Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In the pitch-black darkness, I saw Li Pan.

Three girls followed behind her. Her three little sisters.

Of course, none of the three had lived.

The first sister was thrown into a cornfield. When Li Pan was still toddling, she had stumbled upon her sister’s rotting body.

The second sister had the good fortune to be born in a hospital. Her father held her in his arms and went from ward to ward asking, “Anyone want a daughter? Just born. Healthy.”

No one did. She was abandoned in a corner of the hospital.

The third sister never even got to be born. The little clinic took money and did what it was paid to do. Her mother stared at the female fetus on the ultrasound, her face dark. “Don’t want it. Get rid of it.”

At last, under the eyes of an eager audience, the fifth child was finally a boy. The Crown Prince of the Li Family descended upon the world, universal rejoicing was declared, and he was bestowed the name Li Jiabao.

Li Pan had nothing to rejoice about.

She grew up as her parents’ punching bag and her little brother’s nanny. From the moment she was tall enough to reach the stove, she never missed a chore in the house-boiling water, feeding the firewood, washing clothes, cooking-or a job in the fields-sowing seeds, spraying pesticide, watering crops, harvesting grain.

If she did a bad job, the emperor and empress would hang her from a roof beam and whip her. If she did a good job, she still couldn’t escape a kick from Father or a pinch from Mother. Whether she got beaten or not depended entirely on the moods of Their Majesties.

At six or seven, while other children shouldered their schoolbags and went to the village elementary school, Li Pan was still at home doing forced labor. If the Village Party Secretary hadn’t come to their door, she would never have attended a single day of school.

She was nine when she finally entered first grade. She didn’t study for many years before dropping out three times-in fourth grade, sixth grade, and ninth grade. Each time, her mother personally dragged her back home.

And each time, by some stroke of luck, she was allowed to continue her education.

The first time she dropped out, the villagers mocked her family. “Didn’t even finish elementary school? She probably can’t read, can she? Who still marries an illiterate girl these days?”

Her parents couldn’t bear the shame, so they sent her back.

In sixth grade, a kind teacher from the county said, “If she doesn’t graduate from junior high, no one will even hire her as a migrant worker.”

By then, everyone had already realized the benefits of going out to work. Being worked like an ox in a factory was still better than being worked like an ox in the fields. At least in a factory, the income was guaranteed rain or shine.

Li Pan’s Mother calculated it over and over. With wages and bride price both counted in, the return on investment was quite decent. So, with great reluctance, she sent Li Pan to town for junior high.

Rotten bamboo can still produce good shoots. Li Pan was smarter than her peers. She realized early on that studying was her only way out, and with nothing but stubborn grit, she forced her way into the top ten of her grade and got into the county’s key high school in one go.

But her parents, once again, refused to let her go. “Your brother’s starting middle school. He needs money. You’re nothing but a money-losing good. What do you need high school for?”

Luckily, Maocheng Vocational High School came to recruit students. Standing in the middle of the grain-threshing yard, the recruiter held up a megaphone and shouted, “Tuition waived for anyone who meets the general high school admission line! Job placement guaranteed after graduation! Directly matched factories! Monthly salary of eight thousand!”

Her parents’ eyes went red with envy, and they shoved Li Pan into the program on the spot. When the person in charge heard they had managed to lure in a student qualified for a key high school, he was so delighted he rubbed his hands together.

There were plenty of hardworking, decent kids in vocational school too. But at Maocheng Vocational High School, the ones who occupied the top of the campus food chain were the “street people” riding flashy scooters with their hair dyed red.

Li Pan had never been good at socializing. From first grade onward, she had been the odd one out-the child who went to school in ragged clothes with snot hanging from her nose. Flip-flops in winter, no baths in summer. A child like that would always be the one bullied by other students.

Unfortunately for them, Li Pan was stubborn. Whoever hit her, she hit back, even if she was pinned to the ground, even if her head was split open and bleeding. Gradually, no one bothered with her anymore. Aside from her good grades, Li Pan might as well not have existed among her classmates.

