Paw Law: A Short Story

I was born when the lost stars in the dusty sky danced the night away. In a situation “poorer than any illness, worse than death” I weigh 2.2 kilograms. From the soft hurricane of the people’s words they shook their heads and said to my mom’s face I would not survive a mouth. I was a “fried frog” in this burning hot world. Although the world gave up on me my Mo (mom) and Pai (dad) never did. When there was no hope they created their own. My name is Paw Law La. Paw as a flower, Law La as unique, different, and rare. Wonderful. Since the beginning, I was a wildflower growing in the field of roses. Out of my Mo’s four children I was the first born. The most difficult child. I was malnutrition because my Mo was unable to produce breast milk. In the refugee camp there was no way of making money, so to make money my parents sold their monthly food supplies they receive from UNHCR in order to buy milk for me. Their choice left me well fed

“America is safe, it is the land of opportunity” A place where we will not be surrounded by rusty barbed wire, which kills more dreams than the civil war in Burma. But I already renounce this thorn-bush as home “I don’t want to go” said seven-year old me with my face crinkled up and my eyes squinted looking directly into my father’s eyes. The moment I said those words I wanted to breathe them back in like oxygen. His dark brown eyes seems darker than ever like a polluted night sky without a single star. My words were bullets aiming straight at his heart. Yet he took them and said, “we don’t have to go if you don 't want to” His words were like a cold drift on a hot summer day unexpected, calm but it sends chills down my spin. My father was willing to move across the ocean to a land he have only heard in stories. A land I only knew as ‘the other half of earth”. In the end he lied, he did not stay true to his words because I am here in North Carolina. I am glad he lied to