Below is the thirteenth 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.
*
Not today maybe. Because today Big Mamá calls me into her room in the morning after all the girls leave for work. That never happened before, Adela, so I’m afraid I’m in big troubles. She has a nice room with a real bed, and a white sink too. She tells me to sit on a wooden chair opposite her, while she sits on the bed. Don’t know what I did wrong. Don’t know why I’m being punished this way. All I know is, after El Meya she is the most powerful person on the farm. Even more than Mario. But now my luck with her is coming to an end, I’m afraid.
You’re very lucky, Little Maria, she tells me instead. You survived one year in the farm. Today is your anniversary!
Had no idea a year could pass so fast. Maybe it’s fall again, don’t know. This morning really felt a little chilly. Lost all sense of the passing of time and of important dates. Truth is, I think less and less of Mami and Papi. How come they didn’t look for me? How come they didn’t call the police? How come they didn’t come here to rescue me from this horrible place?
But I think of you, Adela, all the time I think of you. What you doing this minute? What you look like now? Sure you are pretty and all the boys are crazy over you. There are no boys here at the farm at all, just ugly, bad men. Sometimes I imagine I’m back at school, or even jumping rope with you again. Like we used to. It’s the only thing that makes me feel good: remembering that.
She kisses me on my lips, Big Mamá, for a long time. I don’t like it. She hugs me too. Almost kills me, so strong she hugs me. Then she tells me that one day, if I start talking again, I will take her place as Big Mamá. Because I’m strong, that’s what she says, and because I’m a survivor. Very few girls survive here the whole year.
Thanks, Big Mamá, I nod my head. But I want to ask her how come she is here doing what she is doing? How come she is helping these men do all those terrible things to us girls?
Me—I would never do that! And how come she never wrote to my parents when I arrived here? How come she doesn’t call the police right now? How come she hit my head against the wall that first day in the bathroom? And how come she kissed me on my lips like that just now?
But before I can ask her any of these questions, before I attempt to see if I can speak again, she surprises me with a present. A nice, small box wrapped with colorful paper and tied with red ribbons. She tells me to unwrap it and open it so I do what she says. Find a box of chocolates inside, Adela. Can’t believe my eyes. Haven’t seen a piece of chocolate in such a long time. Live on tamales with beans and dirty porridge. So I take one piece and put it in my mouth. Chew on it very slowly. It tastes like no other thing I have ever tasted in my life. It tastes like heaven.
Tag Archives: Women
Little Maria
Little Maria
Below is the twelfth 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.
Summer:
Getting stronger now, after Big Mamá’s operation. Every evening I prepare dinner for my sisters, that’s why I’m the first to notice the new girl as she tries to climb up the stairs. Her skirt is torn, and her thighs are full of blood. Know what to do now, so I take care of her myself. Shower her and wash her clean, then I call Big Mamá. But she is mad at me and takes her away.
Is it my fault, Adela, for doing that? Don’t think so. Because the next day I stop sweeping the floor upstairs in the corridor when I hear shouts and screams coming from the yard. See El Meya and Mario carrying that worker, the one who raped the new girl, to the center of the yard where the well hole is. Big Mamá told me he grabbed the new girl after she stepped down from the bus, back from the factory. He took her to the stables where he raped her in front of the poor horses.
He is beaten very bad already. Can see the blood on him. Everybody in the farm comes out to watch. Big Mamá too. She doesn’t even mind that I stopped working. She looks at me close and I can see some sorrow in her eyes. That girl was a top prize, she tells me. Like you were once.
Know what she means.
Gringos pay many dollars for virgins, she continues. You know that by now.
Yes, I know that by now. But why didn’t she warn me before that I was such a top prize? Why didn’t she save me before I was damaged so bad? Before I was left to die on the ground of the coca field. Before I lost my will to speak.
I’m filled with rage again, Adela. Hope you won’t blame me for that, and for what I’m going to tell you now. Can’t take my eyes away when El Meya shoots the bastard. Then, after Mario strips him naked, El Meya draws this big shiny machete out of his side belt. That’s what he does, Adela, I’m not lying to you: he cuts the penis of the dead man and sticks it in his mouth. Just like that. They both laugh, Mario and El Meya. And they leave him dead there, under the bright summer sun, where the mean dogs of the farm are having a feast now.
