Palm trees lined the entrance of the Murida Hotel as Mom rolled the suitcase through the revolving doors and into the grand lobby. The air-conditioning instantly cooled me from the sweltering heat. Mom said it was always hot and sticky in Miami, which made me grateful for our weather back in Jersey. I followed her to the long marble counter, where a man in a suit motioned for us to step forward.
Mom handed over her ID to check us in. It was the first time we’d taken a real vacation together. Summer was always the busiest for Mom, so I was glad she’d managed to get a week off this year. Especially since she’d been feeling tired lately. She set down her wallet and waited as the man typed away on his keyboard. Unfortunately, there was a problem with our reservation.
“What do you mean you can’t find it?” Mom asked.
“There’s nothing coming up under your name ...”
“Can you check again? I made the reservation months ago. I can show you the email confirmation.” She held up her phone, but the man hardly glanced at it.
“Unfortunately, we have to go by our system,” he said. “And I can’t seem to find it.”
“There’s obviously a mistake. Will youpleasecheck again?”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Dao, but you don’t have a reservation with us. Maybe there was some issue with your ... funds. Now, if you don’t mind stepping aside, there are other guests waiting to check in behind you.” He placed her ID on the counter.
Mom slid it right back to him. “This is completely unacceptable. I’m not going anywhere until you help fix this or find us another room.”
“Unfortunately, we’re fully booked at the moment, so there’s nothing I can do.”
“What do you mean there’snothingyou can do? We flew all the way from New Jersey.” Mom wasn’t raising her voice, but you could tell she was about to. “If you’re refusing to help me, then I’d like to speak with a manager.”
“Our manager isn’t available.”
“Well, I’ll wait right here until they are.” Mom folded her arms, maintaining her spot at the counter. “And please let them know I’m an employee of the company.”
The man looked her up and down. He peered at her faux leather bag, our plastic suitcase that was chipped at the corners, at me, and then back at her. “May I ask what ... you do?”
“I’m housekeeping manager at the Huxton.” It was a four-star hotel owned by the parent company who owned the Murida. Mom worked as a maid for eleven years before she was finally promoted. It was her idea to place towel animals in every bathroom, which she still stayed late to fold herself. As a reward for a decade of loyalty, the company offered a two-day stay at any sister hotel around the world. “And I’ve been there for over ten years.”
“I see ...” he sighed. “Excuse me a moment.”
The man disappeared through the door behind him. Twenty minutes went by as we waited patiently. Eventually, he returned through the same door and started typing again. “All right, Mrs. Dao. I was able to speak with one of our managers. The good news is we found you a single room on the second floor, but it won’t be ready for a few hours.”
“We’re supposed to get a junior suite,” Mom said. “It’s my son Evan’s birthday, and I would like him to have his own bed and a view of the pool.” I had just turned nine years old last week. Mom brought home a slice of cake and surprised me with this trip she had planned for us.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dao. But everything’s fully booked—”
“And yet you were able to find this one,” she reminded him. “We would like ajunior suite.”
“This is the absolute best we can do. Unless you’d like to change it to adifferentweekend. May I suggest ... November?”
They bickered for several minutes before Mom gave up. She didn’t smile when she took the key card from him. She barely said a word while we waited in the lobby for two hours before we could finally take the elevator to the second floor. The door to our room was all the way down the hall beside the emergency exit. Mom set the suitcase beside the bed and took a sad look around. Then she pulled back the curtain. A concrete wall completely blocked our view.
Mom didn’t say anything to me. She just walked over to the bed and sat for a while. I knew she was truly upset when she went silent like this. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I didn’t need my own bed or a view of the pool. But I knew she wanted me to have the best experience. Eventually, she grabbed the laptop we brought to watch movies and pulled out the chair from the desk.
She wrote an email to her boss, explaining what had happened, along with her feelings of being undervalued and disrespected over the years, bringing up all the late nights she’d worked, the holidays she’d missed, and ended it with her two weeks’ notice. Mom cc’d Mr. Claremont—who was the owner of the hotel—and hit send. Then she texted her fellow maids about everything. Not long after, twelve otheremployees had reached out to Mr. Claremont, threatening to put in their two weeks as well. Including Linda, the concierge manager who she’d known for over a decade and had become her closest friend. “Where you go, I go with you,” she assured her.
Forty minutes later, there was a knock on the door. The man from the front desk came in with the manager, who apologized profusely for the “misunderstanding.” Apparently, they’d received a call directly from Mr. Claremont, who demanded they fix the issue immediately. The two men helped pack our things and moved us to the executive suite on the top floor. I had never seen a hotel room that big before. There was even a balcony that let you look out at the entire courtyard.
They offered us complimentary dinner and tickets to an art show. Mom took me down to the pool and watched me swim from a lounge chair. She laughed when I accidentally splashed some water on her. Later, when I asked her why the others threatened to quit too, she explained, “If they treat me this way, what stops them from treating the others the same? We are always stronger when we all stand together.”
We spent the afternoon walking along the beach, collecting seashells. In the morning, we ordered room service and ate it in bed together. It was the best weekend I’d ever had in my life.
Mom died a few months after I turned fifteen. It’s strange looking back on it now. I was at her bedside when the nurses came in and asked me to wait in the hallway. I wish I’d known she’d been feeling sick so I could have convinced her to get checked sooner. But Mom was the type to work through a broken foot. It didn’t help that she lived most of her life without health insurance, so she rarely went to see a doctor.
I remember our last conversation. Mom kept telling me to focus on school so I could make something of myself when I got older. She said she was sorry that she had nothing to leave behind for me. But that’s not exactly true. She left me with a love for reading from the days we spent in the library when our heater was broken. She left me with skills to cook for myself from all the times she let me help out in the kitchen. And she left me with the will to take care of myself from watching her sacrifice so much for us.
I moved in with my aunt Hi?n after the funeral. She lives in East Brunswick, which meant I couldn’t stay at my old school unless I wanted to bike an hour to get there. A loyal guest of the hotel who heard about Mom’s death made a call to the private school nearby, insisting they make an exception due to my circumstances. It seemed Mom was truly loved by everyone she met.
