Big Girls Don’t Cry [self-para]
“Interesting that you think of it that way,” the lowlife chuckled, blood staining his teeth and seeping onto his lips.
“What the fuck are you on about?” Rocky droned in a bored tone, her hands busy with ejecting the clip out of the gun covered in his blood. As she began to empty the clip, the sharp clink of metal clashing onto the pavement below, she continued. “You talk so much, but say nothing.”
“Oh, little one, I think I’m saying quite enough.”
Her gaze fell to him before she lifted her foot, pressing the bottom of her Doc Martin’s into his forehead with some force. “Shut up.”
Another chuckle fell from his lips as he spit up more blood. “You beat the shit out of me for answers yet you haven’t gotten the answer you need.”
She rolled her eyes as she shifted her weight to her grounded foot, forcefully pushing down his face into the cement ground, his face scraping against it slightly from the impact. “Then start talking.”
“Do you trust a word I say?”
“I trust you about as much as I trust a weather report. I’m taking it with a grain of salt, dickbrain. Now what do you need to tell me? Spit it out.”
Her Korean pronunciation was starting to suffer terribly. Her anger was palpable, rolling off of her like tidal waves building just out beyond the shoreline as she stood over him pressing his face further into the cement ground beneath them. He chuckled again, sighing in what seemed to be a delighted tone. “You and me, we aren’t that much different from one another.”
“Don’t think for one second I won’t use your face to wipe birdshit off this pavement. We are nothing alike.”
“You really have no idea what happened all that time ago? You weren’t all that young then.”
“If you keep saying a bunch of shit instead of just saying what you were going to hours ago, I will literally leave you to bleed out in your car,” she said, her voice laced with every ounce of promise she could convey. When she finally worked her way to one bullet left in the clip, she inserted it and locked it.
There was a lengthy pause after the clip clicked into place as she locked it, one that almost made her wonder if the scum beneath her boot was still conscious. “Little girl--”
“I’m not little.”
“Little girl--”
Digging the heel of her boot into his cheek, she ignored the slight pop she felt. “I’m not little, piece of shit.”
“At least my mother didn’t sell me for a plot of land and a pocket full of 50 bhat.”
The world did not end with a bang, or a whisper, but rather, one silent scream at time.
One hundred deafeningly quiet screams. Ones that kept her awake; ones that echoed through the hallway of every memory kept locked away, refusing to leave.
For Rocky, her world ended at twelve. The rest of her long life would serve as a timekeeper to that dog-eared moment in time. She would never be anything more than a kitsune who was sold to a bidder who then sold her to wealthy families who desired “pets” as another trophy in their trophy case.
Returning to Thailand was a goal of Rocky’s. The country she hardly knew but was always reduced to while living abroad.
It was far less beautiful than she remembered. Perhaps industrialization and the push to modernize had taken some of its charm away. Or maybe it was a romanticized land where things were ideal as a coping mechanism for how shitty everything after Thailand seemed to be. The life of complete solitude, subjugation and an anger that only seemed to worsen the longer she breathed--her home was always seen as a paradise whenever she reverted back to her life before she was trafficked.
It was a life of freedom, childish wonder, and playing along the canal. Naive to the world’s harsh realities. A paradise just based off of that.
However, as she made her way through the dirt roads outside Phuket’s city center and the rush of noisy tourists seemed to paint an entirely different picture altogether. She was nearing the stretch of lands owned by several resorts and private luxury realtors. From the information she gathered, she had important business at the Marina Cove Resort, one of the largest resorts in the area.
Rocky knew it was tricky, banking on all this intel to be accurate and correct. Deep down, she still wasn’t sure she could trust the Chinese trafficker who seemingly was still in contact with her mother. She wasn’t entirely sold. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to look into it herself. With his information and a little digital digging, she figured out a few more pieces to the puzzle that prompted her to book a flight to Thailand. Information such as her still working at a resort, changing her name to Rita and how she was now married to a realtor in Phuket.
It was amazing to her, how drastically her mother’s life had changed over the century. She went from a tin shack along the canals of Phuket, working as a housekeeper at two resorts and a woman who lost her daughter for god knows what reason to a wife who was well off and worked for one resort in their catering department. Just the thought of it made the bile bubble at the back of her throat.
