Chapter 19

My life really isn’t a good one.

In the story I tell, my mother loves me dearly.

She never abandons me. She transfers me to a new school, works late into the night for my sake, and when she finds out I’ve been bullied, she fights tooth and nail with my father.

In a drafty, dark rental room infested with rats, we rely on each other to survive.

How I wish I had a mother like that, someone to share hardships with.

But unfortunately, after my father fell into debt, my mother decisively divorced him.

She had long grown tired of my father’s incompetence and chose to abandon custody of me, running away with her lover.

At the station, I knelt and begged her to take me with her. She pried my fingers apart, unmoved. “Anan, your father needs you. Mommy can’t selfishly take you away. Uncle Chen has it hard too. Here, if you ever need anything, call this number. Mommy will try her best to help.”

After I was humiliated, I used the little money I had to make a long-distance call for help.

On the other end, a cold, mechanical female voice answered: “The number you have dialed is no longer in service…”

Mom lied to me. It was a fake number.

“Mom, it hurts. It hurts so much.”

I lay disheveled in a damp, freezing room, staring blankly at the wall above me. The once-white wall was filthy, layers of mold eating away at it.

“Won’t someone save me?”

In the story, I wanted to be kinder to my past self. So, I created a mother who stood by me through thick and thin, and Granny Zhang, who would step in to fight injustice.

Since the characters are fictional, then…

That cruel night-

Did it really happen?

Where is my father, after all?