[Philippine's human rights violations] A Thousand Little Deaths Growing Up Under Martial Law in the Philippines #4/152

Still, I was grateful that I was not eating alone in a prison cell. The pregnant young woman was at the far edge of the table from where I sat. I couldn’t hear her when she mentioned her name. She seemed relaxed, eating heartily, and chatting with the men next to her. I, on the other hand, felt exhausted, giddy and somewhat shaky.

After dinner, the guard came in and told the young woman and me to follow him. He led us into the commander’s office.

“Hi, I’m Annabel,” the young woman said.

“I’m Vicky,” I said, shaking her proffered hand.

“When did you get here?” she asked.

“I really don’t remember, but it was sometime today. It’s been a long day. What about you?”

“They came to my mom’s store in the afternoon but I wasn’t there. They waited for two hours until I arrived. Then they drove me here. I told them I wanted my husband to accompany me but they said there was no time to waste. It was almost dark when we got here. The commander had already gone home and they said I would have to wait until tomorrow to be interrogated,” she explained.

“Oh,” I said. I did not know what else to say. How do I tell someone that I couldn’t remember what I had gone through just hours ago?She noted my discomfort and quickly changed the subject.

“What school do you go to?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

When I told her she replied, “That’s where I went to school too. I graduated high school two years ago.” We talked some about St. Scholastica’s. She did not attend the new campus as it had yet to be built. I began telling her where the new campus was and described to her how it looked.

The new campus was called Cer-Hill, named, oddly enough, after the real estate company that developed it. The school’s main building comprised three stories and accommodated more classrooms than the old site, located in central San Fernando, next to the foul-smelling wet market.