Chapter 2: The Nature of the Beast

Kriscelle

Her name is Kriscelle. She is thirty-one years old. She has been in the USA for six years. She arrived with her twelve-year-old daughter Corrine on a K1 Fiancee visa to marry William. William is now sixty-two. The marriage is stable. The couple has produced two children, William Jr. (age 5) and Ann (age 2). Kriscelle is a homemaker. William is an architect. The family resides in San Diego, California.

That is the family as the world outside their home sees them. Inside the home, it is a different story. William has two wives, Kriscelle and Corrine. The only reason that Corrine has not produced children is that Kriscelle keeps her daughter on birth control. Corrine is now eighteen and desperate to have a child by William. William is all for it, but Kriscelle wants Corrine to graduate college first. William has told Kriscelle he wants Corrine's child but will not force the issue. Kriscelle controls the bed. So long as Corrine does as her mother says, the daughter has free access to William.

The sexual arrangement has been like this since before the marriage. When William took Kriscelle for his bride, Corrine was part of the deal.

This interview is with Kriscelle. Her command of English is good but not complete. She has problems expressing thoughts, which require complex reasoning or analysis, though it would appear that she is quite capable of both. She speaks a number of Filipino dialects as well as English. She has been driving a car for five years, handles her own finances and manages all aspects of the household. Physically she is 4' 10" tall, weighs 93 pounds. Her health is good. Eyes and hair are black. She has a Filipino high school education, which is to grade 10.

I was thirteen when I gave birth to Corrine. When I was a small child, I lived with my Tatay (father), sisters and brothers. My Nanay (mother) worked as an OFW [1] as a med-tech in Dubai. She sent money home every month. Tatay was a tricycle [2] driver. My Ate [3] [pronounced ah-Teh] is two years older than I am and she tried to tell me to be careful, but the church teaches that it is a sin to use condoms. We had no birth control. Because tatay was often away until late, I spent a lot of time with tita [4] Gina and tito [5] Andy's house. They had seven kids and we shared the beds. Things happen when there are so many people in one house and one night tito Andy had too much Tanduay [6] before he came to bed. I think Tita Gina also must have had a lot of Tanduay because she was snoring and she never snores. Tito Andy crawled into bed next to me. His penis was hard. I could feel it under the sheet. His was not asleep and his hands were all over my body. I tried to get away from him but he angrily told me kayo ay masama [7]. So I allowed him to take me. He took me that night and then every night for a month before I got pregnant. I am sure tita, she knew he was doing it. She just told me to be a good girl to my tito. Tita and tito made sure I had food. They paid my tuition through high school. After I had the baby, tita got condoms for tito to use. She said I should stop listening to the Padre when he said condom use is a sin. By the time I was sixteen tito stopped sleeping with me. I was still living there and Corrine was four when she started Kinder 1. [8] I got a job at the Dole Asparagus processing plant and was able to pay her tuition. The work at the Dole plant was hard. But I was very fast and able to clear my table every day.

Because I had a child, no Filipino would look at me. I thought I was pretty, but I had no money to make myself look nice. I wanted to get out of tito and tita's house because Corrine was beautiful and I wanted a different life for her. Her grades were great. For the last four years, she had been the very top of her class, which meant that she got a scholarship and I didn't have to pay her tuition.

I held onto the Dole job for seven years. At age twenty-three I was laid off for younger workers. I needed to move. I no longer had my job and Corrine was about to start grade 5. She was eleven.

I get a job in Gensan [9] at the Mr. Donut in the KCC mall. We stay at a bed-spacer. [10] We share the bed. The cost is P1,200 a month. I am making P8,000 month. The public school (I cannot afford a good private school any more, ) is a different one from the one where Corrine had a free scholarship and the tuition is P2,100 per semester, but I have to pay for all our food and clothing. We were getting one meal a day, plus a donut or two I bring back to the bed-spacer. There is nowhere for Corrine to get a quiet space to study. We are unable to afford to pay the teachers for the private tutoring they offered on Saturdays before major exams. I did not know how we will survive and be able to complete Corrine's education.

There is a story that is circulating about a school for special sixth grade girls who have young mothers. I ask around and find out that it is true, but only a very few each year are chosen. We can apply without any fee, but it is unlikely that Corrine will be accepted. That is all I know about the place other than the name of the teacher at the school, Jun. Applications for the school are accepted in April. The school year ends on March 20^th. The new school year will start the first week of June. We go down to a warehouse in Gensan where there is a line of at least two hundred other women and daughters. That is just one day. Applications were open for twenty-five days! We were told that there were about twenty openings each year. It is a one-year program. But the rumor was 'that is all you need.' After that the rumor was your life and that of your daughter's was set. I don't understand the thing, but it isn't something I can ignore. We bring in Corrine's school papers. They interview both of us, take pictures of both of us, and tell us to come to another place the next week for testing. All the people we meet are women. I don't know it at the time, but Corrine is interviewed by Jun.

We return for Corrine's academic testing and afterward receive a text to come back for another interview. This time there is no line. We meet at the school and both Corinne and I are interviewed by Jun, Cherise and Jake separately. On May 10^th we get the word that we are accepted and that we should attend an orientation session the next week. I have no idea what the orientation session was about.

The next week our lives changed forever. Jun told us our daughters would attend the school without any tuition fee. The school will pay for everything we needed for the ten months. That there was a dormitory we, both mother and daughter will stay in for the school year. I will have to quit my job. The daughters will have an intensive year of schooling, learning everything that normal 6^th graders learn and a great deal more to help them with their new lives when they leave the school. We mothers were also going to be schooled, plus we will be the staff for the dormitory. We will keep it clean, do all the cooking and take classes about things that made my head spin, and some old fears pop-up. What I didn't understand until I sat through that meeting was that the school was an exit system for all the women and their daughters to leave the Philippines and come to the USA as wives of good husbands.