John’s pace is frantic and worried. His calloused hand and eagle eye make sure I’m always by his side. My jaw still aches from that night, and John makes me jumpy and nervous. But with just the right amount of freebase in my lungs, I stay in foolish hopes that this craziness will soon end. It doesn’t. My bookkeeping duties are barely manageable with the amount of drugs John brings home, and the tight, paranoid leash he has wrapped around my whereabouts is suffocating and cruel. If I need to collect the rent for the month and simply knock on tenants’ doors, he interrogates me ruthlessly for hours on end, holding the cocaine in my face as leverage for me to tell him the truth.
John’s interrogations are regular now; morning to night and over again.
“Stop it, John,” I implore in tears, scared to death that he’ll get violent again. “I’m not lying.”
Sometimes he believes me, or pretends to believe me, and dismisses me military style. I know he’s still angry; I turn away and swallow hard, apprehensive. Something bad is going to happen. I just know it.
It does. He takes it out on other things now; the small pieces of my heart that over the years he has allowed into my life—other than him. My beloved garden: destroyed in a flash. I find my entire lovely, tended garden—ready-to-be-harvested squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers—piled and rotting in the middle of the courtyard on a day I let Thor out to pee. Startled and bewildered tenants step gingerly over the pulverized mounds of vegetables. My heart bleeds, pierced straight to the core at the cruelty of John’s destruction of my small, nurtured space.
Sharon sees me crumpled on the porch holding my gut and crying. She steps back into the shadow of the house, emotionless, as if she has accidentally walked into a private conversation.
John is becoming steadily abusive on every level now and steadily more insane.
“Where’s your ring?” I ask him after answering his frantic rapping at the garage apartment door.
He was wearing the large dragonfly when he left, and I have a bad feeling now that it’s no longer on his hand. I know men who have lost everything. They’d sell their mothers to get high. His warning lectures from months ago echo eerily in my head. Lose everything they own. Lose everything they own.
He doesn’t answer but only brushes past me to set up his pipe in the bedroom.
“John, are you all right?” I follow him nervously. “What’s the matter?” He looks shaky and in a foul mood. Snapping his pipe together, he makes himself a big hit of freebase, grabs his stomach, and holds it in.
The stream of residue billows around my head as he exhales at my face. Uh-oh. My heart thumps like a drum in my chest; my palms sweat and twitch. He’s mad again. I straighten up the room, desperate to become invisible.
“Where did you go today?” He flares his nostrils and glares accusingly.
“Nowhe—”
Wham! In one forward lunge, he flings his pipe into his briefcase and throws me on the bed. As I struggle to get free, John sits on top of my chest, pressing my arms down above my head. I am paralyzed. “Now!” he hisses dangerously, deliberately slowing his breath from our scuffle. “Where—have—you—been?”
“Stop! John!”
He yanks my arms down and pins them with his knees, taking one of his free hands and covering my mouth. “I’ll rip your eyes out, you lying bitch!” he sneers, plunging his thumbs into the corner sockets of my skull.
“Noooooo!” I try to yell, but his forearms muffle my voice. Like a bobblehead doll bouncing wildly on a bumpy road, I frantically turn my head from side to side.
The sweat from the battle and the heat of the claustrophobic apartment cause John’s thumbs to slip roughly off my eyes, his nails slicing the edges of my lids.
“Ahhhh!” I scream at the pain.
John’s bloodshot eyes widen in disbelief at my ability to escape his grip; then, in another fit of rage, he draws his arm back and punches me in the mouth.
The room is black with flashes of light like electric sparks. Blood splatters crimson on the pale sheets at my head.
John pushes himself off of me, smears the blood from his hand on the pillow by my face, and walks away.
I spit out a warm metallic mouthful of blood and roll to my side, holding my face. I feel the hole in my lip and the tooth that juts through, and I scream pitifully from the pain. I want to die. How can this be? I can’t comprehend. What’s going on? The horribleness of this overwhelms me.
On the way out the door, John holds up a stack of papers that look familiar through the burn of my cloudy vision. “Here. Now you can give these to your new boyfriend!” he spews venomously. One by one, he tears them to shreds, tossing mutilated pieces of the deepest, most private years of my life in the air before leaving me to my wounds.
“Noooo!” My breath catches in my throat when I recognize the scattered papers. Oh God, no. My poetry! I stagger over to the fragile paper fragments now littered on the gray and mildewed carpet. Precious words from all levels of my soul—words that brought me comfort, joy, release, and love—now scattered like a discarded jigsaw puzzle. “I wrote this one for my father,” I cry out loud, a new stab of pain stinging me with the loss of treasured memories, all I have left of him. “And this one. This, this one. I wrote this for him.” Unbelievably, more tears find their way down my bloodstained cheeks as I realize John mistakenly assumed these were written for someone else. He really doesn’t think I love him… How can that be? Eyes stinging and mouth throbbing, I clutch the precious tattered bits of me in my arms and rock in place for hours, blocking out the violence, willing the devastating destruction gone.
To and fro, to and fro, the constant, simple rhythm carves a space in time.
A safe place.
John sticks his head in the doorway later that evening. I jump out of my skin. “Come eat,” he says, abruptly turning to walk back to the house.
Sharon, I think. She probably wants to have dinner. I gotta think of something to say about my face! I can’t tell her what happened. But what can I say? Oh God, maybe she’ll figure it out! Maybe she’ll be able to stop him. He’s out of his mind. He’ll hurt me again; I know it. Maybe she’ll help me. Maybe? My mind races wildly, seeking a way out of John’s torturous grip. I head to the sink to splash cold water on my face. My lips and eyes are swollen red, the right eye almost shut. I roll my tongue over my bottom lip, numb now, and poke it easily through the hole made by my tooth. Oh shit! She’ll definitely see this. I hold out small hope that I can still make this not real. I’m gonna need some bandages, I acknowledge, feeling a jab in my heart. I clean up the blood and sweat as best I can, take a deep breath, and harness my sinking sadness. Hiding my face with an old cleaning towel, I follow John’s order and make my way across the courtyard.
The big front door squeaks, and the doorknob clicks my way in loudly. Please don’t let her hear me. I rush swiftly across the varnished floor to my room. I don’t want to be here. The shame of Sharon seeing me beaten and bruised pains me as much as being punched by John did, but I’m scared John will get violent again if I don’t obey him.