So Mom, buckling under the pressure, got pregnant again. With me.
To make sure the baby in my mother's womb was a boy, my grandmother had shelled out a small fortune at five months to have someone check.
A boy. Confirmed.
Except when I came out, I was a girl.
My grandmother's face went cold. My grandfather sat in silence, chain-smoking. Nobody wanted me.
And I happened to be a fussy baby. The slightest thing would set me off wailing.
"A waste of money is nothing but trouble," my grandmother said. My grandfather complained I was too loud, that I disturbed his sleep.
The two of them packed up and left. Just like that.
My mother had to look after both me and my sister on her own. She had no choice but to quit her job.
She stayed home as a housewife after that, all the way until I started elementary school.
But by the time I started school, she'd been out of the workforce so long that no one would hire her. Even pulling strings, the only jobs she could land were backbreaking and barely paid anything.
She worked during the day. At night she came home with a face like stone and took out every ounce of frustration from the office on me.