Fabiola - Part One

Her mother had raised her like a boy. She liked the freedom that it afforded her, even if she was still forced to cover her hair. Like a boy, she could attend dinners, sitting motionlessly, looking down, careful to keep her legs closed together. Her mother taught her to eat slowly, pausing between morsels. She was to never reach for what she wanted, but to ask politely and quietly without imposing. News traveled quickly about this. A throng of young men had approached the house threatening rough music, but her father beat the ringleader mercilessly and ordered his companions to pick him up from the pig shit. They had already earlier tried to take her against her will, calling her a whore, but a quick flash of the knife and a sudden drawing of blood had changed their minds. This after they had humiliated her in the streets, throwing food and rocks. She did not care. Not with all these voices.
 

The men at the table ignored her as they spoke about politics, trade, and the way of a world she would likely never experience. Hiding in plain sight, she used their talk to imagine travel and adventure. Sometimes she would get to sit near to him. The young man with the voice that stood for her above all the others, deep and assertive, yet elegant. Unable to raise her eyes from her meal, she could never see him, but she could smell him and feel the warmth radiating from his body into hers. These sensations called to her with a force she could not explain or even acknowledge to herself. She did not know it, but this was why she did not care about violence and humiliation. She wanted everything these dinners had to offer her. Or, at least, she thought that she did. That was before his hand brushed against hers for that one quick moment. And she heard him apologize for his transgression. After that she could think of nothing else but transgression.