I went to Aling Josie's house just across my parents' house here in the farm to ask if her daughter Emily, same age as my younger sister Joy, can dye my hair for a fee. She said her girl can't. Emily just got a housekeeping job and there's a pile of clean clothes at my cousin's house that she needs to press for the entire day. She would have to wet her hands if she dyed my hair which might do her hands harm.
Emily used to be the typical little farm girl who would play and stroll in the fields with me and my sisters when we were kids. She would be wearing those faded and sometimes tattered skirts and clean camisetas which she matched with slippers not her size. I remember her rubber slippers to be so thin and old already that the part where where the heels fall were already torn creating those holes. Dirt and soil would stick to her heels and to the edges of her toenails.
My sister Joy, who is of the same age as Emily and now married and has a beautiful son, has grown to be a mature, sensitive woman far from the cranky and bratty little Chinese-looking girl more than twenty years back. Her childhood playmate Emily who is still single on the other hand, has evolved I think to a kind, simple and shy woman in her own right. Wearing her hair short, she assumes the role of a mother to Sabina - my cousin's five-year old daughter - as her most favorite nanny.
