[Justin]
I want to hold her, stop her from crying, nurse the swellings that are already blackish blue, but the moment I reach out my hand to comfort her she is backing away, shaking her head, rejecting me. Sigh. What else can I do but gesture for her to come inside, hoping she won‘t take it wrong & run away?
She doesn’t. Just gazes briefly into my eyes apologetically. Walking slowly, dismally until finally she is sitting on the couch, a saggy silhouette in the candlelight. She makes a sort of hiccup sound, her body jerking from it’s force. Once, twice, three times she does this until she is panting, her breaths quick and short… exposed, bruised arms wrapped around her.
No shoes? No jacket? No purse. Just this:
this deep, unbearable-to-watch pain.
I‘m going to kill that bitch.
[Rhys]
I don’t know, I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know why I ran like that… without my shoes? I don’t know, I just had to get away, I had to do anything, anything that would make it stop, make him stop, make me stop… screaming, bleeding, wanting to die.
Yeah, it was a long way to run, a long way to walk, with no money, no cell phone, no shoes.
He’s looking at me now as if wondering what to do, and I want to speak, I want to tell him that it’s okay, that I’m okay because I’m here now… but I can’t. Because I can’t stop crying, first panting (I’m trying to catch my breath), then these awful, God-awful wails. I’ll wake his neighbors with this awful crying, I sound like a dying animal.
I should have let him hold me. He tried. But it’s too much right now. I feel combustible. I just want to let the storm pass, get it out of my system, and then forget.
It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
[Justin]
Finally, she’s found peace.
I let her bathe, gave her clothes to sleep in, changed the sheets on my bed. I offered to wash her feet even after her bath; they’re blistered; she traveled about ten miles without shoes, though they’re clean they must still feel dirty. She declined with a slight smile; a split lip, he punched her in the mouth. My stomach turns just thinking about it. Why didn’t she call me? There’s pay phones, she could’ve called ‘collect.’ I would’ve driven anywhere to pick her up… keep trying to convince myself that in spite of it all, everything’s okay because she’s here now. But it’s not. It’s not okay.
She’s…
my baby.
