Hush Little Baby (2 page)

The metallic tang of blood touches my tongue, and I realize my lip is bleeding. I press a tissue to the wound to staunch the flow.

Gordon’s shower stops, and I squat in the corner, stare at the door, and wait. I rock, hugging my knees to my chest—scared, nauseous, exultant—grateful I’m alive. I obsess on my beating heart, the blood pulsing in my veins, the oxygen filling my lungs.

Until you’ve almost died, you don’t appreciate the tenuous tether you have to life, but when you come within a breath of your mortality, suddenly you become very aware of its precariousness. And as insane as it is, and I acknowledge it’s insane, I’m never so grateful for my life than the moment I realize Gordon didn’t kill me.

My ribs throb, and I’m cold. I wrap a towel around my bare bottom and continue to wait.

Fear does a strange thing to time—a minute or an hour, I can’t be sure—but a door different from the one I’m listening for opens, and I leap from my huddle and dash into the hallway.

“Mommy…”

My hand slaps over Addie’s mouth so hard my towel disengages and drops to the floor, and instantly, my baby starts to cry. My hand muffles the noise, and I pray Gordon doesn’t hear. I carry Addie back to her room and mule-kick the door closed. I run to the far corner where her stuffed animals crowd on a beanbag and set her down, pulling her to me to calm her.

“Shhh,” I soothe, as I pray she won’t begin to wail. Her eyes are wide with hurt and fear.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I say, and stroke her red curls.

She whimpers, and my heart breaks.

“Why you do that?” she asks.

I shake my head, unsure if the gesture is because I can’t explain, or because I’m too ashamed to explain, or because the explanation is too burdensome for a four-year-old.

“I didn’t want you to wake Daddy,” I answer honestly.

Her head tilts slightly, then rights itself, satisfied with the explanation. “I need to go potty.” Her tears have stopped, and she seems to have already moved past the moment.

I take her hand and lead her silently back to the bathroom, retrieving my towel sarong as we go.

I sit beside her as she does her deed.

She looks sleepily at my face. “Why you bleeding?” she asks, her shoulders sloped in boredom as she waits for her bladder to remember why it woke her.

A question with no answer.

3

E
at,” Gordon says. “You need to be out the door in half an hour.”

My body protests as I push to sit up against the pillow. He hands me a plate with a slice of whole-wheat toast and a soft-boiled egg.

He doesn’t mention the reason I’m in the guest bedroom and neither do I.

It’s moments like these I wonder if I’m the one who’s crazy and if maybe the nightmare didn’t actually happen.

He pats the comforter over my abdomen, and my battered ribs flinch at his touch, reminding me with no uncertainty that the nightmare was, in fact, real.

“Morning, son,” he says with a celebratory grin, as though his earlier performance were a glorious triumph of baby-making to be rejoiced. On his cheek is a red scratch barely an inch long, a pitiful testament to my lack of resistance.

This is how it goes, an unexpected explosion after months of calm. Always, just as I start to relax and believe I’m safe, just as life resumes its hum and I’m lulled into believing it wasn’t as bad as I remember or that it isn’t going to happen again—that he’s changed, I’ve changed, we’re good now—bam! It happens again, worse than I remember, always scarier and worse.

Addie bursts into the room. “Daddy, youw’re home!”

Gordon scoops the galloping four-year-old into his arms, plants a kiss on top of her red curls, then twirls her back to the ground.

Addie’s feet touch the carpet, and she spins to me. “Mowrning,” she says as she jumps onto the bed and wraps a hug around my neck, then pulls back, her freckled face widening into a huge grin. “I got you a bewrthday pwresent.” And as quickly as she appeared, she vanishes.

Gordon sits on the bed beside me and places his hand on my belly. “I’d be happy with another girl as well,” he says, and I will myself not to tremble.

Addie’s back. In her hands is a lump wrapped in taped-together magazine pages.

“Open it. Open it,” she says, her energy buzzing like a hornet in heat.

I peel off the wrapping.

“I made it myself.”

I hold up the long strip of yellow-and-blue-plaid flannel. It’s about five feet long and varies in width from a few inches to a foot. I recognize it as a piece of one of Addie’s baby blankets.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a scawrf.”

“Oh.”

“For in case you get smudges again.”

Addie’s eyes sparkle, Gordon’s recede, and mine fill as I swallow the emotions back inside. I didn’t think she remembered. I hoped she’d forgotten.