Need to go back to my work but can’t stop looking. Me, Maria, who back home couldn’t even hurt one little fly. You used to laugh at me, Adela, the way I would feel guilty all day long if I accidentally stepped on a wondering ant. Lover of cats and dogs I was, but now I watch this man being eaten by dogs without closing my eyes or looking away. It makes me feel good, you know, watching it. Lost one God, who didn’t listen to my prayers. But found another God. This new one listens to me. Believe me he does.
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.”
Little Maria
Below is the tenth 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.
Spring:
Nothing matters. Nothing but surviving another day without suffering even more pain. Night is my only friend here, my only time alone with myself. And with you, Adela. Tell you this: I wanted to die out there in the coca field but God didn’t listen to me. Maybe he has better plans for me. Don’t believe so. He didn’t kill the man who raped me. Now I know what rape is. And I know that there is no God, only Big Mamá. She saved me—don’t know why. She sees something in me that makes her want to save me. Hard as she treats me sometimes, she takes care of me almost as if I’m her own daughter. Now I’m her little helper too. Dumb Little Maria.
All the sisters are away at the factory on the outskirts of that ugly border town, Ciudad Juárez. Or out in the fields being raped. Either you are slaving at the factory, Adela, or you are being raped at the coca field. Or sometimes even both. If you die during the rape, or after, they toss you out of cars into the desert like piles of garbage. For the hyenas and birds of prey to eat.
Not me. Five times I was raped this way in the coca field but came out alive. Don’t know how. Don’t know why. That almost never happened, Big Mamá told me. Maybe that’s why she saved me at the end, after what the chief of the farm did to me. His name is El Meya, because if he catches you he’ll eat you alive like a spider crab. Big Mamá says he knows everything about farming and agriculture, and that he experiments with growing the coca plants here on the hills. It’s not their natural place to grow, she says.
As if I care. It’s not my natural place to grow, is it? He was so cruel to me, Adela, you can’t even imagine what kind of savage he was. You won’t find someone like him in any of the adventure and pirates books we used to read. He beat me up so hard first, then stripped me naked and tied me to a big tree. He did it to me from behind so I won’t see his face. But I know he was chewing a coca leaf while he was doing it to me. He was just having fun, you see, while I was crying in pain.
The other four, like the first one, were all Gringos from north of the border. Don’t understand why they need to come here and do it to us Mexican girls. Don’t they have rape farms in America? Big Mamá says they have everything there. That’s the name I gave it myself, Adela: rape farm. Because that’s what it is.
Now everybody thinks I’m deaf and dumb because I don’t speak anymore. Decided not to. No reason for me to talk. And I will never sing again, the way you and I used to sing. Remember that silly song we sang on the morning I was kidnapped? Always thought you were the prettiest one. Guess these evil gardeners decided that I was the one. So they picked me up from our garden. Yes they did. And used me: now I no longer pretty and my smell of innocent is all gone. Don’t understand why they didn’t kill me too.
Little Maria
Below is the fourth 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.
Hear Big Mamá’s voice comes from far away, telling the girls to be nice to me because I’m new at the farm. Anybody caught telling Little Maria lies will be punished, she warns them. You know how and you know where. All the girls but me nod their heads. Then Big Mamá orders me to follow her. Never obeyed anybody in my life the way I obey her now. Not even Mami or Papi. Not even Mr. Dominguez, old grumpy, the school principal in our little village.
Only when I get out of the hall do I see that it’s already evening outside. Most of the day I was away from this world and they didn’t even call a doctor. What if I was dying? Who cares. Not even me.
We walk in a long narrow corridor. See some dogs outside in the dusty yard. Hear music and laughter coming from open windows. How could it be: music and laughter here, in this awful place? What kind of a place is it, anyway? Dare not ask Big Mamá that.
We enter a dirty bathroom that has a toilet hole and a metal tub with a shower above it. She instructs me to take off my clothes but I refuse to do it in front of a stranger. Mami warned me not to do that. But the evil giant grabs my hair, my beautiful brown hair I love so much and bangs my head against the cold wall. You’ll do as I tell you, Little Maria, she yells at me as she waves a fat finger in my face. Or you’ll be dead tomorrow!
