Prologue: The Woman I Was

Let me tell you something they don’t warn you about when you’re twenty-one, standing in front of a cheap full-length mirror in a white wedding dress that cost more than your first car.

Your body will betray you.

Not in some dramatic, cinematic way, no sudden illness, no tragic accident. It happens slowly, patiently, like water wearing down stone. A pound here. A stretch mark there. Breasts that begin their southward journey while you’re still nursing your second child. A belly that stays soft and stubborn long after the babies are grown. A C-section shelf that becomes a permanent resident. Hips that widen. Thighs that touch. A cunt that has done everything it was designed to do and then some.

My name is Lorraine Cortez. I am sixty-five years old as I write this. The woman you’re about to meet is forty-eight, still carrying the weight of four pregnancies, one divorce, and twenty-seven years of quiet, constant apology.

But let’s go back.

I grew up in East Los Angeles in the 1970s. My mother named me after a saint and raised me to measure my worth in spotless floors, perfectly ironed shirts, and how quietly I could sit during Mass. My father worked construction, came home smelling of sweat and diesel, and never looked at another woman where anyone could see. I was the sensible one. The good daughter. The one who didn’t talk back.

At nineteen, I met Marco at a quinceañera. He was twenty-two, already working at his uncle’s auto body shop, already talking about marriage like it was inevitable. His hands were rough. His smile was easy. He danced as the music belonged to him.