Maria Fernanda Ampuero

When I first emigrated here, my boss at the internet café, the one who told me I reminded him of his little girl back home, tried to rape me inside one of the phone booths where other people like me cried over their dead or consoled their living. When I resisted, he bashed my head into the telephone. With my mouth full of blood, I turned around, screamed, and spit in his face

Alberto came out to greet me flanked by two Dobermans. As a little girl I’d had a Doberman named Pacha who would eat flowers, leaves, and anything else she came
across. She was friendly and docile until one day she wasn’t. She snatched a sweet roll from my baby sister’s right hand and took off two fingers along with it.

That afternoon my dad tied Pacha up, fed her, petted her smooth back like black silk, and then shot her in the head

I asked the dogs’ names and he mumbled something I didn’t catch, but I didn’t dare to ask again. I learned very young never to bother an angry man, a drunk man, a strange man, a man

I don’t say a word to anyone. I don’t want them to hate John, I don’t want them to pity me, I don’t want to get divorced because they’ve always told me that a woman who gets divorced is a sinner. I also don’t want my family to find out I’m one of those women we’ve all heard about so many times—who puts up with the beatings from my
violent, alcoholic husband because even if he hits me, even if he kills me, he’s still my husband, saying I fell from behind sunglasses, repeating over and over, even when no one asks, My husband is under a lot of pressure.