Chapter 2

He still had to work during the day. I suggested he sleep in the study so he could get some rest.

He shook his head.

“I want to stay with you. I can’t leave you to suffer alone.”

Even exhaustion and the dark circles beneath his eyes could not hide how handsome he was.

He was beautiful.

I was considered quite a beauty myself, yet his features were finer than mine. Put him in women’s clothes, and I would have looked like Cinderella standing beside a princess.

If his family hadn’t gone bankrupt, if something hadn’t happened to his father, I would never have had the chance to marry him.

Seeing how hard I was struggling, he hired a postpartum nanny.

I said we didn’t need one. My repeated hospital stays had already cost us so much.

But he insisted.

In the end, the nanny told me:

“Your baby is the most difficult child I’ve ever cared for.”

The moment our daughter was away from me, she cried. The nanny couldn’t even take her into her arms.

I had to let her go almost at once and continue looking after the baby with my mother-in-law.

Several months passed like that.

Our daughter stopped fussing so often at night, and at last the family could breathe again.

We bought her plenty of toys, including a Barbie doll.

Once, I came back from the bathroom to find the doll’s head twisted off.

“It must have been poorly made,” my husband said.

He bought other toys, little chickens and ducks, all of very good quality.

Within two days, the chicken’s wings had been snapped off. Both the duck’s legs had been torn away.

Gradually, I began to feel that something was wrong.

My daughter seemed to like toys not because she wanted to play with them, but because she wanted to destroy them.

I told my best friend, Chu Viện.

She had a one-year-old son. Hearing this, she laughed.

“Children are all like that. Mine loves taking everything apart too.”

Were they?

As a first-time mother, I had no experience. So I assumed it was normal.

One day, I took my daughter for a walk around our residential complex.

The children there loved playing with newly hatched chicks dyed in bright colors. My daughter was fascinated the moment she saw them.

I carried her closer and smiled.

“Look, sweetheart. Little chicks.”

She giggled and reached out to grab one.

Then, in front of everyone…

She snapped its neck.

4

“That’s normal. Children don’t understand how precious life is. They don’t know their own strength.”

When I told Mục Tranh and my mother-in-law, they both said the same thing.

“Sweetheart, you mustn’t hurt little animals.”

Reassured, I patiently taught my daughter this again and again.

She only giggled.

Before long, she turned one, and her selfishness began to show.

Anything that belonged to her—toys, food, clothes—was off limits. No one could take it away. The moment anyone touched it, she howled.

At first, we didn’t think much of it.

Parenting experts and experienced parents alike said young children were naturally selfish. It was instinct. Before the age of two, you should try to meet their wishes and give them whatever they wanted, to build their sense of security. If their needs went unmet, they could develop personality problems later.

So our family indulged almost every demand.

However busy my husband was, he made time to play with her after work. We gave her all the love and attention we could.

When she was a little over one, a friend had a baby and asked for some used newborn clothes.

I gathered my daughter’s outgrown clothes and old toys to give her.

I didn’t hide what I was doing.

Who would think to keep something like that from a child barely a year old?

Yet she immediately began screaming.

Using the sofa to steady herself, she stumbled and crawled over to snatch the toy from my hand.

She had never shown any interest in it before.

Thinking she liked it, I put it down and picked up another.

She rushed over and grabbed that too.

Whatever I picked up, she took.

When I stopped touching the toys, she crawled away to play with something else.

Since she was so concerned about them, I went into the bedroom to sort the clothes instead, packed them, and set the bag beside the sofa.

I was handing it to my friend when a piercing wail rang out.

My daughter had crawled over unnoticed. She sat on the floor clutching the bag and crying herself hoarse.

I hurried to pick her up and soothe her.

“Be good, sweetheart. These clothes don’t fit you anymore. Let Mommy give them to another baby, all right?”

She wouldn’t listen.

Both hands clung desperately to the bag.

In the end, I kept everything.

At the time, I found it rather funny.

A child barely a year old already knew how to protect her belongings.

