The day they took my mother away, I clung to her and wouldn’t let go.
My little brother blocked the car too, demanding fifty thousand yuan.
That was about the going rate for a wife in our village.
But she was my mother.
You couldn’t sell your mother.
No dutiful daughter would do that.
Sure enough, someone in the car shoved me aside and roared, “To hell with your dad!
We can’t stay here!”
Then they drove off.
I’d never been to school.
I didn’t understand things.
But one sentence stuck in my head: “He can’t stay here.”