The Poor Village Girl Tormented by Her Sex Addiction novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Weighing
The basket fell off my hip halfway down the slope, and the red coffee cherries rolled among the bushes.
I already knew what was coming.
First came the heat at the back of my neck, then in my belly, and then my legs wouldn't hold me anymore.
"Maricruz," my mother-in-law shouted from up above. "Again?"
I didn't answer her.
I ran toward the drying shed, my skirt plastered to my thighs, and closed the plank door with my back.
Inside it smelled like coffee roasting in the sun and warm wood.
I pulled my skirt up to my waist.
I lay down on the empty burlap sacks and yanked my underwear down with both hands, without any patience.
I was wet as if I'd been thinking about the same thing for hours.
I shoved my fingers inside, hard, and rubbed with my thumb where it begged the most.
I moaned against my own arm.
I came fast, with a shudder that shook my chest, and it didn't go away.
That was the worst part of my affliction.
It would ease for a minute, and then come back stronger.
I was twenty-nine years old, and I'd been carrying this since I was eighteen.
The people in town said someone had put a curse on me.
The neighbor women said it was a sickness of the blood.
All I knew was that I burned all the time, and no amount of work could put it out.
The shed door creaked.
I sat up with a jolt, my skirt all wrinkled.
It was Anselmo, my husband, his hat in his hand and his shirt stuck to his chest with sweat.
He looked at my bare thighs, my wet fingers, my face.
He didn't get angry.
He never got angry, and sometimes that hurt more.
"Again," he said quietly.
"Again," I answered. "Forgive me."
"Don't ask me to forgive you."
He closed the door with the latch and took off his hat.
He knelt between my legs, on the sacks, and kissed the inside of my thigh.
His lips were cracked and hot.
"Anselmo," I whispered.
"Let me."
He spread me open with his thumbs and ran his tongue over me slowly, from bottom to top.
I arched my back and grabbed his hair with both hands.
He did it with tenderness, with so much tenderness, but I needed more than tenderness.
I hurried him with my hips.
He understood, unbuttoned his pants, and settled over me.
He entered all at once, all the way, and we both let out our breath together.
He thrust into me with desire, sweat dripping from his nose into my mouth.
"Harder," I begged.
He tried, he really tried.
He grabbed my ass and pulled me against him, and I felt his back start to tremble.
"Hold on," I pleaded. "Hold on a little longer, Anselmo."
"I can't," he panted. "Oh, Maricruz, I can't."
He came inside me with a stifled groan and lay heavy on my chest.
I was still just as burning as before.
I stroked his back and said nothing.
He knew, like he always knew.
"I'm useless," he murmured against my neck.
"That's not true."
"I haven't slept in months trying to bring in the harvest for you and because of this."
He kissed my collarbone, ashamed, and pulled away to pull up his pants.
We went out into the sun without looking at each other.
My mother-in-law was standing at the edge of the coffee grove with her hands on her hips, and at her feet were three jute sacks.
Behind her waited Don Gervasio Ochoa, the buyer, in his white guayabera shirt and his big-toothed smile.
He'd brought his iron scale in the pickup truck, like every year.
"Let's see, let's see," he said, and hung the first sack from the hook. "Forty-two kilos."
Anselmo clenched his jaw.
That morning, every one of those sacks had passed through my hands, and I'd loaded them at forty-eight.
Gervasio weighed the second one.
"Forty-one."
He looked me up and down, pausing at my crooked skirt.
"And here I thought this year would be different, compadre," he said to my husband. "But with a woman this busy, the harvest just wastes away on its own."
The women harvesting nearby laughed quietly.
I felt my face burn.
"The sacks weighed more," I said.
"Oh, really?" Gervasio tilted his head. "And who was watching them? You, Maricruz, or your sickness?"
No one answered him.
My mother-in-law looked down.
Anselmo stayed quiet, his hands clenched into fists.
That night we ate dinner without speaking.
After blowing out the oil lamp, Anselmo sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me.
"I'm going down to town first thing," he said.
"Why?"
"A new doctor arrived at the clinic. He's young, they say he studied in the capital."
"I don't want a doctor looking at this."
"I don't want that either." He rubbed his face with his hands. "But I don't know what else to do, Maricruz."
I lay there staring at the ceiling of black beams.
I wanted to scream at him that I wasn't sick.
But a craving like that, one that never left me in peace—what else could you call it but a sickness?
The next day, as evening fell, I heard footsteps on the porch.
Anselmo came in first.
Behind him came a young man with round glasses, a white coat over his shirt, and a worn leather bag.
He stopped at the door and looked at me without pity, without disgust, without any of what I expected.
"Maricruz," my husband said, his voice breaking. "This is Doctor Leandro Arteaga."
The doctor set his bag on the floor.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. Your husband told me what's going on. I'll only come in if you tell me to."
I dried my hands on my apron.
I felt my pulse in my temples and between my legs.
"Come in," I said.
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