Chapter 3

I don’t remember how I finally fell asleep among the straw, held in Mother’s arms, with that misery inside me.

When she shook me awake, the sky was beginning to lighten.

In the end, she took me back.

We entered quietly.

The courtyard was silent. Mother checked the bedroom and signed that my stepfather was still asleep. She told me to sleep a little longer while she made breakfast.

I returned to my room.

Sleep was impossible.

I was already afraid of meeting Tao Jianguo and Tao Hua at breakfast.

Fortunately, Mother waited until everyone had eaten and left before waking me. I hurried through a few mouthfuls and went to school.

That evening, she didn’t go to bed at her usual time.

She waited by the living-room door until Tao Jianguo came home, then went into their room with him.

I knew she was protecting me.

What she didn’t know was that he wasn’t the only danger.

That night, Tao Hua crept into my room again.

7

He restrained me, covered my mouth and whispered beside my ear.

“Why fight? It happened yesterday. It’ll keep happening. You might as well behave.”

I ignored him and struggled.

He slapped me.

“Stop it. Dad found out yesterday, didn’t he? Beat you and your mother, didn’t he?

“Keep fighting and I’ll tell him you seduced me. He can beat you both again.”

My eyes widened.

He knew.

He knew his father had found out.

And he was doing it again.

Of course.

He had watched his father assault me. Why would he fear being discovered?

What about Grandma?

Did she know too?

No wonder no one had come to see us when my stepfather beat us.

To them, Mother and I weren’t even people.

The whole family was cruel.

I felt I’d fallen straight into hell.

...

For several days, I didn’t see Tao Jianguo.

I either waited for him to leave before breakfast or got up early, ate and went straight to school.

At midday he didn’t come home. Mother took his food to the village shop.

In the evenings, I ate quickly and hid in my room, avoiding everyone.

The apparently peaceful days made Mother lower her guard. She no longer watched so strictly every night for him to come home drunk and trouble me.

One day, walking back from school, I noticed more people gathered along the road than usual.

They were discussing something.

“Heard about that poor woman? They found her near the pond behind Zhang Village. In a terrible state, apparently. Everyone says something awful happened.”

“Poor thing. Who knows how many times people have hurt her over the years?”

“A woman without anyone to protect her. Living like that. It’s too hard.”

I passed the women and shivered.

They were talking about a homeless woman with a cognitive disability.

No one knew when she had arrived, her real name or her age.

I’d seen her a few times. She was always dirty, bewildered, apparently unable to understand what was happening.

I’d heard the villagers say vile things about her, as though anyone could exploit her as they pleased.

Over the years, she had sometimes appeared pregnant.

I’d never seen a child beside her.

I didn’t know what had happened to those babies.

My mind was in turmoil when I got home.

If I ran away, would I end up like her?

That very night, Tao Jianguo appeared at my door.

I panicked and tried to resist and call for help.

He overpowered me.

“Don’t you like men? Then stay here and behave.”

He threatened me, bringing up our attempt to leave.

“Don’t think you can escape. If you run, I’ll find you. And your mother won’t have a moment’s peace.”

He used the homeless woman’s fate to frighten me too.

“Don’t think you’ll have a better life out there. Without me, you’ll end up just like her.

“Stay and behave. If you know what’s good for you, I might find you a husband someday.”

I went cold.

To him, I was an object he could control.

Worst of all, I still had no idea how to escape.

8

The following term, walking home from the town school one afternoon, I saw my brother’s bicycle beside the path.

Shouts and commotion came from the cornfield.

I looked over.

Several boys were beating someone.

Tao Hua.

He was a year older than me.

In our poor, isolated village, children often started school late. He was a bad student and had repeated several years, but Tao Jianguo insisted he continue.

So we still attended the same school.

I knew that, both in the village and at school, he was as unwelcome as I was.

His family was poor. His father was considered ugly. His mother had run off with another man. His stepmother couldn’t hear or speak.

People mocked his looks too.

As for me, there was even less to say.

Poverty. A mother with disabilities. A stepfather. A girl.

Timid and ashamed of myself.

At school, we were both at the bottom.

He had cruel nicknames.

I was “the mute girl.”

I’d seen Tao Hua being bullied before.

I always slipped away.

Not only because I couldn’t help him.

I didn’t dare let him know I’d seen.

Being witnessed in that helpless state humiliated him.

Outside, people pushed him around.

With me, he insisted on being in control.

If he knew I’d seen him powerless, his fragile pride would suffer, and he would take it out on me.

This time, I didn’t hide.

I simply walked past.

In that brief glance, I saw him curled on the ground, arms over his head.

He opened his eyes and saw me too.

I felt nothing.

I kept walking.

That night, as expected, he came to find me.

He was more brutal than before, leaving many injuries.

“Enjoyed watching me get beaten? Laughing at me inside, were you?

“I’ll tell you something. You’re going to have it worse than I do. Just wait.”

I said nothing.

I clenched my teeth and let him talk.

How much worse could it be?

I was already in hell.

However obedient I was, they would never pity me or let me go.

So let him know that, to me, he was only a pathetic, contemptible creature.

The angrier he became, the more satisfaction I felt.

But my knowledge was too limited.

My world too small.

I had never imagined how far human cruelty could go.

