Chapter 1 - The Marks on the Skin
The pale bedroom light fell across Mariana’s exposed legs, and the breath caught in Julian’s throat so sharply it felt like swallowing glass.
Beneath the heavy wool of the blue blanket, Mariana’s lower body was a roadmap of brutal violence. Her ankles were swollen to twice their natural size, purple and blue bruising spreading like dark oil beneath her translucent skin. On her right thigh, jagged, angry red lacerations stretched across her pale flesh—fresh, infected, and inflamed. But worst of all were her knees. Scraped raw down to the tender pink tissue, they were caked in dried blood and cheap, yellowing salve that smelled faintly of rotten lard and sulfur.
"My God..." Julian whispered, dropping to his knees beside the bed, his knees cracking against the linoleum floor. He reached out with trembling fingers, terrified to touch her, terrified that even the displaced air from his hand would cause her pain. "Mariana... what is this? Who did this to you?!"
Mariana buried her face into the pillow, her thin shoulders shaking violently as uncontrollable sobs broke from her throat.
Behind him, Doña Carmen didn't gasp. She didn't cry out. She simply folded her arms across her chest, her lips pressing into a thin, pale line that carried no surprise at all—only cold, sharp irritation.
"Get up off the floor, Julian," Doña Carmen said, her voice flat and utterly devoid of pity. "Don't make a scene over a little clumsiness."
Julian turned his head slowly, his mind struggling to process his mother’s words. The warmth he had known from Doña Carmen his entire life—the woman who cooked black beans on Sundays, who made him hot chocolate when he had a fever as a child—seemed to evaporate into the chilly room air.
"Clumsiness?" Julian’s voice quivered, rising in pitch. "Look at her, Mom! Her legs are torn open! She’s infected! She can barely move!" He turned back to his wife, gently pulling her trembling hands away from her face. "Mari, look at me. Look at me, mi amor. Tell me what happened. Did someone attack you? Did someone break in while I was at the hardware store?"
Mariana shook her head frantically, her tear-filled eyes darting past Julian's shoulder toward Doña Carmen. "No... no, Julian, please... don't do this..."
"Tell him, then," Doña Carmen snapped, stepping closer to the bed, her shadow falling long and dark over Mariana’s pregnant belly. "Tell him how careless you are. Tell him how you can't even perform simple duties without causing trouble."
"Shut up, Mom!" Julian roared, standing up so fast his chair clattered back against the wall. He had never raised his voice to his mother in his entire thirty years of life. In a traditional Mexican household in Portales, speaking to one's mother like that was unthinkable. But looking at his pregnant wife cowering on the bed, something inside Julian snapped forever. "Just shut your mouth and let her speak!"
Doña Carmen recoiled slightly, her eyes narrowing into dangerous, dark slits. "You dare speak to me like that? For a girl you met three years ago?"
Julian ignored her, kneeling back down by Mariana. "Mari. Please. The truth."
Mariana swallowed hard, her chest heaving as she pulled the blanket back over her knees—not out of shame anymore, but out of sheer, instinctual terror.
"Three weeks ago..." Mariana whispered, her voice barely louder than the hum of the old refrigerator in the kitchen. "When you worked the double shift at the Central de Abasto... your mother came over."
Julian’s heart dropped into his stomach. "What?"
"She said... she said a proper daughter-in-law doesn't sit around while her husband works twelve hours," Mariana sobbed, tears spilling over her eyelashes and soaking into the faded pillowcase. "She told me I was lazy. She took me down to the building basement... to the old wash basins. The stone ones."
Julian knew those basins. They were cold, concrete tubs built in the 1950s, located down a flight of steep, unlit concrete stairs in the apartment basement—stairs that hadn't had a working lightbulb in three years.
"She made me carry three buckets of boiling water down those stairs, Julian," Mariana wept, her fingers clutching his shirt sleeve so tight her knuckles turned white. "She said I needed to scrub your father's old work coats and the heavy blankets by hand. She said machine washing made clothes cheap. I told her my head was spinning... the baby was heavy... I couldn't see the steps..."
Julian felt a cold sweat break out across his neck. "And you fell?"
"I asked her to hold my arm," Mariana whispered, her voice cracking entirely. "I begged her, Julian. I told her I was slipping. But she... she stepped back. She said, 'If you can't handle a bucket of water, you don't deserve to carry my son's child.' Then I lost my footing. I tumbled down seven concrete steps with the boiling bucket."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Julian felt as though the floor beneath him had opened up, swallowing him into a dark, bottomless void. He stared at his mother.
Doña Carmen didn't deny it. She stepped forward, tossing her leather purse onto the small dining table nearby, her chin held high.
"She’s exaggerating," Doña Carmen said smoothly, as if discussing a bad batch of sweet bread. "She tripped because she wasn't paying attention. I told her to get up, scrub her knees, and keep her mouth shut. I gave her that sulfur ointment from the market to heal it. I told her if she complained to you, it would stress you out, make you lose focus at work, and ruin your career at the hardware store. I told her a good Mexican wife suffers in quiet so her husband can provide."
"You... you let her lie here for three weeks?" Julian whispered, his voice trembling with sheer horror. "Infected? In agony? With my child inside her?!"
"She wasn't dying!" Doña Carmen scoffed. "Women have been falling down and getting scraped since the beginning of time! My mother worked the cornfields until the day she gave birth to me! This girl is soft, Julian. She’s weak. She’s trying to drive a wedge between you and your family!"
"GET OUT."
The two words came out of Julian not as a shout, but as a guttural, terrifying growl.
Doña Carmen froze. "What did you say?"
"I said GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" Julian screamed, standing up and pointing a rigid, shaking finger at the apartment door. "Get out before I lose what little mind I have left!"
"Julian, I am your mother!" Doña Carmen’s face flushed red with indignation. "You do not kick your mother out for a lying street orphan!"
Julian didn't argue. He walked to the door, pulled it wide open, grabbed his mother's heavy coat off the wall rack, and shoved it into her arms.
"If you ever come near my wife again," Julian said, his eyes burning with tears of pure fury, "I will call the police. I don't care that you gave birth to me. You are a monster."
Doña Carmen gasped, clutching her coat to her chest. She looked at Julian, then over his shoulder at Mariana weeping on the bed.
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"You will regret this, Julian," Doña Carmen spat, her voice venomous as she stepped out into the dark, echoing hallway. "She will ruin you. And when you come crawling back to me, asking for money, asking for help... the door will be locked."
Julian slammed the heavy door shut, locked the deadbolt, and leaned his forehead against the cold wood, his whole body shaking as he let out a jagged, broken breath.
