Womb: A Story For Daughters and A Journey To Love

Chapter 1 The Good Girl

When I was young, my mother would drop me off at relative’s homes when she needed to go for a work trip. When she got back, all of them will praise me for how good I was, or “Guai” in Chinese. I would not cry, would not make a fuss, I just smile to everybody. Now looking back on that time, I probably felt quite calm and safe because I no longer needed to worry about accidentally making my mother angry.

I’ve always felt proud being called a good girl. I liked how adults will look at me with a warm smile when they say such thing, like I was so special. But my mother always responded with a smirk, “is she?” she will say. I know in her head I am not a good child. I would not do my homework; I screw up in exams; I spend too much time on the Internet; I lie to her that I am going to bed when actually I am hiding in the bed reading useless romantic novels on my phone, and more importantly using out all my data and giving her a 200 dollar bill. I always make her angry, make her silent, and make her throw things at me. She never said I was a good girl.

In our first apartment, I had a red chair. We call those chair “Pa-pa-deng”, meaning low, tiny, stool-like chairs, usually for kids. It was bright warm red, with Pongo from Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians printed on the seat. I probably used it a lot. She probably hugged me and kissed me when I sat on that chair. But in my memory, it is remembered as my “kneel chair”, the chair to kneel on when I made her mad.

I was probably 4 or 5 and was put in this daycare facility near home. A girl sat next to me had an idea to paint our nails with a red marker pen as if we are getting manicures. I was happy, but my mother was outrageous. I got slapped in the face. She told me I was hopeless, and then she said, “get your chair”. So I grabbed that red chair, kneeled on it. At first I cried. I cried so hard that I could barely breath, and I would make those gasps sound while crying. I hated those gasps sound. Hours and hours later, my knees were sore, my legs were painful, my tears all dried up on my face. A colleague of hers came to the house, and he looked surprised seeing me kneeling there. I vaguely remember that my mother asked him to transfer me to a different daycare because the old one has so much bad influences, but I don’t remember how I got up or how that day went by afterwards. But I kept going back to that chair, or maybe I’ve never gotten up.

As I was writing this, it suddenly occurs to me now my mother would sometimes mock me when I wear those jeans that have holes around the knees. She would make comments saying I will have broken knees wearing those jeans. Funny that I do have very cracked knees now, and I can’t tell if it was from those jeans or all those years kneeling.

Sometimes she will beat me with her knitting ruler, shoe cleaning brush, or anything by her hand really, but sometimes she will just go to her room and let the house turn into a quiet casket. Sometimes she tells me to get up; sometimes she does not, and then I couldn’t remember how I got up for those days. I think a few times I crawled up to her, begged her to forgive me, and one of those times I also saw tears on her face. After she forgives me verbally, she would be extremely quiet but also still irritated for days or even weeks afterwards, and those time were also suffering. I don’t know if I can eat, and sometimes I would just not eat if she didn’t call me to eat; I don’t know if I can relax or go hang out with friends; I don’t know how to behave at all, and I don’t know how I can fix those things that she’s mad at me for, but I know she’s still mad. I felt scared and mostly I felt alone.