My cousin's wife was trafficked.
The first time I saw her, she was trussed up on the bed with her hands and feet bound behind her back, weeping.
"Please, ma'am—please let me go. I'm begging you."
I hovered in the doorway, unable to look away. She didn't look anything like the women in our village. Her skin was pale and clean, without the deep sun-baked wrinkles or calloused hands we were all used to. You could tell just by looking at her that she belonged to a world far beyond these mountains.
"Just give in, girl," Da Niang coaxed, her tone unnervingly gentle. "We spent good money on you. Give my boy a son next year, and you'll have a place here."
Da Niang—Ma Qiang's mother, whom everyone called Older Aunt—was trying to soothe her when my cousin Ma Qiang shoved the door open. He strode in, his eyes already raking over her with undisguised hunger.
"Ma, go stew a chicken—we're celebrating a wedding today."
Da Niang told him not to be too rough, not to frighten the new bride, and went off to catch the chicken. Ma Qiang moved toward the bed.
Ma Qiang noticed me lingering in the doorway. He rubbed his calloused palms together and showed his yellow teeth. "Xiaojun—pretty, isn't she?"
I nodded. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in this village. Looking from Ma Qiang's unwashed, leering face to the dull terror in her eyes, a sour knot tightened in my stomach. It just felt wrong. All of it.
He grinned and reached out to stroke her pale cheek. She flinched like an animal caught in a trap, her eyes widening in pure panic. "Don't touch me. Get away," she gasped.
Her hands and feet were still bound. There was nowhere to recoil. He brought his fingers up to his nose and inhaled deeply, eyelids fluttering half-shut. "Wife. Come with me. I'll take good care of you."
He lunged, pinning her to the mattress. She screamed. The sound tore through the small room, raw and terrified, but it only seemed to excite him more. I stood paralyzed in the doorway. My fingernails dug into my palms as the old wooden bed frame began to shriek under his weight. My chest felt tight, like someone had pulled a rope around my ribs.
"Big Brother—" I blurted out, my voice cracking entirely. "You're so impatient. What if the neighbors hear?"
He scoffed, pausing mid-motion. Reluctantly, he pulled back and adjusted his trousers. "Xiaojun, keep an eye on her. I'm going to get some liquor—we're celebrating tonight."
After he left, the room went quiet.
I looked at her sideways. She was wearing denim cutoffs and a brown T-shirt, her arms still bound behind her back.
I was only seven when my parents were killed in a mudslide in these mountains. My uncle's family had taken me in. Last year, Uncle died in a coal mine collapse. The mine owner paid a token sum of ten thousand yuan. That blood money was exactly what my cousin had just used to buy her.
Our village, Jishan, was a hollow in the hills bleeding its young people dry. No woman in her right mind would move here willingly, so the bachelors bought them.
She noticed me watching and spoke first. "My arms hurt. Could you untie me?"
I shook my head. "You'd run."
She insisted she wouldn't. I told her to save her breath—others had tried before. The village was ringed by mountains; without a local guide, there was no way out.
A while later she started squirming. "I need to use the toilet," she said tightly.
That threw me off. I opened the door and shouted to Da Niang at the well, who was plucking a chicken, and she told me to bring the chamber pot and let the woman use it right there in the room.
I untied her feet to let her manage. She could not undo her shorts with her hands still bound, and she ended up having to ask me to help. I unfastened the button and turned away.
After two or three minutes, she called me back in. She had turned her face to the wall. She wouldn't look at me as I picked up the chamber pot—it was heavier than expected.
She curled up on the bed and did not speak again.
At dinner, Da Niang brought her chicken. She refused to eat and declared she would starve herself unless they let her go.
Ma Qiang didn't bother reasoning with her. He grabbed a chicken leg, pried open her jaw, and tried to force it in. She spat it on the floor.
He slapped her across the face.
Da Niang sighed, picked up the leg, got a fresh one, and held it out again. "You have to eat, child. We need you healthy. The whole family is counting on you for a grandson."
She looked at Da Niang with pure hatred and did not touch the food.
That night, Ma Qiang shoved all of us out of the room and threw the deadbolt.
I stood alone in the dark dirt courtyard. The heavy thud of the bed frame echoed through the thin walls, followed by a scream so sharp it made my shoulders flinch. His laughter bled through next. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands hard into my pockets, swallowing against the bile rising in my throat.
