Everyone in the village says I should have died in the Yellow River the day I was born.
Grandma placed my lifeless body in the darkwood coffin that had come with her dowry and sang a strange nursery rhyme all night.
When I spat out a mouthful of muddy water and woke up, there was still blood-soaked earth from a grave in the cracks beneath her fingernails.
By the seventh day, girls my age had started drowning in the village.
Red cords braided by Grandma were wrapped around every one of their ankles.
