Arlene’s story:

[When I met Arlene she was working in one of the bars in Manila in order to support herself and her baby. The bar is the kind where the girls attach themselves to a customer and get them to buy them drinks and they get a percentage. She was only twenty and had an innocent look to her. She had a tatoo of a broken heart on her arm and she said that this was because her husband had beaten her. I asked her what she thought about her job and she told me that it was not what she had dreamed of. Here is Arlene’s story.]

Dear Ross,

It was in the year 1983 (I was six) when our family left and moved in Pamgasinan Province and settle and stay there for the shop where my father works have closed shop, that in spite of the reason that my father does not like in the province where he grew up he does not have any alternatives whether he likes it or not but to proceed home and province. My mother told me in her stories that it was such hardship in life that we have gone through with my brother and sister, how we feasted on plain vegetables w/o rice with our meals and it is only at night time that we can eat rice if that is available, for my father only attend and be with his friends in this drinking spree and it is very seldom that he get home if he is with his friends. So we just cry in stomach pain of our hunger and even the rice with it bottom and burred, that it is only my eldest sister who helps my mother to keep us going on with life surviving by selling and as vegetable vendor and have money to buy enough rice for us.

When my sister who is 10 years old and our second eldest sibling is 8 years old us were separately living together, they stayed with one of my aunties and they were able to have formal studies and the rest of us left and stayed behind in the province my father had a work job at our grand mother’s home and we stayed there for long our six sibling died of Broncho pneumonia and it is such a complicated sickness that we cannot afford and have him hospitalised and live with life it is such hurting and lose a sibling sometimes day dream that we are rich and such could not happened in my sibling and it was even my grandmother [great aunt] who have incurred the burial expenses of my sibling death and still but was asked and refund back her expenses.

Anyway the lumber shop that my father works at closed again and sometimes later on, he was able and find job again and still the same lumber job that he had find me left in our grandmothers care and stayed at the lumber shop premises of my father new work for it is a free sheltering and our father took us three siblings with him and was able and continue with our studies, while two siblings are the only me here mi still not in school of there young age our school us fine and reach school it was the first and grand unte in the elementary level and have teach high school because the sibling older than me had stopped schooling for my auntie who is from Rizal province took her with her and stayed there in Rizal Province when my mother decided and leave for Manila in the year 1990 and find a better job and help us in supporting our life for my father works is not enough to feed us an with our life survive.

I was in the first year of high school when my mother have first send me money of her work fee in Manila but it was my father who have pesond saned money that my mother had send me from Manila and my father instead of giving me sanet money that my mother have send me and support my life studies he instead splurge with his friends in their drinking spree, that it was such hard student life hard for unpporedly the fare is P10.00 [25 US cents] and I got my in P5.00 from my father and I just kept mum about it and stomach the hardship even if I am hungry in school he had more time money with his friend in their drinking spree and cruel he boxed and whipped me and other physical pain hurts and using puava stick and whipped me that is reason and my sibling he uses sticks brooms to whipped them and its all scars and our bodies are in swell pain but we have to endure it we told it and complain to our mother but she only advised and consoled us of understanding our father and just to be sacrifice and patient with him, when my elder sibling have finished her studies cannot endure irresponsible father that’s why we are just four sibling left behind with our father we are just two siblings studying in high school and the next sibling to me is in the elementary level with her studies.

When school was closed for vacation home stay with my sisters who is married and her husband is such good brother in law who has a stable job and very accommodating when summer vacation was off and class is due for a month of school year, we went home again to our fathers care when after few days went on his usual drinking spree with his friends and as expected have given me another hit blows of his barbaric behaviour acts of slapping me in the face and insisted that I have to admit me a guilt acts which I never did and I asked him why he hitted me and instead, why not for him to kill me in such a way that my agony and suffering under his hardship care and with such, he stopped hitting and slapping me and it seem that he was embarrassed with that I what I have told him in the following morning.

Someone came to asked for me to have laundry chore and have accepted it together with the money as payment for my fare in going back to Manila in my sister house and she asked me why I run away from home and I tell her that my father that hurt me again my sister decided to have under her care and for me to continue my studies in Manila my other sister was left because I have only slipped and escaped from my father sight and he does not know that I have run-away from home and he only come to know about it when my sister write him anyway. As the days passed I have observed that my sister is not a good sister with her attitudes and such thinking of her *****. Any the other way around she had to answered and shouldering our studies with its expenditures and others, but then, most of the time she does hurt us that even she is hurting us she still help us with that even needs we needed and once when she was getting mad at us with our other sibling, she told me that to pack up my things and to leave and get lost of her care and literally I left her house as told in spite that I left as home told by my sister.

I still continue my studies , but it did not take long when eventually I have to stop continuing my studies, for I cannot attend and support father [further] my studies alone when I met a friend and stayed there at his place and it was just friend which was the cause and reason why I got married early in my teenage life [she was 17 when she got married] and truth of the matter is that I don’t love my husband. My friend took me away with her in Batangas Province and that she had planned that she will leave me there at Batangas Province that such planned was entered into agreement with my friend and my husband to my surprise as stated earlier, my friend left me in Batangas in the arms of my husband with this, my husband was able to get me of what he wanted from me to be his wife which was pre-planned by him and my friend, that in spite that I don’t want him, have no other alternative and choice, when he de-virgined me, so that I will not be called in our lingo ‘disgrasyada’ a victim of sexual related abuse, that for me to be clean of reputation I went living with my husband in spite of the reason that such being a wife to my husband is only for me to have someone to clear my name and reputation.

In spite of such going and living with my husband and treating and accepting him and learning to love him and tried all the best I can do to learn to love him as my husband my wholeness being I still cannot whole heartedly accept him of his hurting me that I am a battered wife to him. There were even an instances once that even though I was pregnant he kicked me always and I just don’t mind him for I was just telling to myself maybe he is just tired, but then as days passed, there wasn’t any change with such sadistic acts of my husband to me and as a matter of fact it was even becoming more serious and heavier and maybe because I am still too young that I was afraid to fight back to my husband of his sadistic acts on me to defend me if even I fight back to my husband, every time he batters me with his ungentleman and no good husband ways of him after a year of living with my husband and I cannot go on living with him of his bad ways that I decided to separate ways with him I was first afraid to separate way with my husband for I don’t know how I will support and survive the life of my child.

With God’s mercy and power I was able to separate and leave my husband alone then I saw my cousin and told her that I needed a work to survive with my child and she bought me alone in the place of her work and was able to find a job and work for a living with my child, no matters what kind of work I am entering to, for my priority to and main concern is to have an immediate money to buy and feed milk to my baby and this is the only ways to means that I know and have no choice because (I know) I have not finished schooling and have enough education.

You know I am always thankful and grateful to our Lord and to you because you’ve been very supporting and all the helps you have extended to me and I pray and asked our Lord that to give you more abundant graces of life filled of his power and blessing in return to your goodness to me.

If you have a problem don’t forget the Lord He always helps you, take care of yourself.

God bless you all.

[Arlene is now living with her mum and baby in Manila and is finishing off her schooling so that she can get a better job. Her father died in 1994.]

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