In the 19th century, criminologist Cesare Lombroso specialized in studying the skulls of prisoners. He discovered that one-third of criminals’ skulls exhibited the same characteristics, including:
- Large faces. Compared to the skull, neck, and body, the face occupied a disproportionately large area.
- Narrow foreheads.
- Ears that were unusually large or small.
- Messy eyebrows with a narrow gap between them.
- Prominent jawbones.
- Upturned noses, with visible nostrils.
- Sparse facial hair.
- Disheveled hair with multiple “hair whorls.”
People with these facial features, Lombroso claimed, were born criminals. I don’t know if my father fits this category. Out of these eight traits, he has six. His eyebrows aren’t messy, the gap between them isn’t narrow, and his jawbone isn’t particularly prominent. When he was young, he was even considered a handsome man. But now, at fifty-three, he’s become increasingly disheveled.
Unfortunately, I resemble him—a feminine version of his younger self. The differences are that my face isn’t particularly large, and my nose doesn’t turn up to reveal the nostrils. What we share most prominently are our large ears.
At 2 a.m., I received a call from the police station asking me to bail out Qiu Guo—my father.
I arrived at the Wan Chai police station at 2:22 a.m. After informing the officer on duty that I was here to bail out Qiu Guo, he led me to a room behind the report desk. My father sat dejectedly in one corner, while a middle-aged woman with garish makeup and disheveled hair sat across from him. The left side of her face was swollen, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
“Who are you to him?” the plainclothes detective asked me.
“I’m his daughter,” I replied.
The detective looked up at me with an expression of utter disdain—the most contemptuous look I’d ever encountered.
“He assaulted this woman,” the detective said.
I glared at my father, this fifty-three-year-old natural-born “criminal of love,” who hung his head even lower, not daring to meet my eyes.
The disheveled woman demanded that the police take her to the hospital for an injury assessment. After I paid the bail, the procedures took thirty minutes to complete, and we were finally allowed to leave. As we exited, an ambulance pulled up to the station.
The moment my father stepped out the door, his demeanor shifted to a carefree arrogance. He kicked an empty probiotic drink bottle across the street with his foot.
“That woman—” he began to explain.
“I don’t want to hear it!” I covered my ears with both hands.
“Did I wake you up?”
“I wasn’t even asleep! It’s exam season. Do you think everyone can live as carefreely as you?”
“You’ve always had good grades,” he said, trying to appease me.
At that moment, the ambulance left the station, carrying the woman to the hospital. I flagged it down.
“We know the injured party,” I told the driver. “May we accompany her?”
The driver glanced back at the woman, who gave my father a sideways glare but didn’t object.
“All right,” the driver agreed.
My father and I climbed into the ambulance and sat across from the woman. Without any explanation from him, I already knew it was a humiliating domestic dispute. My father has always had various women in his life, both when he was young and now. It wasn’t the first time a woman had shown up at our house, and I wasn’t surprised this time when it escalated to the police station.
A platinum ring adorned his left ring finger—not his wedding ring, but likely a token from yet another woman. He has accomplished nothing in life because he was born to fall in love.
The ambulance reached the hospital quickly. After we got out, I grabbed my father and led him away.
“Aren’t we accompanying her to the hospital?” he asked.
“Who said that? I just wanted a free ride.”
Our home was near the hospital, and taking the ambulance saved me taxi fare.
“Only you could think of that! This is my first time going home in an ambulance. You’re as clever as ever,” he said, trying to flatter me.
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