Never Leave Again

bless me, father

trigger warning: rape and sexual assault

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

The confession booth amplifies the heat lulling in the heavy air. Father Guerrera, beads of sweat rolling off his furrowed brow, listens carefully on the other side of the screen.

"It has been eight months and six days since my last confession." I pause. "In truth, I don't even know if I want to be here. I don't know if this is the right place to be."

"Our God is a merciful God," the priest's gentle voice responds. "Tell me, my child. What burdens your heart today?"

I close my eyes.

━━━━━━━

Teresa Segura Sabaté enjoyed her life, once upon a time. Tucked away in Barcelona, with two languages to her tongue, she built herself into her family's world. Just where they had always been.

She was twenty-six-years-old when she realised her relationship with Marc Ivorra was not normal. He was violent and controlling, and tried to convince her to move to Bilbao with him. She refused to go, seizing the opportunity to end the relationship.

A brave woman, she chose to tell him instead of leaving in the night – she was not going to be shouted down into a shrivelled woman, though his fists often tried to pummel her into that very form.

He pinned her against the door and he raped her.

When he was finished, he dropped her naked body, letting her fall to the floor in tears he did not care for. He stormed out, expecting her to be in the same place when he returned. Tere clutched her stomach, fingers digging into the soft flesh that had been tainted over and over again. She wondered if this counted for anything.

However, she got up, stuffed the stack of cash he kept behind the headboard of their bed into a small purse, pulled on some clothes, and got into a taxi.

She called her mother to tell her she was leaving Barcelona, and that she wasn't coming back. She said no more than that. She resolved to forget the feeling of Catalan in her mouth. Maybe it would help her forget how he was inside of her. How he took what she did not give him.

Teresa booked a coach ticket from Barcelona to Madrid. There, a man working in the coach station café suggested that if she was going to run away, she should try Córdoba. Nobody would look for her there. His brother owned an apartment in the centre of the city that she could rent – it was tiny but it was cheap. It would do.

She got on another coach and started her new life. With no qualifications to her name, and a passport forgotten in a place she refused to think about, she found the simplest means to survive; a cleaning job in a school.

Two months later, the crippling realisation came upon her. She was not starved enough to have not bled. She was pregnant. Alone, in Córdoba.

She dropped the mop she was holding.

Sat in the church near her building, she sobbed, alone in the pews. The priest laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. He asked her what was wrong. She told him everything. He promised to help. He was more concerned than outraged at the circumstances of the baby's conception. Still, she decided not to break the silence with her family; ashamed and resigned to leaving for good.

Six months in, she could no longer work. Instead, she volunteered at the church in exchange for a meal. She promised to bring her daughter – she had a feeling I was a girl – to visit as soon as she was born.

Manuel was by her side throughout her labour. The midwife called me blessed.

I would call myself the child of a monster.