After I Voluntarily Went to the Correction Center, My Parents Regretted Madly

The summer after my college admissions exams, my parents realized I'd changed.

I'd become a complete egoist.

No more aching over how hard my mother's life was. No more helping my father pay off his gambling debts.

They tore my room apart looking for my savings, so I turned around and put something in their food.

While they were choking and gagging, trying to vomit it up, I brought out my bank card.

"Mom, Dad, the second you take this card, that was your last meal. Go on. Take it."

After that, nobody dared set foot in my room.

They thought they could threaten me with their own lives. They stood on the school roof and ordered me to drop out.

"Drop out, or we'll make you an orphan today!"

While they were still gloating, I stepped forward and knelt down.

"Please, Mom, Dad. Go ahead and die."

Only later did they understand.

My summer break had been spent at a correction center.

And there, I'd cured myself of any feeling for them.

......

The instructor handed me a graduation certificate.

I took it and left without a word.

For the rest of the summer, I went looking for another job to keep earning.

That money was all I had for my repeat year to retake the exams.

I didn't pick up a single one of my parents' calls.

The instructor had told me: anything that disturbs my own mood, I have every right to refuse.

I was an outstanding graduate. I kept that firmly in mind and carried it out without wavering.

I only went home when the summer was nearly over and school was about to start.

The house was the familiar wreck. My father lay on the floor, face bruised and swollen, groaning and moaning.

My mother sat off to the side cracking sunflower seeds and watching TV, not sparing him a single glance.

When he saw me, his eyes lit up.

"Good boy, how much did you make? Why weren't you answering the phone? Those debt collectors nearly beat me to death!"

He lunged at me, grabbing for the bag on my back.

I twisted aside and dodged.

"You gambled again?"

He grinned and rubbed his hands together.

"I was just trying to win it back and take some pressure off you. Luck wasn't on my side, that's all, so I owe a little more."

"Not much. Just ten grand."

At the electronics plant I stood from morning till night, ten hours a day, and made only two hundred a day.

I stood for twenty-eight days. My legs swelled up, and it came to just forty-six hundred.

But my father, breezy as anything, had run up ten thousand more.

I'd expected to break down, to scream at him the way you scream at someone hopeless, "Didn't you say you'd quit? Didn't you say you'd work and take care of this family?"

I touched my heart, beating steady.

Nothing.

I felt nothing at all.

As if the man in front of me wasn't worth one more glance.

In those twenty days and nights at the correction center, every hour the instructor set my parents' photos in front of me, playing sob stories in a synthesized voice.

The moment my heart so much as wavered, the instructor shocked me without hesitation. Even if I wet myself, he kept shocking me until I was immune to it, until I'd make the choice that served me best.

Every time I chose wrong, the instructor would put my exam scores up.

That column for English, the glaring zero. That was what came of choosing my parents.

And now I was home, right when it was time to test what I'd learned.

My father didn't care about my cold stare. His eyes kept darting toward my backpack.

"Dad won't ask for much. Give me five grand and I'll pay off the one that's hounding me hardest. Son, you can't stand to see them break your dad's hands, can you?"

He held out a pitiful, bruised hand.

Before, seeing him this pathetic, I'd never have been able to stop myself from handing over the money I'd worked for to cover his debts.

I was terrified they'd beat him to death, that then I'd have no father at all.

Blood, morality, pity, duty. They all dragged me down and pinned me fast in this swamp called home.

But now I only let out a mechanical sigh and said, in a flat, cold voice,

"The instructor said anyone who harms my interests is an enemy."

The first rule the correction center instructor taught me.

There's no need to go soft on an enemy.

"So how come they didn't break your hands?"

My eyes traveled over my father's hand, looking honestly regretful.

All he could do was gamble anyway. What did he need hands for.

He snatched his hand back fast, watching me, wary and unsure.

He hesitated.

"Trudy Fox, are you just worn out from working?"

My mother stopped cracking seeds and looked over too.

"You know I'm worn out, and you're still blocking my door?"

I shoved him aside and strode into my room.

Two months away, and the room had gathered plenty of dust.

I tossed my bag onto the chair and reported home to the instructor.

"Did you go soft?"

"No. He's just noise to me. If he's in debt, why not just die? Debts die with the man. What could be better."

