I saw a loose circle of a dozen or so residents gather in the plaza of our apartment complex. An old woman in floral silk pants clutched her grocery basket to her chest. Two middle schoolers in uniform stood on tiptoe, trying to see. A man in a tank top flicked his cigarette to the ground, stepped on it, slapped his thigh, and shouted, “Run faster!”

I should have walked away—the sheets on my balcony still hadn’t been taken down, and the forecast said there’d be showers in the afternoon. But the clucking of tongues in the crowd drew me closer. Through a gap between shoulders, I saw it.

A middle-aged man with a belly and plastic sandals was chasing a thin woman around a tree. Once. Twice. He cursed as he ran, arms swinging. By the third round, he caught up to her and kicked her hard in the lower back. She fell, elbow scraping against the rough ground. He lunged forward, flipped her over, straddled her. Then the slaps came. Once, twice, again. Smack. Smack. Smack. She didn’t make a sound. No crying. No screaming. No pleading. No asking for help.

I didn’t move. Like a charred stump struck by lightning. I stared at the purpling swelling on her left cheek. Blood trailed from the corner of her lips down to her chin. Grains of sand were pressed into the scraped flesh of her palms. That mess of hair. Her tightly shut eyes. The man’s furrowed brow. Bloodshot whites of his eyes. The grin stretched across his mouth, revealing nicotine-stained canines. His sweat-drenched shirt clung to his body; every ripple of fat visible with each motion. The sunlight threw his raised arms onto the cement. His shadow clawed at hers. The shadow of a hand gripping the shadow of her hair. The crowd’s breathing pressed sticky against my eardrums.

“She’s gonna die…”

“Don’t get involved…”

A man in baggy shorts recorded with his phone, clicking his tongue.

Some murmured. Some turned away. Some craned their necks to get a better view. But no one stepped forward.

Back home, I collapsed onto the sofa. The fan blew against my skin, but the sweat wouldn’t stop. I thought again of the woman’s face, the way she endured in silence. I thought of my own face. It must have looked the same. The same clenched eyes. The same stillness. And I wondered, among the crowd that had watched my late husband beat me, were there women like me? Women who understood that kind of cornered despair. I wondered if they, too, had chosen didn’t move. If we had all, eventually, learned to close our eyes instead of screaming.

Huina Zheng, a Distinction M.A. in English Studies holder, works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.