Because of the Pregnancy, They Humiliated Me Every Day, but That Morning One Word from Me Would Erase Daniel’s Smile from His Face Forever

Daniel burst through the room door so violently that the small wooden cross hanging on the wall fell to the floor, and I, six months pregnant, fell out of bed.

“Get up, you lazy cow!” he roared and threw the blanket at my feet. “It’s five o’clock. My mother and father want breakfast.”

My legs were trembling. I put my hand on my stomach and tried to stand up, but such pain began in my back, as if a bone had broken from inside.

“Daniel, it hurts so much… Give me a little time.”

He chuckled and struck the edge of the bed with his fist.

“Pregnancy does not make you a queen. Women have been giving birth to children for centuries. And you cannot even make an ordinary breakfast.”

At that moment, the small copper whistle hanging around my neck cut into my skin. My brother Levan had given me this whistle when, before I moved in with my husband, he told me: “If you ever lose your voice, call me with this at least.” I laughed then. That morning I thought for the first time that his words might have been a prophecy.

I barely went down the stairs. In the kitchen Agnes, Daniel’s mother, was already sitting at the table. Beside her, his father, Givi, was unfolding a newspaper, while Daniel’s sister Nino was reading something on her phone.

Agnes looked at me and twisted her lips in disgust.

“Here our great lady has arrived too. The whole house must stop because she has a belly.”

“Eggs, bacon, and pancakes,” Daniel told me. “Quickly.”

“The doctor told me not to stand for a long time in the morning…”

“The doctor does not live here,” Givi interrupted and tapped the edge of the newspaper on the table. “The family decides here what you will do.”

Nino smiled silently. A heavy silver ring glittered on her finger and, every time it touched the table, made an unpleasant clinking sound.

I boiled oil in the pan. The smell of burnt butter stood in the kitchen, my eyes filled with tears, and the walls slowly began to sway.

“Do not dare put on a drama now,” Agnes told me.

Then I fell to the floor.

The cold tile struck my knee. The baby moved strongly in my stomach. That small movement brought me back to consciousness, but my body no longer obeyed me.

“Get up!” Daniel roared.

“I can’t… I can’t stand…”

“This theater again?”

He grabbed the wooden stick leaning in the corner. This stick had once been for firewood, but now in his hand it looked like a weapon.

“Daniel, please… the baby…”

I received the first blow on my thigh. My breath caught.

“Hit her again,” Agnes laughed. “Otherwise she will continue like this tomorrow too.”

“Shut up!” I shouted, but I did not recognize my own voice.

Daniel raised the stick again. Just then, near the floor, beside the leg of a chair, I saw my phone.

It was several steps away.

I crawled on my knees.

“Catch her!” Givi shouted. “Let her not call anyone!”

Daniel bent toward me, but my fingers had already touched the screen. Levan’s number was open. I typed only two words: “Help me, please.”

The message was sent.

Daniel snatched the phone from me and smashed it against the wall. The screen shattered into pieces.

“Do you really think anyone will come for you?” He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head back.

The whistle swung on my chest. Its cold edge touched my skin.

“Today I will teach you whom you belong to.”

Then the stick rose again. My eyes grew heavy, the room darkened, but at the last moment I heard Nino’s frightened whisper:

“Daniel, someone is standing at the door…”

And before anyone touched the lock, Agnes reached her hand toward the black folder on the table…

Agnes’s hand stretched toward the folder, but such a pounding sounded at the door that the dishes jumped on the shelf. Daniel froze. I was lying on the floor and clutching my stomach with both hands.

“Open the door! It’s the police!” Levan’s voice came from outside.

My brother.

Daniel’s face changed immediately. A few seconds earlier there had been anger in his eyes, but now fear appeared there.

“Nobody move,” he whispered.

“Open the door!” Levan shouted again. “Marika is in the house. We received her message.”

I could not understand then who “we” were. Later I would learn that Levan had not come alone.

Givi looked toward the window. Outside, blue flashes moved across the walls. Agnes quickly knelt beside me and hissed quietly:

“If you say that Daniel hit you, you will never see your own child again.”

“My child does not belong to you,” I barely said.

For the first time, the color disappeared from her face.

Daniel hid the stick behind the fireplace and grabbed my arm.

“Get up. You will say that you fell.”

“You are hurting my arm.”

“Then speak as if I did not hurt you.”

The door shook once more. Even after military service, Levan stood as straight as before, although that morning his voice was different. The protective jokes of my childhood could no longer be heard in it. Only cold determination.

“Step back!” he shouted. “If the door is not opened in ten seconds, we will break it down.”

Nino began to cry.

“Daniel, open it. Please.”

“Shut up!”

At that very moment a second voice came from the gate. It was a woman’s.

“Marika, if you can hear me, tell me!”

It was police officer Ana, Levan’s acquaintance, with whom he had spoken to me about legal assistance several weeks earlier. Then I did not understand why she told me: “If they threaten you even once, do not delete anything.”

Daniel opened the door.

Levan rushed to me the very first moment. His hands were not covered in blood, but his face was so tense, as if he himself had received a wound.

“Marika, look at me. Is the baby moving?”

