No More Money for the Daughter They Sold

1.

I had a little sister who'd been sickly since the day she was born.

The year I got into the top public high school in the county, my father crouched on the front step puffing away at his pipe, and my mother held my hand and kept wiping at her eyes, her face full of pity.

It's your father's and my fault. We just aren't good enough to give you what you deserve.

"You've seen how things are at home. Your sister goes back into the hospital tomorrow. We really don't have the money to keep you in school."

My mouth opened. I wanted to say I could borrow the money, I could apply for financial aid.

But then I looked at our leaking, run-down roof and my sister coughing without stop in the next room, and I shut my mouth.

At sixteen, I shouldered my bag and boarded the train south with people from our town, off to work in the city.

The first year my wage was fifteen hundred. I sent thirteen hundred home and kept two hundred for food.

The second year my wage was twenty-three hundred. My parents said my sister's illness had gotten worse again, so I sent home two thousand.

The third year, the fourth year. Later, when I married, the bride price was eighty-eight thousand, and my parents kept eighty thousand of it.

Every month I still had to give them three thousand out of my paycheck.

After the wedding my husband fought with me over it plenty, saying he regretted marrying a bottomless money pit like me.

Even my child wasn't close to me, saying I didn't have this family in my heart, asking how a mother like me could exist.

It went on that way until the time my sister was hospitalized again and I went to visit.

My parents and my sister were laughing together, the sound drifting out through a door that hadn't been shut all the way.

"Mom, Dad, how much do you think that idiot sister of mine will hand over this time, now that she thinks I'm in the hospital?"

"I've been dying to go abroad and travel. You have no idea how exhausting it is, lying in bed playing sick every single day."

"All right, all right, you've kept it up all these years already. When she gets here, just lie in bed and don't say a word. She made a good bit last month, so we'll get all of it out of her for you."

My head went blank with a roar. I gripped the fruit basket in my hands, turned in a daze, and walked out of the ward. I never saw the truck barreling straight at me.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my second year working in the city.

Through the old-fashioned handset against my ear came my parents, sobbing out one complaint after another.

Staring at everything in front of me, I suddenly smiled. Then I slammed the phone down.

This time I will never again be your fool, bled dry while you lie to my face.

...

I leaned against the wall, eyes shut, gulping down air in ragged breaths. The things my parents and sister had said were still ringing in my ears.

One word kept echoing in my head. Faking.

I couldn't help a cold little laugh. I couldn't have said what I felt. Faking, sure, that was fine. She'd been faking it for close to twenty years.

From sixteen to forty-six, all those years I sent them more money than I could count, and I couldn't even bring myself to spend a bowl of braised pork on my own plate.

At my worst I made a two-yuan portion of plain rice last three meals, with a fifty-cent dinner roll and pickles.

What was I to them? An idiot. An endless, bottomless supply of blood.

My fist slowly clenched.

The phone in front of me started buzzing again. I stared at it without moving.

Over and over. On the third ring I took a deep breath and picked it up.

The moment I did, his displeasure came pouring through. "I wasn't done talking, and you just hang up? Went off to work and earn a little money and now you think you're too good for us?"

"Your sister is lying in a hospital bed right now, and you, her own sister, can just stand by and watch? Don't you have a heart?"

Then came a shuffling, shoving noise over the line.

My mother's voice came through the handset. "Gilly, don't listen to your father. He's just worried sick about your sister."

She went on and on about how terrible my sister's illness was this time.

Lying in that hospital bed, resuscitated more than once, nearly not pulling through.

This time I didn't take up my mother's thread. I just listened, quietly.

It had been the same in my past life. My parents calling to pour out their troubles, one playing the kind one, one playing the harsh one.

And in the end they'd tell me my sister's medical bills had gone up again, that thirteen hundred wasn't enough, they needed two thousand.

I worked in a factory. I was young, and my wage was already docked hard as it was.

Two shifts a day on the production line, the work dull and endless, the kind where you can see the rest of your life the moment you open your eyes.

I was still young. I didn't want to live that way. That first year I scraped and saved every bit of my wage, wanting to change how I lived.

The boss saw how honestly I worked, and the second year he raised my pay.

I counted the days, working out how long I'd have to save before I could quit and go make something of myself.

But the way it turned out, after that one phone call from my parents, I ground it out in that factory year after year.

My mother was still going on and on into the phone, and only then did she notice I'd been quiet for a long time.

That was when she stopped and asked, "Gilly, didn't your wage go up to twenty-three hundred? If you can manage it, send a little more home."

"It's not much, two thousand or so. We'll keep a record of it. Once your sister's better, we'll have her work and pay you back herself."

How familiar. She'd said the exact same thing in my last life.

That wait stretched to thirty years.

Right up until I died, and it never came.

