Because I Said So (40 page)

She answered, “Get away. I don’t want to see you.” Then my sister went up to her and my mom took her in her arms.

After my mother and stepfather split up for good when I was fifteen, things got very hard. My stepfather gave us no financial support. My mother did housework for other people, but she earned very little, barely enough to pay for our school books.

When we could eat, we did; when we couldn’t, we didn’t. We often went to school hungry. I had a friend who fed me sometimes so that my mom could feed my brothers and sisters. Although my mother was mean to me, I could see how she sacrificed herself for us. She was only thirty-two years old, with four children to take care of alone.

I was eighteen, working as a dental assistant to help support the family, when I met Ruben*. He worked on a melon farm, checking the fruit for disease. One day shortly after I met him, I got in a fight with my sister and hit her, and my mom told me to get out of the house. I called Ruben to tell him that I was leaving, going to Guatemala City to look for my stepfather. He said, “Pack your things. I’m going to come and get you.” He told me he didn’t want

*The names of some people in this story have been changed to protect their privacy.

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me to take the wrong path, to end up a prostitute or a drunk in Guatemala City. He told me I could stay with him in his brother’s home, and I decided to take the risk.

Ruben went overboard to treat me well. He pampered me, brought me treats. I felt gratitude for his support when I needed it most, and that gratitude turned into love. Although his family thought I was coarse, he said he didn’t care. He said he wanted me to be the mother of his children. For the first time, I felt loved and cared for. We were married in 1987. I was eighteen years old.

Despite thinking I was not good enough for her son, my mother-in-law did offer us a place to stay. She had a large lot of land and a small home next to her house. After we moved there, Ruben told me to stay at home, saying that I couldn’t leave the house. I thought this was strange, but I was in love and I did what he told me. In Guatemala, a married woman is expected to wait on her husband—cook, clean, wash the clothes, everything. But gradually he started to treat me differently. He became easily agi-tated with me. He started to say the things his family said—that I was base because I came from a poor family, and that I would bring him down. He said, “They were right. Why did I set my sights on you?” He also started to push me around physically. He would pull my ear or hair for no reason.

I gave birth to our first son, Eddie, a year after we were married. Soon after, his father demanded that I begin to work to show his family that I could help support our family. I had already started to learn beautician skills, so I went to work for Ruben’s nephew, who had a beauty salon.

I will never forget the first time Ruben brutally attacked me. I was twenty-one years old. My son was two. My husband was not working at the time, so I worked from about eight A.M. until six P.M., then had to rush home to make dinner for him. I was late one evening and a co-worker gave me a ride on his motorcycle.

Ruben was very jealous. He was waiting for me at the door with our son in his arms. I was happy to see my son, and I took him and started to go into the house. Ruben grabbed my hand, took me into our bedroom, locked the door, and grabbed our son from
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me. He threw our son on our bed. He started to kick my legs and then he threw me on the floor and started to forcibly undress me.

Our son was crying and screaming for me. Ruben said that I was cheating on him and with this, he thrust his finger inside my vagina. This whole time I was screaming and crying. He stood up and put the point of his boot on my throat, and I started to choke.

I thought I was going to die. I looked into his eyes and said to him, “Please take care of my child, and God bless you.” He let up and I gulped for air. Then he left the room.

A few days later, I was in extreme pain and I began to hemor-rhage. Ruben called the family doctor, who said that I had to be taken to the hospital. There, I found out that I had been pregnant and was experiencing a miscarriage. Ruben felt guilty and he asked for my forgiveness. He said that he would never hit me again. I forgave him.

Although he continued to have outbursts, he did get better, and I thought that the miscarriage had taught him a lesson. We had two more children, Sandra and Carlos. Ruben bought equip-ment for me to operate a beauty salon and built an extra room onto the house. Clients began to come, and soon my business was doing well. But I knew Ruben was going out at night with other women. He would become affectionate with me just to get me to go to bed with him. If I refused, he would accuse me of being with other men, perhaps my clients.

About four months after Carlos was born, Ruben and I had sexual relations. It was very painful for me. The doctor told me that I had contracted a venereal disease from Ruben and that we had to undergo treatment. Ruben denied the whole thing. He knew that it was painful for me to have sexual relations, but he forced himself on me anyway.

Things got very bad between us. Ruben would say awful things to me. He would say that I was a prostitute just like my mother. He laughed at my Caesarian scars and said that no one would find me attractive. He began to hit me harder. He punched me in the face, threw me against the wall. I think he might have permanently injured my nose, because the bridge of my nose still
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hurts to this day. He started to sodomize me, and eventually I couldn’t even walk from the pain. I seriously considered taking my own life to end my misery, but then I would think about my children and that would stop me. So, even bruised and scratched, I continued to act as a dutiful wife. I would bring him food to bed, anything to keep him from hurting me. I began to think maybe I was doing something wrong and that I deserved this abusive treatment.

Once Ruben became very angry with me because he could not find a clean pair of socks to wear that evening to go out. He grabbed my hands and squeezed them very hard, until I could hear and feel my bones crack. I told him that I was going to check the patio but I had it in mind to escape from him. There was a ladder on the patio that led to the roof, and I climbed it to get away. As I was climbing, Ruben came out on the patio and yelled that if I didn’t have socks for him, he would choke me with the thick shoelace that he had in his hand. He climbed the ladder after me. He caught my foot and I fought with him to get away.

He let go of me, and I jumped onto my neighbor’s roof. My neighbor was surprised to see me, but she gave me refuge for about half an hour when she saw how frightened I was. She talked to Ruben to try and calm him down.

