The Good Girl in the Trunk

It was a national holiday. My little sister wanted to lie down across the entire back seat to sleep, so my mother told me to get in the trunk.
I obeyed, folding my thin, frail body into a painfully contorted position.
“Don’t crush the luggage,” my mother said, her voice flat.
Then she slammed the trunk shut.
The suffocating heat of the enclosed space and the lurching of the car triggered my asthma. I fumbled in my pocket for my inhaler, only to find the canister was empty.
An image flashed in my mind: my sister handing me the inhaler earlier that day, a knowing, malicious smile on her face.
As my vision blurred, I heard my mother’s voice, cold and distant.
“We’ll just drop her off at my cousin’s place. Give her a little extra money. I’m so sick of looking at her.”
Tears streamed down my face, but I was smiling.
Don’t worry, Mom. You won’t have to be sick of me for much longer.

1.
In the final moments of consciousness, they say hearing is the last sense to go.
I heard my mother finally mention me, her voice, which had been so warm a moment before, turning to ice.
“We were supposed to have a nice, relaxing trip, and now we have to make this stupid detour to my cousin’s…”
She clicked her tongue, the sound full of irritation. The mere thought of me was enough to ruin her mood.
Today was a holiday. The whole family was going on a trip to the capital, and my mother had told me to pack a bag. I was surprised, and so happy. I thought, for a moment, that I was finally being included, that I was finally a part of the family.
I never imagined she was planning on throwing me away, like a piece of trash.
In the dark, stuffy trunk, the only sound was my own ragged, desperate breathing. Cold sweat poured down my face. My chest felt like it was being crushed. Suffocation and despair washed over me in a final, crushing wave.
At the very end, I curled into a ball, like an infant in the womb, and instinctively whispered the name I had spent my entire life hoping would answer me.
Mom… Mom…
I died.
My soul drifted out of the dark trunk. I floated past my sister in the back seat, sleeping peacefully under a pink, hand-knitted blanket my mother had made for her.
My mother was texting my great-aunt, who was being evasive, leaving her messages on read. She typed again, her patience wearing thin.
[Cici is very capable. She can handle all the housework, you won’t have to worry about a thing. She’s not very bright, not cut out for school, so you don’t need to waste money on that.]
She was like a desperate salesperson trying to offload defective merchandise.
I reached out, wanting to smooth the worried frown from her brow, to tell her, Mom, don’t worry. I’m dead now.
The baby you tried to abort, the stain you could never wash away, the landmine you were always trying to avoid, is finally gone from your life.
The car soon arrived at my great-aunt’s house.
Only my mother got out.
“Oh, I was starting to think you weren’t coming! Shouldn’t you be enjoying the holiday?”
“Auntie, we talked about this. Cici isn’t used to the city. I don’t have a choice…”
My mother didn’t give her a chance to refuse, pulling a thick wad of cash from her purse.
To my surprise, my great-aunt didn’t take it. She glanced at the money, her face a mask of conflict, but then shook her head.
“You know how it is here. I don’t make the decisions in this house.”
My mother knew it was a lost cause. Her frown deepened.
“Where’s Cici? I’ve hardly ever seen the poor girl. Let her come out and say hello.”
My great-aunt was trying to ease the tension. My mother turned and looked toward the trunk.
Is she going to find me? What will she do when she finds out I’m dead?
A sliver of dark anticipation bloomed in my chest.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” my great-aunt said, her voice dropping, “but if you hadn’t been so foolish back then, none of this would be happening. You have to pay for the mistakes you make when you’re young.”
The comment struck a nerve. My mother’s face went cold.
“We’re leaving,” she snapped, turning and getting back in the car without another word.

2.
My mother hated me.
She was the only person from her village to ever go to college, but she got pregnant during her freshman year. She was young, naive, and completely infatuated with my father, a man ten years her senior.
She dropped out of school, cut ties with her family, and threw herself into a life she would come to regret forever.
A year later, she showed up on my grandmother’s doorstep and left me there.
She went back to school, got a respectable job in the city, and started a new family. She had a wealthy husband and a beautiful daughter. She was a success story, a happy, fulfilled woman.
She never went back to the small, gossipy village that remembered her as a cautionary tale.
Until I was fourteen. At my grandmother’s funeral.
The woman I had only ever seen in photographs appeared before me. She was so young, she didn’t look old enough to be my mother. She went through the motions of the funeral with a cold, detached air, gave me an address, and said, “Come find me here.” Then she was gone.
It was my first time in the city. I was like a stray dog, lost and scared. The apartment building had a security code. It was the first of many barriers I would never be able to cross.
On the other side of that door was my mother, her husband, and her other daughter.
I waited outside for a long time. It was nearly a hundred degrees. I was dizzy with the heat, sweat pouring down my face.
As my consciousness began to drift, I thought of my grandmother. Whenever the other kids in the village called me a bastard, I would hide in the wheat fields, watching the waves of gold and green, and wait for her to find me.

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