Do as she says. Not because I’m afraid of dying. Oh no—I would prefer to die. But she knows how to cause great pain, Big Mamá. That I already know. Learned my lesson twice. My head hurts so bad but the cold water takes some of the pain away. Turn my back to her as soon as I can. No matter, she turns me around and turns the water off. Looks at me naked, up and down. Nobody ever looked at me like that before. Orders me to lie down in the cold tub. Do as she says again. Shiver very hard, like a flame in the wind. Maybe because I’m so scared.
At home we don’t even have a bathtub. Think about it when she spreads my legs and places my feet on the edges of the tub. She looks down at my private part and I look up at the dirty ceiling. She touches it with her fingers and I see the spiders crawling slowly in their cobwebs above. She examines it but not like that ugly man did, the one who grabbed me away. She doesn’t hurt me so much. Why are they all so interested in my private part?
You can’t trust them animals, comes her answer as if she heard my question. Then she smiles and says: Good, Little Maria, you’re still a virgin. Get dressed.
Little Maria
Below is the second 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 the sun keeps rising. How come? Doesn’t care much about my darkness and my sadness. Brings a new day with her too, bright and chilly morning when we arrive at a farm, after driving almost the whole day and night. Don’t know where we are.
All I know is, during the night they stopped only once for an hour or two to eat and sleep in the car. Not me—I didn’t eat or sleep at all. The man who grabbed me and held me also touched me in my private part. Nobody ever did that to me before. His fat finger went inside and hurt me so bad. They were laughing about it later but I kept crying. Like I do now, when he gets out of the car and pulls me along with him.
Can’t see what the outside looks like. High walls are surrounding this place, that’s why. Don’t want to see it, anyhow, want to go back home and be with my Mami. Promised her yesterday morning before leaving the house to school that I won’t be late. More than anything else in the world I now want to help her in the kitchen and learn how to sew. But how can I explain to her why I’m so late? How can I tell her what this man did to me in the car? She would never believe me, I know her. She would tell me it was one of my stupid dreams. Better for me to die right now.
We found another girl for you, Big Mamá, the man who drove the car tells a big fat woman who comes out of the farmhouse. She wears baggy pants and sloppy, thick shirt over her mountain belly. Not even a skirt or a dress like the women in my village wear. She’s not damaged, says the ugly man who grabbed me and held me all night when he hands me over to her, but keeps crying all the time like a baby.
I want to go home, I say, trying to control my cry. I want my Mami. These are the first words I say since they took me away from Capirato, my home village. Maybe because she is a woman, and a Big Mamá, she would understand and send me back home. But her arm, the way she holds me, is even stronger and more hurting than how that ugly man held me. And her voice is threatening when she tells me: I’m your Mami now, so stop crying!
Cry even louder when she says say that. She is not my Mami. She is…
Slaps me. So hard she slaps me that I see only dark skies and lose my balance. But not on the ground I fall—falling and falling into deep and empty space. Going to die. Dear God: please let me die.
Little Maria
Below is the first 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.
Fall:
“If life is a garden,
Women are the flowers.
Men are the gardeners,
Who pick up the prettiest ones.”
I sing this song while jumping rope with Adela, my best friend, before going off to school. I’m only twelve, but Mami keeps telling me I should grow up and stop jumping rope. Do things girls my age are supposed to be doing, like helping her in the kitchen and learning how to sew. I hate it when she says that. I’m holding tight to the rope that connects me to my childhood, afraid of losing it, afraid of growing up. It’s as if somehow, don’t know how, I know what lies ahead.
The dirt road to school, that’s what lies ahead. Adela and I run hand in hand there, skipping between the small stones, still singing that silly song a boy at school taught us yesterday, about the flowers and the gardeners. And laughing about it too, questioning who is the prettiest one: her or me? And this boy, Angelo his name, is he in love with me or with her?
We come off the bend to the only half-paved road in our poor little village, happy to bounce on solid ground. Just then a black car suddenly stops near us, making noise and raising dust. Never before in my life have I seen such a beautiful, shiny car. I can see myself reflected in it, like in a twisted mirror. But only for a second, because the back window rolls down immediately and a man pokes out his head, asking me for my name. Maria, I say. I hate my name, I really do. It’s so…
He tells me to come over and show him the way to our school. Adela whispers in my ear that I shouldn’t do it and drops my hand. But I do it anyhow, maybe because Mami always told me to obey men. Especially older men like him. When I get closer he opens the door suddenly, grabs my hand and pulls me inside. He is very strong, so it’s easy for him to place me in the backseat between his legs and push my head down. All I can think of is my schoolbag: why did I leave it behind on the dirt road? No matter, Adela will bring it to school with her. Of course she would. That’s where we are going, isn’t it?
