Crash! After a huge bang, an entire pane of glass lay shattered across the floor.
Liu Cuizhi screamed in fury: “Are you crazy? Do you know how much a pane of glass costs these days?”
I said calmly: “If you don’t let me go home today, I’ll make trouble for your family for the rest of my life! Go ahead and lock me up for eight or ten years if you can—either way, I’ll never let you have a single good day.”
My family lived in this very village. My mom, Zhao Qin, didn’t care about me, but I still had my brother—they simply wouldn’t dare do anything that extreme.
“Good heavens! What daughter-in-law dares to talk like that? Lord above, why doesn’t lightning strike this shameless woman dead!” Liu Cuizhi wailed and carried on.
I wasn’t scared at all, just giggling.
Xie Yanlai’s eyes had gone red. I saw his fist clench several times, but he never brought it down.
I looked at him with a half-smile: “Go on, hit me. Haven’t you always wanted to put me in my place? Here’s your chance.”
In my past life, on our wedding night, he’d gotten drunk and used it as an excuse to beat me, tormenting me until I wished I were dead. But now he didn’t dare hit me.
Xie Yanlai’s face went from dark to pale, and he couldn’t say a word.
“If you won’t hit me, then don’t blame me for being rude.” With that, I turned around and smashed the big mirror behind me to pieces. Seeing that smooth mirror broken into countless shards, with my smiling face reflected in them over and over, my mood inexplicably lifted. That mirror had to be worth at least twenty yuan—let those two bastards outside feel the pain!
Liu Cuizhi howled curses outside, and the more she raged, the more I smashed. Xie Yanlai tried several times to stop me, but I shoved him aside. He pointed at me: “Zhenzhen, listen to me… Aaah!”
I ignored him completely. With a casual heave, I toppled a big wardrobe to the floor, and the whole room shook.
The neighbor’s dog barked wildly, and soon every light in the houses around was lit. All the neighbors had been roused.
Before long, quite a few people came into the courtyard, all asking what was going on.
Xie Facai got anxious too: “Everyone, don’t get the wrong idea—it’s just a quarrel between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Zhenzhen! Whatever it is, we can talk it out. We’re all family—is there any need to make such a scene?”
“Who’s family with you?” I kicked the door hard twice and shouted: “Uncle, you’re a man of standing in this village—how could you lock me up and let your son molest me?”
Liu Cuizhi yelled through the door: “You stinking woman! You really think you’re some prize! You’re nothing much to look at, dumb as a post, with no sense at all—we did you a favor taking you in!”
“If you think so little of me, why won’t you let us divorce? Why insist on holding onto me? Can your son not live without me? Is he a eunuch or something?” As I said it, I even glanced at Xie Yanlai’s crotch.
The neighbors all started murmuring—a divorce fight right after the wedding was explosive news, and they were all thrilled.
“Pah! My son is perfectly fine! Plenty of young women would love to get close to him and can’t!”
“Then why insist on staying married to me? If you’ve got the nerve, let me go. Let’s see what kind of woman you can find.”
“Don’t even dream of it! You’re not leaving without compensation! At least a thousand in damages!”
Xie Yanlai’s mother carried on outside while his father explained things to everyone, still playing the role of the harmless nice guy.
“Everyone go home, it’ll be over soon. Don’t disturb the two of them on their wedding night.”
But I knew in my heart that tonight I could not sp the night with him.
I didn’t care for myself, but my brother’s marriage could not be affected. In my past life, he worried himself sick over me. Every time something happened to me, he was the one by my side, and through all kinds of twists of fate, he lost the girl he truly loved.
The blow devastated him. He lived a lonely, desolate life and died young.
In this life, I absolutely could not let myself affect him again.
Liu Cuizhi was shouting and crying outside: “Xie Yanlai, if you’re a real man, get this spthrift wife of yours under control. Otherwise, how will you ever hold your head up in this village again?”
At those words, Xie Yanlai suddenly let out a roar like a wild beast.
I was startled. “What are you doing!”
He said nothing, just charged over madly, wrapped his arms around my waist, and pinned me down on the kang. I smelled the stench of cigarettes and alcohol on his breath, and then he started tearing at my clothes.
