What Lies Beneath
Just last year, I had a girl in my 11th grade class. Very bright, studious, had two other girls she usually was with, but overall not very noticeable. The thing is, she was absent a lot, to the point where she was only at school for a day a week or less. It was quite troublesome, as her parents didn’t ever send a mail or write a note for why she had been gone from school, but as stated earlier, she was pretty smart, so her grades didn’t suffer that much.
I used to talk to her after classes to ask her what was going on, but she would usually just apologize politely and promise she would do better. Fast forward to around Christmas time and she hadn’t been to school for two weeks. That month was exam month, and she was missing out on a lot of prep days she needed to be present at. Fed up, I marched to the principal’s office and told him her absence was really ruining for her, and that I should call the parents and inform them of the consequences, as is norm in the situation.
To my surprise, the principal was completely against it. That’s when he told me the dark truth. As it turns out, her parents had arranged for the girl to be married away to a man from her homeland against her will. The reason she had been gone those two weeks was because she had been picked up by child services and had been moved to a safe location. Shortly after it was revealed she had been absent all those days because her parents wanted her to stay home and take care of them, not because she was sick.
She was abused by her parents, and she was constantly monitored so she couldn’t stay at school after hours or do other activities like hang out with friends. She didn’t realize any of this was wrong until her friends at school talked to her about it. So this wasn’t really drama, but it was quite a shock for me and all her teachers when we were told.
It’s been a year now and she’s doing great. She got a restraining order against her parents and she got a little dog she saved from a shelter. But its safe to say that she’ll never have the life a normal 16-year-old is supposed to have, and that makes my blood boil, but she is very grateful for her new life it seems and she’s safe, and that’s all that matters.