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Isabela

Before

I feel the warm water running down my body, causing a slight stinging sensation when it touches my swollen and sensitive cheek. I don't wash my hair, which is tied up in a tight bun on top of my head. I have exactly ten minutes to shower every time my morning of classes ends. Then I have another ten to get dressed, and another five until I reach the family's driver parked outside the school. And so I get home in time to avoid annoying my stepfather.

A minute late usually ends badly. But today I arrive in time to hear my mother's speech as she sits at the table for lunch:

" And the child full of cavities, can you believe it, honey... I told Marie that Isabela never ate sweets and that's why her oral health is perfect — she boasts in her mother of the year speech, incapable of fooling anyone. Even the walls must be tired of her hypocritical litanies.

Marcos is sitting in one of the chairs at the sumptuous table with an off-white top and honey-colored wood. Her square face, covered in melasma spots, opens in a smile, but her distorted mouth with teeth yellowed by smoking doesn't show any true joy. It's a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. I put my backpack on the L-shaped sofa in the living room, then head to the table. My heart bleeds as I force myself to lean over to my stepfather and kiss his cheek, which smells of imported perfume and cigars. I force my body not to freeze when Marcos gently smooths my hair, which I let down before entering the house, but he takes a while to comply. When I manage to move and walk, I see my mother's contorted and red face, as she purses her upper lips in a frown. I sit down next to her, facing Marcos.

"Good afternoon, Mom!" I greet her.

My stepfather takes the gray cloth napkin and wipes away the trace of my foundation that stained his cheek. I put on makeup to cover the bruise his huge hands left on my face yesterday afternoon. I got an average grade in Math...

I chew on salmon with caper sauce while my mother chatters about work and her husband pretends to listen. My mother's round, pretty face lights up, making her look younger than her thirty-five years. My mother? She doesn't look like the kind woman who told me bedtime stories, who loved watching cartoons with me...

Why did everything change so much when my father left?

The following month, she took Marcos to live with us, and I stopped being an important part of her life. Diana used to say I was her little Rapunzel. My hair always grew too fast, so she gave me that nickname. Everyone around us tells us how much we look alike: the round face, the dark and subtly large eyes, the chin with a slight cleft in the middle, the dark blond hair, the light freckles spaced out below the eyes, floating over the nose...

Where is the mother I knew?

We have lunch together every day, because they both usually work from early afternoon until late at night. They set a time for lunch as a family. A beautiful family in which the stepfather abuses his stepdaughter and the mother pretends not to know, only showing jealousy... of her husband.

As I force myself to chew my food, bite after bite, I look at my pale wrists that display thick, bluish veins.

Would a deep enough vertical cut get rid of this?

“What do you think, princess?” Marcos asks.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t hear…”

A vein pops out on his neck when I confess that I wasn’t paying attention.

My hands feel cold and I swallow hard, squeezing the fork tightly in my hand.

I wait for his outburst, in vain. My stepfather takes a sip of grape juice and looks at me:

“We should go to the country house next month, on the long weekend.”

I freeze in my chair. My eyes burn and I start blinking back tears. Diana clears her throat, realizing I'm about to cry. She knows what usually happens there...

"It would be great..." I whisper, barely having enough voice.

My answer seems to satisfy him, because he continues eating and continues talking to my mother, who has gone pale. She hates that house as much as I do.

Before my father died prematurely from a blood clot in his brain, when I was only ten years old, our life was happy. My mother wasn't that strange woman who looks at the pedophile in front of her with affection. She was devoted and kind, she never raised her hand to me or cursed me, as she usually does.

When my father passed away, Marcos appeared like an avalanche in our lives. At first, he pretended to like me, brought me gifts and told me to call him uncle. Over time, anything I did seemed to irritate him. If I dropped a glass on the floor, I was shaken by the arms to the sound of her loud screams. Then she moved on to pinching... Always increasing the violence until she reached the stage we are at now. I am fifteen years old and not a week goes by that I don't get a slap in the face or a tug on my arm hair. But that's still the least of it.

My body began to change over time. My breasts grew, my curves increased, even if only a little for a fifteen-year-old, and I began to notice that the door to my bathroom would open while I was taking a shower. At first, he would just peek in like a sneaky fox. Over time, he became more brazen, and now he puts himself all over the bathroom. Sometimes, he touches himself, but he doesn't touch my body, not while I'm awake...

I'll never forget my mother's reaction when I told her.

"Start taking showers at school, bitch! Or do you think I don't see the way you look at him?" was what she yelled as she pulled me by the hair and threw me out of her room.

I even thought about my grandmother... Right in Marcos' first year in our lives, when the abuse started, I asked her to pick me up so I could spend a few days at her house. Somehow, my stepfather found out and threatened me, shouting that if I said anything about our life to Hellen, my father's mother, he would find a way to put her behind bars. After all, he was a famous judge in the fight against corruption. He had enough connections and enough power to do whatever he wanted.

I feel besieged. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to help me.

This is my shitty life.

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