The car answers me by taking off screaming. I want to scream too, but I can’t. His stinky hand is on my mouth. It hurts me so I bite it. He curses bad words and hits me on the back of my head. Now I really scream. He is strangling me. I can’t breathe. His firm thighs clap my hips. I can’t move. I can’t shout. I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes, I’m afraid the world that was promised to me—going to school with Adela, meeting Angelo and our other friends there, studying history which I like the most, our day-trip next week to the Mayan ruins, even graduation and going to high school in town—may be gone and lost forever. And together with the cloud of dust I imagine the speeding car is raising behind as it leaves our village, an evil cloud is falling all over me. Covering me with eternal darkness and sadness.
Sex War One
To give you a taste of my book, “Sex War One,” I’ve been posting segments of my award-winning short story, “The Monster,” which serves also as the basis for this book.
Sex War One – a dystopian, Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful Sex War One – my dystopian Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful characterization,” said the Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World. Kindle Edition & Smashwords Edition (for iTunes, Kobo, B&N & more.) For further details please check my books page.
Here then is the last segment:
He wanted to protest but quickly realized his present situation did not allow him to do so. He still had his wits about him, which was a good sign. He knew that everything was done under N.R.’s instructions, and that a constant struggle – maybe even hatred and resentment – would forever rule the air between them. The look she directed at him was full of investigative curiosity. She didn’t believe his explanations, he suspected.
He left them shortly thereafter and went up to his room, thinking that at least this stage was successfully accomplished. The Monster no longer existed within the “sane” colony’s walls. She wouldn’t disturb the “proper” way of life here anymore, or threaten in any way the “forward” progression and development of this golden race.
He rushed to take a long, decontaminated shower, as if wishing to shed down the drain each and every remnant of his sojourn outside. He felt he had to get rid of the impressions that the world he had visited left him with. Especially, he had to let go of the bug that may had bitten him and taken possession of him. Over there in the cave’s ground, with that daughter of nature.
Afterwards, following a meal he hastily prepared and ate, he lay down in his bed, listening to his beloved music; music from a different world and era, preformed by the colony’s music-computer. Maybe a man named Beethoven composed it originally; maybe it was based on his Moonlight Sonata. He had read about him once, being deaf and all, and had heard this piece of music once before. He remembered it fondly, and so had chosen to enter the word “moonlight” into his electronic distance-device. He was honoring not only the memory of a bygone world, age and man, but also – still so alive within him – the magnificent moon and moonlight he had witnessed before entering the colony.
He remembered the dream he had dreamed in the cave. He thought about it and about what had preceded it. What he had gone through with Z.Z. He didn’t have a word for it – or was afraid to search for it. He was not completely at ease yet, revisiting in his head all that had happened to him outside during that long, eventful day, and all the places and vistas he had seen.
Finally, a good feeling began to spread throughout his body and mind, unassisted by drugs and pills. He felt stronger; he felt wiser. He needed only courage.
Sex War One
To give you a taste of my book, “Sex War One,” I’ve been posting segments of my award-winning short story, “The Monster,” which serves also as the basis for this book.
Sex War One – a dystopian, Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful Sex War One – my dystopian Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful characterization,” said the Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World. Kindle Edition & Smashwords Edition (for iTunes, Kobo, B&N & more.) For further details please check my books page.
Here then is the last segment:
He wanted to protest but quickly realized his present situation did not allow him to do so. He still had his wits about him, which was a good sign. He knew that everything was done under N.R.’s instructions, and that a constant struggle – maybe even hatred and resentment – would forever rule the air between them. The look she directed at him was full of investigative curiosity. She didn’t believe his explanations, he suspected.
He left them shortly thereafter and went up to his room, thinking that at least this stage was successfully accomplished. The Monster no longer existed within the “sane” colony’s walls. She wouldn’t disturb the “proper” way of life here anymore, or threaten in any way the “forward” progression and development of this golden race.