Hours later, she meandered into the resort. Strolling with confidence up to the desk with a stolen credit card that she claimed was her father’s, she checked into her reserved room under a completely fake name. Weeks ago, she set this up. As soon as she learned about her mother’s new position at Marina Cove, the tech-savvy girl worked to get as much information about her normal routine as possible. There was a morbid sort of interest for the young kitsune. While she could honestly hear that same statement resonating at the back of her head, the one from the Chinese trafficker who revealed she was sold, not stolen, there was still a part of her that missed the woman. Something irrational within her brought up those nostalgic feelings and it made her feel like she couldn’t breathe.
That night brought no easy dreams. In fact, she felt sick at one point, so sick, she barely made it to the toilet in time to spew the contents of her skimpy dinner. A mere reminder that she wasn’t well off 95 years later. Even after all of these years of independence, Rocky still didn’t make a whole lot of money and ended up stealing money in order to afford the airplane ticket. The hotel room was stolen too. Meanwhile, it seemed after a day of following her mother, she was doing well for herself. She worked as a catering liaison at the resort and helped potential clients explore their options for holding weddings, birthdays, family reunions, etc. at the resort. She had a nice comfy life with her new husband and that was both comforting and sickening all at the same time.
After a night where she barely slept, she used that morning to tail her mother. In shorts, a crop top and sandals, looking foolish in her opinion, she followed at a sizable distance. She watched as she gave a site tour to a potential wedding party. The way she beamed and raved about all the great food packages that came with the event space was entrancing.
She looked nothing like her, Rocky thought with a nauseating realization. Nose shapes, full lips, eyes--all of it looked so different when she compared herself to the older kitsune. She got almost nothing from her mother and that made her jaw flex as she watched her mother throw her head back as she laughed at the groom’s unfunny joke. She seemed so confident as she continued the tour, giving specifications on all the ballrooms and the reception area for said ballrooms. Her mother wasn’t as tall as her, she noted. Perhaps a trait passed on by her other parent--the mysterious person she never knew. Her mother’s short arms extended and it only prompted the young kitsune to look at her own long limbs.
Another thing she seemed to not pick up from her mother was the cheerful disposition. She seemed so content and happy as she walked around. And sure, that could just be her front-facing demeanor with prospective clients, but there was a gut feeling within Rocky that told her she was happy. Happier than she ever remembered her before.
In this moment, with the sun creating a perfect halo of light around her, it was easy for her to forget those words that stuck like glue in the back of her head.
“She knew what was coming and weighed out what was more important. Guess you didn’t make the cut, sweetheart.”
Those words were like a stain. The harder she scrubbed at it, to erase it from her memory and cling to a memory that she was stolen, ripped from her mother’s side, the deeper it set in. The more it set in, the less she could pretend like those words didn’t hurt. For the last twenty years, Rocky tried her hardest to understand why her mother would give her up. Sure, they were dirt poor and lived in a tin shack along the canals. They had nothing but each other. But that wasn’t so terrible, was it? Difficult, and, perhap most of the time it was trying, but that was hardly a reason to just give one’s child away. No matter how much she tried to rationalize it in her head, the kitsune came up with no justifiable reason as to what happened.
Following her mother led the raven-haired woman to a beautiful and sleek mansion just outside the resort area. Secluded, private and easy access for a girl used to breaking into any and everything. Her mother lived in a house made of stucco or similar solid material. No metal to be seen. The roof looked to be sturdy and without holes. A dream of a house and better than her sub-basement apartment back in Gwangju.
It was even harder to deny the words from the Chinese trafficker when she saw the lush and beautiful landscape surrounding the sprawling estate. The home looked gorgeous with the tropical backdrop. Modern and chic in every way. For her to have gone from rags to this, it only seemed to feed into the idea that maybe she did have to give Rocky up in order to have all of this. Another sickening turn in her stomach made her nearly spew the entire contents of her stomach, blood simmering just there beneath her skin.
