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The Bitch
PILAR QUINTANA
"With nowhere to put the puppy, she carried her against her bosom. The tiny dog fit in her hands, smelled of milk, and made Damaris long desperately to hold her tight and cry."
"She felt that life was like a creek and that she needed to cross it, walking with her feet buried in the mud and the water up to her waist, lonely, completely alone, in a body that did not give her children and only served to break things."
PILAR QUINTANA
"The sea remained as calm as an infinity pool, but Damaris was not fooled. She knew very well that it was the same evil animal that swallowed and spat out people;"
PILAR QUINTANA
"about the stabbing pain she got in her soul every time she saw a pregnant woman or a newborn or a couple with a child, about the sheer torture of always longing for a little baby she could hold and rock against her bosom, only to get her period every month. Rogelio listened without a word, and then he embraced her. "
PILAR QUINTANA
"She’d take the dog from the box and stay there in the dark with her, petting her, scared to death of the explosions of lightning and the fury of the wind, feeling tiny—smaller and less significant to the world than a grain of sand in the sea—until the puppy stopped whimpering."
PILAR QUINTANA
"She started thinking about the Reyes, who at some point would have to come back, if only they would do it on a day like this and find her in the house in the middle of her cleaning day, sweaty and dirty in her short lycra shorts and her spaghetti strap blouse, so that they would understand that she was a valuable worker even when they didn't pay her a single peso, that she was a good person."
PILAR QUINTANA
"She spent all day shut in watching television on a mat she laid out on the floor; outside, meanwhile, the sea swelled and receded; the rain poured down on the world, and the jungle, so menacing, was all around her without comforting her’"