Chapter 1: My Childhood and the First-Time Assault
I have always been an abandoned person.
When I first tried to describe myself, the word that came to mind was "discarded child"; though I knew "child" in Chinese originally referred to a chess piece, the character "*" (child) as a symbol of masculinity still often made me feel controlled and uncomfortable. So, I simply began referring to myself as a discarded girl.
My name is Zheng Fanyan. I later started to use Chloe as my English name.
I was born in late June 1989 in Shanghai, a month marked by heavy smoke, not one that could be publicly mentioned in China (the Tian'anmen m******e on June 4th of 1989). It seemed to be a coincidence, yet it felt like there were many connections. Although I was born in a city considered the center of the country, I was just a child from a poor urban family. My parents were both college graduates born in the '60s, but they never achieved anything remarkable like many of their peers from that generation. My father worked as a low-efficiency clerk in a state-owned enterprise that barely avoided bankruptcy. My assessment of him is that he was an arrogant, self-righteous, narrow-minded frog in a well. My mother, on the other hand, was a merciless, emotionless miser. The frog in the well meant he couldn’t offer any opportunities for development to our family or me, and she, trying to save every penny, had no chance of accumulating any wealth. But neither of them truly understood their own limitations.
They always firmly believed that they would raise me to be a phoenix (a symbol of successful women in Chinese culture). From the moment I became self-aware, I was subjected to a life of constant drills, like military training. In kindergarten, I never wore new clothes. I wore worn-out sportswear handed down from my male cousins, so much so that the fabric was nearly colorless. For a year or two, I even thought I was a boy because my mother told me I couldn’t wear flowery dresses like those unruly girls. Strangely enough, although my mother had no concern for beauty, she almost always wore high heels her entire life, no matter how far she had to walk. During summer and winter vacations, when they went to work, I often secretly wore my mother's old high heels at home, feeling like I was just beginning to recognize my female identity.
My father was a staunch supporter of the one-child policy. He believed, and truly thought, that by focusing all his energy on me, I could become someone like him — a superior person (I never understood how this pride was justified). When I started first grade in elementary school, he repeatedly asked the teacher to let me join the Young Pioneers (of the Chinese Communist Party). However, the Young Pioneers was a mere formality, with everyone in second grade joining together at that time. After being repeatedly rejected by the teacher, he blamed me entirely, believing it was my lack of effort that caused me to be in the same group as others in second grade. This kind of daily humiliation seemed to follow me throughout my life.
I remember once, in second grade, on my way home from school, someone from an upstairs apartment spit out chewing gum, which landed right in my hair, sticking tightly to it. When I got home, my parents interrogated me all evening, asking which classmate had bullied me by sticking gum in my hair. I cried and screamed all night, insisting that no classmate had bullied me, but in return, they told me I wasn't good enough and that's why I got bullied. From that moment on, whenever I was hurt, my first instinct was always to hide my emotions, to make sure they couldn’t see, because if they did, it would only lead to more harm. I remember once, in the summer, when I accidentally scraped my knee, to avoid them saying I was bullied, I deliberately fell on the cement ground downstairs, making the original wound even bigger. I cried out loudly to attract their attention, so I wouldn't be blamed for being bullied.
In this family, I was the real adult. I had to always present myself as emotionally stable, responsible, and comforting them, fulfilling their need for someone to cater to their childishness.
Perhaps it was this hardship and labor that made my physical development occur very early. Now, at 173 cm, I was already over 155 cm by third grade. Correspondingly, by third grade, my chest had developed noticeably. I never received any s*x education in elementary school. Although my parents initially used the story of me being adopted to deceive me, later they seriously told me that women would naturally have children when they grew older. So, when my chest began to develop, they said nothing about it, especially my mother, who acted as if she hadn’t seen it.
There was a girl in my class named Fei'er. For some reason, she was the oldest in the class, two or three years older than the rest of us. She was also tall, and because of her age, she was the only girl in the class whose chest was more prominent than mine. Out of curiosity, I wanted to know why she and I seemed different from the others. One day, while observing her from the side, I noticed that she was wearing a bra. I suddenly remembered that my mother also wore one, so I went home to ask my mother if I should start wearing a bra too. Of course, that earned me a scolding. Her criticism was that I was too young to spend money on such things and that I must have seen something I shouldn’t have. So, this topic was completely shut down in our home.
Under the strict control of my family, my academic performance was excellent, always ranking in the top three in class. Having long been accustomed to suppressing my emotions, I was, in everyone’s eyes, one of the most obedient girls in the entire school: introverted, well-behaved, obedient, never challenging anyone, and never saying no.
When I had just started fourth grade, a tall sixth-grade boy began to take a special interest in me after school. He was notorious throughout the school as one of the problem students—his grades were very poor, and he frequently got into fights, so everyone avoided him. Under my parents' strict education, I naturally didn't want to associate with such a person. However, when he spoke to me and asked if I wanted to play with him, I didn't know how to refuse. Of course, I also didn’t dare to tell my parents about this because they wouldn’t help me; they would only reprimand me for bad behavior.
At first, he would just chase away all my classmates on the way home and insist on talking to me alone. Later, he started asking me to go to his house and play. His house was very close to the school, and not knowing how to say no, I reluctantly had no choice but to go with him.
In the first few visits to his house, he would have me watch movies with him. He had a VCD player and many movie discs. My family couldn’t afford a VCD player, and my parents never allowed me to have any entertainment, so in a way, it was a new experience for me. About a month later, I even saw that his family had switched to a DVD player, and I felt an inexplicable sense of envy. His family’s living conditions seemed pretty good, with a three-bedroom apartment, while my family only had a one-bedroom unit. The first time I met his mother, she looked very old, a typical image of a senior female cadre, yet she seemed educated and refined. I was puzzled as to why her child had turned out to be a problem student.
