陳白菊 《 The Lottery 》 美國

        Eventually,   time heals all wounds,   and  life was back to normal. By the time my sister,  Chị Chín and I were born, my older sisters had given up any hope of going back to school. Instead, they became young entrepreneurs.   They knew how to count money and gave correct change using mental math.   They knew how to greet customers. They knew what items sold well and how much inventory to keep. Our big break came when Mom bought a lottery ticket and won. The whole family packed into a xe lam (Lambro 550 bus) followed by two cows pulling our furniture and belongings to our newly built house. We left Phước Long and headed back to Long Thành.

        Life was getting better for our big family of ten. Dad opened a small grocery store and my older sisters managed it. Running a grocery store was a lot of hard work. There were always things to be done: weighing, sorting, measuring, and cleaning.  On the day the delivery truck came,   we  had to carry heavy bags of rice, beans, peanuts, and flour to our store.   It  required  a dolly to carry these over 200 pound bags. One sister would pull and the others would follow right behind to make sure the bag did not flip over. Many of my older sisters were in their late teens and early twenties. They were embarrassed if they ran into some guys they knew.   I  sometimes heard them lament “I was so embarrassed that I wish I could just disappear!”.   Apparently,  Dad  did  not see anything wrong with that.   He  was  oblivious to the plights of young teenaged women and did not hire any outside help.

陳白菊 (Laura Tran)