Life Over Love (2 page)

He didn't open his eyes; he just stood there, like that, with his head back. 
After a minute he said "you're lying, give me the keys, NOW!" Brianna jumped involuntarily.  "I I'll find 'em Mike just give me a minute and I'll find them."   She had her free hand on his trying to remind him that he still had a tight hold on her wrist.

She looked up into his eyes. Realized, it didn't matter, even if he had the keys in his possession at that moment, nothing would have changed what happened next. 
          

2

H
e lifted his right leg and kicked her at least three times in the shins until she fell to the ground.  Brianna was not prepared for this kind of assault, she was completely shocked.  Immediately she covered her stomach to somehow protect the baby inside.  It didn't matter that her words were unintelligible. Mike wasn't listening; he couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding behind her ears.

He was driven by an invisible rage that rose up, and threatened to choke him, unless
he hit something or someone.  He was consumed with a physical need to hit something until he was spent, so hit her, the pregnant mother of his only daughter, his childhood sweetheart, his wife Brianna. 

He bent down, grabbed her up by her sore arm. Half dragged, half carried her into the house.  He pushed her into the living room and slammed the door.  His voice low and menacing, he told her to find them.
"Find them, now..."
          Find them. Find what? She thought oh my God, the keys, he still wants the keys.  Shaking she searched for the keys. She tossed the house; she tore away the couch cushions. She looked in her room, lifted the clothes that she had been wearing at the party. 
          She couldn't understand why her clothes were there, right in front of the bed where she'd left them, but still no keys.  Brianna was really crying, she was trembling, and she couldn't catch her breath.  She was still shocked by the scene that had played out in the drive way. 

She wanted more than anything to find those keys, to be
alone, to cry, and to sleep.  In the bathroom she knelt down to see if maybe she had dropped them under the cabinet, that's how she was when Mike came in,  gasping for breath, trying hard to stop sobbing.  She looked up briefly and resumed the search. 

He went to her then, knelt down beside her.  She flinched and for
whatever reason it was over.  No more fight he simply said "come on mi hija, let's go to bed."  She gulped and cried while he led her to their room.  Finally they slept. 

She found the keys the next day. They were on the floor by the baby's bed, where she had dropped them to tuck in her sweetie.

3

"Momma are you ok? You looked too sad just now..."
Brianna shook her head, blinked a little, and smiled brightly.  Putting up Christmas decorations with her babies and she still couldn't keep her mind off that Christmas two years ago.  

She was terribly sad, but she tried not to be.  “No, my baby girly I'm not sad. I'm hap
py, who waaants cookies!?"

 
Chelsea squealed "Meeee!" as only a three year old can, followed by her handsome little man in diapers. Brody threw down his sippy cup, ran up to Brianna, and stretched out his arms to join in on the fun too. 

After picking up the baby, to the kitchen they went, off to make delicious Christmas cookies.  Christmas cookies shaped memories to replace the monster shaped memories she wanted to forget.  Mike came into the house, picked up Chelsea, and looked over Brianna’s shoulder. 
          She fought the need to shudder before he kissed her cheek. "Hey babe, what smells good?"  “Dinner, I made enchiladas they're in the oven” Brianna answered as she rubbed her nose against her toddlers nose, who was busy sitting on the counter with a mixing bowl in his lap.  "Now, we're making cookies, but they're not in the smell good stage yet. How was your day?" 
          Mike put Chelsea down on the other side of the counter, and put his arms around his wife. "Not too bad, I missed you though, and I--" he broke off in the middle of his sentence.  Brianna had yet to make eye contact; she focused on the sippy cup that lay on the floor.  He gently tilted her chin up to make her look at him. “Don’t say you're sorry about last night.  I know it's fine.  You don't have to apologize anymore." 
          " Dang it Bri, I'm trying to make it up to you.  I don't know what's wrong with me, or how I could do that to you, hurt you like that." He murmured.  Mike lifted her arm looked at the bruises and kissed each one. Four soft kisses where four hard fingers had dug in with such an iron grip, they turned pretty pink skin to black and blue.

She snatched her arm back swallowed the humiliation the gesture caused.  "Just don't apologize,
it gets old, ok?  You hungry?" Mike shook his head, "yeah, just let me wash up."  After he left the room she busied herself preparing everyone's plates. 

Her thoughts were as follows:  he doesn't love me, if hates me so much why does he look at me like that?  Why do we fight so?  I hate him, I hate me, I hate us, and I hate this.  Oh lord what can I do?  What can I possibly do about this? How did I let this happen, I'm too stupid, to fix
it. I'll probably die like this, plain miserable.
          There were no tears. Brianna had stopped crying about everything a long time ago.  Tears did nothing, but magnify the drowning feeling that threatened to engulf her. 

The hardest thing for her to deal with was the humiliation, the shame she felt for being so stupid, and for allowing her life to become such a wasteland.  The only bright spots were her babies, and he never hurt them. 
"Briiiannnaa!” Mike was calling her from their room at the opposite side of their four bedroom trailer. 

She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes.  Brianna chose to walk to the room, rather than yelling back.  She wasn't in the mood for a lou
d long distance conversation.  She leaned in and rested her head on the door frame. "Yep, what's up?" 

