Oh yeah! You heard me right! Jack came by with me to pick up my check at work. The HR lady asked him to get out because she wanted to have a talk with me. I’m glad she did and she closed the door. She goes to say “Was that your spouse?” I nod. She replies “Why does he want your paycheck and do you really want to grant the authorization ?” I said no. The HR person said, “Okay I won't give it to him.” She handed me the check and said take care.
Again, Jack drove me to the local bank to put my check into his bank account. I did not mind giving him some money, but good lord the check was only for $394.09, and he wants it all – every last cent. I said to Jack “What about the monthly bill for my car, and my gas and insurance? He goes “The next paycheck will take care of that”. The following paycheck, he was not able to come with me to cash it because he was at work when I received it. I was at first hesitant to cash it because I didn't know what he would have done if he found out, but I went ahead with it anyway. Jack came home that night and told me to write a check for a total of 10% for the whole month of my earnings. My monthly earnings were just $824 before tax, and my take-home pay was $634.48. He goes “Just use my check and write $100 bucks on it and give me that amount." “Why would I give you $100 dollars Jack?" He goes “You have to give 10% of your earnings as tithes to the church ” “Can I ask you a favor, Jack?” He said, “What?” In a very calm voice, I went on, “If possible, instead of me giving my 10% tithes to the church, can I just send my 10% donation to my family back home, since they need more help than the church? Our church leaders are already rich. They already have a 3-story house. The pastor has 14 healthy children; of which most of them do not have a job because the church provides everything to them. Every single person in the family of our Pastor has a 2–story house with an equally humongous boat sitting on the front of their porch, with three different expensive cars. How can you explain to me that they need more money? They already have enough of it. My family needs more help than our Pastor leader Jack." Jack goes on “Don’t you talk to me like that woman” Jack just acknowledged me as a 'woman' and he asked me to shut up and do not ever mention our church people again. Jack was not as aggressive as I expected him to be, so I did not provoke the argument.
You see, I didn't mind giving 10% of my earnings to the church. I just hated Jack for telling me that none of my earnings would go all over the world and that I shouldn't worry about my 'no-good family'. Who gave him the right to label my family as “No Good?” Jack was the biggest hypocrite ever alive. I couldn't believe that he called my family names like NO GOOD.
I did not want to argue any further with Jack. Every single paycheck, I have given him my 10% earnings, and he added that to whatever his earnings were. We gave money to the church every month and an average of $350 to $450. That amount could have helped my family, but my family received nothing from me; not even a single penny due to the fact Jack would not allow me to.
Of all the things that had happened to me recently, I had to make some careful plans. I became a thinker; I did not want to lose my sanity with Jack. I knew I was not crazy, I was just living with someone who was. I started to look for some creative ways to break myself free from such a horrible situation like I was in. It could be very dangerous, but that does not mean I would give up!
Jack thought that as a Filipina wife, I am so stupid, so instead always acted like one. I played the games that he played on, and I lead him to believe that I was just a no-good fool who followed his every prescription on things, which essentially he wanted me to do. If he had plans, I had plans too. Watch out, Jack! Filipina wives, they are not stupid; they are smart!
Abusers think that they are so smart, but they are not! I went back to my HR lady and changed the way that they distributed the check. Back then, you could request to send a few dollars each month to be deposited into your checking account, as a way of saving. I told the HR lady to deposit $100 a month into my account and label that amount in my paychecks as miscellaneous. That way if Jack ever asked, I would just say something like it was the company’s deduction or whatever! You see. You have to be smart too!
So now, it has been one year of me being in America. Since I could hide the $100 dollars from my own earnings, I started sending that exact amount to my family every month without Jack’s prior knowledge. Why would I tell him, since he already warned me not to do it? It is my own money, and I had the rights to do whatever I freakin' wanted to do with it. I would not take any risk to let that money just sit around Jack’s house because if he did find it, he would just take it away from me.
One day, Jack took me to his senior Japanese lady friend. I did not know much about her. He went towards the back of her garage door and for some odd reason; Jack had access to her garage. It sounds strange now, but it was! If you have a friend, you just do not do that; going in the back garage and opening it up.
Afterward, off we went inside. The lady showed up and she said hi to me and then Jack rushed in to give her a hug, a kiss (on the lips) and what’s even more strange was that Jack called her “Honey." I pretended that I did not see or hear anything strange, but I felt very jealous. Of course, Jack just kissed an older lady in front of me and even called her his honey. I just smiled at her once they were done with their canoodling.
She must have been somewhere in her 50's since she had many wrinkles! She had already prepared some food for us. We ate and talked and just screwed around her house. She seemed to be a very nice lady but oh boy. I needed to know why Jack kissed her, on the lips! We headed back home, and I was utterly speechless. I did not say much to Jack, because I, for some reason, got jealous that he kissed that much older lady. Jack just smirked and he showed off his satisfaction to my reaction. He probably did it intentionally, just to see if I was going to get jealous, of which he succeeded...
The following weekend, Jack and I went to over the mall. He bought a lovely gold necklace and some earrings. He showed them to me and said, “Is this nice, do you like them?” I told him yes and then asked him why did he want to buy them and for whom. I said, "Are they for me?” he goes, “Of course not!” whilst grinning. I was so embarrassed in front of the salesperson. After he paid for the Jewelry, we headed back to his Japanese ladies friends house.
We finally arrived at her friend’s house, and Jack handed her the jewelry he just purchased from the mall and again he gave this lady a big hug, a sloppy kiss and called her the dearest name “Honey” and went on and greeted her a Happy Birthday.
Yes, Jack gave the Japanese old lady a nice gift, yet he never did any nice things for his Filipina Wife because to him, I was nothing!
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