For twelve years of school, the nickname “garbage collector’s daughter” was like an impossible-to-erase scar for Lira, a girl from Tondo, Manila, who grew up without a father. Her father died before she was born; he left her with a thin mother, with calluses on her hands and the smell of sweat and dust: Aling Nena, a woman who collected trash along the train tracks and in the city’s dumps to make ends meet with her daughter. On her first day of first grade, Lira carried an old backpack sewn by her mother.

Her uniform was faded and had patches on the knees, and her shoes were plastic, cracked from use.

As soon as she entered the classroom, murmurs and laughter began among some of her classmates:

“Isn’t that the garbage collector’s daughter?”

“It smells like a dump.”

At recess, while the others ate sandwiches and spaghetti, Lira sat quietly under the acacia tree, slowly eating a piece of bread without filling. Once, a classmate pushed her and her bread fell to the ground.

But instead of getting angry, Lira picked it up, wiped it with her hand, and ate it again, holding back her tears. The teachers felt compassion, but there was little they could do.

So every day, Lira walked home with a heavy heart, but with her mother’s promise echoing in her mind:

“Study, daughter.

So you don’t have to live like me.”

In high school, things got harder. While her classmates had new phones and designer shoes, she still wore the same patched uniform and backpack sewn with red and white thread. After school, she didn’t go out with friends; Instead, she returned home to help her mother sort bottles and cans and sell them at the warehouse before nightfall.

Her hands were often covered in wounds and her fingers swollen, but she never complained.

One day, as they spread plastic sheets in the sun behind their shack, her mother smiled and said,

“Lira, one day you will walk on stage, and I will applaud you with pride, even if I am covered in mud.”

She didn’t respond. She just hid her tears.

At university, Lira worked as a tutor to help with expenses. Every night after teaching, she would stop by the dump where her mother was waiting to help her carry the plastic bags.

While others slept, she studied by candlelight, the wind blowing through the small window of her shack.