Read the first page of One World by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Everyone says I'm lucky; lucky, because Mrs Kong likes to give me her old clothing, dresses she hasn't worn since the 1980s and her old underwear. Most of them don't really fit me, the bras have strings trailing from the torn lace and the dresses are too formal for scrubbing the kitchen floor or clambering up on top of counters cleaning shelves. So, with the dresses, I sometimes cut them up to use as dishcloth since Mrs Kong thinks store-bought dish-wipes are an unnecessary household expense. Or I give the dresses to my friends when I see them in Central Hong Kong on Sunday. Maridel, with arms sectioned like pink lotus roots and hips like the soft underside of a pear, says to me, "I don't want your frumpy housecoats, Alina, freebie or no." "You're lucky I offer them to you," says I. She shrugs and pulls up these cords she’s sewn with finesse onto her fake suede shoes to make them look like boots. “Those boots make you look like ‘ho,” I say. She smirks, “Ain’t it look like Pretty Woman though?” She knows I’m a big fan of that movie. No, I can’t say I’m as lucky as everyone seems to think, at least not compared to Maridel. Her taitai doesn’t get up till two in the afternoon, being a nightclub singer, and only comes home in the wee hours, so Maridel can protest all she likes, but we all know she goes to bed at ten. So I’ve said before to Luya and Febie, our luck is entirely determined by the kind of job or mood your taitai holds. If she has a bad day, you have a bad day too. Luya, with her Palmolive-glossy hair, likes to disagree. She has opinions on everything. She says that if you’re better educated than the other 140,000 amahs here, your employer inevitably sees your worth and will treat you better. As if she’s a Chinese antique – stare hard enough, maybe you can see the value of a moldy cracking piece of wood. She says it may even be the staircase to a better job, maybe as a restaurant hostess or an office assistant. She’s mental, having this kind of bahala na attitude about everything. Me, I’ve got myself an English literature degree from university in Manila and look where it has got me. What’s the difference between me and Febie, who can barely speak English? We both get up at six in the morning to get the children to school, we cook and clean all day, and then we have to hear the harping from our taitais, “Aiyaa, why you no clean behind door stump, look here, balls of dust big as yu dan” (‘fish balls’ – I’ve learned a lot of spoken Cantonese, that chicken-scrawly writing in the newspapers that makes life in this city one giant mystery) or “You big stupid egg, you boil chicken until you can poke at flesh and it spring back.” I have to bite back reply, “No, Mrs Kong, chicken dead, you can poke but it no spring back.” Mrs Kong looks at me suspiciously, so I know she knows I have a good education and speak better English than she does. Luya’s dead wrong on this one – if you are better educated, your taitai thinks you’re acting superior, and she’s waiting to pounce on your mistakes and make sure you know your place. Stacking my pillow against my arm at night, I don’t think about what Luya told me, that she’s heard about José out with some girl, or Abuela kneeling for me daily at Santa Ana or three-year old Juanita looking at pictures I send home and saying “Mama?” No, I think about how to survive every day with Mrs Kong. Febie likes to call me ‘Leng Lui’ – Cantonese slang for ‘pretty lady’ she picked up from the street vendors in Mongkok. But I’m not cheap like Charina or Fredahlia who cruise for gringos with white skin like sharks at tom-tom clubs in Wanchai. Charina and Fredahlia are no better than prostitutes, I tell Maridel. “They got style,” she says, “learning how to smoke cigarettes and doing the hip-hop!” Who cares if they can swing their hips and smile their secret smiles in the hopes of piggybacking one of those sharks who will whisk them away to America or London? Would you sell your soul just so you can have a chintz drawing room or fake Oriental vases or stainless steel hobs or a game room with dead stuffed animals hanging on the walls? No, I stick to my movies.