​I used to have a home, because my dad was there.

​I used to have a little pet snake, yes; a pet snake and I loved it so much.

​I am of a mixed race: Vietnamese and Chinese. My dad was a big Vietnamese man. By one of his old time photos, I could tell he was a handsome and attractive young man. He was also a good guitarist and singer.

​He moved back to Vietnam from Russia when I was a little child.

​Two years later, my dad remarried another woman. My stepmom was tall and had very light skin, a long hair, sharp eyes and pinky lips. I was so happy because it meant from that time I had a mom. I had been dying to call someone “mom”. Only those who had no mom would understand how much I was longing to be loved, to be hugged, to be scratched on my back in the hot summer nights. Yes, I then had a mom, but it was not a mom exactly like my imagination, the imagination of a little child.

​My stepmom gave birth to a boy. He was so lovely and smart. I loved my stepmom more, a sincere, whole-hearted love, because she gave me a brother-friend.

​My dad and my stepmom called him Quy. They loved him so much. To me, he was handsome and lovely. Every time I saw my stepmom nudge him, I quietly watched them with a yearning, because my stepmom never showed that love to me. I wished she gave me only 10% of the love she gave him. But it was impossible. Every time, I wanted to call for my real mom loudly, I wanted to know where she was, I wanted to ask her why she abandoned me.

​At that time, I did not understand why my real mom was not with me.

​The children in my village often told each other: ”You shouldn’t be her friend. She sleeps with a snake. She has poison in her body. If you are with her, you will be mute”. Why did a child like me have to hear these brutal words? Why did I feel like an outcast? Every time they pointed at me and said those words, I wanted to cry out loud. I looked like them. What was wrong with having a pet snake? Why did they treat me like that?

​I had a pity for myself. I was so lonely.

​Later I found out that I had had a wrong expectation of my stepmom. After living a while with my dad and having a child with him, my stepmom started showing her hatred to me. Yes, it was hatred. It was so obvious.

​Once my bicycle hit a pet cat street vendor. The man yelled: “Look where you are going”. I got goose bumps all over my body: “Oh no, I am so sorry.” He kept yelling: “Catch my cat. If it runs away, you die”. Ignoring my begging for forgiveness, he held me hostage.

​Hearing the commotion, the villagers gathered around. Seeing me, they gave me a contemptful smile: “Oh, that bad luck girl. Call her dad”.

​I was there, a lone child, in the middle of the staring crowd. Yet there was not a single one Samaritan.

​My stepmom came, but not to my defense. She yelled: “The bitch. Even your mom disliked you so she abandoned you. Why don’t you run away like her?”

​I was shocked. I even doubted what I just heard. My stepmom was on their side for my innocent accident?

​After that, every time I made a mistake, she repeated that same curse. She knew to hit me exactly where it hurt. If it was not for hatred, how could she be so cruel to me?

​Then to a certain point in time, I could no longer swallow my pain and fought back: “Mom, leave my real mom alone…”. She would use a face towel to hit me many times. And she yelled: “There, I have been raising her, now I only say some words yet she argues back. Where are you, her dad? You the un-educatable girl”. Without waiting to listen to my side of the story, my dad would hit me right away. When the only dad I dearly loved hit me, I felt the whole world betrayed me.

​So many times I suffered the injustice imposed on me.

​I was just a little girl without a mom, a guardian. I could only keep silent. As the popular saying goes: “There is no bone in a pancake. There is no love from a stepmom to a step daughter”.

​Who could I blame? My mom had lived with us but then she had run away, leaving my dad and I behind. What had she thought when she abandoned her little daughter?

​The only one who did not abandon me was the little snake. It was a gift from God. I had saved it from a cock that had almost killed it by pecking it non-stop. It was as small as a chopstick. It just got a new smooth skin. Sometimes I tied a bow to the snake; it liked it so much that it coiled around my ankle. Every time I was not happy, it seemed to know, it crawled to my hand. Caressing its cool skin melted away my sadness. From a chopstick, it grew up to a one-meter long rope. It just wandered around in my room and slept on its own bed after a meal. Many times I released it to the garden, hoping it would go back to the wild. But it just stayed there. “Why don’t you go away? I am tired of you”, I told it. Its round, glittering eyes looked at me as if it begged me not to abandon it. “Ok, ok, but whenever you want to leave me, just go”. It seemed to understand me and crawled back to my room.

​Aside from my snake, another one never let me down: books. They were my family members; they were my friends, my love, my happiness and my teachers. Thanks to reading a lot, I had an open mind. Reading about less fortunate lives in stories, witnessing miserable lives around me, I tried to have an optimistic view of life.

​I got lost in every poem I read. To me, literature was a fantasy world that I could live in, dream, fly and find happiness. Among the poems I read, my most favorite one was the first few lines of the poem “A Vietnamese girl” by To Huu.

​Who are you? A girl or an angel?

​How old are you or are you ageless?

​Your hair or a cloud or a stream

​Your glancing eyes or lightning in a stormy night

​Your flesh or iron or bronze

​Every time I read those lines, my sadness went away. Because the poet glorified the strength of an invincible Vietnamese girl and I was one. I felt a connection between me and those lines, or those lines encouraged me to be that strong brave girl, standing up against the storms of life and finding freedom and happiness at last.

Chapter 2

Leaving home, my youngest aunt and my dad

​I was seventeen years old, the age of poor judgment, spontaneity, over-sensitivity, not enough self-control and being prone to vices. It was also the age of adolescence. The way of thinking was less childish and more mature.

​That was the age of dreams and ambitions. I thought more of my future, my life path.

​I quietly prepared to run away from home. I left a note under dad’s pillow. It said: “Dear dad, I am sorry for leaving you. If you go look for me, I will go to where nobody can find me. Just let me return by myself”. I knew my disappearance would break his heart but life under his home was too suffocating, too much stressful for a young girl like me.

​The following day, when nobody was home, I contacted my youngest aunt. I cried and told her my circumstance. I asked her to shelter me.

​“Alright, calm down, I will come to pick you up”.

​“No, let me go by myself”.

​“But there are too many dangers on the way…”

​I hung up.