Most of my mother’s brothers and sisters died during the war, but there were a few of them left. My mother, two uncles, two aunts, and my grandfather were all that remained in the family.

As time went by, my mother grew older and when she was 13 years old, she was sleeping in her room and her father came in. She didn’t think anything about it until he started pushing her down and forcing himself on her.

She screamed but no one in her family heard her cries. The next morning, she told her brothers and sisters what had happened to her, but they didn’t believe her. They asked her why would a man rape his own daughter? From that night on and for the next two years, she was raped regularly until she escaped to America to live with her brother.

Her brother was the black sheep of the family and he hated my mother.

His wife would only feed her four chicken wings and a bowl of rice a day. She had to work and give her brother the money or she would’ve been beaten. Her sister-in-law hated her so much that she made my mother wear men’s clothes to school. After so long, she forced my mother to quit school and to get a full-time job to pay more bills in the house.

After time went by, my mother met my father (who was my uncle’s best friend) and she believed that he would save her from the life she was living. She decided to marry him. Things weren’t right, but she had to get away from her brother and her evil sister-in-law.

Little did she know my father was worse then what she could have imagined.

Always yelling at her, beating her, and forcing her to have sex with him.

He made my mother give him a bath every day right before his girlfriend would come over to have sex with him in my parents room while my mother sat outside in the living room crying her eyes out.

He told her she was lucky that she was with him, that no one wants her and she was nothing.

My mother gave birth to my brother and then two years later, to me. My father loved my brother but always looked at me like I wasn’t his, and always accused my mother of cheating.

He used to call her all sort of names.

Then she had enough… she divorced him and moved out. Every time my father came over, she had a butcher knife ready for him. She was not taking it any more, and she stood her ground.

My parents went to court and the judge decided that my father should keep my brother and my mother should keep me. My father told the judge that I wasn’t his and my mother had cheated. The judge believed him and he granted his wish.

I have never seen my brother, but I saw my father when I was 16 years old. The first thing he said to me was, “You are my child, you look just like me.” Then told me that I “will not receive any money from him when he dies.”

These are the only words I really remember from my father.