(Caption: No to violence against women)

She gets up, goes straight to the kitchen and makes breakfast. She hurries to wake the children up and get them dressed. They have breakfast. She washes the dishes and puts beans to soak for dinner. He’s already on the go, starts the car, and tells her to move or he’ll leave her behind. She grabs her bag and her vanity case, because she only has time to put on some makeup on the way to work.

She barely makes it, since the school teacher seized the opportunity to complain about her children, today of all days, when she has to submit a report to her boss at 8:00 o’clock. And her husband had to be on time for a life-and-death meeting and couldn’t give her a ride.

She managed to get the bus, which stopped a whole block short of its official stop and forced her to break into a short run. However, her boss took no heed of her excuses about schoolchildren or buses and said she her performance was limited. “That happens to you because you’re a woman”, he grumbled. And yet, that day she took with her another bag full of papers to work on at home.

She picked up her kids. By the time they got home it was almost dark, and she cursed the day when the daylight-saving time was over. She quickly took off her shoes, heavy as they felt by then, and took a dive into the kitchen, from where she explained the children what they had to do with their Math assignment, send them to take a shower, listened to [the radio program] Sobre la Mesa, today about the important topic of Services –thing is, she likes to keep up with current events– and even got on a couple of pages for the report she was expected to submit first thing in the morning.

Her husband arrives. Dinner is ready. Everything smells good and fresh. They ate, and their after-dinner conversation was, as usual, about the husband’s daily problems, ranging from his incompetent secretary to his car’s faulty air-conditioning system. And she’s sitting there for the duration, waiting for the first opportunity to tell him that she would be going to bed late at night again today.

As always, he didn’t understand her reasons and, shrugging his shoulders, stretched out on the couch to watch a crucial soccer game. Consigned to the kitchen for the fifteenth time that day, she stayed up until the clock struck twelve midnight or one in the morning.

The following day, somewhere else in the city:

He sneaks out of bed to avoid waking her up. She went to bed very late at night the day before. He makes breakfast and calls the children. It’s hard at first, but in the end he manages to get them into the bathroom. He thinks how easy it is for her to convince them, and smiles at the thought. Now, the most difficult task of the day: to try and get her on her feet, because she loves to linger in bed like no other.

He kisses her once, twice, three times, until he succeeds. She does everything in a jiffy –she’s very good in that department– and is ready in a matter of minutes, aware that he must be at work early. Never does he push her, though. She fixes the children’s uniforms. He had already dressed them, but as usual had made a mess instead.

At school, the teacher is about to complaint about their children’s pranks, but he had come in with her and, since he’s very good at cutting things short he gives the teacher a friendly “we’ll be back later” –a promise they intend to keep– and manage to escape before it’s too late. He sees her off at the entrance to her office, kisses her goodbye and made a sign to her, a sort of code that only they understand.

They don’t meet again until the afternoon, and as they exchange stories about how their day was, she prepares the spices and he the rice. She’s smiling all the time, today more than ever because she received at the office the acknowledgment she deserved for an important job well done which she can’t stop talking about. Meanwhile, he’s looking at her, waiting for the first opportunity to ask something: “Will you be coming to bed early today?” And she answers with a categorical “yes”, and another kiss.