Eden Onpeng

I have successfully molded my daughter into the perfect daughter. She is meek, quiet, and obedient. She goes to school and then comes home to study. That is all a child really needs in life. She used to whine about not having friends, and I told her, what good are friends? Your family is your friends. Your friends don’t pay the bills for you. Your friends don’t buy your clothes or pay for the roof over your head. A little girl shouldn’t be out running around with friends.

I don’t remember when she stopped whining about it, but the last few years have been peaceful. I think she finally understands what it means to honor your parents. After all, her father and I sacrificed years of our lives working so that she could go to a good college, become a doctor, marry a man from the homeland that we find for her, and have children that we will babysit for her. After everything we’ve done for her, all she has to do is step up to the plate.

Because her father and I both work full time, I work in the evenings while her father works in the mornings. So she spends most of the afternoons and evenings with her father, until I come home late at night. Her father complains to me a lot about the clothes she wears—that they are too revealing and thin, and that the curve of her nipples are showing through the material. So I buy her baggy clothes from the men’s section of the department store—modest clothes. After all, we tell her, Chinese girls don’t dress like sluts, not like those white and Mexican girls at school.

Her father is a jokester. He likes to spank her on her butt. She tells him to stop, but I remind her that she is lucky to have such a loving father. Most girls don’t have such a warm and loving father. Sometimes he will pull her into his lap on the couch and give her a nice massage on the back and thighs. I wish he would massage my back. It is sore after my long days at the factory.

But we know the rest of the world would take this out of context. So I tell her that everything stays within the family. She grumbles but knows better than to defy me. After all, I disciplined her with a plastic clothes hanger throughout her childhood. I stopped when she was fourteen, but I’m sure she remembers, especially when I raise my voice at her. When I see her flinch, I know she remembers our lessons.   

But today…she threatened to tell a school counselor. She is accusing her father of sexual abuse. Her father was incensed. “How could you accuse me of raping you?” he said. All he did was joke around, how could she accuse him of raping her?  

That’s right, How dare she! All we have ever done as parents was take care of her. We did our best. We bought her food, we paid for her violin lessons, we paid for her Chinese lessons, we bought her clothes, we gave her shelter. She is the most ungrateful child ever. I am in shock.

We told all this to her. We screamed this to her until it slowly, finally started to sink in, as her defiance faded into a sullen silence and tears. I explained to her that I had warned her to not wear such slutty clothes—she is in this situation and it is all her fault. I made sure she cried to make sure she really understood. I told her she is wrecking our family for her selfish reasons. Why, because her father didn’t like the way she dressed? All he was trying to do was protect her! Now she is accusing him of rape. Ridiculous, and so incredibly selfish—her betrayal of our family cuts deep.

We no longer allow her to walk to school. We drive her to and from school, and monitor any and all calls and text messages that go into her phone. I watch her when she takes out the trash, to make sure no one kidnaps and rapes her.

She cries and refuses to hug me when I hold my arms out to embrace her. I give her lunch money anyway because I love her. She is becoming so Americanized, it is really sad. But marrying a traditional husband from China will help keep the culture alive.

–EPILOGUE–

Our plan for her life was all set. That was all she had to do—just go to school, get good grades, go college, get a job as a doctor, marry a Chinese man, and give us grandchildren. She had everything ready to go. She didn’t need anything besides us.

But she decided to take her life in the bathtub.

All that money we spent on her. All that work in raising her. All that blood.

They all went down the drain.

THE END