I almost wanted to laugh. I asked the question I'd wanted to ask my whole last life. "You know I make twenty-three hundred a month. How am I supposed to live on three hundred?"

On the other end my mother mumbled something and said nothing more.

I straightened up and said it word by word. "I'm not giving you this money. And I never will again. Not one cent, ever."

2.

The second the words left my mouth, my mother blew up on the other end of the line.

"You won't give it? How can you not give it! Your father's right, you're a heartless, ungrateful wretch we could never raise into a decent person!"

"That's your own little sister. You're just going to sit there and watch her die?"

Her words got uglier and uglier. I lowered my eyes to the phone in my hand.

Two lifetimes of grievance and confusion pressed up in my chest, and I couldn't hold it back anymore.

I asked the question I had always wanted to ask. "Am I even your real daughter?"

I didn't need her to answer. I already knew. I was.

All four of us in that family looked like we'd been carved from the same mold.

But then why me? Why lie to me, why refuse to let me go to school?

And why fool me like an idiot for all these years?

My mother's voice sounded furious, then cornered, choking down the sob rising in her throat.

"I'm begging you, this is your own little sister, she's still so young."

"If you won't take care of her, who will!"

Her voice was worn and thin, pleading with me, her daughter, through tears. It wasn't as if I'd never refused her in my last life.

But every time, my parents would block me with one excuse after another, until I had no choice but to hand over the money like a good girl.

And after handing it over enough times, I got used to it. I stopped feeling like anything was wrong.

But now I bowed my head and gave it the smallest shake. "I'm not giving you money anymore. And don't call me again."

After I hung up, I tipped my head back and looked at the sky for a while, then locked my phone in my locker, pulled on my dust suit, and went into the production floor.

I'd barely sat down at my station when the person beside me leaned in close.

"Your parents called you again? See, I told you, doing so well out here, of course your parents are thrilled to hear about it."

I whipped around and looked at the woman I would have gone on treating as a best friend for decades.

"You're the one who told my parents I got a raise?"

Gloria Glass nodded. "Yeah. Things are so hard at home for your family, shouldn't you be giving them more?"

"Besides, if you're doing well, your parents can hold their heads up back home."

I stared straight at her and didn't miss the little flicker of glee in her eyes.

"Didn't I tell you not to spread it around that I got a raise? You know how hard I've had it."

Gloria's eyes shifted. "What's it got to do with me? I just kindly mentioned you when I was on the phone with my family."

"How was I supposed to know it'd turn out like this?"

I looked at the face in front of me, and slowly it lined up with a face from my last life. The one in bed with my first love, tangled up together.

The one I'd caught in the act, the one that cried and begged me to forgive her.

After a moment, I got up, found the line leader, and asked to transfer stations.

From that day on, Gloria never said another word to me.

And I never sent another cent home. The savings in my hand grew slowly, bit by bit.

I counted my money one bill at a time. Soon. Soon I'd be able to quit and leave the factory.

I could move to another city and live a normal life, keep going with school, and stop being their blood bag the way I had been in my last life.

I would never live that life over again.

At noon, when I got off and was heading out to eat, someone gripped my arm hard.

"Gillian Gray, you heartless thing, your sister's about to die sick in her bed!"

"And you've still got the nerve to be out here living the good life? You're set on driving us all to our deaths, aren't you!"

3.

My mind went blank. It was the end of shift, everyone streaming out to eat, and the crowd was thick on every side.

The woman in front of me kept it up, shouting her grievances against me for everyone to hear.

I tried hard to pull my arm back, but the grip only tightened.

My mother had one hand clamped on me and the other pounding at her own chest, sobbing so hard her face was wet with it.

My father crouched off to the side with my sister curled in his arms, saying nothing, puffing on his pipe.

People pointed and muttered around me. "Our factory's really turned out someone special. So young and already this cold-hearted."

"Right? Look how weak that little sister of hers is."

"Whatever the reason, that's her own flesh-and-blood sister. To just cut her off like that."

Gloria pushed forward, took my mother's hand, and turned to me with a face full of righteousness. "Gillian, your mom knows you want to save a little money. She's already being so understanding about it."

"But you can't be this heartless and not give a single cent."

"Look at your sister in your dad's arms, look at the state she's in!"

"And you wouldn't even pick up when your aunt and uncle called. You made them wait out at the gate all this time."

"You've really gone too far this time! I can't even stand to watch it!"

The crowd heard that and started in on me again, one after another calling me unfilial, calling me an ungrateful wretch.

And saying how kind-hearted Gloria was, worlds better than someone like me.

At Gloria's little speech my mother threw herself onto her and clung to her.

Weeping and wailing about how hard it was to be a parent, about how they'd been forced to beg me, driven to it by me.

More and more people gathered, and standing there, all I felt was wave after wave of dizziness.

