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If There's One Thing You Can Tell Them, It's that You're Free Eula Hall I'll tell you, to get to where I am today has not been easy. I was born anAppalachian child in poverty. I was reared in poverty, deprived of an education. But you know, I held onto one dream. I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to do things for other people, and I wanted to change lives for people in the same position I was in. I didn't get along with my parents because I felt like I was a slave. I felt like I was a servant. I had no freedom as a child. I don't have one happy memory of my life as a child. All we did was work. We worked. We worked. We worked. We worked to survive because fifty or sixty years ago, things weren't like they are now. Things were very, very hard. The children had to help support the family. Because I was the oldest girl ofseven children, education was out ofthe queition. You stayed home. You helped raise your brothers and sisters, you cooked, you milked cows, andyou worked in the cornfield.You did it all. ButI always wanted to learn. And I knew if I never got an education, I'd be stuck where I was. I got through the eighth grade in five years. But that was it, no more education. I became a hired girl. A hired girl was nothing more than a slave for people with money-people with money who had sickness or needed someone to live in and cook and clean, cook for borders, wash on the washboard and a!l that. That's what you did. I got a dollar and a half to two dollars a week to buy clothes. Well, I didn't like that. That wasn't what I wanted to be. That was still deeper in. So I met and married this big handsome prince. I thought, this will solve my problem. Thought I'd landed good. Well, you know what you see ain't always what is. What I got was a wolf in lamb's clothes. He always said I was a tiger. And you know wolves and tigers don't get along so well. Believe me, I was trapped. First thing after my marriage, I became pregnant with my first child. I don't think that you could have been in any deeper trouble than I was in. But I didn't know how to get out. My father had died. My mother still had three small children to raise, and I could not go back home. I didn't want to go back 192 ~ Eula Hall home. My husband was very threatening, very abusive. And here I was, stuck. So I tried to make plans to get out. When you see women in horrible situations like this, you ask, "Why does she stay? Why doesn't she leave? Why does she do this and why does she do that?" I've been there. I know why you stay. I know why you don't leave. You can't leave. You have nowhere to go. Now we have some shelters, but they aren't permanent solutions. So here I was, pregnant, having a child, but the abuse was still going on. But I never gave up. I had one dream. Someday I would be free and I'd be somebody. I'd live my life the way I wanted to live it and how I wanted to live it. I'd do as I pleased. And I'd help other people do the same. That kept me going. When I looked at my husband, I thought, you may be the devil in disguise, but you know you ain't going to conquer me. You may beat better and you may abuse better, but ifyou don't kill me, I'll outlive you and I'll be somebody. So I hung on to that and it looked-well, sometimes it looked very grim and gray. I raised four children with this man before I saw an opportunity to break away. In spite ofall the trials and tribulations and all the trouble I went through with him, I had sneaked and learned to drive a vehicle. He had a car but rode to work with another man, and he'd leave his car parked in the driveway. And I...

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