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Slowly the faint light disappeared from her body. The wounds were healed but the blood remained. Carefully I laid her head down on the bed and made my way over to the bathroom attached to her room. Grabbing a pink cotton cloth and dampening it under warm water. I wouldn’t let her sit in her own blood. She didn’t need to wake up and see that. Gently I wiped the blood from her face, returning her freckles to the soft light brown they had once been. I don’t know how long I was there for, wiping the blood off her body. It could’ve been seconds, minutes, maybe even hours but the minute her eyes opened and those green eyes looked back at me. Everything stopped.
“Gabe where-” Her voice raspy as if she had been screaming
“We’re home, in your room.” I took a deep breath, stealing a spot next to her on the bed,
“Catalina, what happened?”
Catalina tensed and she slowly shifted away from me. The movement was so quick and small that most wouldn’t have noticed. Slowly she sat up, her back leaning against the velvet headboard, pressing her knees to her chest and clasping her hands together so tightly it seemed she was holding on for dear life.
“Did..did that guy do anything-”
“It wasn’t him.”
“Someone else was here?”
Aside from a few acquaintances, Catalina was the only person who knew about this place. Catalina was the only person I ever let stay here. No one should know about this place. I picked this location specifically because it was far away from everyone, the nearest neighbor was a good eight miles down the road. The house was surrounded by huge trees that from a distance almost camouflaged us. Unless you knew about this place, there was no way you would even know we were here. Besides Catalina, no one knew about it. No one was getting into this house unless Catalina or I wanted them to. Which meant Catalina had to have known this person.
“It was my mother.”
Oh fuck.
Tiana Alvarez was not a kind person. Over the years since I’ve known Catalina, I had witnessed her mother do atrocious things to her child. I remembered how she had beaten Catalina so brutally Catalina was in pain every time she sat down for a week and yet the woman somehow managed to smile and pretend everything was okay while her daughter suffered. And if Catalina complained? It only made things worse. So when Catalina decided to move in with me at nineteen, I was prepared for arguments and screaming. I was prepared to step in and defend Catalina if I had to. Yet she was relatively unmoved by Catalina’s decision to move out. It was as if the woman didn’t care. She never called Catalina or even texted her after that. Yet Catalina always tried to reach out, to establish some sort of connection that I will never understand why she would want. She was always met with silence.
“How did she-”
“One of the guys I hooked up with apparently was the son of my mother’s boss. I guess he was angry that I didn’t want much to do with him so he ranted to his mother and it just so happened that my mother had overheard.”
“How did she find-”
“He drove her here.”
“What did she do?”
Catalina sighed before answering me,
“Went on her usual tandem about how I’m a disgrace to the family, how I never should have been born, and how I was a mistake. You know all the usual stuff.”
Unfortunately, I did know. Those claims Tiana would throw at her daughter weren’t new. When Catalina was younger it hurt her. A lot and as a child she always thought there was something wrong with her but as she grew older, she became numb to it. Her mother’s words eventually didn’t strike her as deeply as they used to. They still hurt her but unfortunately, she became used to it. Her mother saying those things became her new normal.
“What else did she do?”
Catalina shifted slightly, pulling her legs even closer to her chest, lifting one hand to twirl a piece of hair that had fallen in her face,
“She had her favorite belt with her.”
Dammit
Catalina’s mother’s favorite belt was ultimately Catalina’s worst nightmare. A long black leather belt, encrusted with hard metal spikes, and depending on her mood, she would warm up those spikes with the fire from her lighter. I glanced over at Catalina as a small tear escaped her eye. Very rarely had I ever seen Catalina cry. As a child, she would cry during punishments at the hands of her mother but as she got older she taught herself to numb out the pain so she wouldn’t feel as much. She was Thirteen when she taught herself that.
“Twenty-five marks for twenty-five years of mistakes.” She whispered
I wrapped my arm around Catalina and pulled her close. I hated it. I hated that her mother had found her. I hated that her mother thought she had a right to come into my home, to Catalina’s home, and put her hands on Catalina. I hated that Catalina had to endure her. I hated everything about that woman.
“I will make sure she never steps foot on this property again. I promise you.”
Catalina remained silent. She wasn’t going to be okay. She was going to lie to herself and tell herself that everything was fine and she would get through it. But I knew what would happen, the familiar deadly cycle would repeat itself once again and again and again. I wouldn’t allow it. Not again. Not ever again.
* * *
