I Was Married Once, For Ten Days

In Madrid 1979 I lost my money, passport, hotel key, clothes when my backpack was stolen while I fell asleep on a park bench. I was 19 and backpacking with a friend who left the day before. I got sick at the stomach from worry, diarrhea and vomiting, I didn't have money to pay for the public bathroom. The man who stopped and asked me if I was OK, at first in Spanish, then in poor English walked away when he saw I was filthy with shit and vomit and stank. He came back and threw some money on the floor and pointed to the public bathroom. While I was in there the attendant came in and gave me a package, a simple dress. That's how my relationship with this man begun.

He took me to his apartment where I showered and washed my hair. He didn't have laundry in his apartment, my clothes had to be taken to a laundry on the street. My stay with h8m was in exchange for housekeeping and sex. I Spanish he called me woman. He fed me and bought some more clothes for me and took the day off to take me to get a new passport. During the days I stayed with him he had sex with me every day. I slept on a blanket on the floor at the foot of his bed.

Via long distance phone arrangements were made for me to pick up a ticket at the counter and I flew home ten days after he took me in. I discovered I was pregnant after I returned home and had a baby girl. She is 42 and by the time I tried to find him a few years later I never did. I never married, I finished a degree, lived with my parents until they passed away.

For a short ten days I was his woman, cooked, cleaned and had sex with him. When I'm asked if I was married I answer yes, I was certainly married to him for those ten days.