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"James, I need to get out of here right now!" Her voice was a weak whisper lost in between sobs.
"I will take you anywhere you want, just tell me."
"No." No?! "I need to get the hell away from you. Stay with your friends; this is their day."
"Rita, I can't let you wander around when you are in this state."
She pushed herself away from me looking dead into my eyes with a hard look.
"I'm not your fucking concern. I am married to another, and now, I need to start cleaning up the mess you made."
What?! Alarms, red flags, stop signs, you name it, and they all went off in my head right then.
"No, no, no, Rita, no! You can’t leave me. You're my fucking family; you are mine!" I felt paralyzed by helplessness and panic. She couldn’t...she couldn’t...what about me? What about Chelsea?
What about Rita? She couldn’t go back there.
She started walking away, aiming for the door, and I turned to look at her, but I couldn’t move. The anxiety was crippling.
"Rita...you promised."
Halfway out, she stopped to look at me, still crying.
"You promised you'd remember how much I love you. No matter what."
For a fraction of a second, there was indecision in her eyes, but it died as fast as my hope.
"Goodbye, James Sullivan. We have nothing to say to each other anymore. Stay the hell away from me."
It was hard to breathe. And it was so fucking hard to walk because of the stupid shoes. I hated them. I hated this dress. I hated this entire city. I hated everything that man had ever touched.
This whole thing sounded like a horror movie, but it wasn’t. It was my fucked-up reality.
What did I do now? Was Trujillo looking for me? And if he was, how long till he crushed my kneecaps for running away?
Trujillo Batista was the kind of man you saw drinking in a bar, laughing with friends, charming everyone left and right. He was attentive and sweet, shining in the light of day like a diamond, but everything changed when the sun went down, and there were no rays left to reflect lies from his mirror mask. I met him in my senior year of high school, right after my eighteenth birthday. He swept me off my feet with his lines and dimpled smile, but mostly it was his stories of freedom that sold my heart to him.
Born in Boston from a Cuban father and an American mother, Trujillo made me draw for him all the time. He would see a building or a landscape and ask me to draw it, and he always kept every single one. He made it seem like my art meant something. He told me about all the art galleries he visited back in the US, all the things I could do with my art...of course, I fell in love like a helpless, stupid, blinded puppy.
So, I left with him. I followed the dream - a life like my father wanted for me but on my terms. I thought I was chasing my faith until Trujillo started spitting poison in my face.
We only had a small religious ceremony in Saint Joseph Cathedral, the patron saint of marriage no less, just the two of us and a few nuns to witness. He never wanted me to meet his family or get legally married, but I was fine with it because every morning, he'd tell me that I was a pretty girl, and I was talented. The night we got married, he took me to dinner in a beautiful Italian restaurant with the most amazing oil paintings on the walls...
Two weeks later, he got me a new set of canvases and oils to train my hand on them - I was ecstatic, walking on clouds. I was so overtaken by happiness that I messed up his espresso. Trujillo smashed my left hand on the counter and broke my pinky to be sure I never forgot my lesson - never use sweetener on his coffee, brown sugar only. That was worth shattering my bones.
From that point on, I was free falling into hell.
Every week, every time we went outside the house - when I was allowed to - he'd see something he didn’t like and teach me another lesson. Sometimes I fought back, but it didn't make me less of a victim. I was lost, alone and dependent on the man who took all his frustration out on me. What was I supposed to do, leave? Where? My family told me not to come to their door licking my wounds when Trujillo would kick me to the curb. Go to the police? Me? A Cuban immigrant with nothing on her name and an expired passport?
Trapped. I was a small mouse in a big, bad trap.
The day I lost my memory, he threatened to slit my throat open because he saw me talking to the mail man. Trujillo took after his father's boiling Cuban blood; he was possessive - possessed by jealousy. If he left the apartment for longer than twenty minutes, he'd look around to see if the furniture was in the same spot. Once I kicked down a pillow from the living room couch, and he accused me of sneaking another man in to ‘give him a quick suck like a thirty dollar whore’ - his words, not mine. I got so many of his fists in my back, I couldn't get out the bed for nine days.
I ran - I was running from a machete that pressed on my neck when James found me. The image was still fuzzy, but I didn't have an accident. I ran and ran and ran, so fast, I was sure I was about to fly and then...it was like someone took out my batteries. I felt numb and went down like a stone in a lake, only to wake up looking into the warmest eyes I'd ever seen. Spring-green, happy, luminous. James's eyes don't carry a fraction of the dusky evil that lurks inside Trujillo.
James.
He picked me up from the street and took care of me...