The problem was, she was already seventeen. Even malnourished and constantly beaten, she had shot up like a weed, and her body had begun to develop. Among a crowd of scrawny middle schoolers, her face stood out as especially beautiful.

Beauty has never been a blessing for poor girls. In Li Pan’s case, that truth played out with unusual brutality.

Fu Yuantao, a local punk, had taken an interest in her. Fu Yuantao was the “local tyrant” of their grade, with his own little gang of lackeys.

Fu Yuantao sent people to make friendly overtures to Li Pan. But at the time, Li Pan’s heart was set entirely on studying. She was pinning her hopes on self-studying for the college entrance exam. When those punks came to bother her, she ignored them without the slightest hesitation.

Humiliated and enraged, Fu Yuantao began bringing people along to make trouble for her. Even more unfortunately, Han Lina, the female school bully who liked Fu Yuantao, also set her sights on Li Pan and started stirring things up with her own little clique.

But Li Pan refused to bow her head. She was stubborn, proud, and determined, and that thoroughly infuriated them.

Li Pan endured severe bullying for two full years. The abuse she suffered included, but was not limited to, verbal insults, beatings in the restroom, and malicious rumors.

On campus, she would be knocked to the ground out of nowhere. In the cafeteria, her tray would suddenly be flipped over, soup and food spilling all over the only clothes she owned.

Those people spread filthy rumors about Li Pan outside school, making up everything from cheating in relationships to sleeping around and soliciting on the streets. They spewed whatever came to mind, destroying Li Pan’s reputation completely.

Gradually, no one at school would speak to Li Pan anymore. People often watched her from a distance, pointing, whispering, and laughing out loud.

Even though she had done nothing at all.

Li Pan never gave in. She tried telling teachers. She tried writing complaint letters. There were indeed teachers willing to help this tenacious girl, but the principal suppressed every attempt. The principal scolded Li Pan and even gave her a disciplinary punishment.

As Fu Yuantao and Han Lina grew more and more brazen, they decided to pull something big. Fu Yuantao took his lackeys and found Li Pan’s younger brother, who was in middle school. Then, through threats and bribes, he got the boy to help him trick his own sister.

That Friday afternoon, Li Pan had just returned home and was washing her brother’s pants when Li Jiabao opened his mouth and shouted, “I left my thermos behind the stadium!”

Without even lifting her head, their mother said, “Tell your sister to go get it for you.”

Li Pan raised her sweat-soaked forehead. “I just got back. The village is more than ten li from town.”

Li Jiabao immediately started wailing. “Dad just bought me that thermos! If we don’t go get it, someone’s going to take it!”

Their mother smacked the rolling pin in her hand against the stove with a loud bang. “What kind of older sister acts like you? Hurry up and get it for your brother. If you don’t go, don’t bother eating dinner.”

Li Pan looked at the brand-new schoolbag on her brother’s back, then at her own army-green shoulder bag covered in patches and the mineral water bottle she had been using for two weeks. Then she climbed onto the crooked old women’s bicycle and left.

She did not know that Fu Yuantao and his gang were waiting for her in the equipment room behind the stadium stands.

But I knew what would happen next.

“I don’t want to watch. I don’t want to watch anymore.” In the darkness, I covered my eyes. “Is this Earth? This is…”

This was hell.

The little memory theater stopped there.

I knew that Li Pan had called the police three times, and no one had cared. I knew she had gone to the hospital several times, but could not even afford the registration fee.

In the end, in utter despair, she gave birth to me in a restroom.

Now I understood what King Yan meant. I understood the hands she had wrapped around my neck. Even if I had been born, I never would have, and never should have, survived.

She was not an irresponsible mother at all. She was a little girl who should never have had to become a mother.

A wave of dizziness swept over me. The darkness froze in place, and I opened my dry, aching eyes.