The Dictator's Slut --- Chapter I

The Dictator's Slut

Chapter I

I'm going to die soon, I know this. They will bury me in an unmarked grave, and the histories will remember me as the Dictator's Slut, but I was just a girl who wanted to be a dancer.

Back then, life was exciting. I was at university and suddenly I was cutting my skirts shorter, wearing a French beret, and smoking forbidden American cigarettes.

I was seventeen, and I was drunk on life and my own daring. When the art students decided to do a silent march to the Generalissimo's sugar-white palace to protest the disappearance of so many of us, I decided to go too.

The truth is I wanted to impress Pedro Baltazar, who was a literature major and a poet and had dangerous hooded eyes and a beautiful mouth. I went on the march to be near him, and I never saw him again.

We marched with signs that showed the faces of the vanished students, with no slogans or demands. We believed that if we didn't write it down: CHILD-KILLER, TORTURER, they couldn't object. HE couldn't object.

We were so silly, such children. Looking back now, I see that. How futile all that pain, all those deaths. We changed nothing.

After fifteen years as the Generalissimo's mistress, his sweetheart, the only woman he ever loved, I changed nothing.

But I'm losing my way and my time is short. I went on that march in my shortest skirt to show off my long dancer's legs, my beret, a daring dash of lipstick, and my mother's perfume.

I was given the photo of a girl with a dull, heavy face and a pimply forehead. To this day, I don't know her name, but when Pedro gave me the poster, our fingers touched.

I blushed and stared at his mouth and the way his lower lip dimpled and I imagined that by the end of the day I'd be kissing him.

By the end of that day, I was screaming and struggling on the floor of a grey room, while a brutal man with a crewcut shoved my skirt up with a meaty hand.

There were two other men in uniform watching and I begged for help. They just looked at me, and one of them calmly took out a cigarette and tapped it against his thick, yellowed thumbnail.

I managed to free one hand and raked my nails down my attacker's face. He cursed me and slammed his fist against the side of my head.

The pain was huge and silent, and through the dizzying aftermath, I half saw, half sensed a commotion. The man on top of me was miraculously gone, and gentle arms held me up.

"OUT!" a huge voice thundered. "How dare you hurt one of my children?" 

Looming over me, gazing down at me with concern was a face I knew from a thousand official portraits: the Generalissimo, the Father of the Nation, the man the world called the Butcher of Belvaria.

Manuela Cardiga