I clearly remember that at the very beginning, I accompanied him to his home to watch several movies, like "Jurassic Park" and "007". Since I was too scared to come home late, every time I had to cry and beg him to let me go home. But I also clearly remember that it was at his home that I saw my first adult film of my life. The scene was very vivid in my mind. The first image that came out on the TV was a white woman riding on a black man, completely naked, holding her large breasts and moaning loudly up and down. Later, I still remember a group of white men surrounding and binding a woman in the middle, and the woman was struggling desperately. At that time, I just found it strange and didn't know what they were doing. I was also very puzzled why that boy wanted to watch this and even show it to me. Because the plots were all the same over and over again, I didn't have too many impressions. I always tried to persuade him that we might as well watch "Jurassic Park" again.
But later on, I also noticed that when watching these movies, he would put his hand into his own pants. I had no idea what he was doing. I knew nothing about this. Once, when I begged him to let me go home quickly, he told me to put my hand into his pants for a few minutes, and then he would let me go. I did as he said unwillingly, mainly because I thought he was dirty. I don't have a particularly strong impression of this. I only remember that I felt some prickly hair and then a very smooth but hard thing in his pants, extremely hot. Having watched some movie plots, I already knew that men had an extra part down there compared to women, but I still had no concept of s*x and always thought it was just that the organs for urination were different for men and women. I don't remember how many times he ordered me to reach into his pants. He only asked me to touch a few times before letting me go and I don't think he did anything else.
But perhaps that experience which changed my fate and his as well did come.
That day, he still took me to his place to watch a movie. I don't even remember if he showed me any pornographic films again. We didn't watch for long before he suggested we go to the bedroom to play for a while. I obediently followed. As soon as we got into the bedroom, he took off all his clothes at once. Although I had almost no knowledge of s*x at that time, I knew it was wrong for a boy to take off all his clothes in front of a girl. So I felt very uncomfortable. But that was also the first time I saw a naked man standing in front of me. The previous times when I was asked to touch him, I only put my hand into his underpants and saw nothing.
After he took off all his clothes, there was maybe a minute when he didn't say anything. I kept staring at his private parts. I guess it's impossible to look anywhere else at that moment. Then he ordered me to take off my clothes too. I was very reluctant to tell him that it was wrong, but he just kept laughing. Under his persistent urging, I also took off my clothes, leaving only my underwear (if my mother had made me wear a bra, maybe I wouldn't have been completely naked on top). He ordered me to take off my underwear as well, but I refused. So he came over, made me lie on the bed and said that since I wouldn't take it off myself, he would do it for me. Then he pulled off my underwear and I didn't resist.
At that time, I was just astonished and confused. I had no idea what he was going to do. But at the same time, I didn't understand why I had always been taught to keep a distance between men and women. I was lying naked on the bed then, and he stood in front of me, looking me up and down for a long time. My only feeling was probably that I felt very uncomfortable being stared at like that, but I didn't know why either.
I don't remember how long he was looking at me. Then he picked up one of my feet and started licking the sole, while his other hand began to tickle the sole of my other foot. I felt very sensitive and was afraid of being tickled. I was so itchy that I couldn't stand it, but at the same time, I felt a tingling sensation all over my body. That numbness spread from my soles to my face, my neck, my chest, and between my legs. After he licked with his tongue for a short while, I felt my whole body go limp. I held back from moaning.
Then he told me to lie down in the blanket. I felt like I finally had a chance to catch my breath, but he immediately got into the blanket too. Inside the blanket, he lay on top of me, and I felt so pressed that I couldn't breathe. I had never been under someone before, let alone a tall and strong sixth-grader. He pressed on me and licked my neck vigorously, and I felt like my scalp was going to explode. Then he slid his tongue down to my chest. I only vaguely remember feeling a swelling in my chest, as if water was being injected into it, and it became much harder than usual.
I can't recall or describe that specific feeling at all. Because too many physical sensations were my first time experiencing them, and I was only in the fourth grade. In the blanket, apart from him licking my neck and chest, my memory of the rest is completely blank. I don't even know how long I was pressed by him under the blanket.
Later, I heard the sound of the front door closing. I knew his mother had come back. Just as I was about to say, "Hurry down," his mother had already opened the room door. The look of surprise on his mother's face when she saw our expressions was the most vivid memory of that day. It was pure astonishment, and not even a hint of condemnation was present at first.
She stared at me in astonishment for a few seconds when I was completely naked. At that moment, my mind went blank. Then she picked up my clothes and socks on the ground and told me to put them on and go home quickly. I vaguely remember that she scolded me a few words when I was putting on my shoes at the door, but I didn't take it to heart. All I could think about was the expression on her face when she was looking at my naked body.
When I went back home to use the bathroom, I found a sticky patch of liquid on my underpants. I was very panicked and had no idea what it was. I wondered if I was ill. But my next reaction was that of course I couldn't let my mother know what happened today, nor could I let her see anything strange on my underpants. So I spent a long time in the toilet, wetting the toilet paper and wiping until I couldn't feel any stickiness on the surface of the underpants. Then I pulled my underpants very tight, hoping that the body heat could dry the water I just wiped quickly. However, at this moment, the tight underpants made me feel a strange current-like sensation that I had never felt before. Later, I learned that people call it pleasure.