Virgin Blood & the City of the Dead

When I was a girl, I was very close with my uncle Edwardo.

He was my dad's brother.

He hugged me and kissed my forehead, tickled me and teased me.

It was nothing improper. I was just a little girl.

He was my favorite. Although she was indulgent toward my brothers, my mom was stern me, her only daughter. My dad worked a lot and drank when he didn't work.

But Edwardo was very kind and affectionate to me. He always brought me treats too, candies and ripe fruit from the market.

My mother and my father started fighting because of his drinking.

They didn't divorce, but he moved out.

My mother told Edwardo not to come to our house. She was very angry at my father, and she took it out on his brother too. She wouldn't let my brothers or me see either of them.

In my country, it is not like in the US. The government, the courts, they don't make sure that fathers pay child support or that mothers allow fathers to visit their children.

My father did not pay and did not see me and my brothers.

I live in Chicago now. But I grew up there and went to college there.

When I became a young woman, eighteen years old, of course, I saw Edwardo on the street. He was walking his dog.

I knew him right away. He is tall for the men of my country, tall and very handsome.

I felt shy, so I didn't go up to him. Instead, I followed him.

He took his dog into the graveyard, and I followed.

He went to one of the oldest parts of it, with very old gravestones.

It was overgrown with weeds and even trees. In my country, the families of the dead care for the graves, but in that part of the graveyard, the families of the dead were long dead themselves, and even their great-great-grandchildren were dead too.

I followed him deeper and deeper into oldest part of the city of the dead.

I was born in a very large and very old city, and some of its gaveyards are vast.

I was following him, but then he took a turn. A large tree blocked my view so that I couldn't see him.

I tried to follow. I looked but did not see him. I walked, but could not find him.

And then I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back.

It was him, but he didn't have his dog.

I still felt shy, so I kept walking, but more slowly.

He caught up to me, and just when I was thinking what to say, he grabbed me and pulled me in the weeds, pulled me among the old graves and stones.

He put his hand over my mouth so that I would not scream, but I couldn't tell him that he was my uncle either.

He pushed me against a grave and bent me over it.

He still had his hand over my mouth.

I started to cry silently. The warm tears ran down my face.

He was tall and very strong, and I was but a girl and only 4 foot 10 inches tall, less than 1.5 meters.

I was wearing a long dress, one that went down to well below my knees.

He pulled my dress up. He yanked my undies down with one hand, did it with so much force that he tore them and they bit into my flesh. The friction burned my skin.

It hurt when he jammed his finger into my vagina from behind, and it hurt when I felt his finger move inside me.

"You are a virgin?" he asked in our language.

But he didn't take his hand from my mouth to let me answer.

My mother was very strict with me. My mother and I went to Mass very early every morning and prayed the rosary in church.

My parents had never divorced or reconciled, and she had never taken another lover.

"I thought . . ." my uncle whispered. "You followed me, I thought . . ."

Still, he did not take his hard, strong hand from my mouth.

"It is too late, I am sorry . . ." He said.

He must've used one hand to undo his pants and to push them down, because a moment later, I felt his penis thrust and tear its way into my virgin vagina.

I felt a sharp, burning, terrible pain.

He didn't wait. He began to thrust in and out of me, while he still held his rock-hard hand over my mouth.

It really hurt, worse than anything I had ever felt in my life, and he did it for a long time.

I am thin now, but I was skinny back then, little more than skin on bones. The old gravestone bit into my hips.

He kept thrusting inside me. I felt raw and sore inside me there, and hot too, but not in the good way that I later felt during sex. It still burned, you see, not as bad as before, but it still hurt very much.

After a long time, while I cried, he said, "It will be over soon, over soon, over soon. You are not on anything, I am sure. It is okay, do not worry, do not worry, do not worry . . ."

And then I felt him pull himself out of me and felt wetness on my back and my skinny butt.

I didn't know that he was ejaculating on my body instead of inside me.