* * *
That night, Ma Qiang swapped rooms with me. He did not want to listen to her weeping.
I walked into his room wearing only my shorts. I found her lying on her side, legs pressed tightly together, her arms still bound. Unable to find a comfortable position, she was still quietly weeping.
"Stop," I said. "I'll be sleeping in here tonight."
She went quiet and looked at me when I brought in a basin of water. Her wrists were rubbed raw from the rope.
"I can't untie your hands," I said. "But I can clean you up, if you want. Otherwise, forget it. Your choice."
She couldn't see another option. She lay still.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Ma Xiaojun."
We lay on our sides on the bed, back to back, and she began asking me questions—how old was I, what did I study, how did I get to school, had I ever had a girlfriend.
"No," I said. "The women here are for making sons. There's no such thing as having a girlfriend."
"Don't you want one?" Her voice had gone soft and strange.
Before I could answer, I felt the slide of her bare calf against mine. I froze. The air in the stifling room seemed to vanish. My chest tightened—not just with the clumsy, terrifying rush of a fourteen-year-old boy's blood, but with the sudden, crushing weight of her desperation.
I sat up.
"I'm not stupid," I said. "You untie the rope, you run."
Her expression flickered—caught—then shifted into something more pleading. "You've been kinder to me than any of them. I just want to repay you. I know I can't escape—I've accepted that. I'm not asking you to untie both hands. Just one."
I looked at her for a long moment. The money used to buy her had come from my uncle's death. I lay back down and told her not to speak like that again. If Ma Qiang found out, he would hit her.
She didn't bring it up again.
* * *
The next morning, Da Niang's scream woke me.
She was pointing at the bed—at the empty rope. The woman was gone.
Within minutes the whole house was in an uproar. Neighbors came running, grabbed their motorbikes, and scattered up the mountain roads. The village wasn't afraid of a woman fleeing; they were afraid of what she might say if she made it out.
I spent the entire morning sitting on the stone steps of the courtyard, my knees pulled to my chest. Every time a dog barked down the valley, I jumped. If Ma Qiang returned empty-handed, he would beat me half to death for losing his expensive "merchandise." But underneath the fear, a tiny, reckless part of me kept praying: Run faster. Don't let them find you.
My prayer didn't work.
By early afternoon, the roar of motorcycle engines echoed up the mountain road, followed by the sound of a woman sobbing. Five men hauled her into the courtyard, gripping her arms and hair like they were dragging a slaughtered animal. I felt a sickening wave of relief for my own skin, swallowed instantly by grief. She had bolted blindly into the mountains without knowing the roads. She never stood a chance.
The Village Chief arrived with a heavy iron chain. He looped the collar around her neck. With deafening strikes of a hammer, he drove a thick iron spike into the wall, tethering her like a rabid dog.
She screamed curses at them. Ma Qiang took a horsewhip and brought it down across her back once, hard, splitting her shirt open.
"Say it again," he challenged.
She pressed her fist to her mouth, saying nothing.
I stood at the back of the crowd and could not watch. I turned and left the room.
* * *
From that point on, she was kept like livestock. Any sign of defiance earned another thrashing with the horsewhip. Within a week, she was unrecognizable. The fierce woman who had spat the chicken bone onto the dirt floor was gone. Instead of screaming, she began to stare at the opposite wall for hours, her unblinking eyes tracking nothing. When Ma Qiang unlocked the door at night, she didn't fight him anymore. She just went perfectly, terrifyingly still.
Watching her retreat into that dark, hollow place terrified me more than her screaming had.
I pulled Da Niang aside while she was washing clothes. "You can't let him hit her again," I said, keeping my voice low. "I read in school that treating a person like a dog makes them snap. If her mind breaks completely, she won't be able to care for a child. And if she's already pregnant, the violence might kill the baby."
Da Niang paused her scrubbing. She put far more stock in her educated nephew than in common sense. The mention of a grandson taking harm was all she needed.
She spoke to Ma Qiang that evening. The beatings grew less frequent. A local herbalist was brought in to rub foul-smelling salve onto the welts crisscrossing her back. She lay on the bed, accepting the medicine without making a sound. The days began passing in a heavy, suffocating silence.