by C. I. Lopez
Yasmin sighed with relief at being away from him. She tried to move but felt excruciating pain. It was caused by Tomas snatching and ripping a handful of hair from her scalp the night before. Yasmin lay back in her bed, nursing her bruised back and aching head. It made her think of the possibility that he might have some ‘accident’ in mind for her when he tired of his sadistic abuse. Living with Tomas had become life-threatening.
As had become her habit, Miss Belky showed up with her bag of goodies; potions and chants to soothe her Boss Lady. Finding the teenager full of injuries in the morning had become a common occurrence. The maid did not question Tomas Chacon’s inappropriate use of his young spouse. This time, however, Tomas had inflicted severe damage to Yasmin. The bruise spreading on her scalp to the size of a baseball cap.
Miss Belky did everything she could to maintain the young woman as comfortable as possible with her particular type of medicine. She used teas doctored with a touch of the boss’s heroin to keep the pain at bay and allowing the girl some relief by being able to sleep. She braced Yasmin’s aching spine first, anointing it with a poultice of her healing balms.
Once, while administering her medicines, Miss Belky whispered in Yasmin’s ear. “You need to leave him.” The woman had glanced around nervously to make sure there were no recording devices in the room. She understood how dangerous it was for her to speak in her boss’s household. Miss Belky usually remained tight-lipped in the house, but seeing what Tomas had done to the nice young woman was unpardonable.
Ignoring the pain in her head, Yasmin turned to glance at Miss Belky, reflective of what she had been thinking since last night’s incident. Tomas’ threat to kill her was drumming in her ears and fully aware that risking escape would involve considerable risk. At the time, the pain was too intense to do more than reflect on the thought.
*
As expected, Tomas returned from his business trip after two days and came in to see Yasmin. Seeing her wrapped in Miss Belky’s brace and smelling the aromatic Haitian medicine bothered him.
Yasmin opened her eyes, and upon seeing Tomas, she painfully sat up on her bed. She asked Tomas to please allow her chauffeur, Pedro, to take her to a hospital.
“You’re not going anywhere, baby,” Tomas asserted authoritatively.
“But Tomas, I have to see a doctor,” Yasmin implored, mere speech wreaking pain, sending a grimace across her face as she tried to stand. It was all she could do to stay on her feet, dizziness nearly overcoming her.
“Lie down and get some rest. You’ll be fine in a few days.” The look on his face telling her he would tolerate no more rebuttals. “I can smell Miss Belky’s medicine in the room. I don’t like her doing anything to you.”
Knowing better than to argue, Yasmin laid back down, embittered by Tomas’ firm control over her life. The week stretched endlessly; every day filled with unrelenting physical pain, except when Miss Belky brought her some of her special tea. Time pressed upon the girl during the solitude of her days, giving her time to think. She began brainstorming possible plans of escape, realizing she would have only one opportunity to make it work, or die at Tomas’ hands.
Another week passed, all the while, Tomas was going out every night and coming back stinking of other women’s sex. He slept in his own room, but not before stopping in to see his wife upon his return to enquire how she was doing. One night Tomas went out, dressed in an expensive suit and wearing a particularly smart white shirt and a silk tie. He came home smelling of alcohol and other distasteful aromas. It had become his habit since Yasmin had been too ill to join him.
By this time, Yasmin was used to his nightly stops to say goodnight and to ask how she was. She was particularly repulsed by the bright red lipstick staining his white shirt as well as being smeared all over his face. His red-smeared lips reminded Yasmin of a baboon’s ass. As usual, he came to say goodnight to her, only to accentuate his power to do as he pleased aware that his wife could clearly see the lipstick. She cringed at his touch.
With utter terror, Yasmin watched as he took off his coat and tie and his shirt and pants, letting them all fall to the floor. Drunkenly, he dropped into her bed, the stink of him overwhelming the girl, who forced her body to a sitting position, turned on the light, and spoke to her husband acidly.
“Tomas, it’s obvious that you’re drunk and stinking of sex. I would appreciate it if you didn’t lie in my bed in that condition.”