Looking back, though, that may have been my first glimpse of her frightening possessiveness.

It wasn’t that she cherished those things.

She simply would not let anyone take anything that had once been hers.

Even if she no longer wanted it.

The incident happened when she was two.

My mother-in-law was feeding her that day. There was a banana in the fruit bowl.

She teased her with a smile.

“Sweetheart, may Grandma have a bite of banana?”

My daughter sat in her high chair.

She looked up, her dark eyes fixed on her grandmother.

I thought she hadn’t understood.

The next moment, she drove the chopsticks in her hand straight at Grandma’s eye.

It happened so fast that none of us could react.

My mother-in-law screamed in agony.

The bowl fell and shattered.

My husband and I froze for a few seconds, then rushed forward.

Blood ran from the corner of her eye. She was in too much pain to open it.

We took her straight to hospital.

Fortunately, the chopsticks hadn’t gone too deep. She hadn’t lost her sight, though her cornea was badly injured.

On the way, I held my daughter in the back seat.

She wasn’t frightened at all.

She merely tilted her head and watched her grandmother moaning in pain.

The corner of her mouth even lifted, as if she were smiling.

A chill ran down my spine.

After treating the injury, the doctor asked what had happened.

We could only say the child had been naughty.

He sighed.

“You’ll have to be more careful. Small children don’t know their own strength.”

My mother-in-law said the same.

“It’s all right. She’s still little.”

She didn’t blame her granddaughter. Instead, she blamed herself for taking the joke too far.

But I couldn’t forget the look in my daughter’s eyes.

It wasn’t the look of a child who had accidentally done something terrible.

It was as though…

She knew exactly what she was doing.

That night, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

My husband held me and murmured:

“Don’t overthink it. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.”

I nodded, but I remained uneasy.

Once might have been a coincidence.

Yet similar incidents began happening more and more often.

Each one chilled me.

And the most frightening part was…

She seemed to enjoy seeing other people in pain.

“Waaah!”

To teach her to share, we tried taking things from her.

My husband deliberately picked up her doll.

“Sweetheart, can Daddy have this toy?”

She screamed and rushed over to snatch it back.

He offered her a piece of cake he had prepared in exchange, but she refused.

Then she flew into a rage, hurled the doll onto the floor, and stamped on it with all her strength, shrieking.

She would rather destroy it than let anyone else have it.

Even her own father.

No one, in short, could take anything that belonged to her.

It only grew worse.

At meals, if she liked a dish, no one else could have any.

If we bought fruit she liked, the rest of us couldn’t touch a single piece.

If anyone ate some, she screamed loudly enough to shake the building.

We tried every method the parenting experts recommended.

Nothing worked.

She still refused to share.

She was terribly selfish.

And it wasn’t only selfishness.

She seemed to have no empathy at all.

My husband, my mother-in-law, and I were the people closest to her. We met her every demand, yet we still couldn’t touch a single thing of hers.

Once, when I was ill, I asked her not to make a fuss because Mommy needed to rest.

She didn’t care whether the adults lived or died.

If she wanted to make a fuss, she did.

Perhaps she was too young to understand.

But at three, at four, she was still the same.

She never thought of anyone else.

Never showed the slightest concern.

And I was her own mother.

She often hit other children when they played together. She liked snatching their things. If she couldn’t get them, she rolled on the ground and threw a tantrum.

I had never taught her that.

Yet she seemed to know how without being told.

Other parents spent every day worrying that their children would be bullied.

I spent every day worrying that mine would bully someone else.

She kept picking on other children and wouldn’t listen to anything we said. Eventually, my mother-in-law and I agreed that we had to be stricter.

Once, after she hit another child again and the parents came to our home to complain, I lost my temper. I pulled her over by the arm, gave her a few light swats, and said:

“You mustn’t bully other children. If you do it again, you’ll be punished.”

She howled and rolled on the floor.

My mother-in-law and I stood watching with stern faces, determined not to comfort her.

She kept rolling about, crying loud enough to bring the house down.