In Madame Butterfly, an older woman at the Puduraya bus station in Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia tries to get a ticket to her hometown in Muar. She runs short because her partner has used her finances and cheated on her. She’s left waiting for him to pick her up as he promises, but he fails to deliver. She calls him multiple times. He claims to be busy and leaves to call her again later or to voicemail. After pleading with the bus driver, she makes it home, and in the end, rests in bed content with herself, calm and collected.
Throughout the film, I saw the parallels between my Mom and Madame Butterfly. They were both working-class older Asian women. They dressed the same in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, carrying a large water bottle and holding a purse to the brim with receipts and snacks.
As a working-class older Asian woman, my Mom worked two jobs. She took care of older people and was a waitress at a restaurant. Outside that she dealt with my Dad and cared for three children.
When she worked, she looked for the time to pass. She found caring for old people to be time consumingly slow. When she picked up their prescription drugs or did their groceries, there was a line she had to wait in. After doing these errands, she would get chores and cooking done. She listened to her clients endlessly for hours until they were done. She had my Grandma, Grandaunt, and three other clients.
Being a waitress, she had no time for herself. She couldn’t take a break, eat, or even drink anything. She was always attentive to the customers and their orders, asking about their day. She made sure to smile and keep a chipper voice so that she could get a meager tip from them.
At home, she cooked and cleaned, helped my Dad with errands before work, and went to school events or picked me up from hanging with a friend. She looked forward to the weekend and her day off because she could sleep in, but she would wake up at 10 to get the day started and cook lunch. She rarely asked for help from my siblings and me, instead, she wanted us to focus on school, and she kept up with my Dad’s on-and-off employment. She saved what was left from his gambling and what he spent on beer and cigarettes. She cleaned the plates that he ate from every night. He never cooked or helped to clean even though he works as a cook. He brought trouble for my mom getting caught drunk driving, speeding, or into an accident. He asked my Mom to pick him up. He got drunk every night and would yell and argue with her, yet she bid her silence or forgave him afterward.
She accepted it. She was used to waiting. She waited to grow up, to go to America, to graduate, and to get married. She waited for things to become better, and 23 years and 2 kids later, my Dad was the same. She realized that she had sentenced herself to incarceration by waiting. In that time, she could have lived a hundred lives or died, but she waited all this time for nothing. There were enough people in the world that wanted to enact violence and harm onto her, yet she was complicit alongside them to hurt herself. She subjugated herself to being an object of love and labor through the roles of mother and wife, but enough was enough.
Nothing was going to change if she remained still, so she left to find herself just like Madame Butterfly had. I realized like my Mom, marginalized people were told to wait by their oppressors, but I was tired of waiting and appealing to my humanity. I couldn’t wait for ICE to stop deporting Asian refugees, immigrants, and the undocumented. I couldn’t wait for state violence to stop incarcerating my community or the politicians to stop their policies, legislations, and wars in Asia. I couldn’t wait for the state to stop older Asian folks from being displaced and exploited for their labor. Marginalized people shouldn’t have to wait until oppressors decide to stop hurting, harming, and killing them. I wasn’t about to wait either and I learned from my Mom the only way to bring about change was to advocate for myself and others.
