Chapter 28: Flora's Story

Very early morning before dawn, Flora finally closed the door of the house that had been her shelter for many years. She had a lot of fond memories of the house, having lived in it for so long, but she also remembered painful experiences that she endured while living there – the death of her mother as well as the news of her husband’s unfaithfulness.

It was a small one-storey house made of light materials with just two rooms. It had a small backyard that used to have cages for chickens that her mother raised when she was still living but was replaced with fighting roosters by her husband, Tunying. There was a vegetable garden that Flora tended from which she would pick tomatoes, bitter gourd and horseradish to augment the food that she bought from the market. Flora hoped that the next tenants would tend the garden and take care of the house as well as she and her mother did.

When Flora got married, her husband had come to live with her in the house. She had returned from Malen a few y