My name is Mai, 28 years old, I work as a bride in a large family. My husband’s whole family has nearly a dozen mouths to eat: my parents-in-law, my brother and his wife, two young grandchildren, and my wife and me. Every day I go to work from morning to afternoon, and when I come home in the evening, I can’t sit down and breathe, so I rush into the kitchen, then after dinner, I cuff my back and wash a mountain of dishes and chopsticks.

Many times I complained to my husband, he just said:

“Come on, you have to live together.”

I quietly saved every penny of my salary. After nearly a year, I decided to buy a dishwasher – as if to support myself somewhat. The day I brought the machine home, before I had time to install it, my mother-in-law shouted:

“No one in this house has ever needed those frivolous things. If a woman is lazy and doesn’t want to move her hands and feet, what kind of system is there? Lose stupid money!”

I stood dumbfounded, my heart seemed to choke. How tired and sorry for myself accumulated. I didn’t argue, just quietly prepared rice as usual. But that day, I deliberately cooked a meal with a lot of fried dishes, full of grease, and dirty dishes piled on top of each other.

After eating, the whole family stood up carefreely, no one moved. I smiled faintly, hugged my stomach, pretended to be stunned, and sat down:

“I guess I’m too tired, I have a headache…”

Mother-in-law hummed lightly:

“If you’re sick, you can go on vacation, and you can wash it tomorrow.”

I quietly went into the room, leaving the bowls and chopsticks in the basin.

That night, at almost 11 o’clock, I heard a rumbling sound outside the kitchen. When I opened the door and looked out, I saw… My husband was quietly washing the dishes, his hands trembling, his face grimacing with tiredness. He sighed as he washed:

“There’s nothing wrong with the dishwasher she bought… Why do you have to make it difficult?”

I suddenly felt that my eyes were blurred. As it turned out, the person I blamed was him, who was also stuck between his mother and wife, and did not dare to speak.

But the most painful twist was that the next morning, the whole family sat down to have breakfast, and my mother-in-law pointed her finger directly at me:

“You pretended to be sick last night to make Tuan wash the dishes, right? Let me tell you, as a bride in this house, you are determined to wash dishes all your life, don’t dream of relying on machines!”

I clenched my hands. That’s when I understood that the dishwasher I bought was not only considered a “luxury,” but also a thorn in the eyes of my husband’s family. And then I said to myself, “Perhaps, what needs to be changed is not the machine… it’s my life itself.”