A Mother’s Love

Imagine a family living in the provinces… father, mother and five daughters. Everything is wonderful and then one fateful day, with one bad decision, everything goes horribly wrong. That is this story and, frankly, it’s one I wish I didn’t
know. I know that things far more horrible than this happen every day but it always saddens me to see a mother intentionally put any of her children in harm’s way. Maybe I expect too much of mothers. Maybe it’s just because of a
deeper bond that I think they should form with their children after having carried them for nine months. Maybe I’m all wrong. But, fundamentally, I think there is some level on which a mother should love her children to a degree that the
father can never reach. Sadly, in this case, that was apparently not so.

Everything in this story revolves around money. The desire for money. The love of money. Feelings that everyone had more money. Given the nature of what transpired, it all started, appropriately enough, on a dark, stormy day when flood waters
were ravaging everything in sight.

I’m not sure exactly what the father was doing in his fields in this weather. Some details I just seem to have forgotten. Perhaps he was trying to catch fish. Out of the darkness, riding along in the swift moving current, came a snake.
I was told it was a cobra but who really knows. Anyway, the father was bitten on the arm. He went home and wanted to go to the doctor. But the mother knew better. No need to waste good money on a visit to the doctor when home remedies were far
better than anything the doctor could provide. But the arm wasn’t getting any better. In fact, it had swollen up as big as his leg. Still, mother knew best. Unfortunately for him, father deferred to her wishes. Soon thereafter, father was
dead. Why? Because mother, apparently, valued money above all else.

Over time, the daughters started leaving home. They would send money back to mother, as good daughters are expected to do. But eventually the money slowed down from some and stopped from others. Mother was beside herself. Everyone had more
than her. Her life was becoming unbearable. This just would not do so mother started formulating a plan. She had come up with the perfect way to increase her fortunes. One daughter remained at home. Mother saw this sweet, beautiful, eighteen year
old child as her salvation. This child’s sole purpose in life suddenly became to ensnare a farang and give mother the good life.

One day, mother packed up some of the daughter’s things and had someone deliver her into hell: a nice bar in Bangkok. Yes, what a bar it was. It had been personally checked out to make sure the daughter would be safe while she embarked
on her mission. On her first night, she met Mister Wonderful. He paid the bar fine and took her off into the night. And then she was not heard from again. Until a little more than a month later. That month was, quite literally, hell for her. You
see, Mister Wonderful had devised a grand scheme of his own. He was going to take this child, fresh off the farm, and pimp her out to one and all. The house where she was held captive had a steady stream of men coming and going at all hours of
the day and night, for the entire month that she was held. She was only freed from this life when one of these men took pity on her and informed the police of what was being done to her. The neighbors had no clue because she was never allowed
to leave her room and she was guarded at all times. They didn’t know what was going on in the house but, as is the Thai way, better not to get involved. The boys in brown came riding in and rescued her from this awful situation. I personally
cannot even imagine what this experience did to that poor child. She has obviously never been the same and I don’t know what kind of life she will have now. If you can believe it, she went back home. Back to that wonderful saint of a mother
who cast her down into the bowels of hell all on the hope of making a few dollars.

I don’t know if anything happened to Mister Wonderful. That part of the story was not related to me but, this being Thailand, where not much value is placed on women, I doubt much, if anything, happened to him. Mister Wonderful, you
see, was not the farang that the mother was hoping for. He was a sympathetic, smooth talking Thai who made the child feel at ease and then showed himself to be a snake, only much worse than the one that had bitten her father. And, from what I
can see, from what I hear, she would probably have preferred to die that first night at the bar.

Stickman's thoughts:

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting.