Face-Slapping12 min read
The Two-Meter Stick, the Hidden Space, and My Small War
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1977 summer had the smell of hot tar and boiled corn. I opened my eyes to a court yard buzzing with voices that wanted me dead or wanted me owned; they were not the same thing here, and both hurt.
“Get away from her!” a man snarled—no, that was not how it began. The loud voice came like a hammer blow, rough and greedy.
“You old witch, step aside!” another voice jeered.
I blinked. Dirt in the mouth, the taste of pond water still in my teeth. I forced myself up and saw a hulking man standing over my mother, Cecilia, his grin all wrong in the heat of the morning.
“He’s lying on the ground—let him be,” someone muttered. The man’s eyes slid from my mother to me and narrowed. “Well, well. Didn’t expect the old woman had a daughter like a rose.”
“Don’t touch her,” I said, and the sound of my own voice surprised me. It was thin, raw, and enough to make the nearest laugh.
“Look at that body!” the man said. “Tonight’s going to be a party.”
“You can’t—” my mother tried to stand. She was pushed down like a rag.
“Brothers, hold the old woman,” the hulking one said. “Don’t waste time—tonight I marry the pretty one.”
My head swam. I tried to fight through a fog of pain and memory. “Help, help!” my mother cried. The sound forked the air and pricked something in me like a hot iron.
The man reached for my shoulder with a hand that smelled of stale beer. I heard the slap that knocked my mother down again. My pulse longed to split from my throat. I had been other things—leader, fighter, something that had survived worse—but here, in this body, I felt small. I felt raw. I felt something like a trapdoor opening beneath my feet.
The yard’s shadow held a log, two meters long, unhewn and heavy, leaning against the wall. My fingers found the rope of pain and memory and pulled.
“Get away from her,” I said again, and this time I meant it.
I ran. I didn’t know if I had the right. They laughed until I swung the tree like a club. My shoulder burned, then my whole body hummed with a strength that did not belong to the fragile woman on the bed the morning after. The first man hit the wall and slid down like a sack of grain.
“My girl—she’s not for you!” my mother shouted, rising when she could. People clustered by the courtyard wall, their faces smeared with curiosity and malice.
The men left in a swell of curses, but the memory of their words—“your mother took my betrothal gifts”—hung like a dirty banner. They had promised me an ownership like a thing. I tasted their threat and spat.
Days later I woke fully, claiming breath like a prize.
“Hah!” I laughed aloud in the tiny room. “I’m not dead. I’m not dead.” My throat felt brittle and strange. The woman’s life I had slid into—this was not my original life. I was Elizabeth Cordova now, and the original Elizabeth had been slight and smiling, twenty-two years old with twin boys and a life that looked like a slow sinking.
I put the pieces together like a stubborn child piecing a jigsaw: I had drowned in a fish-gnawed pond in my other life. Instead of black water at the bottom of that world, I woke here—1977 in a small village—bearing someone else’s name, wrapped in someone else’s fate, and with a gift that made me do improbable things.
This body had strength. Not inherited from me but burned into these bones. When I lifted the balanced log to swing, men fell like wheat under a scythe. That strength was real.
And then, when I let my mind slip behind my eyes, there was a narrow room like a thought hiding in the corner of the house: my space. Fifty square meters of silence and store. Grain stacked neat as soldier's ranks. Soap, shoes, tins, cigarettes, linens, jars of ointments, matches, a pile of glittering trinkets that looked like a laughter of jewels. I did not remember putting any of it there; I only remembered that in the other life, when the world had been dying, I had scavenged everything I could. It had all gone into that room that answered to my will in a way a safe never could.
“I can feed my boys,” I said aloud, and my voice did not shake.
“You sure about staying?” my mother, Cecilia Scott, asked. She had always been a fierce woman in her own quiet way. Her eyes were small, hot with worry and an odd glow of hope now that I fought back.
“I’m staying,” I said. “I’m not leaving these two.” I pointed to my sons, Lucas Mathieu and Dane Fisher, who clung to my skirt like they feared I might vanish.
“You should rest,” my mother said, hand trembling at my hair.
“I will rest,” I promised. “After I make sure no one will ever touch my boys again.”
They laughed when I said I would not leave. The village had its spectators and its predators. Men talked in corners. The stern-faced village chief, Clyde Dell, watched everything with the neutral patience of someone who had learned that peace was a ledger.
“You hid things,” my brother, Noah Campos, whispered once, when the yard was empty. “Why can’t you be the old little sister again?”
“Because I’m done with being small,” I answered.
Soon news of the log, and the way I swung it, spread like a thrown match. They said I had turned into a wild thing. They said I was someone else. The village’s women looked at me differently—tilted their heads and softened their lips—or they picked knives with their looks. The men bit the sides of their mouths and made bets.
“You hit hard,” my mother said. “Be careful.”
“I will be careful,” I told her, but my lips smiled a little too much.
Days went by and the simple acts of survival took a shape. The space-feed in the corner kept giving. I would slip into that quiet room at night, touch the sacks of rice, the tins of oil, the soaps that felt like treasure. I could take a handful of sugar one day and leave the rest. My fingers turned small things into survival.
“You took out a lot,” Ivory Kraus—my mother-in-law—said one evening as she took the bowl I had filled. “That’s a lot of meat.”
“It’s enough.” I looked at her. She watched my hands more than my face.
“You don’t have to hide gifts,” she said. “You’re family.”
“We are family,” I replied, and thought of the way the village sometimes swallowed people whole.
Life steadied: food, cleaning, a list of small victories. I taught Lucas and Dane to count pebbles for fun and to wash their own hands with a bowl of soapy water, because dirt was ugly and danger made it uglier. I bribed the girls next door, Amelie Cabrera and Cloe Garcia, with little sweets from the space to show that the world could be generous if I wished it to be.
I had allies. Bailey Ferguson, a bright friend who had once laughed at my smallness, now cooked with me in the kitchen. Bailey said, “You don’t need to pretend to be weak to survive. You can be strong and kind.”
“Which is worse?” I grinned. “Pretending or being late to the laughter?”
She slapped my arm and washed the last of the bowls.
At the edge of town, a man named Bryson Wolf—large, swaggering, with a son the size of a barrel, Kevin Danielsson—made himself a small kingdom. He bullied with that slow animal hunger of those who think they own other men’s fate.
One afternoon Kevin and his gang crossed the line. They cornered my twins and pushed them, laughing. “Where’s the little mother? Come out and say sorry.”
I had taught the boys enough not to answer but to stand for themselves. They were small but stubborn.
“Back off,” Lucas said, and Kevin pushed him harder. “You little—”
Before the child could say the worst, grease and anger met in my veins.
“Leave them,” I said. “Now.”
Kevin laughed and shoved Dane. The child fell and bit his lip. The village seemed to tilt into a slow, hungry silence.
“You think you can boss us?” Kevin’s father, Bryson, called from behind, smirking that dangerous smirk.
“You bring this again and I’ll bring you water over your head,” I replied dryly, because threats needed names to mean anything.
Bryson stepped forward. “You’ll pay, woman. A woman who hits men will pay.”
“You’ll pay,” I repeated. I had no idea I would do what I did next.
I took a step, unclipped a bone-deep memory of the knife-edge of survival. I wrapped my mind around a thin, sharp thing—something the space had taught me lacked a voice—and pushed it like a current. Power moved inside my skull like a humming bird’s wings. I did not think. The world slid sideways. Bryson doubled over as if a great hand took him and twisted. He collapsed, clutching his head, the grin gone.
The crowd had not imagined that such small woman could bend a man to the ground without touching him.
“Stop this witchcraft!” someone shouted. “Call the village chief!”
“Clyde!” they cried. Clyde Dell arrived slow as a season.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“She hit me with nothing,” Bryson hissed, rolling on the ground. His voice squeaked.
“You hurt my boys,” Bryson spat. “She did this witchcraft.”
“And what did your boys do?” I asked. I let my voice go calm, even tender. “They defended themselves.”
“You are not a judge,” he shouted, trying to rise. “You can’t—
He tried to raise his head and look around, to find an ally in the sea of faces. The crowd structured themselves like a living fence; some nudged toward taking the bully’s side; others scooped into my corner.
“You come into our yard threatening women, you’ll go through me first,” a man, Lorenzo Fujita, said. There was steel in his voice. He was not for show. He had seen what it meant to be bullied and decided he would not go along.
“That man stole our mushrooms and then blamed my boys!” a neighbor cried to the cluster.
Bryson’s face had transformed: smugness gone, surprise spreading into betrayal. Then he denied it. “I didn’t—” he began, but his voice tripped. The crowd’s eyes flicked like knives.
“You did,” I said. I had the print of evidence in the careful logic of the day: the boys had said it; the witnesses nodded; the village chief’s face grew all threaded with worry.
Bryson blustered again, louder now: “Lies! Lies all lies! They want to make me look bad.”
The crowd turned like crows to watch a dying light. Phones did not exist; there were hands instead of flashes. The people’s eyes were the new cameras—wide, bright, judgment-hungry.
“You want money?” I asked suddenly, because I knew the ways of small villages. “You want me to pay for your son’s medicine because he ate mushrooms that weren’t ours?”
“No—no!” Bryson said, his voice wobbling. “I didn’t—”
Louder now I spelled it out. “You grabbed what wasn’t yours. You were cruel to two children. You brought your family’s violence into my yard. You called the boys fatherless. You demanded compensation. You tried to silence them.”
An elder woman, Valerie Arroyo, spat and cried out, “We will not let bullies live off fear.”
Bryson’s face had the horror of the caught fox.
“You’re despicable,” I said. “You will do what the village chief sets. You will apologize to those children. You will work to pay the fees and you will go to the clinic.”
The crowd had a will. That’s how small settlements kept from falling apart: the whole body enforcing a day’s justice.
“He will admit it,” I said, and there was a sound in the yard like a small storm, the villagers moving in—some to help, some to watch brutal morality be served.
Bryson’s posture had reversed from pride to panic. He shook his head stoically at first, then like a dog given a harder bone to chew, he started to crumble. “I didn’t mean—” he pleaded. “I was provoked. I didn’t—”
“You will apologize right here,” I said.
He staggered to his knees, his voice small. “I’m sorry,” he said into the dust. “I’m— I didn’t mean to curse their mother. I was— I’m sorry.”
He looked at the children. His eyes were wet and raw, a man who had not expected the world to call him to account. People started to clap—not cruelly, but with a pressure that said: see what happens when you cross us.
“Say it to their faces,” I demanded.
Bryson bent lower and mumbled, “I’m sorry, Lucas and Dane. I won’t bother you again. Please forgive me.”
The children stared, wide-eyed. Their small faces watched this man shrink.
Bryson’s transformation followed the script of humiliation I had been taught to expect. First smugness, then confusion; then denial; then realization; then a collapse. He begged, his voice rising and breaking. His friends fumbled with their hands and went quiet. I felt every step as if on a taut rope.
People watched. “He’s begging!” someone said. “He’s asking for mercy!”
Someone else took up a chant: “No more bullying! Respect the women!”
The village elder, Clyde Dell, made the final call. “He will work a month in the fields for the injured families. He will take the boys’ teacher’s clay and mend it. He will go to the clinic for his swelling and pay what he must.” He looked at Bryson. “And you will apologize publicly, every market day, until people forget to fear you.”
Bryson sank lower. He was told to stand before the gathered folk and to read the wrongs aloud. His voice shook. The words were an act of peeling the skin off his own arrogance. He tried to grasp at excuses and reality snapped back like elastic.
“You will not threaten or harm women,” I said. “And you will earn back the right to stand among us.”
He dropped to the dust and clutched his head. “Please—please,” he begged. “I can’t—”
A woman near me spat, “Then stay on your knees.”
People began to film—no devices, only memory and gossip to carry the shame. Their whispers would travel faster than any camera. They pointed. They clucked. Some laughed. Some shed a small, sharp joy.
In the days that followed, Bryson’s steps were different. He no longer swaggered. He worked under the hot sun, sweat a witness to the day he had been remade. When he came past the yard, children stared. He never looked at my sons; he lowered his eyes like a man who had seen the sun and decided to change his path.
That public punishment was long—more than a day; it was a sentence served in the light of the whole village. We asked him to kneel, to apologize, to work, to suffer the social pain of losing the unearned respect he had once had. People watched his face go from color to ash to pleading. The spectators told stories about it for months—some sewed truth, some sewed fiction. Either way Bryson learned what it meant to be answerable to people bound by simple justice.
