I could have grown a mouth on every inch of my body and still not made them understand.
All I could do was beg, helpless and desperate. "Please, please call the police for me. Once someone from the station gets here, you'll all know the truth."
That was when my mother came stumbling over, clutching her chest.
"Don't call the police. If you do, Silvia is finished."
"If she ends up with a record, how is she supposed to live the rest of her life?"
"I brought rope. Please, tie her up and take her home for me, so I can cure this sickness of hers once and for all."
She wanted to grind me into the mud, to make sure I could never get back up.
My eyes were bloodshot, my voice shrill and shaking.
"You're lying. You're doing this on purpose. You want to destroy me."
I tried to run. The guards were faster, swarming me in an instant.
Thick palms clamped down on my arms, the grip like an iron vise.
The pain blacked out my vision, but I couldn't break free of them.
"Don't touch me. I've been framed."
I fought with everything I had, but no one paid any attention to my screaming.
Every reaction, in the guards' eyes, was just an ugly fit.
The rope cinched tight around my whole body, and my wrists burned where it bit in.
Two guards hoisted me up and marched me toward our building.
By now the sky had gone light.
The neighbors drifted over one after another.
I kept crying out to them for help.
"Please call the police for me. My mother is lying. I can't go home. She wants to hurt me."
My mother walked ahead of us, sobbing through tears and snot. "I'm so sorry to make a spectacle in front of all of you."
"I really had no choice. She's still young. If I don't tie her up and bring her back, her whole life is over."
"Do me this favor, please. Don't call the police. I'll watch her at home, and from now on I'll make her live right…"
She turned to look at me, pinned between the guards, and the tears fell harder.
But beneath them hid a flicker of triumph, almost too faint to catch.
"Look at her. Such a good child, and look what she's become."
"If you have kids at home, you have to keep a close eye on them, or the whole family is ruined."
"Silvia, don't blame Mommy for being cruel. Mommy is doing this for your own good…"
More and more people gathered, drinking in every inch of my disgrace.
Some coaxed me. "Silvia, just go home like a good girl. Don't break your mother's heart."
Some cursed me. "What a tragedy. A perfectly good girl, gone to waste. Such a shame."
"Exactly. The one I pity most is her mother. At her age, having to suffer through this. I don't even know why she bothers saving her. Better to just let her sink or swim on her own."
They looked at my mother with real, heartfelt sympathy.
They looked at me with the kind of disgust that made them want to keep their distance.
I shouted out my mother's wickedness to every single person there, but not one of them listened.
It only made me look like an ungrateful wretch, through and through.
My throat had long since gone hoarse from screaming, and the darkness kept washing over my eyes.
Just as the guards were dragging me through the building's entrance.
A firm, powerful voice rang out behind us, and everyone fell silent in an instant.
"Kay Lawrence, stop smearing your daughter!"