I had underestimated it.

My brother handed me over to the very people who bullied him.

9

On the narrow path home from school, someone dragged me deep into the cornfield.

“She’s yours,” Tao Hua told them. “Stop beating me. Stop taking my money.”

There were seven or eight of them, notorious troublemakers at school.

Most were older students who’d repeated years.

I recognized two or three from Tao Hua’s class. Two others lived in our village.

The way they looked at me terrified me.

I shook.

Fear seemed to squeeze my heart.

I tried to run, but they dragged me back and surrounded me.

“Don’t worry,” Tao Hua said. “She won’t tell. My father and I hold her life in our hands. Her mother’s too.”

Then he was the first to approach.

Young people can be frighteningly cruel when they don’t grasp the consequences.

Once the first crossed the line, the others followed.

They assaulted me as a group.

Restrained and unable to call for help, I felt like an object they could destroy at will.

Pain and despair swallowed everything.

As I seemed to fall into a bottomless abyss, the person who was supposed to be my brother stood watching, arms folded, delighted.

His smile looked demonic.

...

I don’t remember how Tao Hua dragged me home.

The world had become an endless whirlpool.

I was trapped in despair.

There was no way out.

When my thoughts began to clear, I was lying in my dark room.

I didn’t sleep.

I kept my eyes open until morning.

When Mother came to wake me for breakfast, I lay like a puppet.

No words.

No blink.

No response.

Through the haze, I felt her shaking me, trying to rouse me. She ran out to fetch Grandma.

Grandma wouldn’t come.

Mother returned alone, put me on a wooden cart and pulled me to the village healer.

He examined me carefully.

I thought he must have noticed the many suspicious injuries.

Mother saw them too.

Agitated, she shook me and signed again and again, asking whether someone had hurt me.

I remained numb and silent.

She took the medicine he prescribed and pulled me home.

All day she sat beside the bed.

She tried to feed me porridge and medicine.

I vomited them back up.

Grandma came to scold her for neglecting the fields, the chickens and the pigs.

Mother ignored her.

She stayed with me.

Unable to hear or speak, her life so closed off, she didn’t know what her daughter had endured.

But she knew something was wrong.

Perhaps that was a mother’s instinct.

Toward evening, Grandma came to order her to cook.

Mother stroked my hair, signed and made sounds I couldn’t make out, then finally left.

My eyes moved slightly.

In the evening light, her retreating figure looked exhausted and alone.

As she disappeared, despair closed over me again.

I thought of ending everything.

I no longer wanted to live like this.

10

I had thought I would never survive those days.

But Mother discovered what was happening and saved me in time.

When I woke, her face was above mine.

Her tears fell onto my cheeks.

Seeing my eyes open, she broke down and cried harder.

I wasn’t dead.

Mother had saved me.

She seemed to want to ask what had happened, but feared hurting me.

Instead she begged me in signs never to harm myself again.

She promised to protect me.

If anything happened to me, she said, she wouldn’t want to live either.

I looked at her exhausted face, swollen with crying.

Everything I had held in broke.

My tears wouldn’t stop.

There was still someone in the world who loved me.

For a long time after that, Mother scarcely left my side.

I still wouldn’t speak or move.

I was like an empty puppet.

Nightmares jolted me awake.

I didn’t dare see people.

Didn’t dare speak to anyone.

I was afraid they would hurt me again.

Afraid they would learn what had happened.

Mother went to school and arranged several months’ leave.

She told me to rest. I didn’t have to think about anything. She would take care of it.

When she cooked, she sat me beside her.

When she worked in the fields, she brought me along and seated me at the edge.

If she realized she’d moved too far away, she came back and brought me closer.

Always within sight.

At night, she slept beside me.

Again and again, I felt her wake and touch my face gently, as though to make sure I was still there.

Whatever Grandma and my stepfather said or did to her, she ignored it.

She insisted on staying with me.

Those were the safest, most peaceful days I had known.

Mother’s love, and all I had endured, gradually drove away the wish to end my life.

There seemed to be no rumors outside.

As things quieted, I began to feel that life might be returning to normal.

Then Tao Hua graduated.

He failed to qualify for the next level of school and refused to repeat another year.

Tao Jianguo sent him to a vocational school in another province.

He was gone from the house.

At last, I began to see a little hope.

And with Mother protecting me at every step, Tao Jianguo had no opportunity to approach me for months.

After my leave, she asked if I could go back to school.

I’d missed the high-school entrance examination.

I would have to repeat ninth grade.

During that time, Tao Jianguo and Grandma repeatedly said I was old enough to marry.

Girls of fifteen or sixteen getting engaged weren’t unusual there.

At my age, people already saw me as a girl getting on in years, doing nothing but eating the family’s food.

My remarkable mother protected me every time.

How many beatings she took for it, I never knew.

She couldn’t read.

But she believed absolutely that education was my future.

“I know you hate this house. That’s why you must study hard. Get into high school. Then university. Afterward, you can live well without depending on anyone.”

She pointed outside.

“And if you get into high school, you can board there. You won’t have to come home every day. You won’t have to see them.”

“Them” meant Grandma and my stepfather.

She knew I disliked them.

Knew I feared them.

She thought it was because they often beat me.

I didn’t tell her the truth.