Luz dourada irradiando, e você diz que é cego?

When I was ten years old, my mother poisoned the meal with rat poison, ending her life and that of the man who had tormented her for five years in his second marriage.

That butcher of a man had the audacity to lay his hands on my sister Yan, who was only thirteen at the time!

As she was dying, my mother took out the few bills she had and pressed them into my sister’s hand.

“Yan, take Stone to Haizhou to find your real father, Shi Musong!”

After saying this, she passed away.

She only told us that man’s name but never said where exactly in Haizhou he lived.

Perhaps she didn’t even know herself.

Yan and I bought a train ticket and traveled for a whole day and night to Haizhou.

As soon as we got off the train, our luggage was stolen. Inside were a few tattered clothes and all the money we had left—twenty-seven yuan after buying the tickets.

Standing there in the train station square, penniless and alone, we had no one to turn to.

To fill our stomachs, Yan took me to a small restaurant by the station to wash dishes.

But she was too young, and carrying me, a helpless burden, she was kicked out after just an afternoon’s work.

I was born disabled; my left eye was almost all white, with a pupil no bigger than a pinprick—I could see nothing.

Starving and desperate, I seized the chance when an old woman selling tea eggs at the square was not paying attention and stole two of her eggs.

When I brought the eggs to Yan, she asked where they came from.

I didn’t dare lie and told her I had stolen th