“My husband beat me while I was pregnant and his parents laughed… but they didn’t know that a simple message would destroy everything.”

Helepa and Raúl, her parents, were sitting like spectators of a daily spectacle, while Nora held her recorded phone, as if my pain were entertainment.

—“Look at her”— said Helepa, smiling with a coldness that chilled the blood— “she thinks that carrying a baby makes her special.”

There was no compassion, no doubt, no moral conflict, only a shared narrative where I was the problem.

Victor repeated the orders, as if he were speaking to an animal, or talking to his wife, or recognizing the mother of his child.

I opened the refrigerator, but the world started to spin, and at that moment I stopped saying that my body could no longer sustain that pain and its consequences.