Story of an OFW

By Emmanuelle

Elena was the only child of a widowed mother.  She had only her high school diploma to her name, and a few semesters in a university in Pangasinan to affix to her biodata; but Elena had overwhelming ambition and determination. And she had the luxury of time before the rush. Elena belonged to the earliest groups of Filipina women who flocked to the various overseas employment offices in the 80’s, when lines were not so long as to snake from block to block, and recruiters did not charge as much as the worth of a house.

Elena was contracted for two years as a domestic help in Hong Kong. She embraced her mother goodbye: Inay, this will only be for a little while. Her mother burst in tears; but she had always been in tears each time her daughter left – for school, for a job, and now this. What mother wouldn’t? Elena promised she would always take care of her mother, and her mother’s relatives in need. And she did so, simply and without much ado.

Elena first became an OFW when she was still in her early twenties. She pushed her homesickness aside by burying herself in good, honest work that she was renewed for another contract of two years. Home for a while in her barrio near the foot of the Cordillera range, she bought her first investment – her first parcel of land in her name.

Afterwards, each time she came home for a rest between contracts, she would purchase one parcel more. Like a period or an exclamation point to end a sentence.  A two or three-years sentence of hard labor.

Then Elena met Alfred, a good-looking local boy who had a sometime work as a sometime driver.  Elena knew how to fix herself to look good, but she knew she was not very pretty; she also realized her biological time clock was running out fast. The courtship was one twirl from I love you to I do; a whirlwind would have whirled longer. Who courted whom was a question whispered around. Another: was there true love between the two?

No matter, Elena waited eagerly for her latest contract to bear fruit – her baby. As the barrio school nearby discharged the pupils every afternoon, she would sit by the front window, call out to the kids she knew; and if the child were her niece or nephew or godchild, she would ask the kid can you spend the night with me?

Maybe the marriage was built on the wrong premise; maybe the partners were not compatible. Maybe if they had a baby. Whatever the true reason, this marriage ended sourly when Elena won a case over Alfred’s own family. She sued for possession of a parcel of land which   Alfred’s family originally owned, loaned to a local bank, then failed to reclaim. Elena paid the bank with the understanding that Alfred’s family would reimburse the amount. They never did, but they continued to live off the land. When the court awarded the land to Elena, Alfred left her for his family.

One morning, Elena hears her husband and his male relatives are preparing the land she had just won from the court. Armed with her grit and nothing else, she rushes to the in-law’s place. She passes by her mother sweeping the front of her house. Elena stops her running, hugs her Inay, gushes: I’ll be just a while.

She runs on to the farm. She sees her husband and his relatives working, their implements glinting from their newly honed sharpness and from the rays of the sun. She calls his name; Alfred turns, rushes to meet her.

It was a scene straight from the movies: woman running to her man, man rushing to his woman. As if to embrace. As if to twirl, to whirl around in a dance of life, of love.

The couple stops within an arm’s reach of each other. Alfred whacks her neck with his bolo. Elena drops. His relatives rushes to her, whacks her too with whatever sharp implements they held.

Nobody came to claim Elena’s body for hours.

It had been too long a while. As of this writing, Inay has yet to claim justice for Elena.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments