Story 8
My Mother’s Stalker
My mother was what you’d call a single mother. She gave birth to me at the age of 20, unmarried.
My father was apparently a heavy drinker with a violent streak, so when my mother found out she was pregnant with me, she ran away from him.
My mother started working part-time at a supermarket around the time I was about to enter elementary school.
The first strange incident happened in October, when I was in second grade.
A couple of days after the school sports festival, one of my friends said to me, “Hey, your dad gave me candy at the festival. Thanks!”
But I didn’t have a dad. I told my friend clearly, “That’s not my father.”
Still, my friend insisted, “No, he said he was your dad! Absolutely!” Children can be so stubborn, and before I knew it, we had gotten into a little fight over it.
After that, similar things kept happening.
At almost every school event, someone would say things like, “I met your dad,” or “Your dad gave me snacks.”
But of course, I had no father.
Each time, I thought it was strange and asked my mom, “We don’t have a dad in our house, right?” My mother would always answer with a dark expression, “I’m sorry. No, you don’t have a father.”
And then, the day finally came when the creepy “father” revealed his true identity.
It was during the second term of sixth grade.
One day, I came home from school as a so-called latchkey kid, since my mom was working late.
When I arrived, I noticed the front door was unlocked.
I thought maybe Mom had just forgotten to lock it, and I stepped inside. Our apartment had the kitchen right by the entrance, so as soon as I opened the door, I saw things scattered all over the floor.
Panicking, I assumed it was a burglar, and I rushed to a nearby friend’s house for help.
Her mother immediately called the police.
When the police searched our home, they found my mother’s supermarket manager hiding inside the closet.
According to what came out later, this man had been stalking my mother for years.
I had no idea, but she had been persistently harassed with unwanted approaches, floods of emails, and constant phone calls. As for why he broke into our home, he reportedly said it was because he “felt like he could marry her.”
But the most disturbing and incomprehensible part of it all was this:
He had been attending my school events, telling kids in my grade, “I’m her father.”
That was the stalker who haunted my mother.