When my neighbor left, Ruben warned me that I had better not go to the police or I would find out the consequences. Ruben’s family has many connections to the police force and to the military in Guatemala. One of his brothers was a police officer; another was an artillerist who was considered a hero for infiltrat-ing Sandinista camps and single-handedly killing many Sandinistas. Other brothers and his sister had worked on military bases. And his family had money. In Guatemala, if you have money, you can get away with anything. Ruben threatened me,

“If you ever divorce me, I’ll take the children away from you.” I knew he had the money and the power to do that. I knew I could do nothing to stop him.

Once, he pulled me out of the car on a bridge. He leaned me over the railing. Below us, the river was rushing over large rocks.

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He threatened to throw me off the bridge. I got on my knees and begged him to spare my life. Ruben said he was satisfied with my answer and let me go. We returned to the house and he acted as if nothing had happened. I then knew that my life was in his hands.

My mother had left the country shortly after I was married, before my husband started beating me. She left to make more money so that my brothers could go to school to get teaching credentials. She was undocumented, so she crossed the border into the United States with a group of other undocumented workers.

My mother was so brave to do that—I would never have had the courage. She got to San Francisco and got a work permit and sent money back, and my brothers did become teachers. Later, they joined her in the United States.

When I would tell my mother on the phone about Ruben’s abuse, she would cry. She encouraged me to come to the United States, too. She said, “Come here, and we’ll figure something out.”

Back in Guatemala, my sister, Carmen, took me to the police station to file a criminal complaint. I got the courage to finally denounce Ruben. The police officer told us this was a family problem and I had to go to family court for a judge to decide whether I could leave the household. I told the judge I just wanted to get away from Ruben and take the children with me. She saw my injuries. She issued a court order acknowledging the abuse, prohibiting Ruben from harming me or any of my family, and providing authority for the police to protect me. But she said the children would have to stay with Ruben or he would have grounds to accuse me of kidnapping them. If I took them, I could be put in jail!

I went back to Carmen’s house and stayed for a few weeks.

The children came to see me and told me that they wanted to stay with me. Then Ruben came over and said that if I didn’t return the children to him, he would have me “disappeared” and he would tell the children I had run off with another man. I borrowed money from my family to hire an attorney for the divorce process, but it was all for nothing. Ruben refused to sign the divorce papers and said that he was going to make my life impossible. Without his consent, the judge had no choice but to close
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our case. But she and a court psychologist recommended that I leave the house immediately to get away from Ruben.

I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t stay with my sister indefinitely. I didn’t want to go back to the house because I knew what Ruben would do to me. I borrowed money from my sister and rented an apartment, but I lived in fear that Ruben would come after me or that I would encounter him on the street. Was Ruben really going to have me killed? Would he hurt my children if I did not return to him? Not too long after this, my son Eddie, who was nine years old, knocked on my door and I opened it for him.

His father jumped out from nowhere and forced the door open.

He locked it behind him and pushed me onto the sofa. He put his legs against mine to pin me down. He grabbed my blouse and shook me, yelling that I was a prostitute. My son begged me to return to the house to make his father stop hurting me.

We returned to the house, and my husband told me to feed the children. My children and I were so happy to see each other, but they and I knew that I would no longer be safe. Before Eddie fell asleep, I told him to ask his father for the key to get water from outside, and I planned to use the key to lock myself in the room that had been created for my beauty salon. My son gave me the key, and I locked myself in. This was the only way that I knew I could save myself from Ruben. I literally had to jail myself to be liberated from him.

I locked myself away from everything. I would open the door for my children only when Ruben was gone from the house. They would feed me. I was suffering from an episode of the herpes I’d contracted from Ruben, so I had to send my daughter to get medicine for me. Once, Ruben threatened to pump propane fumes into the room to poison me and get me out. Sandra heard this and called her brothers to save me. While their father was in the kitchen, the children came to the door and I opened it for them. Sandra yelled at her father that he would have to poison them too.

I stayed in my “jail” for a month. Ruben had plans to leave for Boston, where he had family. Before he left, he told me to stop acting “stupid” and to come to an agreement. He wanted me to
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join him in Boston and find work there, but first he said I could visit my mother in San Francisco. The children could stay with my sister Carmen while we were gone. I agreed. Since my children were everything to me, Ruben didn’t question whether I would join him or return to Guatemala; he felt sure I would.

Once Ruben left, I was able to come out of my jail. I was so happy to be finally alone with my children, but it was only for a few days. I told them that I had only a little time with them because I was going to see my mother in San Francisco. We cried and cried, but I trusted God to take care of the children and me. I left for the United States in June of 2001. It broke my heart to go.

I had never been separated from them before.

Once I joined my mother in San Francisco, I thought about my life with Ruben. I had already breathed freedom for those few days when he was gone from Guatemala and I was alone with my children. In San Francisco, I had family who would care for me and protect me. I called my children and told them that I was going to stay in the United States. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. My children are my life. But they were supportive because they knew that my life was in danger if I stayed with Ruben any longer. My oldest son said, “I’d prefer that you leave us, go far away, than to have to bury you some day. And I don’t want to make a mistake that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.” He was twelve years old at the time.

When I called Ruben to tell him that I wasn’t going to return with him, he became very angry and said that he was not going to send any money to my sister for our children. He said that once he returned to Guatemala, he would take the children back and turn them against me. True to his word, he did not send any money. My family helped me send money for their food and support. And when he returned, he started saying terrible things about me to our children.