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

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Comfort Woman
not know you,” he said. He also asked me about my mother.
“Please, Father,” I asked, “Let me see you every month, even only
in this terrible place.” He was quiet. “I see that you are ashamed of
me,” I said.
I saw his face turn red, maybe from anger at the harsh words he
had heard from me. He asked me about my studies. I answered him
politely, not telling him how diffi cult my mother’s situation was under
my grandmother’s command. “I gave the money to your grandmother,”
he said. Then he kissed me and handed me a small piece of paper.
When he left, I went to my grandmother who was waiting for me
beside the church. I read the piece of paper to her. “After two months,
I will see you again in this place at ten a.m.” The date and the day
were typed with the message.
While my grandmother and I were walking to the train station,
I asked her, “How did my father type these words before he came to
see me? You stayed in his house only for thirty minutes.”
“The last month that I came here, I said to your father that I will
take you to see him,” she said. “Maybe he typed that message even
before you arrived.”
When we reached home, I told my mother that Don Pepe had
asked how she was. Then I realized why the message was typed.
He did not want anything in his own handwriting that would serve
as evidence that he acknowledged me as his illegitimate daughter.
Maybe he thought that someday I would sue him. I was angry with
him because he was ashamed of me.
After two months, I again went with my grandmother to Angeles.
I went straight to the rice granary to wait for my father. There was
a narrow path near the granary, and I sat on a piece of rock that lay
on the path.
There were people passing by, and they all looked at me. Then I
saw Don Pepe’s daughter on her way to church. She saw me, too, and
looked at me from head to toe. I knew immediately that she was my
father’s daughter because we looked alike.
I waited for more than an hour for my father. I felt like a thief hiding
near the granary. When at last my father came, I went inside.