The worst was when village children started taunting me.

“Hanh has no husband! Hanh has no husband!” they’d chant, following me through the market.

“Who’s the father? A ghost?”“Maybe she doesn’t even know who the father is!”

I was eight months pregnant, carrying heavy bags of rice from the mill, when I finally broke. A group of teenagers—kids I’d known since they were babies—surrounded me and started their cruel games.

“Does the baby have a father?”

“Is it a demon child?”

“Will it have a face?”