The problem with being a hormone-riddled teenager, constantly itchy with the urge to get myself a husband that would be me.
Lilith. Yes, that's my name. As for what it actually means? No idea. You'd have to ask my parents. They said a fortune-teller came up with it to counter bad luck related to infertility.
My family has always been on the poorer side. They wanted a child so badly that hospitals became a second home. IVF, procedures, injections whatever that hellish alphabet soup was called. We went from comfortably average to broke before anyone even realized what happened.
It's not like I wanted things to turn out this way. Seeing my parents work themselves to the bone, I just wanted to help with whatever I could. I know how to make desserts. I can help sell them. I'm not afraid to talk, not afraid to hustle, and certainly not ashamed of being the child of dessert vendors.
I never felt resentful that my mom couldn't buy me expensive toys or fancy treats. I knew exactly how hard my parents had tried how desperately they wanted a child to complete their family.
They spent a ridiculous amount of money planning for a baby, and even more on countless little expenses after I was born. But still…
A home with parents and a child, filled with laughter, with nagging and scolding, with everyone together under the same roof..
That kind of life…
is genuinely, undeniably happy.
The way I walk hips swaying, butt bouncing, lips pursed, neck tilting chatting away with the market aunties, along with my shameless flirting with men, has become part of this place's collective memory.
Everyone here is a familiar face. This market is known for being cheap, fresh, clean and for delicious vendors…
Oops~I mean, delicious desserts.
You should really try some.
I mean the men should try.. me.
Oh? A man over there.
Charge!
"Hey there, handsome~ What are you buying today?
How about some sweets from my stall? Buy the desserts and I'll throw myself in for free~"
A young office worker in company attire steps up, selecting two or three packs of Thai desserts twenty a pack and hands them over to the petite vendor sitting there, fluttering her lashes, shooting him sweet side-glances, smiling softly while squeezing her voice thin and tiny, like someone with a tongue gone limp.
"That's alright. Just the desserts are fine."
The familiar-looking man who prefers shopping at the market rather than the mall says gently, clearly amused. He's known this little one since childhood, after all.
"P' Handsomee~"
The exaggerated, over-the-top coquettish act pure bottom energy, puffed cheeks, fake sulking at the customer might look a bit too grown-up for my size. But honestly, I'm just teasing a handsome guy to scratch that itch. Even if I'm laying it on a bit thick…
I mean, he's handsome. It's justified.
And so the day goes on, with countless customers young, old, men, women chatting, joking, bantering back and forth, hands waving, gestures flying, the whole market buzzing with lively, messy warmth.
The clattering sound of metal trays ringing out from the front of the market all the way to the back is the unmistakable signature of Mae Tim's Thai dessert stall at Thaweesap Fresh Market.
Tucked away in a narrow alley three hundred meters from the main road, deep inside a crowded urban neighborhood, this is a place working-class people know well a place where fresh, clean, delicious food can still be found at honest prices.
In the middle of a sprawling metropolis filled with luxury malls, sky-high restaurants, and cafés upon cafés of every trend imaginable, traditional Thai desserts carefully made, clean, freshly prepared every single day in a small local market have become something plain and unfashionable to modern-minded outsiders.
Yet for the low-income working class struggling to survive in a capital steeped in materialism, these humble sweets are a small comfort, something that nourishes both body and spirit.
Even so, every time I went out to study, to face the world beyond the market, I would return with questions lingering in my ears asked by friends who were better off than me.
Why do you get so little allowance?
Why do you wear the same school uniform, the same shoes?
Why don't you own anything expensive?
I would start comparing myself to them.
I would begin to feel discouraged, to waver in my own sense of happiness.
And every time, Grandma Tim would tell me to take some desserts and offer them to the homeless to sit, to talk with them, to listen to their stories. Then she would tell me to come back and look at myself again: a small house, a small business, a family of three father, mother, and child together, under the same roof.
She wanted me to see how much better off we were than so many others in this world.
Not to look down on anyone but to reflect on our own humanity in the present moment.
We had no debts. We had enough to live on, and enough to share with others when the opportunity arose.
So why shouldn't we be happy?
Why choose suffering simply because others appear richer, shinier, more elevated?
In the end, it's all a matter of choice.
That's how I was taught.