Scotch tape patches the edges of the scarf where it frayed.

If I speak, the tears will escape, so instead I nod and wrap the soft gift around my neck as the memory replays—almost exactly a year ago, my life darkening as Gordon strangled me. Then after, the “smudges”—swollen red, bruised blue, vermilion green, then jaundice yellow—a month of color changes ringing my throat before they disappeared.

“How you get smudges?” Addie asks.

Gordon pats his thigh, and Addie climbs on board and wraps her pink arms around his neck.

“Sometimes, Ad, someone gets real mad or real sad,” he says, “and by accident they hurt themselves. And that’s what happened to your mommy, but then your daddy showed up and stopped her, and she got all better.”

A thousand jolts of electricity couldn’t shock me more.

I stare at my husband as he spins his horrible tale, my fear and shame teaming up to squelch the pride and outrage that rise like a fist in my throat.

Your father strangled me. Your father tried to kill me. Your father is insane. The smudges are from his arm wrapping around my neck and squeezing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

My mouth doesn’t move.

Addie sits on his knee, her left hand on his massive shoulder. Her right pokes the dimple on his chin, and she studies him with a hero worship that can’t be shattered with the truth.

Dragging footsteps, then the shaggy head of Drew appears, followed by his spindly body.

He plops himself onto the foot of the bed.

“Mowrning, Dwrew,” Addie says. “You see what I got Mom for hewr bewrthday?” She points to the scarf as I start to unwrap it.

“Youw’re not gonna weawr it?”

“Of course I am.” I rewrap the boa, my neck sweating in protest.

“It’s a cut-up blanket,” Drew says.

“It’s a scawrf.”

“It’s stupid.”

“At least I got hewr something.”

Drew sneers at her, his muscles tensing.

“Time to get dressed,” I announce, shifting the tides. Addie trots off, and Drew shuffles behind her.

“Eat,” Gordon says. “Eating for two.”

With another kiss to my belly, he follows them out.

This is how it goes, the initial shock absorbed like a wave, disappearing in the chaos of the day—ignored, pushed aside—remembered in every breath and bruised movement, but overwhelmed by the responsibilities of life, buzzing in the shadows of my mind and creating a cloudy numbness that, by day’s end, will progress into paralyzing fear.

The pattern’s so familiar it’s like déjà vu before it’s happened.

For the next few weeks, I’ll obsess on preventing another attack, catering to Gordon like he’s a king—loving him and worshipping him with abject devotion. I will work out, wear sexy lingerie, attempt to be more beautiful than I am. I will smile and purr, forsaking my dignity, my pride, and any sense of self that remains, all in a vain attempt to prevent it from happening again.

Like now, though I’m nauseous, my system wrecked, and in no condition for food, I force the breakfast Gordon’s given me down my bruised throat in an effort to please him.

This will go on for a while, perhaps a few weeks, until exhausted, I give up in despair, slipping into an antipathy so deep that a chill shudders my spine to remember it. Waking up, breathing, existing, becomes a chore—bathing, grooming, eating, out of the question.

It is a dangerous time—a time of feeling nothing, wanting nothing—a time when I’m no longer afraid. So I tempt fate, taunt Gordon and my mortality with sloven disregard, inviting and inciting my own destruction.

Two years ago, I accidently-purposely left the stove on and nearly burned down the house. Another time, I half-intentionally released my parking brake, taking out a parking meter and the trunk of my car. And a year ago, I had an affair—Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber.

I choke down the last piece of toast, closing my eyes and willing it to stay put.

If I survive, if I don’t destroy myself, eventually Addie and Drew will bring me back from the ledge, and thoughts beyond the present will begin to break through as I think of their future and what will happen to them if I don’t pull it together and figure out how to make things right. And as the bruises fade, my resolve will grow, and I will become determined to reclaim my life.

Gordon senses this, instinctively knowing when I begin to regain my strength.

As we lie in bed, my head spinning with thoughts of escape, he will turn to me. “Jill, you know how much I love you.”

I will nod.

“And if I ever lost you…” His voice will trail off and he will shake his head, then he will look at me fully so I can witness the veracity in his eyes. “…I’d go crazy.”

He is crazy. I already know this.

“You won’t leave me,” he will say. “You wouldn’t do that? Do that to me and the kids?”

