You Called Me Barren, Mr. Sterile Don

Dante asked for a divorce o

n his eyes, and told me

," he wept. "God has f

ng me "broken" because I hadn't

I paid for, and his mother mocked me as a "dry v

he truth I had bur

slid the file across the desk:

s the st

ia Don. I took the blame. I drank his mother's vile herbal p

for a "miracle" that was

ivorce papers

any, put on a blood-red dress, and

come to

ector and show the entire underworld exa

pte

the divorce papers, and that simple, dismissive ge

the most feared man in the city, drumme

the warmth that used to make my knees weak. "She

talking ab

ing about h

cument that would end e

ty vellum, the kind used for tr

d, marriage

cause I had failed the one d

given hi

ed up

didn't

ar, a skill I acquired living in the shadow

d, shifting

n his charcoal suit, t

he rot benea

pt in the safe behind th

hat made him scream in

reality he was terrif

, his tone softening just enough to be cruel. "

ru

*Ome

le

y silence fo

ide while his mother

bal concoctions she forced d

he truth to prote

d wrapper because he found someone else

ned m

Viti

page, severing it from my identity

paper away the mo

't look

ure, relief washing ove

ne," he w

, buttoning

yed s

the shards of my dignity be

e have to file this today. The christening is nex

o marry her

se me before the

my legs feel

d since I was nineteen out in