TERESA TRUDGED ALONG BEHIND Sister Marcela, accompanied by the clicking of her rosary. Nearly seven years had passed since she had first set foot in these corridors strewn with bruised, battered bodies.
She hadn’t wanted to stay in the infirmary. She had already spent two nights there. She needed the girls by her side; their presence was like a cocoon. Or rather, a wall to keep the outside at bay. She needed to hear them going about their day, arguing over scraps of orange rind and moaning and groaning when they were trying to go to sleep at night.
When they arrived back at Teresa’s cell, Sister Marcela slipped a little chamomile and two aspirins into Teresa’s hand, then promptly turned on her heels and went on her way.
The girls got up from their straw bedrolls. Slowly. Juana’s little one hid behind her mother, and started crying and asking who Teresa was.
‘Oh, Tere…’ they all gasped, almost in unison. The sound echoed off the damp walls.
Not one of them dared wrap their arms around her, fearful of hurting her battered body even more. Teresa could see in their eyes the ravages she had suffered three days earlier. The slightest touch to the cuts and bruises on her face made her flinch.
Her cellmates made sure she took an aspirin. Then they helped her out of her dress, gently lifting it free from her scabs, and dabbed at her wounds with compresses dipped in the chamomile. Teresa could feel from their touch they were surprised she was still alive. She too had thought she would never be going back to them in that cell. There had been so much force and rage behind the blows, each one had felt like it might be the last.
For the first few hours, she had tried to keep the flavour of her beloved Tomeo fresh in her mouth and her mind. It was for him that she kept getting up – after every single blow. There were two of them fighting so they could be together again after the war. He was battling in the resistance, and she was struggling in here. Every time a blow came, she thought back to the taste of the scraps of paper her Tomeo would have someone slip to her on visitors’ days. She would read the message twice, loving every curve and peak of the letters he had written on the little slip of paper, then crumple it up and place it under her tongue, like a holy communion wafer, before chewing and swallowing the pulp. She savoured every moment of this communion.
But when they placed his wedding ring on the table in front of her, she understood. Suddenly, she felt empty. Hollow and empty. The spirit of Tomeo had kept her stronger than she could ever have imagined. If she were a tree, he had been the roots and the branches. And so she had asked one of the guards to open the window. She was suffocating, she had said, spitting the words through her swollen lips. If he had believed her, and if he had opened that window, she would have hurled herself out of it. Because she understood there would be no more scraps of paper showered with kisses and folded with hope. There would be no joyful reunion. No more future for them. This was where their story ended.
The girls clothed her in a loose tunic, and piled a few straw mattresses on top of one another and helped her to lie down. Teresa closed her eyes to connect with her Tomeo. She was going to tell him she had changed her mind.
Now, she would far rather die than live.