“Yes… but I am afraid.”

“Now you are allowed to be afraid. You are no longer alone here.”

Ana knelt beside me and did not touch my stomach, only looked into my eyes.

“The ambulance is on its way. Who hit you?”

Daniel answered immediately:

“Nobody. My wife fell. Because of the pregnancy she often loses her balance.”

Levan looked toward him.

“Then why is the stick hidden behind the fireplace?”

Silence fell over the room.

Givi folded the newspaper.

“This is a family matter. There is no need to go outside.”

“No,” Ana said. “When a pregnant woman is lying on the floor with bruises, this is no longer a family matter.”

The ambulance doctors brought in a stretcher. The copper whistle hanging around my neck struck the stretcher’s metal and made a short, thin sound. Levan heard it and lowered his eyes.

“You are still wearing this…” he said.

“I thought I would never use it.”

“You used it, Marika. The text was enough.”

In the ambulance I could barely breathe under the oxygen mask. The doctor said the baby’s heartbeat could be heard, but observation was necessary. I thought only of one thing: Agnes’s black folder.

It was no longer lying on the floor.

Levan had taken it when leaving the house.

“What is in it?” I asked.

He was silent for several seconds.

“I do not know yet. But your phone did not lose everything.”

“The phone is smashed.”

“The phone is. Not what had been recorded before.”

In the small hospital room, after the examination, Ana stood by the window. Outside, rain began, and drops struck one another on the glass.

Levan put the folder on the table. A sheet written with my name was visible on top.

“Marika, there is one thing you need to know,” he said. “Before we open the folder, someone called the clinic number and said that the baby is not Daniel’s.”

My blood froze.

“Who called?”

Levan did not answer me. At that moment a new message arrived from my phone’s old number.

“If you tell the truth, you will never take your child away.”

And at the end of the message there was only one letter — N…

N. It was only one letter, but I knew whom it belonged to. Nino. Daniel’s sister always stayed silent when her family insulted me, although that morning she had a frightened voice at the door.

“Maybe she is simply frightening us,” Levan said and showed the message to Ana.

“Or she is trying to pass Daniel’s words on to someone else,” Ana answered.

On the second floor of the hospital, in the doctor’s office, the clock showed eleven. On the windowsill stood a purple plastic cup in which the doctor had left a coffee spoon. I looked at that spoon and tried not to break down.

“Let us open the folder now,” Levan said.

Inside Agnes’s black folder were a copy of my identity card, bank statements, and several printed letters. On the last sheet, in Daniel’s handwriting, it said: “If she leaves, we will take the child away. We will tell everyone that she is mentally unstable.”

Cold fell over my fingers.

“How did this get to him?”

“I photographed it,” I told him.

Levan raised his head.

“When?”

“Three weeks ago. When Agnes rummaged through my bag, I left the phone in the kitchen and took pictures. Everything was automatically saved in a secure storage.”

Ana quietly came closer to me.

“Is there anything else?”

Levan took a small device from his pocket. It looked like a pregnancy belt, but a small recorder was sewn inside it.

“Do you mean this?”

I nodded.

“Daniel did not know. Levan told me that if I was afraid to remain alone at home, I should at least leave my voice behind. It was turned on that morning.”

Ana connected the device to the laptop. For the first time, the morning’s voices sounded in the room.

“Get up, you lazy cow!”

Daniel’s voice.

Then my quiet plea. Agnes’s mockery. Givi’s words that the family decided my life. Finally, the sound of the stick striking and my scream.

The recording ended with Daniel’s phrase:

“Today I will teach you whom you belong to.”

Nobody moved in the room.

Levan’s jaw tightened, but he did not raise his voice.

“That is his voice,” he said. “He will perish by his own words.”

Ana immediately contacted the investigator. Several minutes later Daniel appeared in the corridor, handcuffed. Agnes stood behind him and was crying, although her tears did not reach me.

“Marika, everything was different,” Daniel said. “You were provoking me.”

“Your voice was recorded.”

His face emptied in one second.

“That is illegal.”

“Beating a child is illegal too,” Ana answered.

Agnes reached toward me.

“You are destroying this family!”

“No,” I told her. “You destroyed it yourselves.”

Daniel lowered his head, but then smiled strangely.

“You still will not take the child away from me. The doctor already has a message. Everyone knows that the baby may not be mine.”

Levan turned toward him.

“Did you spread this rumor yourself?”

Daniel said nothing.

That same evening the doctor informed me that the baby’s condition was stable, but additional tests would become necessary. I still could not understand why Daniel had suddenly become a man clinging to the child’s parentage.

Then Ana placed a second sheet on the table.

“This was found in Daniel’s car. It says that after the child’s birth he intended to demand custody and had prepared false testimonies in advance.”

At the bottom of the sheet stood one signature.

Nino’s.

While I was looking at that name, a telephone rang in the corridor. Ana answered, listened for several seconds, and then looked at me very slowly.

“Marika, Nino is coming to the hospital. She says she must confess everything, but before that Daniel left her one thing…”

She could not finish the sentence. In the phone, Nino’s frightened breathing could be heard.

“Daniel said that if I give testimony, they will kill my child…”