Helepa and Raúl, her parents, were sitting like spectators of a daily spectacle, while Nora held her recorded phone, as if my pain were entertainment.
—“Look at her”— said Helepa, smiling with a coldness that chilled the blood— “she thinks that carrying a baby makes her special.”
There was no compassion, no doubt, no moral conflict, only a shared narrative where I was the problem.
Victor repeated the orders, as if he were speaking to an animal, or talking to his wife, or recognizing the mother of his child.
I opened the refrigerator, but the world started to spin, and at that moment I stopped saying that my body could no longer sustain that pain and its consequences.
I fell to the ground, and the impact was what hurt the most, but the reaction of those who surrounded me.
—“How dramatic”— grumbled Raúl, as if the suffering were an act designed to make them uncomfortable.
Victor didn’t come to help me, didn’t hesitate, didn’t waver, he simply chose violence as an automatic response.
He walked towards the corner, took a wooden stick, and in that gesture the whole story of abuse that I wanted to fully accept was concentrated.
The blow to my thigh was sharp, direct, unremovable, and the scream that came out of me was both of pain and terror.
I curled up protecting my belly, because at that moment, my life mattered less than that of the being that had just died.
—“He deserves it”— said Helepa, laughing, validating the violence as if it were education.
That phrase, repeated in many homes, is the root of a problem that society still doesn’t want to look at head-on.
—“Please… the baby…”— I begged, and that plea wasn’t just for me, it was for a hypochondriac life trapped in a hostile environment.
