"No!" She yelled helplessly when she felt someone's rough hand slapped her cheek.
Her eyes fluttered open and found her mother hovered over her face, so close that it made an uncomfortable twist in her stomach. For a moment, she thought it was a ghoul. Her mother's face was the last thing Ling Ling wanted to see after having a romantic dream.
"Wake up, Ling Ling!" Her mother slapped her daughter again.
Ling Ling hissed and yanked herself up. Her hand lifted to caress her red cheek. The stung of her mother's hand left an annoying ache. "I'm awake, woman!"
"What happen to you?" Her mother asked, worry and irritation laced her thin voice as though she couldn't decide whether to be concern or scold her child. She decided to scold Ling Ling. "When last time you ate?" She picked up her daughter's arm and wiggled it. "Look at you, you so skinny Ling Ling, you no eat. That probably why you passed out!"
Ling Ling held the urge to roll her eyes. "I've been skinny all my life, ma! Or did you just noticed it?"
Her mother dropped Ling Ling's arm and pursed her lip. "Why you talk back to your mother? I raised you better than that!" Her mother snarled.
"Oh, please." Said Ling Ling. "I've been a better daughter than most of the neighborhood girls."
At eighteen, Ling Ling had taken over as the main breadwinner of her family working two jobs. She leaves early in the morning to work in an early morning shift as a cashier at a bakery then walk over to another shop to work as a sales clerk later in the afternoon. It's a grueling sixteen to eighteen hours of work everyday for the young woman who's still in her teens.
"Mrs. Chang was crying the other day because Hui had gotten pregnant by Hooney while he's engaged to someone else."
Her mother stopped Ling Ling with a raise of a finger and dropped her eyelids closed. The corner of her mouth twitched. "It displeases me when you gossip about neighborhood girls. I raised you better than that!" Her mother reprimanded but found Ling Ling's gossip too juicy to refrain. The woman leaned closer with eager ears. "So, how far along is she?"
"A few weeks at least." Ling Ling responded.
Her mother tossed her head back in laughter. She laughed until her breath hitched then halted suddenly pointing a dangerous glare at her daughter. "Don't you get pregnant like her!"
Ling Ling furrowed her pretty eyebrows. To think her mother would've given her some slack already, she had been responsible all her life and getting pregnant was the least on her mind.
"I don't even have a boyfriend, ma! And besides, I'm about to get married to a dead man, the chances of me getting pregnant is as good as a nun."
...Unless she's talking about one of those naughty nuns.
*****
Note: I think the hardest thing to write is her mother's accent. I'm practically writing my own mother here. Asian moms are vicious.