Alex Tizon was an ordinary boy with ordinary parents and and ordinary life. His father had a law degree and his mother was working to become a doctor. He and his siblings were polite and did well in school. Then there was Lola. Her real name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. She had been a gift from Alex’s grandfather to her mother. She had cared for his mother since she was twelve.
“Lola fed, groomed, and dressed my mother. When they walked to the market, Lola held an umbrella to shield her from the sun. At night, when Lola’s other tasks were done—feeding the dogs, sweeping the floors, folding the laundry that she had washed by hand in the Camiling River—she sat at the edge of my mother’s bed and fanned her to sleep,” Alex Tizon wrote in the Atlantic.
Then she cared for Alex and his siblings when they were born. Alex was 11 years old when his brother, Arthur, brought the idea of slavery to his attention.
“‘Do you know anybody treated the way she’s treated?,” Arthur said. “Who lives the way she lives? He summed up Lola’s reality: Wasn’t paid. Toiled every day. Was tongue-lashed for sitting too long or falling asleep too early. Was struck for talking back. Wore hand-me-downs. Ate scraps and leftovers by herself in the kitchen. Rarely left the house. Had no friends or hobbies outside the family. Had no private quarters.”
Alex Tizon found himself caught between his urge to look up to his parents and the reality of Lola’s life. He was 13 when he stood up for Lola after his parents blamed her for his sister not eating.
His mother blamed him for liking Lola more than her. But the truth was, Lola was the person he saw first in the morning and last at night. He said her name, Lola, before he said mom or dad.
“The woman who used to hum Tagalog melodies as she rocked me to sleep, and when I got older would dress and feed me and walk me to school in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoons. Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow. One summer when I had plaster casts on both legs (I had problem joints), she bathed me with a washcloth, brought medicine in the middle of the night, and helped me through months of rehabilitation,” recalls Alex in the Atlantic.
In way, Lola was more of a mother to him than his birth mother had ever been.
When Alex was 15, his father and mother split up. While his mother tried to scrape up enough money to support them, Lola was the one in charge at home.
“For days in a row Lola would be the only adult in the house. She got to know the details of our lives in a way that my parents never had the mental space for. We brought friends home, and she’d listen to us talk about school and girls and boys and whatever else was on our minds. Just from conversations she overheard, she could list the first name of every girl I had a crush on from sixth grade through high school,” Alex remembers in the Atlantic.
Finally, Alex brought the subject of Lola to his mother. An argument exploded and their relationship deteriorated. Alex accused his mother of having a slave and his mother accused Alex of siding with Lola. His mother blamed Lola for stealing her kids and along with the despair from her destroyed marriage, she started to bring the brunt of her anger out on Lola. Despite this, Lola continued to offer solace and support.
“My mom kept herself together enough to go to work, but at night she’d crumble in self-pity and despair. Her main source of comfort during this time: Lola. As Mom snapped at her over small things, Lola attended to her even more—cooking Mom’s favorite meals, cleaning her bedroom with extra care. I’d find the two of them late at night at the kitchen counter, griping and telling stories about Dad, sometimes laughing wickedly, other times working themselves into a fury over his transgressions,” Alex wrote in the Atlantic.
Life continued. Lola’s parents died but she wasn’t allowed to return to her home. Alex’s mother remarried. Then Alex’s mother died.
Although Alex and his mother had had their disagreements and although Alex hated that she had had a slave, he could not hate her altogether. After all, she was his mother.
And although Alex’s mother had mistreated Lola, Lola did not hold a grudge against her.
“The priest asked Mom whether there was anything she wanted to forgive or be forgiven for. She scanned the room with heavy-lidded eyes, said nothing. Then, without looking at Lola, she reached over and placed an open hand on her head. She didn’t say a word,” writes Alex in the Atlantic.
Without his mother, Lola turned to Alex. Until her death, Alex tried to have her relax and live the rest of her life peacefully at his house but instead of watching TV she would clean. She just couldn’t stop being a slave. She had been one for so long that she didn’t know what else to do.
When I read this article, I was stunned. How could slavery still go on in the modern world? Many others were stunned too.
Richard Burck, a journalist who worked alongside Alex Tizon at the Atlantic, wrote, “Knowing what he did, why did he allow his mother to continue to “own” this woman?”
Many accuse him of not doing more but some also sympathize with him.
Luzia wrote to the Atlantic, expressing her feelings. “Indifference to injustice also comes at a heavy cost, one that Tizon no doubt paid and continued to pay after Lola died. But I sympathize with him even while I lament his failures and those of his family. His story cannot compensate Lola’s suffering, but it reminds readers of the dangers of looking the other way,” she says.
Edgie also wrote in, with hopes that something would come from this article. “With sadness, I know that the noise for eradicating modern slavery will die down, and people will forget as they always do. At best, I hope that there will be some progress for this cause,” she writes.
This is a story about modern slavery. It’s about a boy, struggling with the desire to look up to his parents but the inability to ignore their mistreatment of Lola. It’s about an 11 year old boy realizing who Lola was and unable to forget the debt he owes her. But more importantly, it's the story of Lola: a woman who was given into a life of slavery at the age of twelve. A woman who inspires admiration and sympathy among us. And a woman whose compassion to those who wronged her inspires us to show compassion in our lives.
To read the original article about Lola, visit: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/
Alex Tizon died just before the publication of this article. Neither he, nor Lola, lived to see the readers’ reactions to their story.