As I struggled and kicked at him, I said through gritted teeth, “Xie Yanlai, I haven’t treated you badly. Do you have to torture me to death before you’re satisfied? Your sister—no, my sister—didn’t want you because you were fooling around with another woman. What does that have to do with me? Why torture me? Are you even human?”
He yanked his shirt open forcefully. “It’s no use saying anything! I’m not divorcing you. We’re husband and wife now—let’s see you act high and mighty after this! Let’s see what your sister says then!”
“Even if you killed me, my sister wouldn’t care. My sister is living a wonderful life. You can’t get revenge on her.”
Not only was my sister doing well—my mother was doing well too.
My past life was so miserable, and my mother turned a blind eye to it. She wouldn’t even let me return to her home, thinking I was an embarrassment to her. She poured her whole heart into my sister, helping take care of her household and her children, and every bit of the family’s money was spent on her alone. My sister lived her whole life easy and carefree—even city folk didn’t live as well as she did.
And me? If my brother hadn’t helped me, I probably wouldn’t have lived that long.
I had always felt wronged. Why was it that no matter what I did, my mother was never satisfied?
After my father died, I came home holding my sick child, begging for help. That was when my sister Liu Yaolan told me the truth.
“You’re nothing but a bastard child. If Mother hadn’t been so magnanimous, the day Father carried you back home, she should have strangled you. And now you still have the nerve to show your face at our house?”
My mother rushed out with a broom to beat me. “Get out! Take your bastard child and get out! If you ever come to our house again, we’ll set the dogs on you!”
Holding my child, I wept as I listened to Liu Yaolan and my mother’s curses, and only then did I learn the truth: I was the child my father had fathered with another woman while working on the Gobi Desert. My birth mother had died, and my father carried me back, begging my mother to accept me.
My mother hated me to the bone—how could she ever have treated me well? So all those years, no matter how she abused me, my father just preted not to see, because he felt he owed her. Besides, his heart had already died; he had no desire to live at all. He just drank and worked every day, and he died young.
My mother—no, I should say Zhao Qin—had transferred all her hatred for my father onto me.
Lost in these memories of the past, my struggles weakened.
Xie Yanlai said smugly, “I know exactly what you’re like. All reserved on the surface, but dying for it inside? I’m not going to hold a wedding for nothing! Let’s do it first, talk later!”
His movements grew rougher, and the couple outside had gone quiet too.
With so many people out there, if I let him bully me like this, I’d never be able to hold my head up in the village again.
With that thought, I suddenly grabbed his hair with all my strength and slammed it hard against the fire wall beside us. He howled and crashed to the side. I snatched up the little stool and swung it at him several times—I’d been aiming for his head, but he dodged in time and every blow landed on his back instead.
In my past life I’d worked at a quarry, and apparently that strength had come back with me. Xie Yanlai was knocked around like a lump of dough, with no strength left to struggle. He lay sprawled on the floor.
I got up and kept smashing the glass along the edge of the kang. Standing on the kang in my shoes, I shattered every single pane in the whole window. Outside came waves of dog barking and people shouting—everyone had clearly been terrified.
Liu Cuizhi screamed curses at Xie Facai, telling him to deal with me, while I kept slamming the stool down with all my might. The yard desced into total chaos.
Finally Liu Cuizhi couldn’t take it anymore. She flung open the door and charged in like a tiger to attack me, a pig-cutting knife in her hand.
“You damned slut! I’ll beat you to death today!”
But I was prepared. I shoved Xie Yanlai into her path. Liu Cuizhi shrieked and hastily pulled back her knife, then got pinned down by her precious son, and the two of them tumbled to the floor together. Ignoring her curses, I leaped over them and out into the yard.
I smoothed down my disheveled hair and said to the gathered villagers, “My fiancé was once engaged to my older sister, but the engagement was broken off when he got caught fooling around. Xie Yanlai only married me to get revenge on my sister. I was deceived—I only just found out. So please don’t blame anyone. Xie Yanlai and I are getting a divorce.”
The crowd around me erupted.