I Survived! (Part 2)

“What? They tried to get rid of me?” I stared at my big brother in disbelief!

“What…how….do you mean?” I managed to stammer, as I felt my insides crumbling.

“Yes, they tried to get rid of you,” repeated my big brother, with an evil smile hovering at the corners of his lips, “they didn’t want you!”

I felt faint. A thousand thoughts crowded my head. No, big brother must be kidding, he was just trying to hurt me, I told myself. Calm down now. I took a deep breath and sat down on a chair. I put my hands under my sweating thighs to stop them from shaking. Yes, I was almost sure he was pulling my leg. He was just jealous I was mom and dad’s favorite. He was trying to bully me, as he always did, when my parents were not around. I said mom and dad loved me most because I was the youngest, and he could not swallow the truth.

“You’re lying!” I found my voice as my confidence returned.

“If you don’t believe, ask big sister!” my brother answered with a sneer, as he pointed one evil finger at my sister.

My sister, who was listening to our conversation all the while with a worried expression on her face, looked at my big brother reproachfully.
“Why did you have to do that?” she asked.

“Ha! Ha! Coz’ it’s fun!” My big brother turned to look at me, as if making sure my eyes were welling up with tears, before he turned and walked out of the room – whistling.

“Is it true? Mom and dad didn’t want me?” I got up and went towards my sister, tugging at one of her hands. She never lied to me. She wasn’t evil, like big brother was.

“Hmm…it…it wasn’t like what big brother said. Mom and dad couldn’t afford to have another kid and…”

Big, hot tears gushed from my eyes. It was true! Mom and dad did not want me. I did not wait for my sister to finish her sentence. I rushed from the room and locked myself in the bathroom. I pulled every towel from the racks and threw them on the floor. I could feel anger rising from my feet right up to my chest. It got stuck there, pressing upon my heart. How could I have mistaken that my parents loved me? They did not love me! They did not want me. They wanted big brother (nasty as he was), big sister, second brother, and second sister, but they did not want me! I stamped my feet on the towels strewn upon the floor.

“Hypocrites! Hypocrites! Stinking hypocrites!” I screamed at the top of my voice, each scream accompanied by a stamp of my feet.

I could hear big sister hollering at me outside the bathroom door. Of course she could play the angel, I thought to myself. She was a ‘wanted’ child! Fresh, hot tears streamed down my cheeks. So evil! My parents were evil beings! I stared at my crumpled-up, pitiful face in the mirror as a thought crossed my mind. I would kill myself! I would kill myself so that my parents’ wish could be fulfilled. Yes, I wanted them to feel guilty for the rest of their lives! The murderers!

“Moi!” my mom’s voice penetrated the bathroom door, and also my thoughts.

“You evil murderer! You don’t want me!” I screamed hysterically through the door.

“Go away! You murderer! I’ll kill myself for you and dad. Then you, dad, big brother, big sister, second brother and second sister can live happily ever after!” I watched my face contort into ugly expressions, as I yelled my lungs out.

“Come out! NOW!” my mom smacked on the bathroom door and commanded. I stopped screaming. Somehow, my mom’s stern voice could still chill the ten-year-old me into obedience, angry and insane as I was then. I unlocked the bathroom door, rushed past my mom without looking at her, and walked into the kitchen. My mom dragged her tired body after me, and sat down beside me. I refused to look at her.

I chose to focus my eyes on my mom’s hands instead. They were still wearing the gloves she wore to the lumber factory everyday. The gloves were supposed to protect her hands from the splinters that came off the pieces of wood she had to carry and stack. Sharp splinters were sticking all over the gloves.

“We had no money…no jobs. We didn’t want you to suffer….” my mom’s voice went on gently - explaining.

I continued staring at those splinters. They grew bigger and bigger till they filled my whole vision. My mom’s voice became a buzzing in the background as my thoughts wandered…

I saw my mom walking in the door. She just came home from work. She smelled like wood. She pulled her gloves off and there they were! The stubborn splinters that managed to escape through the knitted gloves and pierce into my mom’s skin. She just plucked the splinters out one by one, not paying attention to the tiny dots of dried blood left on her skin, where the splinters had pierced. She went on to wash out the container in which she used to bring lunch to work. Rice soaked in hot water with a few drops of soy sauce stirred in, or rice mixed with a few drops of cooking oil, made up my mom’s lunch menu.

Then, my mom appeared at the kitchen table, cutting an apple into five pieces. She watched and smiled as my siblings and I devoured our own piece without a second thought. When we looked at her for more, she gave us an apologetic look. “Next week,” she said. I always wondered why my mom’s tummy made so much noise. I did not know those were the voices of hunger, which were left unanswered, while ours got answered.

My mom appeared again, this time begging my dad’s sister to lend her fifty dollars. Big brother and big sister needed school supplies.

She was sitting by the lamp now, in her patched and re-patched clothes, sewing new clothes for me. My siblings and I always had new clothes for Chinese New Year. Not my mom, nor my dad.

Suddenly, my dad appeared. He was coming home in the dead of night, hands blackened with oil from the machinery he was operating the whole day, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep because he had taken on more shifts than the ordinary worker.

My mom’s voice became louder, and interrupted the images in my mind. “We do love you! It was wrong of us to think of not wanting you, but we didn’t know better...”

I realized I was still staring at the splinters sticking to my mom’s gloves. They were regular-sized splinters again, instead of dark blobs of brown. Tears welled up in my eyes. How did I dare judge my parents? I reached out and pulled the gloves off my mom’s hands. There they were - the splinters sticking from their little dotted wells of dried blood. I felt the splinters pierce my heart. My tears fell onto my mom’s hands.

“Moi, do you understand?” my mom was asking.

I wanted to stay angry and dwell on the fact that my parents did not want me. I could not. I felt ashamed for doubting their love for me. They might not have wanted me to join my siblings in a life of poverty. However, I stubbornly survived and came into their lives. My parents kept nothing from me. They did not treat me like a burden. Whatever they could scrape together, my siblings and I shared equally. Who was I to judge them – victims of an ignorant era? Having a load of kids and living in poverty was the norm during that time. I nodded my head, too choked with emotions to say anything.

“Good,” my mom patted my head, picked out the splinters from her hands, put on her apron and started to prepare dinner.