Right on cue, my sister let out a fit of coughing loud enough to wake the dead.

The crowd hushed for a second, then went back to loudly condemning me.

I stood there watching all of it, and suddenly I was just tired.

I shook off my mother's hand and walked step by step up to my father, and reached out to touch my sister's forehead.

Her eyes were squeezed tight shut. She was nervous, even, the lids fluttering and twitching against it.

Something rose in my chest, a deep, hard hatred. Hatred that they'd treated me like a fool, hatred that they'd used family to chain up my whole life.

And more than that, hatred for why they couldn't love me the way they loved her.

"Dad, did the two of you ever once feel sorry for me?"

"Is she the only daughter you have?"

At that my father froze, the pipe going still in his mouth, and he looked up at me.

"Has she really been sickly since she was small?"

I looked straight into my father's eyes, and I didn't miss that flicker of panic in them.

When did it start?

When my sister didn't want to haul firewood down the hill or cut pigweed, or didn't want to feed the chickens or wash the dishes, and started faking it?

They'd caught on and never called her out, had even kept it from me together.

Tricked me into playing the family's workhorse my whole life, and glad to do it.

The commotion was too big; management came over fast and scattered the crowd.

My parents and I were shown into an office, and the section manager smoothed things over with a smile.

"Gillian Gray, I know you. You're a hard worker, aren't you? Good-natured too."

"Your family's in this much trouble, just lend a hand. Work hard and the factory won't do you wrong."

"You're a young girl. Don't wreck things with your own family like this."

My mother, as if she'd found her anchor, plopped down flat on the floor and started to wail.

"Raised this daughter for nothing, she's an ungrateful wretch! Her sister's still so little, how could she do this!"

"Why is my life so bitter! I can't handle her anymore, you leaders handle her for me!"

"Do you know your sister almost didn't make it out of the hospital! We had no choice either!"

"Mom's begging you. Show some mercy, save your sister!"

I looked at the faces around me, every one of them false, the scheming and the coldness right out in the open, and I laughed.

My voice came out perfectly calm. "Fine. I'll give it."

4.

The moment I finished speaking, the whole room lit up.

Even Sonia, who'd been curled up in Dad's arms playing sick, cracked her eyes open.

I set my savings book down in front of them. "These past few months, I've saved eight thousand dollars."

Mom's eyes went bright at the sight of it on the table, and her hand shot out to grab it.

Eight thousand dollars, back in the nineties, was no small fortune.

I pulled the book back into my hand. "But I have one condition."

"Go on, go on, Mom's good girl, whatever you want, your mom and dad will agree."

She was smiling all over her face, so eager the wrinkles around her eyes stood out.

I looked away and kept going. "We cut ties."

I ignored the shock on every face in the room and said it slowly.

"If you want this money, we cut ties. My name comes off the family register, and after that we have nothing to do with each other."

"Otherwise, none of you gets a single cent out of me."

The room went quiet for a moment. Legally cutting off all family ties was still a strange, new phrase then.

Dad, who hadn't said a word this whole time, clutched his chest on the couch and kept heaving for breath.

"Cut ties!"

"Fine, fine, fine. So I, George Gray, really did raise an ungrateful little snake."

"I should've strangled you the day you were born."

I said nothing, just watched them quietly. Cutting ties was the only way I could think of right now.

This life, I wanted to live once for myself.

Dad opened his mouth to say something, but Mom tugged at his sleeve.

"Agree to it. You really think a little slip of a girl can pull off anything out there? She'll be back before long, crying and begging us."

"We'll see how we deal with her then!"

"If I don't peel a layer of skin off her, I'll call her my mother!"

I took leave from work and rode the train back home with them.

When I took the sheet of paper from the town mayor, the red ink of the stamp still not dry.

Mom and Dad kept looking my savings book over and over, my sister tucked in their arms.

Her face wasn't pale anymore, and she'd stopped coughing.

Then Mom cleared her throat.

"All right, take your things and go. You're not this family's daughter now, so what are you still doing living in our house?"

"Didn't you want to cut ties? Quit clinging on like you've got no shame."

I lowered my head, silent for a moment, then gathered my luggage. "Okay."

Just before I stepped out the door, I heard laughter drifting in from the yard.

"Sonia wants those little leather shoes from the mall, doesn't she? Mom'll buy them for you!"

My sister laughed, delighted. "I want braised pork and a big breakfast sandwich from the restaurant too!"

"Okay, whatever my precious girl wants, Mom will buy it for you."

Inside, everything was warm and easy. My feet didn't slow, and I didn't turn back to look.

I carried my thin bundle of luggage and walked forward, one step at a time.

Gillian Gray, you finally saved yourself, for once.

This time, I'm going to live a life that's nothing like the one before.