Viola is happy. The heat hasn't yet arrived, but school is heading into its final stretch of the year—that relaxed time when vacation draws near and the whole rhythm feels lighter. But Viola is happy for another reason too. It seems to her that finally, at last, the people around her and her little sister have found a way to listen to them both, to understand each of them as they are, with all their differences. Mimosa is so beautiful, and so welcomed. First and foremost, within the family.
This is why a piece of news caught Viola off guard—something she happened to hear on the radio one afternoon while Stella, Bianca's mom, was driving her to music lessons. It was a story both sad and beautiful at once. The voice on the radio spoke of the Philippines, where many people with physical and mental disabilities live today—countless adults and children—most of whom are rejected. Their own families, ashamed of them, lock them away at home.
"Segregated," the journalist said, adding "forced into situations almost like prison." Then Viola understood. Bianca's mom was about to change the station (she knew about Mimosa, naturally, and Viola figured she didn't want to upset her). But then came the beautiful part of the story, and Stella decided to keep listening.
In Manila, the radio continued, seven sisters live together. They belong to the order of the Charity of Saint Anne (but wasn't Anne the mother of Mary, the one who—as Viola had seen in a beautiful drawing—taught her to read?), and since 1994 they have run a home called Elsie Gaches. More than a home, really—a village, Viola thought. With help from 170 staff members, the sisters live with nearly six hundred people with disabilities. Most have been abandoned, some found on the streets, all from families so poor they didn't know "how to manage them."
The work is enormous. The institute is the only one in that Asian country dedicated to people with disabilities, and it places great emphasis on education: numbers and literacy are the key to giving dignity to the children and adults in their care, the sisters say.
Viola felt a flash of solidarity at yet another emphasis on school (but why do adults talk about nothing else?). Then she thought back to the other day, when she saw Mimosa running her hand across the spines of books on the low shelf in their room. Viola thinks Mimosa will become a happy reader someday. Besides, even if Mimosa never learns to grasp the meaning and order of written words, Viola will read all those wonderful stories to her. Because yes, school does matter for something after all (and so do the sisters!).
Giulia Galeotti, 2013