Chapter 1

When I was little, I always thought Dad wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

At home, he couldn’t take care of himself without Mom. Outside, people swindled him all the time.

Back when my grades were bad, one of his colleagues casually remarked, “Is that kid retarded or something?”

Dad took him seriously.

He secretly took me for an evaluation. The doctor said, very clearly, “There is nothing wrong with this child’s intelligence. In fact, she is exceptionally lively and optimistic.”

Dad refused to believe it. He dragged me from hospital to hospital and even sought out miracle healers with folk remedies. He got cheated out of a lot of money.

When Mom finally found out, they had a screaming match.

“People call you brain-dead behind your back too. Why don’t you believe them?” she demanded.

Dad actually went to confront the first colleague who had called me retarded.

The man laughed. “I was just talking.”

But the question of whether I was intellectually disabled soon became a popular topic around Dad’s office. Over tea, his colleagues joked that a man whose students flourished across the world had somehow grown a bitter gourd at home.

They were kidding.

Dad grew more convinced by the day.

He decided to get rid of me.

The first time was on Children’s Day. He drove me more than two hours to an amusement park in the countryside of a neighboring county. He bought me one bottle of water, told me to wait where I was, and vanished.

Honestly, when people whispered that he was brain-dead, he really should have done some soul-searching.

I was already eight. And I wasn’t retarded!

After waiting two hours, I borrowed a stranger’s phone and called home. I stayed where I was until nightfall, when Mom finally came rushing to find me.

Dad said, “Why did this child go wandering off?”

I was furious. “I stayed right where you left me! I called you, and you hung up after one ring!”

He glared at me. “When did you ever call me?”

Mom held out her hand. “Give me your phone. Let me see the call log.”

Dad fell silent.

And people wondered why they called him brain-dead.

Mom flew into the worst rage of her life.

“Before you abandoned her, you didn’t even take her on one ride!”

Then she added, “You bought her nothing but water. Not even a bottle of Wahaha!”

Of course, Dad denied trying to abandon me. Mom slapped him, and he punched her. The bruise was on her face, so people saw it when she went out.

Dad claimed Mom was crazy and had falsely accused him of dumping his daughter.

Now everyone at their university knew that Dad not only had a “retarded” daughter, but was also a wife-beater.

The second time Dad abandoned me, he planned it properly.

We had returned to our hometown for a family gathering, and Mom had drunk herself senseless. Dad immediately put me in the car and dumped me in the middle of nowhere.

I chased his lousy car as fast as I could, hurling rocks at it, but could only watch it disappear in the distance.

Apparently, once he got home, he went straight to Grandma’s room, lay down, and told her to swear that he had never gone anywhere.

Perfect.

Unfortunately, he knew nothing about me.

My brain might not have been much good, but my arms and legs worked great. I crossed mountains and valleys for two days and one night until I found my way home.

At dawn, I saw Mom searching frantically for me. I ran into her arms and burst into tears.

“Dad is brain-dead!” I sobbed. “He drove away without noticing I wasn’t in the car!”

Back at the house, a crowd of relatives surrounded me and started scolding.

“How can a child your age lie like this?”

“You ran off to play, didn’t you?”

Grandma insisted that Dad had been in her room the whole time and had never gone out.

I shouted, “I threw rocks at his car! Three rocks! There are three dents on the back!”

Dad went quiet again.

Mom ran outside. The car was covered in mud, and there really were three dents in the rear.

She shook with hatred. “You would rather drive drunk than miss your chance to dump her?”

Only then did Dad admit it. “I was drunk. I wasn’t thinking clearly. She kept pestering me to take her out, and I didn’t know what else to do. After that, everything was a blur…”

Mom trembled with fury and said she was going to the police.

The entire family blocked and pleaded with her. She would not back down—until my sister ran over in tears and begged.

Dad said, “If you give me a criminal record, what will happen to Wenwen? Wenwen isn’t like that retard. She has a wonderful future ahead of her.”

Mom lunged at him and nearly clawed his eyes out.

But she had no choice except to drop the police report.

Terrified that the moron would take me out and dump me again, Mom finally divorced him. She wanted my sister too, because she knew Dad was unfit to be a parent.

But his family refused. My sister was too outstanding. They insisted that she had inherited their genes, while I had inherited Mom’s.

I might have been playful, but I remembered that even after Mom moved out with me, she kept fighting Dad for custody of my sister.

Eventually, Grandma began leading a pack of aunts and female relatives to make scenes at Mom’s workplace every day. It did not affect Mom’s job, but soon people there were also whispering that I was retarded.

Everyone around me started acting unhinged.

One day after school, a gang of children surrounded me. They held out rocks, called them candy, and told me to take a big bite.

I grabbed the rocks and cracked several heads open.

There were too many of them, though. I could not win, so they chased me all the way home.

That happened to be the day Dad’s family had finally agreed to let Mom bring my sister home for dinner. Mom and my sister had just entered the neighborhood when they heard children chanting “Retard! Retard!” in the distance.

They hurried over and found the gang chasing me while they shouted.

What a joke. They could not catch me at all.

I scrambled up the old bayberry tree in our compound and threw caterpillars down at them. As they shrieked and scattered below, I laughed my head off.

“Morons!”

My sister’s face darkened, and she turned to leave.

“I can’t stand being related to a retard like her,” she said. “And I only came today to tell you to stop trying. I’m not going with you.”