A Mother Gives Birth to 10 Babies — But One Wasn’t Human…

She sat down opposite me with a small basket of fruit. The oranges were bruised. Just like her.

“How are you, Nay?” she asked in a voice so fragile it seemed to be asking permission to exist.

I didn’t answer. I took her wrist. She shuddered.

—What happened to your face?

“I fell off my bike,” he said, trying to laugh.

I looked at her more closely. Swollen fingers. Red knuckles. These weren’t the hands of someone who had fallen. These were the hands of someone who had fought back.

—Lidia, tell me the truth.

-I’m fine.

I lifted his sleeve before he could stop me. And I felt something old and dormant awaken inside me.

His arms were covered in marks. Some were yellow and old. Others were recent, purple, and deep. Fingerprints, belt lines, bruises that looked like maps of pain.