No Choice

I watch Ruby as she washes the dishes. Get a dirty plate from the left side, soap it, rinse it and stack on the right. She does it a few more times. Then it's the silverware's turn, which makes a lot of jingling noise. Next, the glassware. She puts them all properly in the rack dry and wipes the rest of the sink and the counter.

I just looked at her, not even daring to start a conversation.

In my mind I think of what my father told me. She is just my age. Like me, she graduated last March from high school. However, she does not plan to go to college. Instead, she would like to work. Slash that. She needed to work.


Ruby gets a broom and a dustpan from a closet and starts sweeping the floor. I raise my feet so that she could sweep under my chair. She smiles at me. I smile back weakly.

She was my playmate when I was a child, my father told me. Back then, I would be contented wearing a sando top and panties without any shorts or pants during playtime. Her house was just a stone's throw away. We would play together with the other older kids in the neighborhood.

Soon after, Ruby's family would move and we have never seen each other since. Well, until this summer.

Her mother is a housewife. Her father is a contractual carpenter with no present hiring. They have seven children. Ruby is the third. She works to pay for her siblings' tuition fees. She works to help her parents stay away from hunger. She works because they don't have money to send her to college.

She leaves the kitchen and goes to the backyard, where another house-help is cooking in the dirty kitchen. I was left alone to ponder by myself.

She will be working here until God-knows-when while I will be studying in a university far away from home. She will be doing household chores that I have never done voluntarily. But it is not her fault. Ruby, sadly, does not have a choice, lest she wants her family to starve.