Learned Fear
He only hit me once.
We were walking along Gaylor Ave., taking pictures of the renovated bungalows and rebuilt Victorians that we could never afford to live in without a major label record contract or a winning lottery ticket. We cracked jokes at each other’s expense. We planned what to make for dinner. We laughed about exotic vacations we would take “some day.”
I made a crack about… whatever… I have no idea what I said, but it must have been insensitive because the street and the trees and the houses in the neighborhood all inhaled at once. They held their breath as he turned and pulled back his right hand into a ball. Because there was no air left on the street, I didn’t hear his fist swinging towards me. In the flash of light it took for me to sense movement in the corner of my right eye, my neck flinched and pulled away. We all exhaled, the street, the trees, the houses and me, as he made an impact on my right shoulder and knocked me off the sidewalk. I hadn’t been holding it in, so my exhale was sharply unexpected, but what I heard from the street and the trees and the houses was an electric hiss that replaced the air with a high-pitched scream.
I gasped, “What the… Ow! Yeah, that hurt!”
“No. It did not.” The street kept hissing and sparking.
“Yeah. I’m serious. You don’t know your own strength.”
“I know what hurts. I know how hard I hit you. That didn’t hurt.” Who taught him that bullshit? His father?
“Don’t you tell me what I just felt. My arm is throbbing to the bone.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
Silence. The street returned to normal. The white spotlight around the two of us went out. I crossed the street. I didn’t want to walk beside him any longer. I had felt this fear before. He would rage outside my window on a Saturday afternoon if I told him I didn’t want to see him. He would terrorize me with phone calls and e-mails if I didn’t want to be around him because he was drunk or high or both. Some days, it got where the first ring or a ping on my Mac would make me cringe. I knew how to wait out those episodes. It would pass. Please, if there is a God or a higher power, let it pass. Let me sleep. Let it be quiet.
The next night, as we were getting ready for bed, he looked at my right arm and said, “Honey! Your arm! What did you do to it?”
He only hit me once, but I had learned to fear him. I learned to sit quietly on the couch until he came to pick me up. I learned not to question where he was or what he was doing or who he was seeing. I learned to swallow my pride and my trust. I learned to be weak in front of him and accept his friends instead of my own. I had a lot more to learn before this relationship was over. If he had hit me more, I could show you the scars.
We were walking along Gaylor Ave., taking pictures of the renovated bungalows and rebuilt Victorians that we could never afford to live in without a major label record contract or a winning lottery ticket. We cracked jokes at each other’s expense. We planned what to make for dinner. We laughed about exotic vacations we would take “some day.”
I made a crack about… whatever… I have no idea what I said, but it must have been insensitive because the street and the trees and the houses in the neighborhood all inhaled at once. They held their breath as he turned and pulled back his right hand into a ball. Because there was no air left on the street, I didn’t hear his fist swinging towards me. In the flash of light it took for me to sense movement in the corner of my right eye, my neck flinched and pulled away. We all exhaled, the street, the trees, the houses and me, as he made an impact on my right shoulder and knocked me off the sidewalk. I hadn’t been holding it in, so my exhale was sharply unexpected, but what I heard from the street and the trees and the houses was an electric hiss that replaced the air with a high-pitched scream.
I gasped, “What the… Ow! Yeah, that hurt!”
“No. It did not.” The street kept hissing and sparking.
“Yeah. I’m serious. You don’t know your own strength.”
“I know what hurts. I know how hard I hit you. That didn’t hurt.” Who taught him that bullshit? His father?
“Don’t you tell me what I just felt. My arm is throbbing to the bone.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
Silence. The street returned to normal. The white spotlight around the two of us went out. I crossed the street. I didn’t want to walk beside him any longer. I had felt this fear before. He would rage outside my window on a Saturday afternoon if I told him I didn’t want to see him. He would terrorize me with phone calls and e-mails if I didn’t want to be around him because he was drunk or high or both. Some days, it got where the first ring or a ping on my Mac would make me cringe. I knew how to wait out those episodes. It would pass. Please, if there is a God or a higher power, let it pass. Let me sleep. Let it be quiet.
The next night, as we were getting ready for bed, he looked at my right arm and said, “Honey! Your arm! What did you do to it?”
He only hit me once, but I had learned to fear him. I learned to sit quietly on the couch until he came to pick me up. I learned not to question where he was or what he was doing or who he was seeing. I learned to swallow my pride and my trust. I learned to be weak in front of him and accept his friends instead of my own. I had a lot more to learn before this relationship was over. If he had hit me more, I could show you the scars.
posted by Scott Macphee at 5:43 PM
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