Excerpts From A Book I'll Never Write

an ode to Mbak

I know Mbak since i was five, my brother was just a small bundle of joy fresh out of my mother's womb. He was born yellow, my brother, too much bilirubin in his system, they say. My mother can't bring him home days after she herself has been discharged from the hospital.

But he survived.

Mbak holds my brother in her arms like he was her own. She has her own, a daughter, an only child. She wants another one but she told me it was fiscally impossible for her to carry another child. She just can't afford it, she said as she mopped the floor of our house that one sunny afternoon.

Mbak has been working in our house for years, she cleans, washes our clothes, prepared meals, cooks for my mother til her last dying breath. Mbak knows what she should and shouldn't eat, Mbak knows what she could and couldn't eat, Mbak cleans her dirty plates still full of half a portion of a bland porridge, almost untouched. Mbak prepares her funeral, came to our house upon hearing the news almost immediately and calls on relatives and neighbor to help.

Mbak has probably seen my stash of antidepressant hidden in between my makeup pouches but Mbak never says anything for she probably doesn't even know

what was those pills for.