Dios le bendiga, Doctora,
God bless you, Doctor,
for curing my baby of syphilis.
Can you cure me, too?
I am broken and need to be fixed.
When I was twelve I pretended to be sick
and stayed home from church.
In my vanity I plaited my hair like shiny black snakes
and put on my sister’s hibiscus-flowered dress.
My uncle came by drunk from a lost cock fight.
He raped me in the kitchen where I had made
cactus candy with my mother and sisters.
Blood ran down my leg like prickly pear juice.
Because of that, I do not enjoy the act of sex.
I lie like a stone beneath my husband,
so that he had to go to prostitutes,
which is how my baby got this disease from me.
So you see that it is all my fault.
I want to be cured of my coldness,
to be a good wife to my husband,
and not cause all this misery.
Thank you for the telephone number, Doctora,
Dios le bendiga.

§ § §

Jan Steckel is an Oakland, California writer and former pediatrician whose fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Lit Pot, Problem Child, the HarperSF anthology WomanPrayers, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a book-length collection of interrelated short stories. You can read more of her work at www.jansteckel.com

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This piece was first published in INK POT #4- 2004, a literary journal.

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