They had a lot of trees--apples, plums and


cherries. I remember in the evenings, when the staff was gone and the nuns were at prayer, some of the girls and I went down to the garden to pick the apples until our bellies were full. At the orphanage, I went to regular school,


and I joined the track team and I was really good! As long as I was number one and brought trophies home, I got any kind of excuse from class. I really didn’t get an education. On the weekends and vacations, my oldest foster brother George and his wife would take me to their home. The summer I was about fourteen, I went to summer school in my brother’s village.


I


also joined the track team there and I was really good. My brother’s wife Margaret really didn’t like me. She was mean to me, behind my brother’s back of course. l remember that I was in the bathroom and


my panties were bloody. I thought I had cut myself. I was so scared, and Margaret came upstairs. I was crying. She didn’t tell me what was happening. She just picked me up and threw me into a


cold bath and washed me up. The next day she said I couldn’t run on the track team. I thought I’d done something really bad. The next day she walked into my classroom and showed everyone my bloody panties. I was so embarrassed. The teacher took me to the nurse. I think they must have thought that this lady was crazy to embarrass the child in class. The nurse explained to me the birds and


the bees and told me about a woman’s body. I left the orphanage at about 16 and lived with my brother. My mother was just up the street, so a lot


of times I’d visit her but the government wouldn’t let me stay there. I left the village when I was 18 and I went to London. I was a nanny, taking care of wealthy children of the aristocracy. I didn't really like it. but it was all I could do with no real education. I survived in London, in 1973 I met my


future husband who was an exchange student from U.S.C. he reminded me of the picture that I had seen in a magazine from America, Curtis Mayfield he really did, he came to see me in a play that I was doing called the cockpit Theatre at first he thought I was American until I spoke!


PHF Magazine October 2016


“The violence escalated and the police were often called, my husband was so


controlling that he wouldn


allow me to be a good mother”


Our relationship developed and then came


that first slap I shouldn’t run but I didn’t I came to the United States in 1975 it was a warm October evening as a flight landed in LA I got off the plane, excited little anticipation. Little did I know that I had just stepped into a 25- year nightmare. As I stood in line, ready to step onto American


soil I couldn’t wait to see him. I looked anxiously around for Carl and he was nowhere to be seen, I didn’t panic I went to get my luggage and still no car. I found myself open suitcase at LAX looking


for a number that he give me, I found it and called the lady ,on the other side of the line she directed me to her home. I suppose as a young woman I was fearless,


that was the start of many clues, I arrived in Inglewood California, my first impressions of an American family extremely different, later that morning Carl popped in as if nothing had happened, I was just happy to see him and early that morning we took a cab to his apartment. Let the nightmares begin. We were married in 1976 and during the


course of our relationship I was introduced to deception, cruelty, low self-esteem and I had to fend for my children and myself with little resources and this went on for years, I can’t say we didn’t have a good time, but most of the bad memories stick with you. The violence escalated and the police were


often called, my husband was so controlling that he wouldn’t allow me to be a good mother, a good wife there were times we had no food in the house, as the child grew up in the turmoil of our relationship. He had a 9-to-5 job when he’d come home he took the kids out to eat and bring me back scraps of food! I felt humiliated he treated me more like a maid and refuse to be intimate with me I felt very depressed and distraught and wanted to leave but I had no place to go.


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