My mother died before I was born.

I was cut out from her belly and for the whole ordeal, they called her 'a bad woman'.

At first, I mistakenly thought she had been called cruel for giving life. As it turns out, it was cruelty to have taken life. And an even bigger one to have attempted to take one.

You see, she killed herself.

No one knew who my father was. The ladies at the house took it upon themselves to raise me. Luckily, I was a girl. Had I been a boy, they couldn't have kept me in that place. And then perhaps, in the cold winter of '40, I would have died in some dark lonely alley where strays and orphans were left for cats and dogs.

Because the world waged war endlessly, you could always hear someone calling another a bad person. So when they called my mother a cruel woman, I thought it was merely because she had taken life.

But as I grew older, I realized that the other women in the house, whom I considered my big sisters, were also bad women.

How could they be bad? They dressed so beautifully every day. Everyone who came to the house to see them was always happy. They were always laughing. Even as the world burned outside our door, the men who visited were happy because of the women of the house. They drank, laughed, and slept soundly, always looking content when they left in the morning.

I wanted to be like them. Like all my big sisters who raised me. They were always kind.

If I could be as kind, beautiful, and happy as them... if I could make all the people happy too... if only...

Some nights, as I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, I wonder why they called her a cruel woman. Even though I never met her, sometimes, I miss my mother.

I would tell her she was right. I would tell her she was far too kind. I would tell her she wasn't a bad woman.

Most of the girls were sold to the house, and those who weren’t had no other place to go. With the men off to war, killing each other, women and children were left to fend for themselves. When the war ended, so many homes were left empty.

At first, they would cry. I thought they felt betrayed. But in truth, they cried because they had nowhere left to go, because they were forced by the only thing they had left: they were women.

Natalie was 16, four years older than me, when her crippled, drunken brother sold her to that place. She was the first girl close to my age that I ever met, and so we became fast friends. She was the one who kept me away from this business for as long as she could.

She had red hair and a spirit just as fiery. Despite everything, she never wavered. She taught me everything about the world I had never seen and was never going to see. Most of it sounded like a fantasy. Even among all my big sisters, she seemed so different to me. There was a genuineness unique to her that I never could forget.

She died when I was 16. She fell in love. That was a stupid mistake. I could never imagine someone as smart as her would fall victim to such a malady. And yet, she never looked like she regretted any bit of it. Not even when he told her he could never be with a 'bad woman' like her.

Natalie told me that night, that all it took to be a bad woman was a man. A woman on her own couldn't do a thing that was bad. But men would always find a way to make her a bad woman.

I didn't understand. The next morning, I failed at trying to wake her up.

Her grave wasn't marked because no one was ever going to visit her. I learned how fleeting it all was. Everything that was sublime was inevitably transient.

Because I was born there, the route my life was to take had already been set in stone. I wasn't sent to school. The women at the house couldn't afford it. No one wanted to give a decent job to anyone who hailed from a disorderly house.

It wasn't hard to see. Some of my big sisters often sighed.

"You're born into this... this cesspit. You poor angel", they'd say.

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I helped around the house chores and if that was all my life amounted to, I wouldn't have cared. I was much too caught up in the lives of my big sisters. I was busy, watching. But a girl's gotta grow up, don't she?

And when she grows up, it's not a woman that dictates her life. It's always men.

When I was 20, I thought of Natalie. Soon, I was going to leave her behind. I hadn't even fallen in love like her. And I knew it was too late. I had stopped feeling things. When I looked in the mirror, a stranger stared back. How suddenly a girl becomes a woman, it's unforgivable.

No woman at the house lived a full age. Some died of diseases, some killed themselves over failed loves, some were simply driven mad by the possibility of getting old.

I dreamed I was a child again, lying in the greenest lawn of a house on a street lined with an endless array of similar homes, all brightly painted and full of life. My cat slept on my stomach, curled into a ball. The sun shone on my face, and we were at peace. Then we heard a roadkill, and we rushed to the now-empty road. My cat mourned it, for it was her kitten. I mourned too, and flowers bloomed from the carcass. While we stood there on the road, I realized that what had been killed wasn’t the kitten, but my cat. And I was all alone. Yet still, I mourned. And still, the flowers bloomed.

At 23, I gave up on trying to be a good woman. The best thing was to simply forget. I couldn’t bear calling fate cruel. It seemed like a simple escape, a balm for the soul, something that might have soothed some of the suffering. But I wasn’t willing to give up even a grain of my pain for a placebo. After all, it was the only thing left in the world that truly belonged to me. I wouldn’t have parted with that emptiness, even if my life depended on it.

Then I met Alfie. He was a sailor. He spoke of the sea and everything he had seen in the world. He was younger than me and more innocent than the others. I took a liking to him because he spoke of his world, not mine. He showed me a dream—the first I had ever known in my life. It was a dream of freedom, a beautiful illusion of a wide sky above and an infinite ocean stretching before me.

