The following story is a work of pure fiction. Neither the location nor any of the characters in the story exist nor are they based on a person nor place that is real.
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Kendra Wu had just recently moved into an apartment at the Retirement Community. Kendra's husband had died six months earlier. Her children had looked at a number of Senior Living Communities and felt that she would be safer living at this one and that maybe she could even make a few friends.
Kendra was a second generation Chinese-American had been born Ng Choo. As soon as she had started elementary school, she had changed her first name to Kendra because none of the other children or even her teachers could pronounce her first name properly. Her teachers had a particularly hard time because even the ones who could pronounce Ng had a hard time saying it loudly enough to call roll.
Because Kendra had grown up with two parents who had emigrated from Taiwan, her parents made her she spend most of her time studying rather than making friends with the other girls in the neighborhood. As a result, Kendra only had a few friends and by the time that she was in high school, her social skills were limited, which left her very introverted, quiet and shy. Because of this, she never had any boyfriends.
This continued through her time in college at a local school. So, Kendra continued living with her parents. She spent most of her time with her studies and her outside activities didn't really provide her much contact with the boys in the school. This didn't bother her parents because they were working on an arranged marriage for Kendra.
During her senior year, her parents introduced her to Wei Choo, who was Kendra's age and was studying medicine. Her parents felt that Wei would be a good husband for Kendra. Kendra wasn't asked how she felt about Wei, she just did what any good daughter would do and accepted the fact that she would be marrying Wei soon after she graduated.
They were married one month after Kendra and Wei graduated. Wei had been accepted at a medical school in another city, so the two of them moved to that town. This was Kendra's first time away from her parents. While Wei was at school, Kendra was expected to be a good wife and homemaker. She would have dinner ready for Wei when he came home and would pack a lunch for him each day. Other than shopping for groceries, Kendra had little to do, so she played the part of a good daughter and would call her mother each day and spent the rest of her time reading romance novels and dreaming that she was the heroine in the novel. Very often, Kendra would break out in tears during the call with her mother and her mother would lecture her about accepting her fate and that she needed to be a good wife to Wei.
After dinner each night, Wei would study until 10P and then would expect Kendra to allow him to have sex with him. He wasn't interested in expressing love for Kendra, because he didn't love her. He just wanted to have sex with her to try to get her pregnant because he wanted a son.
About six months after the wedding, Kendra found out that she was pregnant. Her mother was thrilled at the news and even Wei was happy, but Kendra feared that this was just one more link in the chain around her neck.
For Kendra, the only good thing about being pregnant was the Wei stopped expecting her to have sex each night. In fact, he completely ignored her, especially when the pregnancy was causing Kendra problems.
Nine months later, Kendra gave birth to a son. Both Wei's and Kendra's parents were thrilled as was Wei. Kendra just accepted it and did what she could to adjust to caring for a newborn child.
Six months after the birth of her son, Wei resumed expecting Kendra to submit to sex each night unless she was having her period. About six months later, Kendra was pregnant again. Nine months later, she gave birth to a little girl.
As soon as Kendra had become pregnant with her daughter, Wei had not only stopped expecting sex from Kendra, he had actually become cold toward her. She was never sure, but she often suspected that many of Wei's late nights were spent sleeping with nurses or hookers.
For the next eighteen years, Kendra's life revolved around the children, who she had learned to love. After Wei had graduated from medical school and finished his internship, he got a job at the local hospital. Wei's job kept him away from home and the children most of the time, so Kendra was able to raise the children the way that she wanted without any interference from Wei. Even before she had married Wei, she had decided that her children would be raised in the American tradition and not the way that her parents had raised her. As a result, she was continually taking her children to participate in activities outside of school, such as soccer, baseball or Girl Scouts.
Both children did well in school and had many friends, which was the only joy in Kendra's life. She knew the mother's of some of her children's friends and so she had an idea of what their lives had been like.
Just as Wei and Kendra turned 60, Wei suffered from a massive heart attack and died. A life of stress and little exercise had finally caught up with him. Suddenly, Kendra was alone for the first time in her life.