Mother For Sale

I sold my mother. Yes that's right, I sold her as a prostitute.

She raised us alone, all sixteen of us. And she doesn't have a decent job. We had three fathers but they all left my mother when she no longer had any use to them.

Mama willingly gave herself and sacrificed for us. There were nights when we would go hungry. The little kids would cry and cling to her while we grown-ups pretend to be alright. We live in a little house and use lamps and candles at night. We don't even own it. We live just under the bridge in the middle of the city. We ate twice a day and we had to share three cups of rice among us.

Mama would go on with her work just to get us through the day. And she has to send the big kids to school, too. But we cannot concentrate on anything with empty stomachs. Sometimes we would chop her up so we could have something to eat. But she always came back only to be eaten again.

Mama is an attractive woman. Most of her customers are foreign men. She was abused and raped many times but she didn't care. We children didn't care, we want food, that's all. Her submission is truly heroic. And the desire to give us a better life kept her going till she's old.

But now, no one wanted her services anymore so we told her to sell her organs to hospitals. And she did. First it was one of her kidneys, then part of her liver until what was left was her heart and brain. We still need her to provide our needs, so we didn't sell her important organs. But doing all these didn't ease our problems.

Now she has to send us to college. The little kids are growing, as well as their demands. Plus prices are higher and the cost of living has become unbearable. We don't want to work. It's her responsibility to raise us. She bore us so she must suffer the consequences.

Mama is old but we sold her anyway. We sold her as a slave. And she agreed.

Soon we'll leave Mama to make our own families. We don't want to go back to her and to that rotten house. But she has to take care of our children and our grandchildren as well. She has to sell herself still in the future.

Such is the fate of our mother, the Philippines.