The day the merchants shaved her head, the marketplace was louder than usual. Voices rose not in sympathy but in spectacle. Luciana Mendoza—only twenty-four and eight months pregnant—stood in the center of it all, her trembling hands resting instinctively over the curve of her belly. She had fallen behind on payments for small goods she once sold, debts that had grown faster than her ability to repay them. What she expected was anger, perhaps legal action. What she received was public humiliation.
They took her dignity strand by strand.
As clumps of dark hair fell to the dusty ground, laughter and whispers circled her like vultures. The sun burned against her newly exposed scalp, and the humiliation cut deeper than the blade itself. She said nothing. She couldn’t. Her child shifted inside her, and all she could think about was staying upright—for him.
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