They told her not to make a noise or they'd lock her up in the toilet. Jane had never been a noisy child. Her teachers had, in fact, commented on her timidity when she was much younger. But of course, they didn't know that. Thus, the threat.

The other children— two were older than her and two were younger, looked at her in wonder. Jane heard someone say all babies are adorable but the two young kids who are actually twins looked too dirty and thin to be thought cute. She was scared of the older ones who were both boys, respectively eleven and twelve, and already appeared mature and big to her.

The older boys were playing with some broken toys near the door and the twins were crawling freely on the wooden slabs that passed for a floor. The splinters from the floor looked dangerous to her but the other kids never seemed to get wounded or cut.

One of the older boys smiled at Jane— his cavity-infested front teeth beckoning like flies inside his mouth. Jane shuddered involuntarily, earning a slap from the boy.

"Uppity brat," the boy muttered venomously.

"Leave her alone!" the children's mother screamed and kicked the boy.

She's already been in the dingy, ramshackle house for a month but it seemed that she hasn't gotten used to it yet. Jane couldn't understand why she was there. She was desperate to run away but where would she go? Who would she ask for help?

The mother of the children wiped her hands on her dress and beckoned to Jane to sit by her and although the little girl didn't want to, she really didn't have a choice.

"Let's comb your hair, yes?" the mother said and without waiting for an answer, began untangling the snarls from Jane's hair.

The tangles were so bad she wanted to cry when the woman needed to exert force to make something of the rat's mess that was once her long, lustrous hair. Jane was afraid to move as she's already been hit in the head with the same comb— yes, the very one with some missing teeth.

The woman's husband arrived after a bit, bringing with him their lunch. The older children crowded excitedly around their father, both eager to know what food they'd be feasting on.

"What is it, Father?" the one they call Toto asked.

"I bet it's lechon!" the other boy, Nonoy, chimed in.

"Chicken joy!" the father replied and smiled in triumph as the boys cheered.

Jane winced secretly and tried hard to suppress the horror she felt from appearing on her face.

"Let's get the plates," the woman suggested and Jane obediently followed.

The food was barely distributed when the boys gobbled up their portions hastily. Like a pack of wild dogs. Proper decorum was not observed by anyone in the house at all. They probably never even heard of table manners.

"If you don't want your food, Jane, I'll have it," Nonoy said grinning at her and pointing on the untouched stuff on her plate.

The twins were lucky, they get to drink milk albeit from filthy-looking bottles. She almost wished she could have that instead of the pagpag that excited the boys so much. She had eaten the stuff the first time it was served in front of her but regurgitated it all up when the boys gleefully told her where it was from.

The children's mother sighed and produced a piece of bread she'd been saving for Jane from the nearly empty cupboard near the stove.

The father frowned heavily and shook his head in disgust at the "uppity brat" but the boys were only too happy to divide Jane's portion of pagpag between themselves.

"She needs to get used to the food. She needs to get used to our life," the father grumbled to his wife.

The woman shushed her husband and gently touched Jane's face instead.

The man left soon after lunch with the boys, as he was accustomed to do. By then, Jane was already aware that he gathered trash for a living and the boys helped their father with the sorting. That's also where pagpag came from— from the large garbage bins outside fast-food stores.

The woman and the twins napped while Jane stayed awake, loitering around the house, inspecting the small and dirty domain of the family that has kept her captive for weeks already.

Eventually, Jane found herself sitting by a window that faced the dirty river behind the house. It was smelly too but somehow, she had made herself immune to the that. At least it was not as overpowering as it was when she first arrived, brought to the family in a white van by a suspicious looking woman.

It was a hot afternoon but she could see a group of kids playing in the distance. She had been asked to play with them but she had haughtily shaken her head and chose to stay in the disgusting but seemingly safe abode.

Some of the kids looked like they haven't seen soap or water in ages. Two of them had stood near enough to Jane for her to notice that their filthy head was swarming with lice. It was common to see snot running freely from their noses too. But somehow, they looked carefree and happy. As happy as Jane was in her parents' big white house before the strange women and this family took her.

A tear dropped from her eyes although she hastily wiped it away. Why don't they return her to her parents? She had been the sole daughter and everyone had made such a pet of her. She was always impeccably dressed like a doll that was never taken out of a glass case. She was her father's darling and the apple of her mother's eye. She had her own pretty pink room which she didn't have to share with anybody. The frocks which her mother carefully chose for her made her seem like a dainty little lady. She was presently dressed in a bedraggled affair that may have been an old blue t-shirt five years ago. It was dirty, dotted with holes and three sizes too big for her slim frame.

Jane especially miss her dolls and quaint tea sets but there was no recovering them anymore. She was stuck with makeshift or half-broken toys courtesy of the garbage bins regularly available for the children's father's perusal.

Then one day, everything changed. The policemen came to their house and took her away from her mother. Then she was taken to stay briefly in a nice but crowded place that also housed a lot of children. Time seemed to go very slow for Jane as she waited in anticipation for her parents although there was a nagging fear in her nine-year-old heart that she was never going to see them again.

She had seen the news of course. She had also seen a copy of a newspaper with her picture on the front page with the headline: "Stolen Child Recovered from OB Doctor's Residence". But the meaning of those words was lost on Jane. She would never believe she was not her parents' real daughter, or that she had been stolen from this poor family when she was a baby. No. That is entirely impossible.