And my heart will twist in terror for Addie and Drew.

This is how it will happen. This is why I have stayed.

I set the empty plate on the nightstand, and numb and sore, hobble toward our bedroom.

I limp as I walk and try to force my left leg to bend, but the battered muscles refuse to cooperate.

Each step aches. My pelvis is bruised, and my ribs pulse so acutely I wonder if they’re broken. Halfway there, I stumble into a gimpy run, lunging for the bathroom and getting there just in time to vomit my efforts into the bowl.

I flush away the evidence and, my head spinning, pull myself to the seat. I rest my forehead against the cool edge of the vanity. Below me, the trash can holds the empty tampon box, and the pain intensifies as my breaths deepen with despair. I can’t be pregnant. I’m already at my breaking point.

Gordon’s hand on my neck was a warning, its loosening, a show of mercy. I close my eyes and feel his fingers tightening, the thin stream of air whistling to my lungs.

If I stay, he will kill me. If I leave, he’ll destroy Addie and Drew. This is the impossible catch-22 I’m left with.

There’s a third possibility, but I pretend I don’t recognize it. Like an itch I’m afraid to scratch for fear it will fester and grow, I turn from it, close my ears to it, drape it in a sheet, but like an elephant in the room, it cannot be disguised—it smells, it bellows, it takes up too much space.

NO!
I scream. I refuse to acknowledge it, consider it. I push it back. It doesn’t budge.

I pull on my clothes and turn on the faucet to drown it out.

Run
, it whispers.

I apply my makeup, a heavy coat of foundation and a deep shade of lipstick to conceal the truth.

Take the kids and run. Hide where he can’t find you.

Leave my job, my home, my parents?

I can’t…I won’t…

He’ll kill you; he’ll destroy them.

“Jill, let’s go.” A holler from downstairs.

Mercifully, the choice will have to wait. Like all the times before, at this moment, my focus is on survival—survive this moment, this hour, this day.

“Jill!”

On shaky legs I stand; my time to decide is up.

*  *  *

Drew’s lunch is packed and sits on the counter above his Angels backpack that sits on the floor.

Gordon walks from the hallway wearing the off-duty uniform worn by most of the cops in the department—white T-shirt, dark Levi’s 501s, and a blue windbreaker that conceals his Glock.

He pulls a banana from the stainless steel banana hanger and walks to the door. He’s going to work out, then he’ll return to sleep a few hours before spending the rest of the day with Addie. And this afternoon, he’ll coach Drew and the Laguna Beach Indians.

“Game’s at six,” he reminds me, his tone laced with warning.

I nod.

The door closes behind him, and I breathe.

I comb Addie’s red curls, though they spring instantly back to an unruly mop, and finish just as the front door opens, letting in the crisp morning air along with my mom.

“Morning,” my mom says, and that’s all it takes.

Addie bolts to my leg, and the tremor before the eruption begins. The quivering starts with her lip, then moves outward to her chin and cheeks, culminating in a bloodcurdling wail as she clings to my skirt to prevent my departure.

Drew pulls on his backpack and watches unimpressed. When we get in the car, he’ll rate it on the Addie Richter scale. Friday was mild, only a six. Today’s revving up to be a nine.

My mom walks past us and pours herself a glass of orange juice. Tantrum consoling isn’t in her job description nor in her skill set. She sits at the counter sipping her juice and paging through the latest edition of
Redbook
.

I pry Addie’s hands from my skirt and almost escape, but she lunges back, sending a jolt of pain through my injured ribs.

“Damn it,” I snap.

My mom scowls, annoyed that my expletive interrupted her reading.

“Addie, honey, you know Mommy needs to go to work.” I try, though my stressed voice hardly conveys the sympathetic plea I was going for. My ribs throb, and the clock ticks.

Addie latches on tighter and screams louder, and I don’t have time for this. Drew’s going to be late; I’m going to be late. I wrench myself free from my sobbing daughter, grab Drew by the hand, and drag him out the door.

As we drive, the stress ebbs, and I glance in the mirror to see Drew sitting quietly in the backseat. His mop of sandy hair hangs past his forehead and curls around his ears. His blue eyes are like Gordon’s, his long eyelashes are mine. Since he turned eight, he no longer sits in his car seat, so my view of him is limited to his eyes, which stare solemnly forward toward the road and the reluctant destination of school.