The Jennie’s story is the true story of my life which not any person in the world would have continuously suffered such cruelty, ferocity with extreme fierceness and unrestrained violence and brutality since I have a memory of my life. The purpose of Jennie’s story is one should control one’s life instead of the constant blame for everything on childhood problems.

                                                      Childhood Life

First Time in Memory,

For the first time in memory, I was late 3 years old. It was warm and sunning day. I sat on floor played in the hall. The hall which shared with all my uncles and Aunts used to honor the memory of ancestors and worship of traditional Taiwanese God. My mom was sick in the bed. My father with malignity in looks hurriedly walked toward me from outside with a large bamboo carrying pole holding in his two hands. He tried to hit me with a large bamboo carrying pole. He missed it.

I crawled underneath the table; there was a bench in front of the table. In the eyes of 3 years old child, possible only two feet tall, everything was big/huge and tall/high. As from present-day perspective, the bench was about 8” W x 6’ L and a piece of the wood on top of two pairs of legs (not trestles, the legs were fixed firmly underneath bench) about 18” to 20” high. The table was 6’ x 6’ Table and was 30”H. The bamboo carrying pole hit the floor and broke in half.

My mom must had heard my tremblingly crying voice and the loud noisy sound made by the pole hit the floor. She ran over and tried to grab the half of a broken carrying pole from my father hands. He pushed her away and she fell on the floor. My father tried to make abrupt thrusts with a sharp side of the other half of broken pole yet the pole could not reach me as I had already crawled to the other end of table against wall. He tried to move the bench away. My mom got up and stood face to face with my father in front of the table and shouted “we are all dying together; I will fight you to the death”. She tried and successfully grabbed broken pole from my father’s right hand. He stopped and left the hall. My mom looked so frail. She collapsed to the floor. I crawled out and sat beside her on the floor. She was crying, but I did not. Perhaps, I was terrified and state of shock.

My uncles and aunts had never helped or tried to talk to my father regarding his ferocious violence. It seemed to me that they did not care as long as it did not happen to them.

First Dream Intertwined With My Real Life,

I was born near a lake, the place which local people call Dwa Owr Dai in Taiwanese or the bottom of a big lake, located Yen Sun, E. land, Taiwan. The lake with the deep blue colored water and waves of its inside lake as well as the velocity of sound as irregularly torrential water was smashing down and splashing foams all over the place of spillway bed beneath 7 feet long and 1 ¼ foot wide cementing walk path over the spillway gave me such a creepy feeling. Usually, there were three punts docked by the lake shore, not far from spillway and occasionally, on the way to or down from the mountains, I saw that white whooping cranes at both ends of punt took a ride with the punter who propels the punt by pushing against the lake bed with a pole in middle of the lake. For Taiwanese cranes bring a good luck and prosperity. Local people had protected them. Those whooping cranes were treated like pets. So, they were not afraid of human.

I was only an either 4 or almost 5 years old child and my brother or sister asked me to go with either one to the mountain to collect the firewood from falling branches of the tree or falling trees in the forest for cooking foods. To go up to the mountain, we had to walk through a cementing walk path over spillway of the lake as well as a long walk of a narrow about 1 ½ feet wide walk path to the other side of the lake, which one side of walk path is the lake, the other side is muddy rice fields with cranes in search of the foods/insects or uncultivated swamps and cross the lake is the thick and massive deep green forest covering the mountains around the lake. There was a house at bottom of the mountains, a big dog tied on long ropes under a tree barked furiously at us; poultries ran around outside the house, and there was a string bean, garlic flower, eggplant and cucumber garden in front of the house. Most times, I either saw a woman, who carried her baby in fabric slings tied to her back, picking up the vegetables or old man---------------------------------------- to be continued-----

Jennie PC Chiang/江佩珍 01/02/12 美國