She'd driven the man's wife to suicide, along with the unborn child the wife was carrying. My mother thought that would clear her path. She thought she'd finally take the wife's place. But after his family was gone, the man woke up. He cut my mother off completely.
She tried to use me as leverage. He didn't flinch.
In the end, my mother had no choice but to raise me alone.
The reason it all resurfaced eighteen years later was because the man posted a public confession online.
People condemned him, and in the process, they dug up my mother's identity too.
Once my mother was exposed, it didn't take long for them to find me.
Even after the cyberbullying drove my mother to jump from a building, the women who'd been wronged by mistresses like her still didn't let me go.
They were everywhere. Inside school and out.
The classmates were milder about it. They'd whisper and point when I walked by, saying women like my mother deserved to die.
The women outside the school gates were far worse. Every day a crowd of them waited for me with rotten eggs and spoiled vegetables.
"A mistress's daughter will grow up to be a mistress herself," they'd say.