I took several pictures of the bruise. One close-up. Another showing the entire back. Another with the closet handle in the same frame.
I felt miserable doing it. Like I was betraying my daughter by turning her pain into evidence.
But not doing so would have been to betray her even more.
When Lucía finished checking his breathing and the mobility of his legs, she said we needed emergency care. She wasn’t waiting for permission.
Camila stepped forward.
—They’re not going to take her away for one blow.
Sofia dug her fingers through my shirt.
I said the only thing that mattered.
-Yeah.
Camila turned her face towards me as if I had just insulted her.
—Are you accusing me of hitting my daughter?
I didn’t answer her. Sometimes a question like that isn’t looking for the truth. It’s looking for noise. And I already understood that noise was where she had the upper hand.
Lucía picked up the pink backpack from the floor and handed it to Sofía.
My daughter hugged her with an urgency that pierced me. We left through the side door to avoid crossing paths again. Camila followed us to the patio, calling my name, first firmly, then brokenly, then furiously.
I didn’t turn around.
In Lucia’s car, Sofia sat sideways because her back wouldn’t let her get comfortable.
The seat smelled of rubbing alcohol and vanilla hand cream. I was in the back with her. I asked her if she wanted me to call an ambulance instead of driving like that.
He shook his head.
“Just don’t send me back,” he told me.
Those four words hurt me more than any photograph.
Halfway there, while we waited at an endless traffic light on López Mateos, I looked at the backpack still pressed against her chest. I asked her, as gently as I could muster, why she didn’t want her mother to see it.
He took a while to reply.
Then he unzipped it just a few centimeters and let me look.
Inside were her stuffed rabbit, a change of underwear, her inhaler, a travel toothbrush, and a drawing folded in four parts.
Nothing strange. Nothing criminal.
The unbearable thing was something else.
An eight-year-old girl had prepared an outing.
I asked her who had made it.
She told me that she.
She had set it up after Camila told her, very calmly, that if I found out about the juice, the house would fall apart and she would have to leave with a backpack, like in the movies where families separate.
She didn’t cry when she said it. I did, though I turned away so she wouldn’t see me.
In the emergency room, we were seen relatively quickly because of the way Lucía explained the pain and how Sofía protected her left side when walking.w
The doctor on duty ordered X-rays and a full examination. The social worker arrived before the second X-ray was finished.
