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When I studied abroad in London during college, I thought my homesickness was unmatched. It was March, and when I woke up to another gray morning, all I could think about was how California bloomed and brightened in the springtime. So when my mother asked me to take a train ride to meet Irma Soriano, her best friend from high school, I couldn’t pass up the offer. Little did I know, that by the end of my visit to Irma’s, my homesickness did not matter.
Irma lived in a two-story flat in Northern London, the exterior plastered in faded posters, next to a main road where the copper glow of streetlights seeped into the fading bustle of the evening. When I first met Irma, she held my hands and looked me up and down. “Come, come,” she beckoned from under her doorway. Irma was a cheerful tiny woman with soft brown eyes. “You look like your mother!”
I felt at home right away. Inside, the rich smell of chicken adobo and hot rice wafted through the air as music hummed above the chatter. Irma introduced me to her daughter, Sonny, who had just graduated from college and invited friends to celebrate.
I felt embarrassed; I knew little about the family and was afraid we would have nothing to talk about. In an effort to make conversation, I pointed out a family photo featuring Irma, her husband and their two daughters.
“Where’s the rest of your family?” I asked.
“Oh,” she smiled. “They’re still in the Philippines. We’ll reunite soon, though, I just know it.”
The night took a turn when I asked that question, and soon Irma gathered everyone closer to tell the whole story.
When Irma came to London in 2005, she only planned to stay for a few months. In that time she planned to work as much as she could to pay debts back home in the Philippines, where her husband and two young daughters remained. Instead, she stayed for fourteen years as an undocumented immigrant, working cash-to-hand jobs cleaning, waitressing and nannying. By the time she reunited with one daughter in 2019, both were already adults.
The Soriano family’s debt problem began in 2002, when Irma lost an accounting job that kept her family stable in the Philippines. Soon after, Ed, her husband, also became unemployed. Determined, Irma creates a blueprint: she would go to London and Ed would follow. In 2005, through an opportunity that would both disrupt and save the Soriano family, Irma and Ed headed off to London and set forth on the plan.
Sonny was twelve and Sherry was nine when their parents left for London. From elementary to high school, they rotated from grandparents and extended families to good friends and nannies. Irma and Ed raised them through computer and phone screens. They told them when to sleep early and when to do homework, when to bathe and when to wake up. In 2012, just before the girls entered college, Ed returned to the Philippines while Irma stayed in London. As the family’s main source of income, she had to stay.
Irma spent the next seven years alone, working five days a week cleaning homes in the morning and babysitting strangers’ children until midnight.
For one year, she took no breaks and worked everyday. She lived in a one-bedroom flat infested with cockroaches where she came home every night to call her family on the phone. To protect herself from deportation, she steered clear of medical appointments for fourteen years. Until the day she reunited with her daughters, Irma sent home euros equivalent to $1,600 dollars a month to see them flourish through a screen. As Irma worked, Sonny and Sherry graduated school, discovered hobbies and settled into themselves.
In 2016, Sonny saw her mother for the first time since she was twelve years old. With just her and her mother in London, Sonny has since then finished her master’s degree and gotten married. Her sister, Sherry, was expected to arrive in the fall. Now, they all plan to live together in London and are only waiting for Ed, who is banned from the U.K. after violating his visa status all those years ago.
“I still can’t believe I’m sitting right next to her,” Irma said as she smiled, stroking Sonny’s hair. “Things might have been different if I were a nurse like your mom,” she says as she turned to me. “But I’m scared of blood!”
She laughs but her face has a certain hardness, a history applied to the skin that I cannot overlook. Even after we say goodbye I cannot shake off the thoughts of her alone for all those years in London, working from dawn to dusk because of debt, and coming home to the phone.
Vianna Mabanag graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Writing & Literature, where she was a Raab Writing Fellow. Her work been featured in The Daily Nexus and The Catalyst Literary Arts Magazine. She is based in Santa Barbara, California.
