Chapter 2 - The Marks on the Skin
The clothing store was unusually loud on Friday afternoon. A shipment of autumn coats had arrived early, and the manager, a sharp-featured woman named Clara, was pacing the floor, directing us to hang them on the metal racks near the front window. The smell of new wool and plastic packaging filled the air, making my head ache with a dull, persistent throb.
"Elena, you're missing the tags on that rack," Clara said, her voice cutting through my thoughts like a pair of shears. She pointed a manicured finger at a line of cardigans I had just finished steaming. "You need to double-check the sizing before they go out. You look like you're miles away today."
"I'm sorry, Clara," I said, forcing a small smile as I wiped my brow. "I didn't sleep well last night."
"None of us do," she muttered, turning away to scold a teenager who was folding jeans incorrectly.
I went back to the cardigans, my hands moving automatically, but my mind was stuck in the dark bedroom from three nights ago. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sofia’s body jerk away from my hand. I saw her knuckles turning white around that stuffed rabbit.
I hadn't spoken to Alejandro about it. How could I? What would I say? My daughter flinched when I touched her, so I think you're a monster. He would look at me with that calm, rational expression of his. He would tell me I was carrying the trauma of Mateo’s sudden death, that I was projecting my fear of loss onto our new, stable life. He would be gentle about it, which would only make me feel more insane, more ungrateful.
At 5:30 PM, the shift finally ended. I punched my card at the digital clock, grabbed my purse, and walked out into the blinding San Antonio sun. The heat off the asphalt was intense, rising in visible waves that distorted the shapes of the cars in the lot.
I drove home without turning on the radio. The old sedan’s air conditioner took ten minutes to blow anything other than warm, dusty air, but I barely noticed. I was counting the minutes until I could see Sofia. I had started picking her up from the after-school daycare program myself this week, telling Alejandro he didn't need to make the drive after his shift at the warehouse. He hadn't argued; he had simply told me it was sweet that I wanted more time with her.
When I pulled up to the small brick building of the daycare, the children were playing on the enclosed playground out back. I walked through the gate, my eyes immediately searching the crowd of bright shirts and running bodies for the small, dark head of curls that belonged to my daughter.
I found her sitting under the shade of a large live oak tree near the chain-link fence. The other children were crowded around a plastic slide, laughing and pushing one another, but Sofia was alone. She was holding a stick, drawing small, repetitive lines in the dry dirt between the tree roots.
"Sofia," I called out softly as I approached.
She didn't jump. She just raised her head slowly, her brown eyes tracking my movement until I knelt down in the dust beside her. A faint, tentative smile flickered across her face, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"Hi, Mommy," she said.
"Hi, sweetie. Ready to go home?"
She looked down at the stick in her hand, her small fingers turning it over and over. "Can we go to the park instead? The one with the big swings?"
"It's very hot today, baby. I thought we could go home and have some ice cream. Alejandro bought the strawberry kind you like."
The stick in her hand snapped. She didn't look up, but her shoulders dropped, her small body collapsing inward slightly. "Okay," she whispered.
I reached out to lift her up, my hands catching her under her arms to swing her into my hip the way I had done a thousand times before.
The moment my right hand pressed against her upper arm, Sofia let out a sharp, indrawn gasp of pain. She didn't cry out loud, but she pulled her arm away quickly, her face twisting into a tight grimace.
I froze, my hands hovering in the air between us. "Sofia? What is it? Did I hurt your arm?"
"No," she said quickly, her voice rising in pitch as she tucked her arm against her side. "I'm okay."
"Sofia, look at me," I said, my voice trembling now, all the false calm of the past few days dissolving into a cold, hard panic. I reached out, more gently this time, and took her hand, pulling her sleeve up toward her shoulder.
The sleeve of her yellow t-shirt rolled up, exposing the pale skin of her upper bicep.
There, stamped against her skin like a brand, was a cluster of purple and yellowish bruises. They weren't the round, scattered marks of a child who had fallen against the playground equipment. They were four distinct, elongated shadows—the clear, unmistakable shape of adult fingers wrapping around her small arm and squeezing with enough force to burst the vessels beneath the skin.
My breath stopped in my throat. The playground around us, the shouting children, the sound of traffic from the main road—it all receded into a distant, underwater roar.
"Who did this, Sofia?" I whispered, my voice shaking so hard I could barely form the words. I touched the edge of the darkest bruise with the tip of my finger. Sofia shivered, her eyes filling with large, silent tears that ran down her dusty cheeks.
"I fell," she whispered, repeating the word like a lesson she had been forced to memorize. "I fell off the big blocks at school."
"Sofia, these aren't from a fall," I said, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. "These are finger marks, baby. Did someone grab you? Did a kid at school do this?"
She shook her head, her lips pressed together so tightly they turned white. She wouldn't look at me. She kept her eyes fixed on the broken stick in the dirt.
"Was it a teacher?"
No response.
"Sofia... was it Alejandro?"
The moment the name left my mouth, she let out a small, terrified sob. She pulled her sleeve down with her free hand, covering the marks, and buried her face against my chest, her little shoulders heaving as she wept. She didn't say yes. She didn't say no. But her terror was an answer louder than any confession.
I held her tight, my arms wrapped around her small, shaking frame, my eyes staring blankly at the rough bark of the live oak tree. My mind was a chaotic storm of black thoughts. Not Alejandro. Not the man who fixed the floors. Not the man who read her stories.
But the bruises were there. They were real, they were physical, and they were shaped like the hand of a man.
"It's okay, baby," I whispered into her wet curls, though my own teeth were chattering with fear. "Mommy's here. Mommy's got you. Nobody's going to hurt you."
As I carried her to the car, my mind began to map out the geography of my own ignorance. I thought about the bruises I had seen on her knee last week, the faint yellow mark near her ribs that I had explained away as a bump from her bicycle handlebars. How many times had I looked at her skin and chosen to see a clumsy child instead of a victim? How many times had I protected my own illusion of a happy marriage at the expense of my daughter’s safety?
I put her in her car seat, buckling the straps with numb, useless fingers. She had stopped crying now, her face pale and exhausted, her little hand gripping the stuffed bunny she had brought from the house.
I climbed into the driver's seat and turned the key. I looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was 6:00 PM. Alejandro would be home from the warehouse by 6:30 PM. He would have the water running for her bath by 7:00 PM.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My eyes looked hollow, terrified, but beneath the fear, a cold, hard stone of resolve was beginning to settle in my gut.
May you like
I wasn't going to ask him. I wasn't going to give him the chance to give me a gentle, logical explanation that would make me doubt my own eyes.
Tonight, I was going to see for myself.
