Back to the days of over 10 years ago, I and my mom used to suffer. My father was such an alcoholist who easily hit us after over-drinking and over-smoking even though he used to be a nice person. He would become as a monster whenever he drank too much. I did not know whether he hallucinated at that time. His face turned red like the color of boiled shrimps; he would become a different person who talked something nonsense, and he was always the first person who began the conflict. At that time, I lived in scariness; I was in the state of anxious suspense whenever I did not see my dad at home before 10pm because I knew he might hang out and drink with his co-workers. And shortly after going to bed, I suddenly woke up because of the sound of metal door when he opened it. It was getting chilly. At that time, I was in the state of anxious suspense since there would be something bad happened.

Though it was for a long time ago, those terrible moments still are vivid in my mind now. My father not only yelled my mom by words laced with profanity, but he also hit my mom so hard. I felt so headache and worried about my mom so bad. He smashed my mother, and he even used a helmet to hit her head so hard. Deep down in the heart of a little child, I perceived that my mom could be killed by my dad. The even-minded soul of a kid had been ridden roughshod over from that moment. Even though I cried loudly, my parents did not stop fighting with each other. What is more, my mom was raised in a traditional family with Confucianism, so a wife needed to be patient, and it was not right for her to hit the husband. I saw that my mom only suffered and cried. When she could not suffer, she would run out of the house even though it was so cold outside. Moreover, at some nights, my father sometimes came to upstairs where I slept with my grandparents; I felt hurt, then I realized I was pinched by him without any reasons.

Nobody could protect us at that time, and as a traditional Vietnamese woman, my mom did not protest because she loved my dad so much. She forgave my dad many times, but as people usually say, “who drinks, will drink again”. My father could not reject his violent blood in his arteries and veins. Therefore, sometimes I witnessed that my mom tried to suicide because she could not stand those hurt feelings anymore. She tried to use a scissor from the kitchen to kill herself or tried to quickly run head-on the wall. I was so freaking out; I genuflected to supplicate my parents, but it seemed not to work at all. My mom had to run out of the house many times at midnight and get helps from her relatives. I was crying a lot; I wanted to protect her from my father, but I could not do anything because I was so small.

The end of those terrible things is usually a divorce. We went to the court, and my mom agreed to take care both of me and my younger sister, and the price she had to pay was that she had to work three jobs at the same time to raise us. On the other hand, my father did not want to support us anything such as pension. My mother, I and my younger sister had rented and moved to many places in six years. In addition, we did not have enough money to rent an apartment, so three of us had to share a small room with other families who always complained or doubted about everyone if they had lost something. Equally important, I also remembered that we used to live at a dark slum with rats, mosquitoes, and wet atmosphere under a rotten ceiling, which made me suffer serious viral hemorrhagic fever then. I and my sister, incidentally, we had to stay at my mother’s workplace which was an eatery owned by her relatives after school to wait and help her. We did not usually have good food; we only ate leftovers from our relatives until my mother could earn a little more money. Nonetheless, three of us were still happy because we had each other even though we were poor until another “storm” hit us again. It was when my sister was diagnosed to have a malignant brain tumor when she was only 7 years old.

(to be continued)