By the time I was five, two years of being left alone in the house  had stretched longer than I could bear, and so I asked to go to school—not shyly as a child asking for permission or a wish, but as someone demanding for rescue. 

 

Mom tried to talk me out, explained to me that I was too young for school, I  needed to wait until next year. “Next year” Also she said, the way adults do when they hope time will soften a child’s insistence. But no logic would make sense to me since waiting had already hollowed me out. So I turned to Dad, who never once learned how to say no to me. 

 

He took my small hand through the red-dust road, past low fences and quiet gardens still wet with morning dew, and brought me to the elementary school, where he spoke confidently and firmly to the teachers, proving that I could already read, could count, could follow lessons meant for children one year older than me. I had learned by watching—by sitting beside him while the television murmured, by watching my sisters bend over their homework, copying letters in the air before I ever held a pencil properly. The teachers looked at me—tiny, brown-skinned, not quite quiet—but my eyes were definitely loud with excitement, sparkling with a hope too big for my body.

 

They let me stay, not yet officially, only to sit in class, and that small mercy opened my life wide. 

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It was, probably, one of the happiest days of my childhood.

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The night before my first school day, I laid out my uniform myself, a white shirt and blue trousers carefully smoothed, notebooks stacked neatly, pencils sharpened, books aligned, and a new hat Dad had bought placed on top like a promise. I went to sleep feeling as though my life was about to begin.

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And it did.

 

When I stepped through the school gate the next morning, it felt as though I had walked through a magic door, crossed into another world—one filled with voices, laughter, chalk dust, shaded corridors, and a schoolyard framed by old trees whose leaves trembled gently in the highland wind. I loved everything at once: the sound of the school drum, the order of desks, the weight of a book opening to a new page, the way knowledge arrived quietly and changed everything. 

 

After class, I stood waiting for my sisters beneath the long shadows of the trees in the schoolyard, and together we walked home along the familiar red-dust road. At every dismissal hour, that road would suddenly turn into a kind of heaven, and we—small children in white uniforms—were like hundreds of quiet angels stepping out into the light. From that day on, I came to love the white shirt as I loved the feeling of belonging, and the simple hope that no matter how harsh or weary the world beyond might be, the purity of that white shirt could still stand for a new chance, a new horizon.

 

In the evenings, I waited for Dad, told him every detail of my day—new letters, new songs, new stories—and after dinner I went straight to my desk, reviewing all lessons carefully, examining my mistakes as if they mattered greatly, and told myself to do better the next day. I finished my homework before seven so I could sit beside Dad and watch the news.

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That was our first ritual.
Then came another.

 

Dad said that if I earned the highest mark, there would be a reward, could be a coconut candy, a star apple fruit, or an egg, and so I earned them all—not merely for the gift, but for the feeling that nothing more could be demanded of me, that I had reached the limit without regret. 

 

Weeks passed, Dad told me the teacher spoke to the principal, and I was accepted as an official student. 

 

I was over the moon.

 

I treated my notebooks like treasures, kept them spotless, practiced my handwriting for hours, chasing perfection line by line. When Dad asked which subject I loved most, I answered honestly: all of them, because every page was new, every lesson was a door opening. 

 

I took school seriously, like a small soldier entrusted with a sacred mission. Recess filled the yard with dust and laughter, games unfolding beneath the sun, friends everywhere, while the deep sound of the school drums stirred something proud and steady in my chest. 

 

On Monday mornings, the entire school gathered for assembly, standing beneath the open sky, singing the anthem together, and I stood perfectly still, singing loudly with pride, imagining histories larger than myself Dad told me all about. That was also when certificates were awarded in front of the whole school, and quietly, without telling anyone, I gave myself another mission: I wanted the certificate, not to be on the stage, but for the way Dad’s eyes softened when I handed them to him.

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Yet school cost the family more money, and so everyone began waking even earlier. 

Mom left before dawn to go into the ethnic villages, buying small goods while they were still fresh to sell later at the market, while Dad and the others worked the garden as the mist lifted slowly from the land. 

 

I went to bed with mom at night, but each morning woke alone in the hollow house, its silence too large for a child. I cried and ran through every room searching for them, into the garden, screaming that they had left me without a word, only to be told gently that they had said goodbye while I slept. Then either Dad or Hai would carry me back on their back, my sisters’ laughter fading behind us. I dressed up for school, still in tears. 

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Before dropping me at school, Dad said “Strong girls don’t cry, tears would steal your focus”.

So I swallowed them, hugged him tightly, adjusted the hat he got me, and ran into class, burying my fear in concentration. 

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Every night,  Mom tried to put me to sleep however she could. Sometimes she sang lullabies, though rarely—she was usually too tired. More often, she frightened me into sleep with stories of punishment, of frozen limbs, of children turned to stone or sent to hell for refusing to close their eyes. 

—but she always ended with the same promise: sleep, I won’t go anywhere, I’ll be here when you wake up. Her lullabies could rarely put me to sleep, but fear and her promises surely did. 

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And every morning, she was gone, again.

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I remember the anger, the fear, the disbelief of it, and one night, in a child’s desperate logic, I tied a rubber band from my shirt to hers, believing it would keep her with me. I fell asleep smiling, only to wake to the snapped band lying useless on the bed. 

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After that, I set myself another mission: I would never sleep too deeply again, would hover between waking and dreaming so I could catch the moment they left and ask them to stay. I half slept like that all the way through my childhood, but not once could I hold them back, not even for another minute. They had more things to worry about than a desperate child asking to be soothed. 

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Eventually, they all began waking even earlier. Dong woke up at 2-3am.

 

She was ten.