For a while, I forgot what Natalie had told me. I foolishly grew wings, not realizing how fragile they were. I asked him if I could go with him.

"It's hard work, a ship. And you're... you're just a girl."

Well, I thought, even if just for a short while, perhaps I had been an ordinary girl, like Natalie. Just for a while, I had dreamed. And that had been enough. I understood why she hadn't had any regrets. So was I going to end up the same way as her? No, I wasn't going to let life have the last laugh. Regardless, whatever hope there once was had now extinguished.

Alfie sailed away that winter and it was the last I saw of him. I turned 24 with the first snow that year.

And like every year, I thought of my mother. But this year, for the first time, I also wondered about my father.

I was now curious. Not because I expected anything from it, but simply because I wondered why my mother hadn’t gotten rid of me sooner. Why did she only think of killing me when it was too late?

Most of my big sisters were now gone. Perhaps, I should have asked the question earlier. I soon realized the only one who could answer that question was the madam of the house.

She was a tough woman, and I always had a sense that she disliked me. So, I had always avoided her as best I could. It took courage to face her.

"Those of us who don't die young become madams. There's barely any that make it to old age like me. In a way, I think it's good. Hopeful as I'd like to sound, the truth is bitter for us. We must not hope. We must not feel. That sort of luxury isn't for us. You get out of this life as soon as you can. The ones that die are lucky", she was smoking her long jade pipe as usual when I found her in her office.

I stood before her perfectly still.

"You know, your mother was cruel."

"I think what she did was nothing but kindness. Of all the people, I thought you'd understand", I answered, bitterly but somewhat monotonously.

She sniggered, "She wasn't cruel because she tried to take your life with her own. She was cruel because she gave birth to a girl."

In that house, regardless of what you were born as, a boy or a girl, your life went to the dogs, in the end. The only thing that made one life worth more than the other was how long you got to live it. And in this case, the shorter, the better.

There was nothing left to say. I clenched my fist, gritted my teeth, dug my nails into my palms, and yet I could not escape the truth in her words.

She told me who my father was. Contrary to what I had expected, he was a general in the army. Not a mere drunk, but a respectable man. He was already married when he met my mother.

He quickly grew fond of her and visited her regularly. Perhaps, when he was posted to the border, my mother chose to wait for him.

In November of 1940, he went missing during the air raids that claimed hundreds of lives. I suppose my mother was certain he would never return. So she hastened to join him. After all, a "bad" woman couldn't expect to raise a child alone in a world so bent on destroying itself. And after giving birth, her career in the house was already over. She had nowhere left to go... once again.

The madam showed me his photo in a newspaper. It was a coverage of his daughter's wedding. He looked happy. His daughter, too.

I looked at the madam, bitter and mortified. And I bet she could read it written all over my face: 'It could have been me.'

I could have planted myself before him and demanded my right as his daughter. I could have asked him for everything a child ought to ask their parent. I could have leveraged my mother's love for him and demanded a good life for myself.

But I didn't. Of course, I didn't. That was a different world. If I parted with the filth that had become of me, would I have remained myself? If I were happy, would I even be me?

The house fell on hard times briefly. But nothing changes in this business. People simply find new ways.

Beneath those layers of pretty, smiling faces, my big sisters had all been suffering in the same way. But they never once complained, so defeated were they. I never saw them cry. Come to think of it, I never cried either.

Every morning, as I woke up to an empty bed beside me and some crumpled notes on the side table, I could feel myself slipping away. Now more than ever, I thought of my mother.

I knew I'd never get to be as old as her. She was 32 when she died. But I wasn't going to throw myself off the roof like her. The idea of letting some passing wind swoop me down seemed too much.

But I knew when the end loomed in front of me, I'd let myself be taken without any resistance. The only thing I feared was getting a disease. It rots the body. Those women suffer till the end and they don't even get a burial. They get shovelled into some dark cranny where they die like a dog.

The house burnt down when I was 27.

Most of the girls, myself included, didn't even leave our rooms. There was no point. This was the finish line for our lives anyway. Even if we'd run to safety, there was nothing left anymore. This was our last frontier.

I tried to get a young one out but she clung to her bed so fiercely that I could feel my own resolve slipping away. I sat down beside her. The fire didn't burn us. We'd gotten used to hell a long time ago.

I gave up, even though I hated the smell of burning flesh. I sat in my own smoke, smiling and laughing in the face of the last embers of life. I had won. I had the last laugh.

Needless to say, you needn't mourn us. This is not a story that should be told. Just know that I missed the house, the green lawn, the sun, and the warmth of my cat—things I never had. Yet, I missed them all the same.

My mother wasn't cruel.

My big sisters weren't bad women.

No one chose this.

And me? Well, what else could I do? I was just a girl, after all.