"Good. Keep it up. Remember, take one step back and they'll take ten forward. You're my best student. Don't wreck my reputation."

The instructor's warning, I kept it in mind.

"Yes, instructor."

The old house had thin walls.

Even with my parents keeping their voices low in the next room, if you pressed your ear to the wall you could still catch some of it.

"...why do I feel like our son's changed?"

That was my father.

"You don't know your own son's temper? She's a sensible girl. Come dinner, I cry a few times, and she falls right back in line, doesn't she?"

"Then your gambling debt, the household money, our boy's tuition, it all works out, doesn't it?"

Naked scheming, quiet as breathing.

The instructor was right after all.

They didn't deserve it.

They didn't deserve a single cent of mine, didn't deserve to bask in one bit of my light.

Dinner was the same as always, two bland vegetable dishes.

My parents ate, trading glances now and then. I pretended not to see and ate carefully.

Starting today I had to get ready to study. It burned energy, so I needed to eat more.

Halfway through the meal, my mother set down her chopsticks.

"Trudy, you're part of this family. When the family's in trouble..."

Here we go again.

Really killed my appetite.

The instructor had said:

"This kind of moral blackmail, most of the time it's the parents doing it. Remember, they live badly because they're incompetent, not because of you."

I filled myself up fast and put down the empty bowl and chopsticks.

"So you've got nothing more to say?"

"You've been saying that line since I was little. The family has no money because you two have no ability, right? Well, if you have no ability, then don't talk. Say less and do more, that's what you should be doing."

"And another thing. I'm going to repeat the year and retake the exams."

"No!"

My father was worked up.

"College takes four years, and there's no telling you'll earn much coming out of it! Son, listen to your dad, go to that trade school, you'll have a job the moment you graduate. Your dad's counting on you to start earning and pay off the debt sooner!"

My mother chimed in right behind him.

"That's right, your cousin already said she'll set you up at their factory when you graduate, four thousand a month."

"It's not that Mom doesn't want you to go to college. We just don't have the means, we really don't!"

My mother looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and, in the same motion, pinched my brother.

He wailed.

"Big brother, I'm hungry, big brother."

He wrapped his arms around my leg. I peeled him off and tossed him back onto my mother.

Then I flipped the table.

The old folding table had no weight to it in the first place.

One light shove and it went over.

The second principle:

Whoever raises a hand against you, you carve the payback into their bones.

My brother was so frightened he burst into howling sobs. My parents stared at me like I was insane.

It didn't move me.

I glared at my brother, out of patience.

"You're hungry, go to your mom. If you want to blame someone, blame her. A gambling-addict husband and a woman making two thousand a month, and she still dared to have a second kid."

"You're in grade school now, you can understand words. Remember this: every bit of your misfortune comes from your mom and dad. Don't come to me. I owe you nothing."

Full now, it was time to study.

I went back to my room and dug out my review materials.

The crying and shouting outside didn't stop, so I fished out a pair of one-dollar earplugs and pushed them in, shutting out most of the noise.

I should have done this long ago.

The moment my father picked up his gambling habit and set his sights on my savings, I should have done this.

The moment my mother used blood ties to beg me to go earn money, I should have done this.

I hadn't done anything wrong.

At home, I was a dutiful daughter to my parents and took care of my little brother; at school, I respected my teachers and helped my classmates.

I was just too soft-hearted.

I thought caring for this family was all my responsibility.

But how old was I back then? Those responsibilities were only forced on me by people who didn't want to carry them.

The family's hardship wasn't of my making. On the contrary, I was the one holding this crumbling house together the whole time.

Everything I gave, they took as their due.

To clip the wings that would carry me out of here, my parents locked me in the house on the last day of the college admissions exams.

They thought that would make me accept my fate, that I'd meekly go to a junior college and then earn money for them.

My heart ached so badly.

I hated them, but I hated myself more.

Hated that I really had almost been talked around.

What could I do?

They were my own parents, my closest kin. It wasn't that they'd never been good to me. If I listened to them, everyone would be happy.

But I saw it clearly. If I really did what they wanted, I truly would rot here.

So I went to the correction center.

I became the first person to enter voluntarily since the correction center was founded.