Héctor and I had been in marriage for five years. From the very first day I became his wife, I got used to his cold words and his indifferent glances. Héctor wasn’t violent or loud, but his apathy made my heart wither a little more each day.
After our wedding, we lived in his parents’ house in a neighborhood in Mexico City. Every morning I woke up early to cook, do laundry, and clean. Every evening I sat and waited for him to come home, only to hear him say,
“Yeah, I already ate.”
I often wondered if this marriage was any different from being a tenant.
I tried to build, I tried to love, but all I got in return was an invisible void that I couldn’t fill. Then one day, Héctor came home with a cold, blank face. He sat down opposite me, handed me a divorce paper, and said in a dry voice: – Sign it.
I don’t want to waste either of our time anymore. I froze, but I wasn’t surprised. With tears welling up, I took the pen with a trembling hand.
All the memories of waiting for him at the dinner table, of the times I had stomachaches in the middle of the night that I endured alone, suddenly came flooding back like deep cuts. After signing, I packed my things. There was nothing in his house that belonged to me, except for a few clothes and the old pillow I always slept with.
For illustrative purpose only
As I was pulling my suitcase out the door, Héctor threw the pillow at me, his voice full of sarcasm: – Take it and wash it. It’s probably about to fall apart. I took the pillow, my heart constricting.
What happened next changed everything…
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