The Phoenix
Yolanda Alsino (1988) Batey Santa Lucia, El Seibo. She is currently in the 4th year of high school and works in Bávaro. She married at the age of nineteen and is mother to two children. She has a national identity and electoral card.
This is how my story begins –at the age of nineteen– as I returned to my parents’ house and married my childhood sweetheart. Everything was coming up roses, until my husband started going out with friends and then drinking. That was when he began to attack me verbally and physically. My son Deivi was born into this. At that point , he [my husband] improved a little bit. But that was just for a short time. Because he started drinking again.1 At that time, I remember I went hungry with my son because he didn’t give me money to eat.
When my son was about to turn three years old, my husband hit me in front of my son. I remember running out of the house with my son in my arms to my mother’s house and at that point he came in to beat me. While this was happening, my son was sitting on the floor. I remember all my son said, “Mami, take the knife and kill him.” That was when I decided to leave him, but I was already pregnant with my second child.
He remained the same: he threatened to kill me if I did not return to him. By then I was just a few months pregnant. I found a job as a domestic worker and he continued stalking me. I lived in a constant state of terror and flight. That’s when I fell into a state of depression because I could not eat or sleep.
I also could not go out alone for fear of running into him. I even carried a knife in my purse to defend myself. Months went by, and I gave birth to my second son and he continued insisting that I had to go back to him because he wanted to be close to the children. All I could say was, no.
Just about three months after giving birth, one afternoon, he sent for my youngest child, supposedly to see him. I sent him with my brother. All he said was, “Why didn’t she bring him?” He kept my son and tried to convince me to go and pick him up. I said no. Finally, late that night, my father had to go pick him up –and he gave the baby to him.
I seriously thought he was going to stay cool, but he did not. The next morning, around six in the morning, while I was heading to work, in a dark corner… there he was with a wooden bat. All he said was, “It’s payback time.” I, very calmly, said: “I don’t owe you anything.” But when he gave me the first blow… I realized he was not playing and I thought to myself: “Now I am really going to die,”… because he hit me with that bat so many, many times.
The worst: there wasn’t anyone there to help me because it was still very early. At that moment, my aunt came out to throw out the urine from the chamber pot2 and she saw me curled up on the floor while he was hitting me with the bat. She threw up her hands on her head and shouted for help and then ran to help me. When she got to me, he ran away and left me all bloodied on the ground. People gathered and helped me and took me to the hospital. They took x-rays and gave me an injection for the pain.
When I was released from the hospital I went to the police. A truck full of police officers took us to the crossroad of Pavón, kilometer 11, the place where he lived. By the time we arrived, he was already gone. His parents had helped him and made him leave. He was in hiding for five months. During that time the police kept looking for him. I remember that one day his father told me that he was going to pay me off, so that I would, “leave it be.” He would not come back. I spent years without seeing him or talking to him… until one day I saw him again. He went to my parents’ house and asked them for forgiveness. All I said to him was, “Forgiveness doesn’t undo what was done. Blows are not healed with forgiveness.”
A year ago I began working in la zona hotelera.3 For that reason, my children stay with my mother… and my mother tells me that sometimes he sends her a thousand pesos.
I just tell her to do whatever she wants [with the money.] Now he shows up claiming all the rights of a father and wants to hit my children as well… when he never took responsibility for them. I got his phone number, texted him that he has no right to hit my children and he replied with a voice message five days ago that said: “I have the right to hit my children and you too.” I have it saved on my phone.
I am like the Phoenix, I can fall and be reborn again.