Tag Archives: female discrimination

Character Study: Hazel

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

“You shouldn’t go to college,” said Dad, looking down at us kids. “There’s riots and immoral behavior. You’ll get brainwashed for sure.” Dad sat in his brown recliner with the foot rest down, his hands fiddling with a cigarette and match. The four of us, my two older sisters, me, and my little brother, sat cross-legged on the worn-out carpet in front of his chair, even though we were teenagers. We should’ve been sitting in chairs like him.

The news was on television. Dad had just seen pictures of students rioting at U. C. Berkeley for women’s rights. He had turned down the sound and called us into the room from our bedrooms that were right down the hall. I had been doing my chemistry homework, and I still had to finish math.

A wood-framed picture of the Last Supper hung on the wall right above Dad’s chair. To the side of it on the mantel was a porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary that Dad had bought Mom when he flew an Air Force mission to Portugal. A pile of rosaries filled a basket next to the statue. They reminded me of earlier years when we were ordered to kneel on the scratchy carpet to say the Rosary for 45 minutes. Thank God, Dad didn’t make us do that anymore. I’d never get my homework finished.

“Hazel, give your dad his ice cream,” said Mom from the kitchen. She stood at the counter, a box of vanilla ice cream in front of her. Jars of caramel and chocolate, too. Cherries.

I got up from the floor, happy to escape the lecture that I knew was coming. Whenever Dad got on his soapbox, we were stuck for at least an hour. Backpacks open on the floor in our dark bedroom. Homework books splayed wide on our desks. Pencil case contents spilled over half-used binder paper.

Dad put his cigarette and matches down. I gave him his bowl of ice cream.

“I need a spoon,” he said in his booming voice. A scowl made two deep furrows between his eyes on his sun-tanned face.

I jumped, turned to the kitchen, found a spoon on the counter next to Mom, handed it to him, then sat down.

While Mom finished scooping the ice cream into bowls, Dad, in-between his own bites, talked about how college wasn’t good for kids.

“They preach against religion,” he said.

I had heard Dad defend his religion ever since I was a little girl. The thing was, he didn’t seem to be a happy person, even though he went to church every Sunday, prayed at every meal, and raised money for new church buildings.

What good was it doing him?

I didn’t like how the parish priests treated women and girls either. We were treated like appendages of our fathers. No authority. No voices. No purpose except for one day having babies.

Luckily, our high school was run by nuns who were great examples of what women could do when men didn’t oppress them. The principal was a nun who had been educated in London in both education and school administration. My chemistry teacher was a pretty blonde married woman who one day wanted her own children. Our choir teacher was a nun who had a college degree in music. She taught choir, violin, flute, and piano.

But I loved my English teacher most of all. She’s the one who introduced me to the English and American poets and Edgar Allen Poe. Poe wrote such delicious horror stories. Murder. Psychological torture. Manipulation. People buried alive. So incredibly creative.

In Sister Elena’s class, I wrote my own poetry. She entered our poems in contests. I won first place once. We also read Shakespeare plays and acted them on stage for the whole school. Someday, I’d like to write a sonnet as good as he did.

What these nuns taught me was that my father had a narrow viewpoint when it came to education and women. He sent us to our high school to learn religion. But these nuns had taught us their version of Catholicism, and it had nothing to do with oppressing women.

Dad was still lecturing. His loud voice filled the room, but it wasn’t filling my ears.

Nodding my head “yes” every so often, I was far away. I saw myself walking through a university campus, my arms filled with Shakespeare, Marlowe, Emily Dickenson, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I definitely was going to college.

The Maid and the Parking Valet

We stayed four nights in an expensive hotel on the beach in Central California.  Every night, I slept fitfully in a luxurious bed with the ocean waves rolling right outside our sliding glass door.  It was heaven near the sea.

As we left our room each day, we said “Good Morning” to Lili, our maid, who cleaned all the rooms on our floor.  She spent about 45 minutes to an hour in each guest room—picking up the wet towels, wiping down the shower doors, polishing the faucets, making up the king-size beds, vacuuming, cleaning the coffee pot, arranging soaps and shampoos near the tub and at the sink, and moving the patio furniture back into place. 

I had read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich so I knew that hotel maids earned minimum wages or not much higher.   When I saw Lili’s envelope on the dresser after her first cleaning, I thought about the book and made a note to leave a tip at the end of our stay. Meanwhile, we wished Lili a good morning each day before she came in to clean our room.  When we came back each afternoon before dinner, our room was immaculate and inviting—an oasis by the sea, the waves making music just outside.

On the morning we were packing up to leave, I saw her tip envelope again.  “Let’s leave a tip for the maid,” I said to my husband, a retired, successful man.

“I don’t usually tip the maid,” he quipped.

“We should,” I said.  I went to my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill.  While I was slipping it into the envelope, my husband handed me a ten-dollar bill.  “No, I’ve got it,” I said.

I tucked the envelope’s flap inside and carried it with my luggage down the hall until I found Lili’s cleaning cart outside of another room.

“Lili, I have a tip for you,” I stated across the open room where she was arranging the curtains.

Lili’s face registered total surprise.  She walked up to me and took the envelope with two hands.  “Thank you so much.”  She didn’t seem to get too many tips.  I wanted to watch her open the envelope to see her reaction, but I thanked her again for her wonderful work and continued down the hall with my husband. 

As we were walking out to the front entrance, we decided that I would go get the car that was parked in the lot up the hill and drive it to the front where my husband would wait with the luggage.

When we got to the open door, the parking valet wished us a good morning.  “You were here four months ago, weren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.  I’m Sean.  I thought I recognized you.”

My husband proceeded to chitchat with Sean while I got the car.  By the time I came back with the car, he had found out that Sean had two sons and Sean coached both of them in soccer.  Since my husband had been an athlete and a coach for our sons, he enjoyed this conversation quite a bit. 

Sean put our two suitcases and two other bags into the trunk for us.  He also got us a bottle of cold water to take on our drive home.  My husband tipped him outside while I waited in the driver’s seat.

When he got in the passenger seat, I asked my husband how much he tipped Sean. 

“Six dollars.”

“What?  For only a little conversation and lifting four items?  At the most, he was with you for ten minutes.”

“He was a good guy,” my spouse said.

I’m sure he is a great guy, but I’m curious as to why Lili didn’t get the same equal treatment.  The inequality built into the exclusive hotel system left a cruel impression.