Rhea’s nightmares continue to burn her soul. She has finally returned home to Sta. Fe, but she still wakes up in the middle of the night, shouting and screaming out, “No more!”

In the adjacent town of Sagkahan, Che quietly sits in front of her nipa house. On her lap she cuddles her youngest nephew, who is only four years old. She stares blankly across the distant rice fields. Like Rhea, she is back home, but her mind is still somewhere else.

Like an unextinguished fire, trauma haunts the two girls. Their mothers have tried asking them about the scars on their arms and bodies but the distant cousins just say that what is important is that the scars do not hurt anymore.

Rhea’s father died when she was only seven. To earn her way through school, she worked for her teachers until she reached fourth grade. Her mother had remarried, while her brothers were supporting their own families. She dropped out of grade school and took a step further by working in Sagkahan, earning P700 a month as a domestic.

Che, 17 (about the same age as Rhea), was also born to a poor family. One day, her mother consented to her plan to venture to Manila as a domestic worker.

The two girls’ paths crossed when they both landed as domestics in the same household in Manila. Rhea was recruited by the brother of her sister’s employer. Che and Rhea became fast friends and soon found out that they were distant cousins. Each trusted the other like a sister.

“We were all-around domestic workers. Our employer was very strict. She didn’t allow us to have days off. And every time we asked for our P1,000 salary, she would say that half of that was already sent to our parents in the province and the other half covered the soap, shampoo and toothpaste that we used, as well as our share in the electric bill when we watched TV. We never received any salary,” Rhea explains.

Every time their employer would leave the house, she would lock the doors and gates from the outside. She would put chains on the outer side of the grills and then padlock everything. She didn’t want the two girls to become acquainted with the neighborhood. Thus no one knew that the girls were being maltreated.

Moreover, the cousins couldn’t comprehend why their employer would always punish them. “She would pull my hair and then bang our faces against the wall,” Rhea says.

When their mistakes became more frequent because they became more nervous, their employer devised creative forms of cruelty. “She would ask me to kneel on a stool or over some scattered mung bean seeds, then order me to balance a fire extinguisher on one outstretched arm,” Che said while demonstrating the punishment.

Both girls had to endure beatings all over their bodies. “Sometimes, when our employer was tired, she would force one of us to beat the other. I couldn’t take that kind of cruelty. It was then that we realized that our only choice was to escape,” Rhea cries.

They tried to escape twice but the door locks proved difficult to break. One day, when their employer was out for a medical checkup, the moment the girls had long been awaiting finally came. They forcibly unlocked the chains by using a pair of small scissors.

Once they were outside the gate, they ran as fast as they could until they reached the barangay hall to seek help. The official on duty was aware of the bad reputation of the employer among the villagers, so he believed the two girls’ tale. He hid the girls in a parked jeepney and then called the Visayan Forum hotline that he had seen on the news.

VF gave shelter to the cousins. During their medico-legal examination, doctors from the Philippine General Hospital noted signs of hematoma on the arms, legs and backs of the girls. VF helped the girls file a case for child abuse against their employers.

Because the preliminary investigation was moving slowly, the two girls requested that they be returned home to Leyte before the hearings began. The cousins got their wish.

When Rhea turned 18 a few months later, she decided to return to work in Manila. She thought that since she was no longer a minor, she might be able to make more well-informed decisions on her own behalf. Che, on the other hand, decided to stay home for awhile; she didn’t inform the social workers about her cousin’s trip. She spent her days tagging along with her mother, who worked as a stay-out laundry woman for houses near their community.

Rhea landed as an all-around domestic for a Chinese couple in Manila who owned a grocery. Working alone, she would start cleaning and cooking at 4 am, then by the afternoon she would tend the store, working until past midnight. She would work even on Sundays because the store was hardly ever closed.

Her employers would accuse her of stealing goods in the grocery. “Every time I would miscalculate the change to the customers, my employer would curse me. He would always accuse me of stealing food from the store. And all the opened food packs in the store and overpayments I made were all deducted from my salary,” she narrates.

Rhea guessed that after the verbal abuse and accusations, the physical beatings would soon follow. Indeed, before long, she was being subjected to slappings and beatings once more. So she decided to leave.

She contacted the VF once more and stayed in its safe house for a second and longer time. Soon after, she volunteered to become an advocate for the rights of domestic workers. She loved expressing her experiences through the arts. She was also able to enroll in a non-formal education program that gave her the opportunity to be a part of the formal work force.

The case that Rhea and Che filed has not reached any definite conclusion. Rhea ultimately went home, but though her nightmares come less frequently now, they still have not been extinguished.