Comfort Woman : a Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under ...

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Comfort Woman
directed her life. Sometimes my mother worried, what would happen
to her and her child if the landlord died?
I saw my father for the fi rst time when I was three years old. I did
not want to approach him, but he was very happy to see me because
I looked very much like him. Every two months, my mother, grandmother
and I went to see my father at the Escolta, which was then
Manila’s business district. My father owned a pharmacy there. He met
us in a restaurant, and he talked to my mother while we ate.
He continued to support not only my mother and me but also
Carmen’s entire family. Julia’s brothers and sisters all depended on
Don Pepe’s money, whether they lived in the house in Pasay, or in
their own houses after they got married. None of them had a job.
They became even more dependent on Don Pepe after my grandfather
died when I was fi ve years old. At one time, fi ve of my mother’s
relatives from Pampanga stayed in the house in Pasay for almost two
months. All of them were fed with Don Pepe’s money. Julia resented
this. How could she save any money for her and her child if everyone
depended on her?
Three of my mother’s sisters, Aniceta, Laria and Consing, and
her brother Ando married while they were still in their teens. All of
them managed to attend school, but stopped after the second grade
after they had learned to read and write. The landlord’s money paid
for the tuition of Julia’s brothers, Juan, Pedro, Felino and Emil, in a
private school in Pasay.
For years, all of them depended on Don Pepe’s support. Even
though Julia’s married sisters and brother no longer lived in the house
in Pasay, they went to visit Julia every month to ask for some money
and food. Pedro later worked in Don Pepe’s house.
The day came when the monthly support from the landlord was
no longer suffi cient. By that time, I was seven years old and needed
to go to school. Don Pepe had instructed my mother to take care of
my education.
I was enrolled in a Catholic school run by nuns, St. Mary’s
Academy. I was very bright in class. Although my father gave extra
money for my studies, I was always short of the things we needed in