THE EARLY YEARS OF A GENIUS
Born in Mexico City in 1963 and immigrated from a very young age to San Diego, California, with her parents Pedro José Álvarez and María Luisa Paredes de Álvarez, Verónica was a very strong and enterprising child. Despite her fragile physical frame, »Vero«, as many called her, distinguished herself for being a girl who spoke with confidence and disarmed boys and girls of older ages with arguments worthy of the best lawyer. Being the best student in her class, Veronica provoked both admiration and respect, as well as envy and irritation in the people with whom she lived and interacted. Especially the number two, three and four boys in the class. They could not understand how a person of the opposite sex, small, weak and foreign, could relegate them to second, third and fourth place in the class. Because of this, the trio of boys kept trying to make her look ridiculous with disparaging remarks about her origin, her culture, her gender and her size. Fortunately, the little ruffians never knew that little »Vero« also lived in El Cajon, one of the worst suburbs in San Diego.
The girl grew up watching her parents argue and, frequently, witnessed her father’s abuse towards her mother. One winter night, the little girl was sleeping in her room as usual when she got up to go pee, and suddenly she heard her mother screaming in the room, begging her father to let her sleep because she was exhausted and didn’t feel like having sex.
―Exhausted? ―said her father, a little irritated and then continued―. I haven’t touched you for two days, woman.
The exhausted woman replied in annoyance:
― Pedro José, please don’t touch me, I want to sleep. Today I cleaned the whole house. I’ve been up since seven in the morning.
―But I want to fuck you, woman, don’t you see how hard I am? Said the insistent man, evidently affected by the drinks he had had with his friends as his tongue was getting tangled. Then there was a scuffle and suddenly the sound of a slap.
―Ouch! you fucking bitch, you hit me! ―and after two dry hits the only thing that resounded were the old springs of the bed they slept on and the back of the bed hitting the wall harder and harder until it stopped and Pedro sighed heavily because he had reached his longed-for orgasm. After that, Veronica listened to her mother’s silent crying until she fell asleep from exhaustion. The next day, the girl woke up thinking about what had happened the night before and could not help but feel helpless and guilty for not having the strength to intervene.
She wanted to knock on the door or open the door to intercede for her mother, but panic had stopped her from doing so. Knowing her father’s character and how irrational he was, the only thing that would happen would be that he would hit her too.