Downstairs, he was the man who had starved me for three weeks and measured my survival by whether the baby still kicked.
Every other day, he pushed one rotten apple through the bars.
He never gave it to me quietly.
He watched.
Sometimes he leaned against the cage and waited until hunger defeated whatever dignity I had left.
“The baby needs something,” he would say. “I want to feel it move.”
The cruelty was not only in the food.
It was in the way he acted as though the child inside me belonged to him more than my own body did.
My face had changed during those weeks.
One eye stayed swollen.
My lower lip split and healed and split again.
Bruises darkened along my jaw, wrists, arms, and knees where I tried to protect myself or brace against the steel.
I had stopped imagining what I looked like because Marcus enjoyed reminding me.
