I shrug, scooping some onto my spoon. “Tito Boy was out of the sweet kind. I like the spicy kind better, anyway.”
“Me too.”
The kitchen fills with the sounds of our chewing. “So what do you wanna do today?” I ask her. I already have a plan, but I’m interested in hearing what she has to say.
“Uh…” she says, looking up diagonally at the ceiling again. “Sundays are laundry days. Why don’t you get all our dirty laundry and then I put them in the basket and then you bring it downstairs.”
“You’re not gonna help me actually do the laundry?”
“I am,” she insists. “I’m putting it in the basket.”
“But that’s only one step.”
“That’s helping.”
I ponder the technical truths of five-year-olds. “Could you help me pour the detergent in?”
She huffs. “Fine.”
“Anything else?”
“I wanna look at the war book we got from the library yesterday. Also we need blueberries,” she says, about her most recent snack obsession that costs me about as much as our rent.
I nod. “Okay. Laundry, grocery, book. I have a work call in the afternoon, around two o’clock… what do you think about reading your book in your room while I’m on the call?”
Frankie frowns at me, her little nose scrunching. “Or I can go downstairs to Tita Gloria and Tito Ben and hang out with them.”
This strikes an immediate nerve.
It’s been just me and Francine for her entire five years, ever since her mother disappeared after all but dumping Frankie on my doorstep immediately after she was born. One drunken mistake, after an entire lifetime of perfectionism, ended up being the most beautiful, wonderful mistake of my life, but I was never going to make a mistake again.
I do fucking everything. I am the most present, involved, supportive, best fucking parent anyone has ever had. I’m a machine. I do it all. I won’t share responsibility. Don’t need to ask for help. Even if when my aunt and uncle live just downstairs.
Dom, my therapist chastises. Fine. Does this stem from shame? Probably. Is it stubbornness? Definitely. Who am I kidding? I know where it comes from, and it’s a generational, cultural curse I’ve been working with my Filipino therapist to break since Frankie came around. There are a bunch of unfortunate things from the culture that I’ve brought back to the States, one of them beinghiya(shame, embarrassment) and a general fear of losing face, and, according to my therapist, “this prevents me from admitting vulnerability and seeking help, especially because it involves revealing personal struggles or weaknesses.”
Yep. She’s said it so many fucking times I have it memorized. It’s more nuanced than just being embarrassed, and I can’t explain the crippling anxiety that comes from avoiding being a burden to others, except that it’s a deeply rooted personal feeling that feels almost impossible to break. Regardless, no one else is going to be impacted by my actions or mistakes ever again.
“I don’t want to inconvenience them, Frankie. We don’t know if they’re busy or not,” I tell her.
“Can I just go downstairs and ask?” she whines.
“It’s okay, hon. The call won’t take very long, anyway.” I eye her, hyper aware of what that whine meant, knowing that we are now towing the very fine line dividing passive cooperation from absolute nuclear meltdown.
She rolls her eyes and my body relaxes, Chernobyl warning alarms ceasing.
I take another bite. “Want to go to the park and read together after my call? I got a new book from the library, too.”
Frankie sighs, accepting the subject change. “Fine. But only if you carry my book. I got a visual encyclopedia (vi-zoo in-thide-a-peda) of World War II. It’s heavy.”
I nod as if it’s totally normal for a five-year-old to be into World War II weaponry and aircraft. “I know. I carried it home for you. But what if you brought your backpack instead?”
“It’s too hot to wear a backpack. My back gets all sweaty.”
“Fine,” I tell her.
“But you have to do French braid pigtails before we go,” she adds.
“This is not how negotiating works, Frankie.”