He held his hand over my mouth still and didn't let me up.

Instead, he pulled my ripped undies up again and my dress down over my legs and my shame.

"I am so sorry," he whispered. "I thought that you were following me. I thought that you wanted what I gave you."

I couldn't speak, but he had stopped raping me. It gave me time to think.

"If I let you go," he asked, "do you promise not to scream?"

I nodded.

He released my mouth but didn't let me up.

"I saw your dog," I lied.

I felt much too humiliated to tell him that he was my uncle, my beloved Edwardo.

"My dog?" he asked.

"It is so white and strange."

It was snow-white. I later learned that it was a mini bull terrier. They have strange and ugly faces for dogs and such short little legs for their chunky bodies, no?

"I am sorry," he said again.

"I was stupid, stupid to follow. You are a man."

In my country, everyone knows that men can't control themselves when it comes to sex.

"Yes, I am a man," he said.

"I will not tell and never go to the police. I promise."

"Thank you. I am sorry."

He let me up and helped me too. He was so gentle with me after having been so fierce and brutal.

"I am to blame too," I said and believed it.

"It is true," he said.

In my country, women do not follow men they do not know and certainly do not follow them into places where no one else can see them.

"I am sorry too," I said. "I was stupid."

"Yes, very stupid," he said, but he smiled when he said it. "You are far too beautiful to be so foolish."

He meant that I couldn't afford to be so stupid because I was so attractive to men, that I'd surely be raped again if I persisted in my naïve foolishness.

"I'm not beautiful," I said.

"Yes, you are."

I laughed and he did too.

"You are very beautiful," he said again, only instead of my face he was looking at my body.

He reached over and squeezed my breasts, and I let him.

He turned me and unzipped the back of my dress.

"I just want to see, please. I won't rape you again, I promise."

I let him undress me completely.

I felt helpless to stop him and shy and completely humiliated too. I had never been naked for a man before.

We were in the middle of a city of millions, but we were hidden in the oldest part of the city of the dead.

I allowed him to turn me so that he could see everything, all of my naked body.

I felt especially shy not only about the place between my legs and my breasts, but about the wet red blood on the insides of my thighs.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Isabel," I lied. It was the name of a girl at my school.

"What is your phone number?"

I told him, told him the truth. He hadn't know that it was me, of course. He was my favorite uncle, and I still loved him.

"My mother, she is very strict," I whispered.

"We will be careful," he said. "You will come to my apartment when you can. You will go on birth control. I will pay."

I was no longer a virgin, and he had taken me, even against my will, so by the rules of our culture, I kind of belonged to him from then on.

"Thank you," I said.

"But you will do what I ask, will you not?"

I nodded.

"And now, it still hurts?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"And your mouth, does it hurt too?"

I giggled.

He put his hands on my bare shoulders and pushed me down onto my knees.

I undid his pants without being asked.

My virgin blood was still smeared on his penis. I had never seen a penis before, never even seen my brothers naked.

I loved him, of course. I am an educated woman now. I think that I was already romanticizing and mythologizing his rape of me in my mind.

I felt a little sick to my stomach at the blood and that part of his body, but he grabbed a handful of my black hair and pulled my face toward his erect penis.

I kissed it and tried to take it in my mouth.

He laughed and pushed me away.

"I will have to teach you."

He didn't even say that I'd bit him.

Instead, he pulled me up and bent me naked over the stone again.

I was too frightened to think to suggest that I use my dress to cushion the hard stone against the front of my already sore hips.

"I am sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay," I said.

I clearly remember that I truly meant it, even though I knew that he was about to hurt me again.

I sneaked over his apartment every chance I got after than day. I went on birth control too, of course.

It's ironic, I think. I had wanted to marry right away, right out of high school. My mother had been encouraging me to go to college. Her family had money, so we could afford it.

I went to college instead of getting married so that I could see my uncle and not because I wanted an education.

I never told him that I was his niece, and he still doesn't know.