The stakeout taught her a few things. She owned a vehicle. A very nice foreign brand. An Astin Martin actually. Her husband was tall and a little older with completely gray hair. He wore a bespoke suit that first time she laid eyes on him. He was somewhat handsome and pale. Almost looked foreign. He drove a Porsche. He seemed to treat her well in the few hours she could stomach observing. It must’ve been nice to find love after all these years. Probably most shocking of all was just how serene everything was. From her vantage point in a tree near the house, everything looked like it had a place and nothing was out of that designated spot. Blindingly clean, white cabinets in the kitchen, pristine dark wood floors, stainless steel counter tops that gleamed when the light hit it just right.
A perfectly secluded escape tucked away in Thai jungle.
Just as she determined she’d seen all she could take for the day, another set of headlights bobbed and flashed as the car pulled into the driveway to the house. Curiosity was getting the best of the young kitsune, and so she stayed there, perched between branches, her back uncomfortably digging into the rough bark of the tree as her eyes focused in on the final car. It came to a full stop and parked behind her mother’s Astin Martin. The last bit she saw of her mother and her new husband, they weren’t in any clothes to receive guests at this hour and it was rapidly getting darker. Her mind tried to rack over who would be arriving this late to a house they didn’t live in with people who looked like they were settling in for the evening, but she was coming up blank.
So, she just decided to watch and see what happened.
A man dressed in casual clothing hopped out of the car to open the passenger-side backseat door. Rocky was so engrossed in the mystery of who would emerge from the car, she didn’t notice how far she was leaning forward or that she was holding her breath. Her eyes narrowed as she saw a short leg peek from the bottom of the car door. Soon, it was a mess of jet black hair. With a tan leather backpack slung over his tiny shoulders, Rocky watched in silent confusion as a teenage boy emerged from the backseat. Who was this?
A shrill laugh sounded from somewhere and her head whipped around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. But by the time she turned to face the car once again, she found a second kid crawling from the backseat and pushing the older and taller boy. It was a small girl with her hair in a ponytail, her school uniform an absolute mess of wrinkles and what looked to be dirt on her skirt. Bone straight jet black hair almost identical to the bob she had when she was younger, she watched as a thin preteen arose from the car. She had to be a preteen. As they bickered among themselves, Rocky realized she didn’t know enough Thai anymore to keep up. A language she’d long forgotten to make room for the Korean language she used on a daily basis.
Who the fuck are they?
She stayed there in that tree, watching the children bicker as they moved around the car, thanking the man for the ride and handing off an envelope to him. As they waved the car back out of the driveway and onto the private road leading back to the dirt road she walked along to make it to the estate, she watched a porch light illuminate the back deck of the house. The soft light guided the two back toward the house and as they continued to bicker lightning fast between the two of them. At the door was Rocky’s mother, smiling fondly as she scooped them both into a hug, ruffling the younger girl’s hair.
Dumbstruck and unable to process the image before her, the young kitsune straightened her rigid torso as she continued to watch the interaction. Kissing both kids at the crown of their heads, she laughed when the younger one jumped around excitedly, her backpack spilling the entire contents of the bag onto the wooden deck.
Who the fuck are they?
Her keen hearing picked up one word in all the flurry of indecipherable Thai. It was one of the few Thai words she remembered.
Maa.
The chill that ran through her was bewildering. It started at the top of her scalp and only descended at the slowest of paces. As if someone was pouring a bucket of ice water on her but instead of a splash, it was a steady trickle. Her eyes bore into the two children and her mother who was still helping pick up the fallen paper. She said something about dinner, but Rocky wasn’t able to pick up much else, her hearing beginning to turn fuzzy. Her vision blurred, unable to sharply focus on anything in front of her. Why would they call her mom? Why would they go up and hug her like that? Why would she be waiting for their return? Did those children live at the house?
The answer to those questions was obvious, but she couldn’t help but fight that possibility. There’s no way her mother had children. There’s no way Rocky had siblings for...at least ten years without her knowing. No. She was ripped from her mother, never reunited, despite possible efforts made on her mother’s part. No. She wouldn’t have children of her own after something so traumatic, right?
Right.