Tomas reached over his wife to turn off the light, and mumbled in his disgusting drunk voice, “I’ll fucking well sleep in any bed in my house that I please, so shut the hell up.” With a yawn, he turned his back to her.
Fed up with her situation, Yasmin was unable to let it go. “Better still, just give me a divorce and let me leave here.” It was the first time she’d ever mentioned the word divorce to him.
It got his attention, and he bolted to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and flicked the light back on, consumed by instant rage at her request. For several seconds, Tomas remained quiet, then he turned enough to reach out and punch his wife on her jaw.
“You stupid bitch, you just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?” With his teeth-gritting, he spoke in a tone that hissed with venom. “Don’t you ever mention divorce to me again, Yasmin. If you should ever get the notion of trying to run away from me, I will kill you. Mark my words.”
Despite the pain that was shooting from her dislocated jaw and spreading over her whole face, Yasmin was too incensed to let well enough alone. She spoke her mind through clenched teeth to control the pain in her jaw.
“Tomas, the stench coming off your body, will keep me from sleeping. We’ve already agreed to sleep in different rooms, so please, leave my bed.”
Leering in her direction, Tomas made a scoffing sound, as if what she wanted was of no importance, and instead, he turned her face in his direction. Inflicting incredible pain, he crushed his lipstick-smeared lips to hers, hard and bruising, drawing blood.
“Stop it, Tomas,” she demanded, fighting him with her fists, not realizing her outburst merely encouraged him. She struggled with him, crying out at his abuse. Her jaw now hurting dreadfully. Before he finished atrociously abusing her physically and sexually, she was begging him to stop.
What he did next was the most sickening thing he had ever done. Hell would have been a relief, as he befouled her lips with the touch of his flaccid organ, knowing he’d just come from being with other women. He made her gag. His steel-grey eyes indicating there would be more punishment coming for the young wife.
Yasmin knew something was terribly sick about that look. His verbal expression just before a climax.
“Baby, baby, give it to Daddy,” was suddenly followed by him yelling, “You’re a cold bitch, Yasmin, about the coldest I’ve ever known. Where did I get the idea at the beginning, you were warm and passionate?”
The tone of his voice deepened Yasmin’s tenseness. She knew better than test his wrath further. She’d learned all too well Tomas was capable of devising inhuman lessons to teach her obedience. With her whole face pounding like hammers, she tried to mollify him.
“Tomas, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to displease you,” she mumbled humbly. It amazed her how she could sound so sweet while rage boiled inside her like a steaming kettle. She wanted to yell that she hated him, and wanted to scream every invective she had learned from him while in his house. She wished to find the nerve to take his gun from the nightstand drawer and blow his brains out. God, she could just see it in her mind, him lying sprawled on the bed with his brains seeping out of the gunshot hole—and the mere thought made her feel relief. Her apology seemed to humble him, at least temporarily. In the mixture of contradictions that was her husband, he expressed in a contemplative mood.
“Just tell me one thing—why in the hell can’t I please you, baby?”
“You do please me, Tomas. You do.” She cried through the pain in her jaw, wanting to placate her husband to prevent further abuse. How co
uld he expect anything less than icy participation when abusing her so hideously? How could he expect her to reciprocate while the nauseating stink of other women rose from his body?
“Like hell, you say. When have I ever pleased you? You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?” He slapped her backside with a stinging blow. “I’ve been as tender with you as a man can be, thinking you’d respond, but you’re too damned cold to even know how to enjoy sex.”
“I don’t do it purposely, Tomas. Truly I don’t.” Yasmin’s stomach rolled with revulsion as she realized what he was planning. Bitter bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it back down. When he got up and thrust himself deep into her throat, the taste of his unclean sex left a sickly sensation as she gagged.
Laughing at the girl’s discomfort, knowing that she’d never been exposed to that treatment before, he pulled back when she began to turn blue from lack of oxygen. Since that hadn’t been satisfactory for him, but rather a punishment for his wife, he pulled out and pinned his wife down on the bed. He spread her legs before ramming his manhood inside her dry canal to prove his point.
