Madame Butterfly: What Are You Waiting For?
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 all of her finances and cheated on her. She’s left waiting for him to pick her up as he promises, but yet again fails to deliver. She calls him multiple times while he claims to be busy and promises to call again later. After pleading with the bus driver, she finally 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 are both older working-class Asian women. They both dress themselves in long-sleeved shirts and jeans, carrying a large water bottle and a purse filled to the brim with receipts and snacks. As a older working-class Asian woman, my Mom worked two jobs. She took care of older people and waitressed at a restaurant. Outside of that, she dealt with my Dad and cared for three children.
When she worked, she wished for the time to pass. She found caring for old people to be achingly slow. Everytime she picked up their prescription drugs or did their groceries, there would always be a line she had to wait in. After doing these errands, she would finish chores and cooking. She listened to her clients endlessly for hours until they were done.
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. She would ask about their day and made sure to smile and maintain a happy attitude to 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 after hanging out 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 anyways to get the day started and cook lunch. She rarely asked for help from my siblings and I, instead, she wanted us to focus on school. She kept up with my Dad's on-and-off employment. She saved what was left from his gambling, beer, and cigarette habits. She cleaned the plates that he ate from every night.
He never cooked (though he worked as one). He never cleaned. He brought trouble for my mom, asking her to pick him up after getting caught drunk driving, speeding, or getting into accidents. 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 twenty three years and two 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 that 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 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.
Cover Photo by Jennifer Farley. Edited by Katrina Kwok.