Mai, pt. 2 - Missing

It was a rough year in 2022 for myself and my daughter, Mai, who had just turned 21. Towards the end of summer in 2021, Mai hastily moved from my mother's home after a spurt of anger...overall due to them having to move into a new home. Mai had been living with my mom, my youngest brother (Chris), and my mom's distant cousin, who had just temporarily moved in around June 2021 after relocating from Atlanta, Georgia.

As Mai quickly packed her belongings into a moving truck, my eldest brother (Lewey) asked of her new location as he helped, but she refused to provide one. "Oh, it's not far from here" - her response. Mai had discontinued communicating with me after I reprimanded her for speaking to my mother in a disrespectful manner and when I questioned her extreme behavior.

After she moved away, she would only respond with a brief, 1-word text message – usually a “yes” or “no” after trying for days to get a response from her. We were so desperate to find her that my mom reached out to her estranged paternal grandmother, Kat, who'd recently visited with Mai a few weeks prior while in town. However, Kat couldn’t help us, stating that she hadn’t spoken to Mai since her visit.

The feeling of possibly losing my child was gut-wrenching.

I couldn't sleep and could barely eat at the thought of not knowing if she was safe. This "new" behavior of her's put me into a tailspin...not understanding what was happening. "This is not like her" - I constantly thought. It took me 3 months to finally pinpoint her whereabouts. I reached out to her old high school friend, whom she still communicated with. That friend quickly provided Mai’s address to a home in a nearby city. I also found out she had mononucleosis, so I made her some homemade vegetable soup and carefully made a plan to “be around her neighborhood” when contacting her again . It worried me that she had been ill, especially since the outbreak of COVID-19…and how I’d recently found her to have trouble with basic hygiene.

Once I texted and stated that I was on her street, she came out to greet me...with no expression of anger or confusion, but as if she'd expected me to find her. Our interaction was warm and familiar from the relationship that I was accustomed to having as mother and daughter. After accepting the soup, Mai proceeded to show me the 2012 Toyota Corolla she recently financed. I was happy for her progress.

I raised my daughter to cautious of the real world to eliminate or at least alleviate potential dangerous situations. Her "new" behavior confused me.

I convinced Mai to come home after learning that she had been renting a room from an older man who she found in an ad off of Craigslist. At first she lied, stating that there were others who rented rooms from the man. However, she later stated that the landlord loved to date women who were considerably younger and that she was his only tenant. I raised my daughter to cautious of the real world to eliminate or at least alleviate potential dangerous situations. Her "new" behavior confused me. Other than wanting privacy, there was no justifiable reason to be in that current situation of living with a predator...as if she had no where else to go. So, within a month she, along with her cat moved back in with myself and her furry sister, my cat Apache. It had been nearly 2 years since she’d lived with me.

For the first month or two, everything seemed okay. Although it was a tight fit in my 2-bedroom apartment, I made do with providing comfortable living quarters, allowing Mai to have the privacy she desired. I also purchased a new bedroom set since her old one was left behind. She stated that she no longer had her daytime waitressing job and gotten another working nights at a restaurant, in the bar area as a barback. However, I began to notice that she would leave at sporadic hours of the night, in a face full of costume makeup, and in house slippers…as if she was going to change clothes to perform somewhere.