Chapter 6

My mother-in-law said Li Dazhuang’s affair was my fault. I hadn’t fulfilled my duties as a wife.

I said they’d ganged up on me, refused to feed me, and taken my money. Was I supposed to smile sweetly at him too?

“A wife is supposed to keep her man happy,” she said. “Otherwise he’ll find another woman. If you won’t do it, plenty of women will.

“Besides, what man doesn’t stray? It’s hardly a big deal.”

She told me to hurry up and apologize to Li Dazhuang, beg him to come home.

There was no chance of me begging. When he came home, I beat him up.

He might be a man, but I wasn’t a pushover.

We both took some damage. But I had a wrench, so he got the worst of it.

My mother-in-law was horrified. How dare I lay hands on her precious son?

She shouted that she’d call the police and have me locked up, making a show of dialing 110.

To be honest, I was a little scared then. I had four deaths on my hands, after all.

I tried to soothe them. Let’s forget it. As long as Li Dazhuang didn’t do it again, I could forgive him this once.

Besides, even if the police came, it wouldn’t help. This was between husband and wife. They wouldn’t get involved.

I swear I really did want to smooth things over. But they thought I was scared, and that I’d been bluffing.

When the police arrived, my mother-in-law and Li Dazhuang both clamored for them to lock me up and get me sentenced.

I explained what had happened from beginning to end.

It turned out it really was a marital dispute. They blamed us both equally.

After the police left, Li Dazhuang sat clutching his head, trying to work it out.

“I’ve been locked up for slapping someone twice in a fight. How come you can beat me like this and they don’t even arrest you?”

I smiled. “Because we’ve got a marriage certificate!”

A marriage certificate. Also known as a domestic violence waiver.

If you want to know how I knew so much, it all came down to my guilty conscience.

I’d always believed what I’d done back then was wrong. But I’d had my reasons. I’d had no choice.

So I’d been secretly studying the law, hoping that one day I’d understand it all and find some peace.

But I’d never been to school. I wasn’t educated.

Even the characters I knew were the ones my mother had taught me.

I couldn’t understand all those stiff, formal laws and regulations. But I’d watched plenty of legal education videos online.

See? They’d come in handy already.

Whenever Li Dazhuang dared hit me, I hit him back, blow for blow.

If he didn’t care whether he lived, I cared even less.

We fought and fought. We were pretty evenly matched.

But I had one advantage. I’d grown up being beaten. I wasn’t afraid of pain and could take a hit. If a slap knocked me down, I got right back up.

I didn’t even need any recovery time.

That alone was enough for Li Dazhuang to keep saying I wasn’t normal.

After calling the police several times with nothing coming of it, my mother-in-law took it upon herself to become an anti-domestic-violence volunteer.

She spread the word about its dangers in our utterly insignificant county town, in our utterly insignificant little city.

Everyone thought I was the one being abused. You didn’t air the family’s dirty laundry, after all. My mother-in-law would never tell people it was her son getting beaten.

She even urged me to get a divorce. Said there was no point living like this.

What did she mean?

I found it very exciting. Every day brought a new challenge.

More importantly, apart from his mother, Li Dazhuang had no relatives.

The house, car, and savings in his name weren’t a fortune, but they weren’t nothing either.

I couldn’t divorce him now and let someone else have them.

I had to think of my child, after all.

Taking my baby to work on my back, coming home and having a fight at the drop of a hat—I lived like that for seven or eight years.

Li Dazhuang stopped going to work.

Why? Because I kept beating him black and blue, and he couldn’t face people.

Besides, I could earn money. At least he’d still get fed.

And so, little by little, this was what our life became.

I lived in his house. I drove his car. I beat him up.

When the need arose, I could pull him over and put him to use too.

Li Dazhuang and his mother surrendered completely to my stainless-steel wrench.

My mother-in-law was getting old. She couldn’t take these blows anymore, and in a fit of anger, went off to be reunited with her husband.

Li Dazhuang glared at me viciously.

Well, would you look at that. Another death on my hands.

So what?