Chapter 2

My nails dug into my palms, but the pain there was nothing next to the pain inside.

I looked straight at her and said each word clearly:

"The coming-of-age celebration was the task Father handed to my brother. He arranged all of it himself. I wasn't even allowed into the kitchen."

"If he hadn't been trying to get even on Marina's behalf, he never would have caused this kind of disaster."

Mother choked for a second, then snapped, "So you're blaming Marina? If it weren't for her, a jinx like you would still be rotting in some corner somewhere!"

"Don't forget, if we hadn't found you and brought you back, you'd still be crawling through the mud, working like an animal for someone else! I should have known better than to bring you home at all!"

The cold, merciless words were like a sharp blade splitting my soft flesh and driving into my heart.

So it was true. It hurt most when your own family did it, because they knew exactly where you were weak, and they knew exactly how much you cared about them.

Before the age of five, I once had a happy, whole family too.

Loving parents, a brother who took my side, everything a child could want.

Until the year I turned five, when the nanny quietly carried me away.

Small as I was, I was drugged, dazed and slumped against the nanny's chest.

A loud high-speed train, a crowded, swaying bus, muddy country roads. I was hauled from one to the next until I ended up in a remote little village.

After that came endless hell.

That nanny could never have children of her own, and had always wanted a child. But back in the countryside, the moment people saw me they mocked her for being able to bring back only a worthless girl, not even a son.

The more they laughed, the more she came to loathe me too. Day to day it was beatings or cursing, and every chore in the house was dumped on me.

I wasn't even as tall as the stove yet, but I was already standing on a stool to cook.

The firewood was so wet the smoke stung my eyes until they burned.

The village's iron pot was heavier than I was, and if they came in from the fields and the food wasn't ready, what waited for me was a savage beating.

In the dead of winter my fingers went red and raw with cold, and the nanny only gave me a flat glance.

"Worthless thing, so slow you can't even wash the clothes."

That winter was bitter, and the room had a warm heated bed, but I was only allowed to sleep on the floor in the corner.

I curled into a tight ball and held myself, hoping to get a little warmer, but it was simply too cold. Past midnight I nearly froze into unconsciousness.

That day I was feverish and dazed, and for the first time I didn't get up to make breakfast.

A red-hot stick came down hard across my body, and in my daze I smelled the sound of skin and flesh burning.

But strangely, this time I felt no pain at all.

My head was swimming, my mind fading further and further away.

At six years old, for the first time, I understood I was about to die.

When I woke again, I was lying in the village's little clinic.

The nanny watched me coldly. "I wasn't going to bother with you. Didn't think a girl could still be worth something."

Only later did I learn that the old widower on the west side of the village had put down a two-thousand-dollar bride price to reserve me in advance, an arrangement that once I was a little older I'd become the wife of his simple-minded son.

The year I turned ten, I set fire to that ruined shack, and while they ran to put it out I escaped into the mountains.

I didn't dare take the small paths, and I dared even less to walk the main road, so I only pushed through grass and scrub that stood taller than I was.

I ate dirt and drank rainwater, and the day I finally walked out of the mountains my legs were raw and bleeding, my whole body nearly spent.

By the time the Pruitt family found me, I was already twelve.

Back then a kind person had taken me in, and I was helping in the back kitchen.

A woman in expensive clothes rushed into that filthy little alley without a second thought and held me tight.

"Lucille, my Lucille, I've finally found you."

She called me Lucille. Not worthless girl, not jinx.

Her arms were warm, and her hot tears fell on my shoulder, and I thought I had a family at last.

But when we got home I found another girl living in what should have been my room.

That was when I learned that after I went missing, my mother had nightmares night after night, until she was nearly out of her mind.

Until my father suggested adopting a child to ease her longing for her lost daughter.

"No!" Back then my brother objected almost without thinking. "Why do we need to adopt another one? I have a sister. She's only lost. One day I'll find her!"

"But your mother is suffering. She may not last until the day we find Lucille."

Father's words moved my brother, and so they chose Marina Harding.

The day my mother brought me home, Marina was sitting in the living room in a nightgown, barefoot, crying.

She was sobbing for Mommy, begging Mommy not to give her up.

Without a moment's hesitation my mother set me down and went to hold her.

"There now, sweetheart, don't cry..."

She soothed Marina in that gentle voice, every movement so tender, so full of a mother's love.

I stood off to the side, alone, tipping my head up and watching carefully, unable to stop the thought: so this is a mother? Could I have a mother's love too?

But the next second, I saw Marina flash me a smug smile, her eyes full of malice.

After that Marina would deliberately play the pitiful victim in front of my father and brother, saying I had it out for her, and no matter how I explained, my parents and brother always blamed me first.

Marina had spent ten years with them.

Spend enough time together and feelings grow. That's only natural.

I just never understood why, when I tried so hard to fit into this family, tried so hard to tell them I was not pushing Marina out, even when I laid the proof in front of them, they never once looked at it, insisting the whole time that it was my jealousy at work, that I was the one hurting Marina.

Was the debt of being raised always going to outweigh the debt of being born?

Countless nights, I lay in that tiny room and imagined a day when my parents and brother would learn the truth, apologize to me in tears, and then give me all the love I'd wanted.

But after being let down again and again, I stopped dreaming, stopped hoping for things that would never be real.

Those family members who didn't love me, I didn't want them anymore either.