Screaming with pain, Yasmin prayed her life would come to an end rather than have to continue putting up with this. Tomas was a man driven by perversity, he thrust in and out of Yasmin as she bit her lips to withhold further screams.
He continued until he’d ripped the delicate tissue inside, causing her to bleed.
More convinced than ever that Tomas meant to kill her, Yasmin saw him as nothing but a horrible monster who sadistically and purposely hurt her for his selfish amusement. When he was finished pounding her unmercifully, leaving her insides feeling disconnected and like raw flesh, he rolled off her and was snoring within minutes.
In her urgency to throw up the contents of her stomach, the injured girl stumbled to the bathroom. She scrubbed her body and the inside of her mouth until that, too, was raw. She remembered the horror of Toni’s rape before she’d arrived at this house.
Many times, during past weeks, Yasmin opened the drawer in the nightstand by Chacon’s bed to look at the gun she knew he kept there. Apprehension made her every nerve ending tingle, causing her to close the drawer quickly. After repeating this action many times, she finally reached down and laid her hand on the gun, lifting it, turning it in her hand to feel the cold steel. A paralyzing fear gripped her at the very thought of what she was considering. The cold weight of the gun reminded her of how deadly it was, making her heart pound fiercely with the hate she felt for the man.
Placing both arms out in front of her, she took aim, envisioning Tomas’ face before her and thinking how quickly and easy it would be to do the deed. Just a little squeeze of the trigger as he approached to kiss her with his stinking lips, and it would be over. She would be free. But would she? The guards would rush in and carry her away to her own death. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands trembled at the thought of sending a bullet into Tomas’ brain. Her knees weakened until she had to sit down on the edge of the bed.
With rising hysteria, the young woman shoved the gun back into the drawer and slammed it shut. She couldn’t do it.
PART TWO
Chapter 6
A Way Out
On several occasions, while Yasmin was trying on clothes at the boutique, the shop owner noticed nasty bruises on the girl’s body. They were only on parts of her body that were typically covered by clothes. The store owner bit her tongue, knowing who the girl’s husband was. Although Rebecca’s role in the girl’s life was to be a strictly professional one, she developed a maternal feeling toward Yasmin, who seemed so sad.
The recipient did not reject the sentiment, but because of fear of Tomas, neither did she trust the other woman enough to show her true feelings. If either of them mentioned anything other than the professional treatment Rebecca provided, their lives could be in danger. Both women knew that no one betrayed Tomas Chacon and lived.
After three years of frequenting the establishment, Yasmin sensed she could trust Rebecca. She wanted to ask the store owner if she would discretely post a letter to her family for her.
Rebecca was struck by the extent that this girl was kept a prisoner by her husband. It was incredible that it would take her this long to make such a small request under so much secrecy. Rebecca agreed, feeling a surge of sympathy. Furthermore, Yasmin had asked if it were possible to use the shop for a return address should her letter prompt a reply. The store owner assured Yasmin that she was the only person who picked up the mail daily. When a return letter arrived, it would be locked in Rebecca’s desk drawer, securely, until Yasmin was able to retrieve it.
The ecstatic Yasmin felt a drop of hope for the first time in more than three years. Trying to look calm for the ever-watchful Pedro, the two women formulated a plan for how Rebecca was to let Yasmin know, if or when a return letter arrived. Yasmin’s fear and excitement at such a proposition were evident in her tears.
Rebecca understood how vital such a simple request was because momentarily, it brought terrible memories for Rebecca.
“Please don’t mention this to anyone,” Yasmin begged, her anxiety evident.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Chacon. What my clients confide in me is nobody else’s business.”
Elated at the possibilities, Yasmin couldn’t concentrate on shopping any longer. Finally, she’d found a way to communicate with her family, to let them know she was alive.
