Even at thirty, I still couldn't make sense of it. Both my parents were dual-income factory workers. So why had my childhood been nothing but suffering?
One day I posted about it online, just on a whim. The post blew up. The top comment read: "I'm guessing you're a girl, right?"
"Back then, dual-income couples were only allowed one child. They were hoping you'd get sick and die so they could try again for a boy."
"I bet they treated some male cousin of yours a whole lot better."
I sat frozen for a long time.
I thought about how I'd coughed until I was spitting blood, and my mother never once bought me medicine.
I thought about how I'd been hit by a car, fractures all over my body, and they only took me to some back-alley clinic to get bandaged up. That was how I ended up with a permanent limp.
I thought about every holiday, every New Year, when my parents would buy my cousin brand-new clothes while I shivered in rags.
I thought about how I'd sobbed, begging them to believe me when my cousin framed me for things I didn't do. They told me I was lying. That I was just jealous.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the dead of winter the year I turned eighteen. I was crouching in the kitchen, gulping cold water to soothe my cough.
"Cough, cough, cough! For God's sake, are you going to let anyone sleep? What are you, some kind of curse?"
Listening to my mother's complaints, I quietly found the bottle of paraquat she'd hidden away.
In my last life, they'd resented me for being so hard to kill. This time, I'd give them what they wanted.
——
"Sophie Harding, what are you sneaking around doing in the kitchen?"
My mother walked over and grabbed a fistful of my tangled hair like she was snatching up a stray chick.
Ice-cold water splashed across my flushed face. My throat felt like something was lodged inside it, raw and swollen. The taste of blood filled my nose.
I wanted to cry. But when I saw the impatience on her face, I knew that if I cried, she'd only get angrier.
"I asked you a question. Gone mute? Are you breaking things again? When are you going to learn to behave like your cousin?"
I clutched my aching throat and rasped, "Mom, my throat hurts..."
There wasn't a flicker of concern in her eyes. She let go, and I crashed to the floor.
"Serves you right. Normal people know to dress warm in the winter. Not you. All you care about is looking pretty. You get sick, that's your own damn fault."
The thirty-year-old soul inside me wanted so badly to speak up for the girl I was now. I didn't care about looking pretty. She had never once bought me a decent coat for winter.
But I knew that one word of protest would earn me a beating.
So I just looked up at those furious eyes. In thirty years of life, I had never once seen a trace of warmth in them.
"You little brat. What's that look supposed to mean? Got a problem with me?"
She let out a cold laugh, slapped me across the face, and dragged me into the little room in the basement without a glance at the tears streaming down my cheeks.
It was freezing in there. Pitch black. Even with thirty years of memories in my head, I couldn't stop the fear from crawling in.
"Mom, please, don't lock me in here. I'll be good..."
By the end, my throat hurt too much to make any sound at all. I could only watch as she shut the door.
In the darkness, I curled up on the floor in despair.
I never imagined I'd come back to the year I was eighteen. All those tragedies I could never escape were playing out in front of me all over again.
In my last life, I'd fought tooth and nail to get into college. My family refused to pay a cent. I had to work to scrape the money together, but the disability from the car accident meant almost no one would hire me. I ended up on the streets, collecting scrap to survive.
When my parents saw I was useless to them, they tried to marry me off for the bride price. The only taker was some middle-aged bachelor out in the mountains.
I'd confronted them so many times. Why were they so heartless? Why, when they had two steady incomes and money was never the problem, had they never been willing to spend a single extra dollar on me?
