I am Hmong. And I am a girl. Because I am a Hmong girl, I have a ton of duties, responsibilities and expectations. I am supposed to make relatives, elders, Hmong Ogs, (aka:Original Gangster), or even strangers look up to my family and be like, “Damn, they have such a good daughter who knows how to speak Hmong, respect her elders, cook and clean. She’ll be a great nyab (daughter-in-law).” And just because of one mistake, I ruined the family’s name.

“Everybody makes mistakes and it’s okay.”, people tell me, true, but this is different. Bringing shame to your family especially if you are a daughter, is definitely not okay.

It’s around like seven in the morning and i’m still rolled up in bed holding my fluffy yellow duck pillow pet. And I heard a ‘ding dong’ at the door. Because of how naughty and curious I was back then, I quickly got out of my bed and ran out to see who was at the door, while wearing my beautiful silky cherry blossom dress length below my knee by about an inch or two. I opened my bedroom door and saw my step-dad welcome “the honored uncle” to our house.

I looked up at “the honored uncle” and thought to myself, “Uh. He doesn’t look Hmong at all.” I said hi and wasn’t so great with handshakes back then, so I gave “the honored uncle” a hug. He picked me up and kissed my right cheek. I felt a prickly, pokey, mustache against my right cheek and I hated that feeling. A second later of me still being in his hands held like a three year old about the be thrown in the air, he kissed my cheek again and this time his glasses stabbed my right eye! Who kisses like that?! Especially from someone I never met before, I automatically hated this man.

My step-dad and mom sat him down and told him to make himself at home. I followed my mo  to the kitchen and saw her making my most favorite drink, iced coffee. (Really, it was an asian ginseng coffee with like ⅓ of a can of condensed milk. But it was so good!) I noticed that she only made one iced coffee and gave it to my step-dad first. From what I learned, we always have to serve the guest first before family members. But i’m not gonna lie, I would’ve served my husband first too.

After my mom served my dad the iced coffee, she quickly went to the restroom. I was still thinking to myself why my mom only made one and couldn’t do two at the same time. I peeked out of the kitchen to see my dad and “the honored uncle”. “The honored uncle” just sat there, watching my step-dad drink his iced coffee right in front of him.

I felt really bad, and knew deep down I couldn’t just walk away. And this is when it goes down.

I ran to the kitchen and ripped open not one, but two coffee packets. I poured both packets in a big glass cup. I grabbed the kettle because it still had a good amount of hot water and poured it in the big glass cup. I was looking for the condensed milk and found it in the trash. So that led me to no choice but to ten tablespoons of sugar to make the iced coffee sweet. We had two small glass containers, one was salt and the other was sugar. I don’t know about you but I thought salt and sugar looked the same, and I whatsoever had no interest in tasting which was which, so I grabbed the glass container to my right. Was it sugar? No, it was salt.

After adding like a whole cup of salt into my “honored uncle”’s iced coffee, I went to go get a napkin and put it at the bottom of the cup. I thought for a moment, “Should I taste it first?” But then I chose not to because I didn’t wanna spread germs. I forgot to get ice so I ran to the freezer and grabbed about six ice cubes barehanded and tossed it in the iced coffee.

I finally finished making an iced coffee for my “honored uncle” and it was time to serve it to him. I walked towards him while fake smiling to hide my shyness.

“Here you go uncle, I hope you like it.” I said as I handed it to him.

“Wow! You guys have such a great daughter!”, “The honored uncle” said excitedly.

“Did you make this?? How old are you?” he asked before he took a drink of the messed up iced coffee.

“Yes uncle I made it and i’m six years old.” I said while turning away.

Just in time, my mom came out of the bathroom and sat next to my step-dad. My “honored uncle” took a big sip of the horrible iced coffee and spat it right back out.

“WHAT IS THIS?!” He shouted.

Before I could move, he threw some iced coffee at my face, leaving some in the glass cup.

I saw the terror on my mom’s face as she quickly grabbed the cup of iced coffee and took a sip.

“What did you put in there?!” She yelled.

SMACK. She slapped my right cheek, the one my “honored uncle” kissed me on and threw iced coffee at. My face was getting hot and my tears were all ready to come out. I was about to cry a river. My face had just been slapped by my mother’s hand and iced coffee thrown by someone I don’t even know who I must consider my uncle.

“Shame on your daughter! She’s bad luck!!”, “The honored uncle” yelled while pointing at me. I sat there ashamed at the age of six while my parents went after “the honored uncle” who wanted to leave immediately.

Mistakes are meant to be done in everyone’s life and it’s your choice whether or not you wanna learn from them. This was my favorite mistake and it taught me a lesson. No matter how good you are or try to be, they will only see the bad things you do.