Little Maria

Below is the eleventh segment of a new short story, ‘Little Maria.’ While the story is new, it is based on a chapter from my novel, Unidentified Woman, a literary crime about rape, revenge and redemption. I believe it stands alone as is, and will reward you handsomely when you read it.

“But I almost died today. Suddenly I fall and pass out in the middle of cleaning El Meya’s room. Next thing I know I wake up in that cold empty tub. Feel a terrible pain in my tummy and in my pussy. Sorry for talking to you like that, Adela, but that’s how they all speak here around me. It’s no longer my private part, you see.
Nobody knows it better than Big Mamá. She is standing above me, holding some twisted wire as lifts something out of me. Her hands are full of blood. She throws it into the toilet hole and washes her hands while I scream so hard. Because of the sight I scream, even more than from the pain. But she signals me to be quiet. She takes a warm, wet towel and places it between my legs. She crosses my legs over it, then puts another small and wet cloth over my face and eyes. It smells terrible, so I close my eyes. Feel how I’m drifting away into a different world. Think I’m going to die at last. But still, feel Big Mamá’s hand stroking my hair. And hear her voice saying: Don’t worry, Little Maria, you’ll never get pregnant again.
Happy to hear that. Don’t want to go through that operation ever again, it’s so painful. What do I care if I’ll never have children? Who will want to marry me, anyway? Want to die, that’s what I want.
But she keeps talking to me. Don’t understand a word she is saying anymore. All I can think of are her hands, full of blood, carrying that poor little thing and throwing it into the toilet hole. And that if, if I’m still alive the next day, they are all going to pay for it. Don’t know how and I don’t know when. But you know me, Adela, you know how long I can carry a grudge. Remember when I didn’t speak to you for almost one year because you didn’t invite me to your eighth birthday party? Why didn’t you?
Never mind now. Forgive you. Forgive you even for dropping my hand that morning I was kidnapped, and not pulling me away with you. But I can’t forgive these men. Will make them suffer one day, you’ll see, for everything they did to me. Now I’m just a wounded bird, that’s true. Like the little turtledove you and I saved one stormy day in my last winter at home. Remember how wet and wounded it was, its wing broken? It couldn’t even fly, poor little thing. Yet it was dreaming of flying again.”