I was five years old when I first attempted suicide.

That’s a hell of a sentence to use to introduce yourself.

Especially when the little girl I’m talking about loved to sing.

Mickey Mouse

I had a white Mickey Mouse record player with a microphone attached to it.

That thing went everywhere with me.

By the time I was done hauling it around, it was dinged up enough to prove it. I didn’t care. If there were people willing to listen, Mickey Mouse and I were prepared to put on a show.

And I really did love to sing.

That’s something I don’t want to lose in everything that came afterward.

I loved music.

I loved that microphone.

I loved performing.

One of the songs I sang was “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”

But Mom always wanted me to sing “You Light Up My Life.”

Always.

Maybe my voice sounded better on it.

I don’t know.

I was three or four years old.

Relatives still tell me about the way I sang that song.

Not simply that I knew it.

That I seemed to feel it.

Somehow, this three- or four-year-old little girl seemed to understand and feel lyrics written for adults.

That part makes more sense to me now than it once did.

I’m an empath.

I absorb emotion. I feel things deeply, even things that don’t belong to me.

What I understand less now is why none of the adults seemed to stop and wonder why a three- or four-year-old was singing a song like that in the first place.

They were impressed that I could sing it.

Mom wanted me to sing it.

So I did.

The Audience

One of my great-uncles had a beautiful home.

Tennis courts.

A swimming pool.

A basketball court.

Pachinko machines.

I loved going there.

I especially loved those Pachinko machines.

I could sit there and play with them and just be a kid.

I didn’t get in trouble when I was doing that.

I could just play.

And I loved it.

His children—my second cousins—were much older than me. Only one was still in high school. The others had already graduated.

They had plenty to do.

But apparently recreation wasn’t enough.

These people also needed entertainment.

So out came Mickey Mouse.

And me.

I sang.

They listened.

They were actually a pretty good audience.

I liked performing.

I liked making people smile.

I liked being good at something.

There was another reason to be good, too.

If I performed well, I wasn’t going to be beaten.

I might get a treat instead.

That’s something I’ve been thinking about while writing this.

I know I loved singing.

I don’t question that.

What I don’t know is whether I would have loved performing quite the same way if being good at it hadn’t also come with something else.

Praise.

Attention.

A treat.

Instead of a beating.

That’s quite a lesson for a little girl.

Sing well.

Make the adults happy.

Be impressive.

And good things happen.

Maybe I simply loved music.

Maybe I loved the microphone and the attention and hearing people react when I sang.

Or maybe part of me learned very early that performing was one of the safest versions of me to be.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in all of it.

I wouldn’t have explained any of that when I was three.

Or four.

Or five.

I couldn’t have.

I only knew there were versions of me that seemed safer than others.

The cute one.

The talented one.

The one adults wanted to hear sing.

The one who made people smile.

That little girl had value.

At least for a while.

Within the last decade, one of those cousins said something to me about my mother that I didn’t fully understand at the time.

She said Mom had always given her the impression that I was more like a toy to show off than a daughter to love.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

It didn’t sound like the way I remembered myself.

I wasn’t a toy.

I was just me.

Then I started writing this book.

And I remembered Mickey Mouse.

The microphone.

“It can’t be wrong

When it feels so right

‘Cause you

You light up my life”

Performing for adults.

How important it was to be good.

The little girl who would sing for anyone willing to listen.

And suddenly, I understood what my cousin had been trying to tell me.

The Basket

I have never felt like I belonged.

That’s not something that started in high school.

Or junior high.

Or even kindergarten.

By five, it wasn’t a new idea.

It was something I already believed.

Some of my earliest memories aren’t really memories in the way people usually mean the word.

They’re pieces.

Mom’s finger close to my face.

Her voice.

The feeling that I had done something wrong.

I was about three when she told me she should have left me under a bridge.

In a basket.

Covered with flies.

To die.

I knew what a bridge was.

I knew what a basket was.

I knew what flies were.

And I knew what dead meant.

That was enough.

For a long time afterward, I thought about that basket.

What kind was it?

A laundry basket wouldn’t work. It had holes in the sides.

Maybe a picnic basket.

Those had lids.

I wondered about the bridge, too.

Where was it?

Was it close to our house?

Had she taken me there?

Had she almost left me?

Maybe she’d changed her mind.

I didn’t ask.

I’d already learned there were questions you didn’t ask.

So I wondered by myself.

A bridge.

A basket.

A baby inside.

Me.

The details changed depending on the day.

The conclusion didn’t.

Mom didn’t want the baby.

I didn’t know then what I know now about where I came from.

But I didn’t know the whole story.

I still don’t.

At three years old, Mom had given me enough information to build one of my own.

There had been a baby.

There had been a basket.

Mom could have left her.

Mom brought her home instead.

And somehow, that baby was me.

• • •

I started paying attention to other things, too.

The front door.

Footsteps.

Cabinets.

The way something was put down on a counter.

A sigh.

Mom’s face.

Sometimes I knew before she said anything.

Don’t talk.

Stay out of the way.

Be quiet.

I didn’t know how I knew.

I just did.

Sometimes I was wrong.

At least I thought I was.

Nothing happened.

Those were the best times.

But the bridge stayed.

So did the basket.

And the flies.

By five, that wasn’t a story I occasionally thought about.

It was part of how I understood myself.

Things were said when Mom was angry.

“I should have left you to die under the bridge in that basket, covered with flies!”

“I wish your grandmother never tugged my pant leg!”

I don’t remember every word from every beating.

