For the past 14 years, my mother has been cleaning houses for a living. I still remember the first time I cleaned a stranger’s house with her. I was in charge of the bathrooms. I hated it.

I would sit on the side of the bath tub and look at the cleaning supplies in front of me. Ajax. Windex. Clorox. Dr. Clean. That shiny bald head always looking back at me. 

“You’re doing it all wrong mijo,” my mother would say. She would kneel down next to me and show me the proper way to apply the Ajax on the walls. Most of the time, my mind was some place else. “Did you get that?” she’d ask. I’d just nod my head yes.

She would quickly get up and run back to the kitchen. Or throw a new load of the stranger’s laundry. Or do their beds. Or kneel back again and clean under the couches. Always moving quickly. Quicker than me. Not once complaining. 

“Even if you see 5 cents or five dollars, you are not to take a single penny,” she’d tell me over our lunch break. “We might be poor, but we don’t steal.”

Every time I aced a test, she would brag to her bosses in her broken English. I would thank them for congratulating me and go back outside to clean their patio.

I can’t ever thank that woman enough for making me the man I am now. 

To support the rights of domestic workers, please visit http://www.domesticworkers.org/