Returning to my parents’ house, I found a strange girl with my own face waiting for me, and one word from her froze my mother on the spot

On the day I found out about the pregnancy, my mother threw my schoolbag out the window, and my father slammed the door as if I had never been their child.

I was still studying in the tenth grade. The test fell onto the cold bathroom floor, and I saw two clear lines. My hands were trembling so much that I could barely pick it up. I did not recognize my own face in the mirror.

My mother was arranging glasses in the kitchen. I went over and put the test on the table.

“Mother, I need to talk to you.”

She only looked. Then she called my father.

“Come here. Your daughter has something to say.”

My father folded the newspaper. When I told him the words, he neither shouted nor got angry. That was precisely the most frightening thing.

“You have taken this family’s name away,” he said. “From today, you are no longer my daughter.”

“Where should I go?”

“To where you came from.”

My mother stood by the door. In her hand was my small bag, to which my grandmother had attached a silver bird pendant in childhood. That pendant always jingled when I walked.

“Mother, please, it is raining outside.”

“We are ashamed too, Mariam.”

That night the rain turned the streets into rivers. I stood at the door, both hands wrapped around my stomach, and did not know whether the cold or their words were choking me more.

I spent the first months in a small room. The room was so narrow that only one step fit between the bed and the stove. The neighbors spoke quietly when I went downstairs to get water.

“How did such a girl not get married, but become pregnant?” someone said from behind the wall.

I locked the door and placed my hand on my stomach.

“You will not let anyone make you ashamed,” I whispered to the still-unborn child.

A daughter, Nino, was born to me. That day I hung the small silver bird pendant on her cradle. Its sound was so thin, as if a little bell were ringing in the room.

Two years later I went to Saigon. In the mornings I worked as a waitress, and in the evenings I studied at vocational courses. Sometimes Nino stayed with a neighboring woman, and sometimes she slept in the back room at work.

“Mother, will we ever have a big house?” she asked me one evening.

“We will.”

“And then no one will throw us out anymore?”

Her question remained stuck in my heart.

The years passed slowly, but they passed. I began trading online, lost everything several times, and then built it again from the beginning. In six years I bought my own house. In ten years I had several stores. After twenty years, my wealth already exceeded two hundred billion.

But every night I remembered that door, the rain, and my mother’s voice.

One morning I told Nino:

“I am going to the village.”

“To see them?”

“No. So that they can see whom they threw away.”

The old house was more ruined than I remembered. Rust had covered the gate, and weeds had grown in the yard. I knocked three times.

A young girl opened the door. She could not have been eighteen. She had the same eyes, the same nose, the same habit—when angry, she raised her left eyebrow slightly.

My breath caught.

“Whom are you looking for?” she asked.

At that moment my father and mother appeared in the corridor. When my mother saw me, the color drained from her face.

“Mariam…”

“Do you remember me now?” I asked calmly.

The girl went to my mother and took her hand.

“Grandma, who is this?”

The word “Grandma” rang out in the room like a gunshot. I slowly turned toward my parents.

“Who is this child?” I asked.

My father was about to answer, but just then a black car stopped in the yard. My lawyer, Levan, got out of it, holding a brown folder. He looked at my mother, then at the girl, and finally at me.

“Mariam, before you say anything, you must see this. Here is the answer to the question they have avoided for twenty years…”

Levan put the folder on the table, but did not open it immediately. Only the noise of the old wall clock was heard in the room.

“What is in there?” I asked.

My father stepped forward.

“Go away from here, Mariam.”

“For twenty years you called me a stranger. Are you afraid of my questions now?”

My mother placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Elene, go into the room.”

“Why?” the girl asked. “Who is this woman?”

My mother’s lips tightened.

“She is your…”

“Be quiet!” my father shouted so loudly that Elene flinched.

Levan took out his phone.

“This conversation will be recorded. Until now it was considered a family secret, but now it is already a legal case.”

“Who are you?” my father attacked.

“The person who retrieved from the hospital archive documents that you made disappear years ago.”

My fingers began trembling again. I looked at Elene’s face, and a strange pain overcame me, as if I were seeing pictures of the lost years.

Levan opened the folder. From the top he took out a small plastic bag. Inside lay an old bracelet on which one date was engraved.

I recognized it immediately.

“I made this on Nino’s birthday…”

“No,” said Levan. “This bracelet was worn by the child who was taken from you that night.”

Elene covered her mouth with her hand.

My father leaned against the chair.

“The test result will come tomorrow morning,” Levan said, “but I already know what it will confirm. The main thing is that your daughter has been told something else in this house all her life…”

Levan’s last words hung in the room. Elene stood by the wall, her fingers intertwined, while my mother stood in front of her as if protecting her from my gaze.

“Tell me the truth,” Elene said. “Right now.”

My mother lowered her head.

“Child…”

“Do not call me child until you tell me who that woman is.”

Levan took a sealed result from the folder. I watched him open it, and my knees gave way. More than twenty years had passed, but the fear of that night was still stuck in my body.

“The genetic comparison was made on the basis of old samples from Mariam, Elene, and Nino,” he said. “The answer is unequivocal.”

My father pushed the chair back.

“You obtained this illegally.”

“The samples were taken voluntarily. And you know better why you did not want this answer.”

Levan placed the paper on the table.

“Elene is Mariam’s biological daughter.”

Elene closed her eyes. My mother exhaled loudly. I could not say anything.

“But Nino?” I barely managed to say.

Levan took out a second document.

“Nino is not Mariam’s child. That is how it was recorded in the hospital documents for you, but on the night of the birth two newborns were switched. Elene was handed over to your parents. The other child, Nino, was left with you.”

I rose from the chair.

“Why?”

This time my mother answered me.

“When you left, your father was afraid that the village would laugh at us. Elene stayed with us. When the mistake was discovered at the hospital, he paid money to hide everything.”

“You knew that my child was here?”

“We knew,” she said quietly.

“And Nino?”

“We thought you would leave anyway and would not be able to do anything.”

Elene removed my mother’s hand.

“All my life you told me that my mother had abandoned us.”

“I only…”

“No!” Elene’s voice cracked. “You lied to me.”

I took a step toward her, but stopped. She was a strange girl. With my face, my eyes, but a stranger to me.

“I did not come to take you away,” I told her. “I came only to find out the truth.”

“Then why do I look at you and feel that I know you?” she asked.

I had no answer.

At that very moment Levan’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his face changed.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“The daughter of the hospital’s former administrator. She says that before his death, her father left a second recording.”

“What recording?”

Levan ended the call and looked toward the window.

“It does not mention only your parents. It says that another person was involved that night… and that person now works in your company…”