I don’t need to.

I remember the message.

I wasn’t wanted.

Kindergarten

Then I started kindergarten.

My first day, I cried.

A lot of kids did.

Mom brought me to the classroom, and when it was time for her to leave, I didn’t want her to go.

There’s something about that I understand differently now.

This was the same mother who had told me she should have left me under a bridge.

The same mother whose moods I had already learned to read.

The same mother who beat me.

And when she took me to kindergarten and started to leave—

I cried.

I wanted my mom.

I was five.

Mrs. Krause assured Mom I would be fine and led me inside.

I wasn’t even all the way into the classroom before I heard it.

Tittering.

Then pointing.

They were laughing at me.

Because I had cried.

I didn’t understand what was so funny.

Other kids had cried, too.

But they kept going.

One of them pulled at the corners of their eyes.

Then another.

“Chink.”

They laughed.

I knew they meant me.

But I wasn’t Chinese.

I was half Korean.

Then they made fun of the way Mom and I looked different.

I didn’t understand that either.

Why did it matter that we looked different?

She was my mom.

I was her daughter.

We couldn’t change our faces.

And I didn’t understand what was wrong with mine.

What was wrong with my eyes?

What was wrong with my face?

What did they see when they looked at me that gave them something to make fun of?

What was wrong with me?

I knew I looked different from most of the kids in my class.

But I didn’t understand why different meant there was something wrong with me.

I was half Korean.

I couldn’t change that.

I didn’t understand why I should want to.

Anna and Beth were part of it from the beginning.

They were the girls other children listened to.

Eventually, I would understand just how much power they had over the other kids.

They could decide who got to play.

Who didn’t.

Who was acceptable.

Who wasn’t.

And everybody seemed to fall in line.

I didn’t understand that kind of power yet.

I just knew I wanted friends, too.

Instead, kindergarten became another place where I had to pay attention.

Another place where I had to figure out the rules.

Another place where being me could be enough to make something happen.

At home, I watched Mom.

At school, I watched everybody else.

I was five years old.

I had no one.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t people in my life.

There were.

I had relatives.

I had teachers.

I had Dad.

And I loved my Daddy.

But loving someone and believing they can protect you aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I didn’t have those words at five.

I only knew what happened.

Mom hurt me.

The kids at school hurt me.

And Dad didn’t make either one stop.

I was already learning how to handle things myself.

Not because I was brave.

Not because I was independent.

Not because five-year-old me had developed some admirable philosophy about self-reliance.

Because what else was I supposed to do?

Five

By five, I’d gotten used to being in trouble.

The problem was, I didn’t always know what I’d done.

There were rules I understood.

And then there were the infractions that seemed invisible to me.

Something I’d said.

Something I’d done.

Something I hadn’t done.

Whatever it was, Mom could be furious about it while I was still trying to figure out what I’d done wrong.

I don’t remember what caused most of the beatings.

The reasons blurred together.

They seemed so minor to me.

Sometimes I couldn’t see the infraction at all.

I just knew Mom was angry.

And when Mom was angry, I’d already learned what that could mean.

Then came the day she threw me out.

I don’t remember what I did.

I don’t remember what caused that particular beating.

Whatever it was, Mom was furious.

She stripped off my clothes.

All of them.

Then she put me outside.

Naked.

I was five years old.

So I walked.

I didn’t have a destination.

Where exactly does a naked five-year-old go when her mother has just kicked her out?

I only knew I wasn’t allowed to be home.

So I walked.

Crying.

Trudging.

About two blocks.

Then a cornflower-blue Volvo pulled up beside me.

Dad.

He wanted me to get in.

I didn’t want to.

Mom didn’t want me there.

She wished I was dead.

Why would I go back?

Dad got out of the Volvo.

Eventually, he got me into the car and drove me home.

I didn’t understand that either.

If Dad wanted me home, why had Mom been allowed to throw me out?

If he wanted me, why didn’t he stop her from beating me?

If he wanted me, why didn’t he protect me?

Those weren’t adult questions yet.

They were much simpler.

Maybe Dad didn’t like me either.

I know things now that the little girl sitting in that Volvo didn’t know.

But she didn’t have those answers.

She only had what she could see.

Dad took me to my room.

I got dressed.

Then he left and shut the door.

I cried quietly.

That mattered.

If Mom heard me crying, she might get angry again.

And then she might have another reason to beat me.

So I cried where she couldn’t hear me.

She didn’t want me.

She wished I was dead.

And lying there, I decided maybe I wished I was dead, too.

I lay there for a while.

Then I decided to do something about it.

I had a mini slicer, the kind with a retractable razor.

It was plastic blue, with a black grip that slid the little blade up and down.

Why I was allowed to have one at five years old, I don’t know.

It was the eighties.

We were on our own, the kids.

I’d seen an old black-and-white movie once.

A woman had hurt herself with broken glass.

I remembered that.

So I tried to do what I’d seen her do.

I didn’t understand what I was doing.

I didn’t understand how any of it worked.

I only understood what I wanted.

I didn’t want to be here anymore.

It hurt.

There was blood.

But nothing happened the way I thought it would.

I failed.

Again.

As always.

Like Mom said.

I failed.

Nobody found out.

There was no ambulance.

No doctor.

No frightened parent discovering what I had done.

No adult sitting beside me and asking why a five-year-old little girl wanted to die.

There was no aftermath because nobody knew there was anything to have an aftermath about.

I kept it to myself.

That was my first suicide attempt.

I was five.