To make the shopping trip look legitimate in Pedro’s eyes, Yasmin picked up a blouse without even looking at it from a stack Rebecca had brought into the vestibule. While Rebecca checked out the garment and boxed it for her, Yasmin glanced at her watch. She had used less time than usual while shopping. The nervous girl wondered if Pedro would notice the difference in her. She took a deep breath to calm herself before stepping outside, while her mind was a hurricane of words seeking the paper.
As soon as Yasmin left the cash register, Pedro was holding the door for her. “Mrs. Chacon, you didn’t buy much today.” Pedro’s words were more conversation than speculation after noticing her single package.
Even knowing that Pedro had no reason to suspect her of doing anything different than she had hundreds of times before, Yasmin felt the need to explain. “I couldn’t find anything else to suit me today, Pedro.”
“Where to now?” Pedro asked, knowing Yasmin sometimes asked to make a stop at the ice cream shop on the way home. It was a secret they managed to keep from Tomas, a show of trust between the Boss Lady and her chauffeur.
“None for me today, Pedro. I’m not much in a mood for eating.” She let out a deep sigh of relief, having made her first move toward freedom. Her mind was too filled with thoughts of home to allow her to eat ice cream, but she still felt the need to explain a change in her behavior. She told her driver that she had developed a headache.
Pedro looked at the young woman in his rearview mirror and drove straight home.
After much pacing and deliberating, Yasmin waited until Tomas left the house before entering her husband’s office, a room which he always kept unlocked. Yasmin waited until the rush of dinner time for the guards when they would be distracted, hoping they would be more interested in their food than the monitors.
She slipped inside Tomas’ office, grabbed a page of his stationery, and one of the many pens he kept on his desk, hiding them between the folds of her skirt. The girl spent some time admiring the Japanese art Tomas kept in his office, which reminded her of the art Don Jose had at home.
Don Jose had brought back the coveted art from his honeymoon with Federico’s mother when they visited Japan, and it still hung in his house. The delicate art form had always appealed to her. She had been surprised to see similar prints in Tomas’ office. Besides enjoying looking at the exotic prints in the office, Yasmin hoped that admiring the artwork would pass as a pretext for being there if questioned.
Usually, the beautiful designs calmed her nerves, but this time, Yasmin was feeling far from calm. Leaving
the office unnoticed, she quickly walked upstairs to her room and locked herself in the bathroom away from the cameras. She wrote her first letter home and addressed it to Ofelia, the person who had taken the most significant risk on her behalf.
Penning the letter with the tiniest letters, Yasmin composed a long message, utilizing both the front and back of the single sheet, including the margins. She hoped no one noticed her leaving her husband’s office, or if they did, they did not give it enough importance to tell her husband.
At last, Yasmin felt able to tell Ofelia everything that happened to her since the accident in the taxi. Yasmin asked about the welfare of her mother, her sister Eva, and she wondered whether Federico was still in town. She also expressed her gratitude to Ofelia for all her help. The girl apologized to her benefactor for disappointing her sister Sofia. She told how Tomas had her baby aborted against her will on the first day of her forced marriage. Finally, Yasmin expressed her sincere desire to return home.
As she was finishing her letter, Yasmin heard Tomas’ voice, yelling orders at whoever was available. Hurriedly, she pinned the note to the inside of her skirt, in case he came into her room as he often did. She carefully hung it in the back of her closet. Yasmin changed into her bedclothes and casually reclined on her bed, holding a magazine trying to look relaxed.
The door to her bedroom was left unlocked to avoid enraging Tomas. The moment she heard her husband’s footsteps outside the door, Yasmin made sure that in her haste, the magazine she was holding wasn’t upside down.
Tomas opened the door a crack. “How are you doing, baby? Are you going to show me what you bought at the store today?” Of course, he already knew from Pedro’s report that she had made only one purchase. The bag was still sitting on her bed, unopened.
Stifling a yawn of boredom, she told him about her purchase of the blouse.
“Show it to me, baby. I like to see the pretty things you buy.” Always testing her honesty and Pedro’s loyalty, he insisted on seeing everything himself.