Instead, she fled what she described as an abusive relationship and turned to prostitution in China to support herself and send money home. She hasn’t told her parents or sought help.
… I am a native of Dong Thap [province]. My family is very poor and my folks are living hand-to-mouth. In the Mekong River plains, neighborhoods such as Taiwan Block, Korean Block [where residents’ daughters are married to Taiwanese and Korean men] have mushroomed, thanks to the money these women have sent home to support their families.
I love my folks so much that I agreed to marry a foreigner. They took me to Saigon to meet a matchmaker. Sitting in a bus heading toward Saigon, I was worried about what the future would hold for me. My only thoughts were that if I could be lucky enough to marry a loving husband, I would be able to send money home to help relieve my folks’ hardship.
Your life will never be better if you’re married to a Vietnamese man from the countryside. As far as your children are concerned, they continue to get stuck in poverty if you are married to a poor countryman. That’s all that I had in mind, not at all dreaming of anything more.
Everyone has his or her own destiny. Nobody wants to fall on hard times, but how can one abandon this fate? Unluckily, I met a cruel husband from whom I had to escape after two years of marriage...
… I’ve been a ‘streetwalker’ for over a year now, unable to stay or go. I still have to earn enough money to pay for my daily expenses here, as well as save money to support my folks.
Every week, I call my parents. They ask how my marriage is going. My response is simply: ‘It’s OK. By the way, my husband is sending you two his regards.’ I once asked a client to talk with them on the phone, and I heard him send them his regards.
One day, Mom asked if we had planned to have a baby. I told her that I just had a miscarriage. Upon hearing that, she gave a sigh of sadness, but I didn’t dare tell her the truth. The story of a miscarriage sounds better than ‘Mom, your daughter’s life has been miscarried for a long time.’ Well, I don’t have the heart to tell them the truth.
Every week, I go to confession at church asking God’s forgiveness for my bad deed of lying to my parents…
