Glass Beads and Floral Umbrella

My cry at birth was exchanged for the crisp sound of my father smashing the earthen bowl. When I was six years old and licking the eggshells dropped by my younger brother, my mother secretly gave me half a piece of moldy cake. When I was twelve years old, my father accepted a bride price from a lame man in a neighboring village and wanted to marry me off in exchange for a cow. I escaped into the mountains with the glass beads I had saved for five years, and was picked up by my head teacher, Mr. Wang, and brought back to school. On the day of the college entrance examination, my parents locked me in the woodshed with a copper lock. When Teacher Wang kicked open the wooden door, the wooden thorn pierced my ankle. In the university dormitory, a rich girl tore up her poverty certificate and threw it in my face: "A poor guy deserves to go to university?" Until my mentor Professor Zhou pointed to the old scar on his wrist and said: "I have eaten more glass shards than you." Ten years later, I stood on the plaintiff's bench to defend a peasant woman who had been domestically abused. When I walked out of the court, the spring rain soaked my high-end suit. The light in the eyes of the working girl under the umbrella is very much like that of Mr. Wang who kicked open the door of the woodshed.