Maria Fernanda Ampuero

When I first emigrated here, my boss at the internet café, the one who told me I reminded him of his little girl back home, tried to rape me inside one of the phone booths where other people like me cried over their dead or consoled their living. When I resisted, he bashed my head into the telephone. With my mouth full of blood, I turned around, screamed, and spit in his face

Alberto came out to greet me flanked by two Dobermans. As a little girl I’d had a Doberman named Pacha who would eat flowers, leaves, and anything else she came
across. She was friendly and docile until one day she wasn’t. She snatched a sweet roll from my baby sister’s right hand and took off two fingers along with it.

That afternoon my dad tied Pacha up, fed her, petted her smooth back like black silk, and then shot her in the head

I asked the dogs’ names and he mumbled something I didn’t catch, but I didn’t dare to ask again. I learned very young never to bother an angry man, a drunk man, a strange man, a man