He rushed to take a long, decontaminated shower, as if wishing to shed down the drain each and every remnant of his sojourn outside. He felt he had to get rid of the impressions that the world he had visited left him with. Especially, he had to let go of the bug that may had bitten him and taken possession of him. Over there in the cave’s ground, with that daughter of nature.
Afterwards, following a meal he hastily prepared and ate, he lay down in his bed, listening to his beloved music; music from a different world and era, preformed by the colony’s music-computer. Maybe a man named Beethoven composed it originally; maybe it was based on his Moonlight Sonata. He had read about him once, being deaf and all, and had heard this piece of music once before. He remembered it fondly, and so had chosen to enter the word “moonlight” into his electronic distance-device. He was honoring not only the memory of a bygone world, age and man, but also – still so alive within him – the magnificent moon and moonlight he had witnessed before entering the colony.
He remembered the dream he had dreamed in the cave. He thought about it and about what had preceded it. What he had gone through with Z.Z. He didn’t have a word for it – or was afraid to search for it. He was not completely at ease yet, revisiting in his head all that had happened to him outside during that long, eventful day, and all the places and vistas he had seen.
Finally, a good feeling began to spread throughout his body and mind, unassisted by drugs and pills. He felt stronger; he felt wiser. He needed only courage.
Sex War One
To give you a taste of my book, “Sex War One,” I’ve been posting segments of my award-winning short story, “The Monster,” which serves also as the basis for this book.
Sex War One – a dystopian, Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful Sex War One – my dystopian Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful characterization,” said the Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World. Kindle Edition & Smashwords Edition (for iTunes, Kobo, B&N & more.) For further details please check my books page.
Here then is the twenty-eighth segment:
The approaching night began to close in on him. But there was still some light outside, at this hour of dusk, and he was able to find his way down to the valley below. From there, the searchlights of the colony’s Periscopic-Tower were guiding him along, as they were looking out for him. He began his run toward the colony, fully aware that he would be forever affected by the events of this day. His mind was pure and clear as the mind of a small child. Only one thought was there: survival! He would have to report to the citizens of the colony. He would have to tell them what took place outside. He needed to find a good, convincing excuse for his long absence.
Before he had reached the small hill on top of the colony, he was able to see a sight he had never before seen. He saw the moon: a white, glowing moon rising, washing the darkening plains with an expansive, majestic silver light. He stood on top of the hill for one more moment, savoring this unequal sight, before going down the stairs leading to the Periscopic-Tower.
*
Inside the colony he was received with opened arms. Literally: two men met him in the Transfer-Room and helped him to take off his outside trip-suit. In the long corridors of the colony he met many of the citizens, anxiously waiting to find out how he was, and learn what had happened to him. They were glad to see him alive, and with him the dress he had brought back. Z.Z.’s dress.
In the main Control-Room, N.R. and B.F. were waiting for him. He rushed to return the radiation-gun to Robot W.1, who immediately deposited it inside the Weapons-Cell. He threw the nylon dress at N.R. and she caught it in midair, holding on to it for a moment and twisting her nose in disgust, before throwing it away on the floor.
D.L. told them – not looking at them though, busying himself with checking one of the large, oval-shaped computer screens – that he had exterminated the Monster. He had taken a rest lying down, he further told them, and had fallen asleep till sunset. Only then did he wake up, and then hurried back to the colony. He further told them that the air outside was mostly clear of nuclear radiation. It was possible for him, he emphasized, to breathe without the trip-suit helmet and its special, built-in gas mask. He watched the sun rising and setting, and saw the moon appearing up in the darkening skies. He estimated that in not too many years ahead, some flora, maybe even insects and other such living things, would start growing and living outside again.
N.R. and B.F. looked at each other and smirked in disbelief. They gave him a report on what had taken place inside the colony while he was gone. They told him about the steady development of the babies in the last tier; on the current situation in the semen-freezer; and the damage, later fixed, to the electronic sucking-pump of the female eggs. They had conducted an experiment in the Birth-Laboratory with the graduating tier, working on the birth-production-line. The experiment was a success. The backyard down at the bottom level of the colony was cleared and cleaned. It was as if the Monster’s shack was never there in the first place. Nor was she!
Hillel F. Damron @ hillelbridge.com 