"At night, she would lie awake on the floor where she slept on a thin mat and instead of wondering why she never complained and always did as she was told, she concluded that she must have been neglectful in another life. It was tempting to imagine that in this life she was paying off the sins of her past and the result would be a future of contentment, but the cautious words of her mother would show up and remind her that to do anything now to alter the future would 'break the rules of the heaven.' "