I held my boys close those nights and said, “There will be days when someone twice your size will look for trouble. Remember this: you have people around who will not let you rot. You have me.”
“You’re strong,” Lucas said once, holding on. “Like a rock.”
“Like a stick that knocks down a gate,” Dane decided, and both of them giggled.
I laughed too, because their laughter was a small, stubborn thing.
Days grew into seasons. The space in the room kept giving. I sold meat and flour in town, traded notes with a woman at the steelworks, learned how to haggle with people whose faces had money now and whose eyes didn’t. I bought two small things I’d never allowed myself before: a pair of battered shoes for Noah, and a warm pot for my mother.
“You’re doing what’s best for the family,” my father, Simon Poulsen, said once, his voice cracked by tears he could not show.
“I’m surviving,” I replied. “And building a life.”
I trained the boys with a careful hand, teaching them the difference between using force and using confidence. I taught them how to count shares of grain, how to tell a lie from a rumor, and how to stand when someone cuts across your path. I gave them the craft of survival and the grace of laughter.
People’s attitudes shifted. Where before the village had seen a fragile wonder, they now saw a woman who had fought. Some respected me. Others calculated how to take advantage. The old balance always bent toward more cunning.
A time came when the market’s rumor mill spun a different wheel. A group of men who had been sour with their own lives had planned an ambush months ago—one of those things where the worst of pride and lust combine. They would take whoever they wanted and think themselves brave.
They tried to take what was mine.
But the yard had a log now and a woman with a space that kept her fed. I knew what wolves smelled like. I knew how to move.
They walked into the yard, thinking they were in a cartoon of bravado. They learned what daylight can do. I made them stand and listen while the village imposed justice. I made them kneel and forget their laughter. The punishment was terrific in its clarity: public, thorough, merciless in its moral clarity.
They went from arrogant to stunned, from denial to pleading. Someone recorded it in stitches of gossip that folded into the market square conversations. People clapped. They cheered. A small chorus of faces was the only jury I trusted.
From this, the yard became a place people measured with their eyes. They would not step inside thinking they could take and go. The men’s humiliation was not sweet; it was corrective. They begged. They were turned into cautionary tales.
“Do you feel free now?” Bailey once asked while passing me a bowl of water.
“Free isn’t having no enemies,” I said. “Free is teaching your children how to walk so they don’t need tidewaters to guide them.”
The boys learned. The village learned. I learned too: power can be a tool if you keep your hands clean enough not to stain the children’s mouths with it.
Years would come. I would go back to that space at night and find small treasures—an old coin, some medicine for a fever, a strip of fabric. Each thing felt like a piece of map. It led to a life where I could buy a small bicycle, a better pot, shoes for the boys. It led to the moment I sent Noah to learn steadiness, for there was always one more life that needed help.
In the end, standing by the low wall of my courtyard, watching Lucas tie his shoe while Dane chased a stray dog, I thought of the log and the pond and the odd mirror of my other life.
“I tightened the knot,” I told my mother. “We are tied now.”
She leaned on my shoulder, trembling with old age and a new joy. “You made us a home.”
“I have more than home,” I confessed, glancing at the small door to the room where my store waited. “I have a space that never runs out of the right thing at the right time.”
“And what will you do with it?” she asked.
“I’ll keep it,” I said. “I’ll put a bit away for the boys. And I’ll swing the log if someone thinks they own the world.”
The sun slid down like a soft coin behind the mountains. A child laughed. The yard smelled of boiled greens and future. I touched the two-meter stick propped by the wall, felt the grain of its wood, and smiled.
“Keep your hands off my family,” I told the empty air, and the wind answered with the creak of old wood.
That night, before I drifted into sleep, I opened the small room and slid one thing into the farthest corner: a tiny carved charm, made years ago in some other life, that had always reminded me to remember who I was. I set it on the shelf and whispered, “I’m Elizabeth Cordova. I was a different woman once, and I am another now. This stick keeps its story, and I will keep mine.”
The space hummed, as if content.
“Goodnight,” I said to the log, to the boys, to the quiet room that held all my things.
Outside, the village breathed and the last light folded over the hill. I pressed my forehead against the last plank of the log and listened to the dry, sure sound it made—an ordinary, honest sound that meant home.
The End
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