Mike was sitting at the foot of the bed fresh out of the shower. Clad only in his boxers, after pulling his t shirt over his head, he said “yeah, where are those new sweats I bought to wear around the house?"  She
thought for a minute before answering, “you wore 'em remember?”  "No, if I remembered I wouldn't have asked. Why didn't you wash them then?" 

Not bothering to hide her own frustration she answered derisively "oh I don't know.  Between taking the kids to the doctor, the grocery store, the power company, and paying the rent today, I gues
s I forgot to wash your pants." "Ok, so wash 'em now!'  He had to yell again, because she had already turned away, and was going to check on the cookies in the oven.  She decided to let it go and save the cookies from burning. 

Mike walked into the kitchen as she was trying to salvage what she could of her Christmas cookies.
  With the sweats flung over his shoulder he grabbed a drink from the fridge.  Brody started crying in the living room. Brianna went to the walker and picked up the distressed boy, now whaling for his sippy cup. It had rolled under the couch.

With Brody screaming in her ear and Chelsea begging for a cookie in the other she barely heard Mike
when he said "here throw these in the wash babe." 
           Maybe it would have been best if she hadn't heard him.  Her head snapped up, her eyes flashed, and before she could stop she said “you have two arms and two legs, you can wash them yourself."
          As soon as she said it, and thought of a very bad four letter word, she knew it was a terrible mistake.  The minute she put the baby down and stood up a smashing force slammed down hard on her left eye. 

She collapsed, crumpling down to the floor, and pressed h
er palm hard against her eye.  Involuntarily squeezing both eyes shut trying to will away the sharp pain.  She sat like that for a good while, waiting for the halo like orbs to stop floating before her, before she dared to open her injured eye, so much for apologies right?

She couldn't open her eye let alone be s
ure she would ever see again.  Her right eye was fine, it just didn't want to open for fear of hurting the other one more.  She covered her poor eye with her left hand so that she could at least see the floor.  She stepped over the steel toe work boot he had used. She ignored the crying youngsters.  Keeping her head down, her eye cupped, and walked slowly to the bathroom.
          After washing her face with cool water, with her good eye or course, she watched the blood swirl down the sink drain for a while.  Brianna lifted her face to the vanity mirror.

   The mirror was brutally honest. She hated that weak, pathetic,
person reflected in that mirror.  She laughed then, out loud.  She was laughing at the grotesque sight before her. 

Her eye was swollen shut, with a deep, but small cut bleeding at the corner.  She laughed more still, and grabbed a soft towel to dry her face.  The laughter died away, turned into shaking sobs. She let her body sink down where she cried herself to sleep on the cool bathroom floor.      
          Brianna woke in her bed. She vaguely remembered being carried to bed, in the same fashion she carried her sleeping toddler, by the man that she had loved since she was fifteen years old.  She opened her eyes, winced, and gently touched her swollen eyelid. 

Brianna rolled over, looked at her sleeping husband, and wondered what happened to that compassionate boy who used to hold her hand on long walks around the city.
          He still looked like that same boy with the exception of a few pounds, his dark hair still had red highlights in the sun, his hands were rougher, but his eyes were still the color of honey, and seemed smile when he laughed.  In his eyes she saw a little house, with a porch swing, and room for kids to play hide and seek in the evening. 
          That boy would stay up all night just to talk to her. His eyes often said the things he was too shy to say, she had so much in common with him, and they shared the same dreams.

  They would talk of having the family that she had dreamt of as a little girl, torn between two fighting parents, and two crappy apartments
that only represented everything that she never wanted for herself.  She thought he wanted and needed her, to fulfill what he wanted for himself in this life. She wondered if that boy even existed anymore, but even the memories of what they once had couldn’t change her mind or heart, because those were just memories. 
          The kind loving boy had grown into a hateful man who repeatedly hurt the one woman in the world that wanted to give him everything.  He opened his eyes, and put his arm under head. The way he used to when they were first married, when it seemed like that’s where it belonged. 

For him it felt like old times and he asked if she slept well.  Just like that, like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t spent the night in a deep sleep brought on by sheer exhaustion and pain. 
            A tear slid from the corner of her eye before she could answer, “Yeah,   I had a weird dream though, I was in a kitchen, and when I looked across the hall, into the next room I saw a white haired lady.  She was surrounded by a bunch of cute black kids, one was in her lap, she was like Santa to them, and then I woke up.” 
          Mike laughed “you are crazy girl.” He shrugged out from underneath her and sat on the edge of the bed. He asked “what do you feel like doing today?”  Brianna sat up and hugged her knees “can you drop me and the kids off at church this morning; I’ve been wanting to go?”  He shrugged his shoulders said “sure” and went to get some breakfast. 
          When he got back everyone was dressed, the kids were pretty in their Sunday best, and Brianna was lovely in her white sundress.  She wore a sweater to cover her arms and dark sunglasses to hide the previous night’s attack.  They followed him back out to the car.  To anyone watching, they looked like the perfect family headed to church.  What they couldn’t see was the young woman’s broken heart and resolve to put an end to the constant battle in her home.
          Mike kissed her check before she had the chance to get out. His pretty family waved, said their loud by daddy’s to him, and they went in, where they sat in the back row of the chapel.   Even though she seldom attended services she took the sacrament, and cried when they sang Love One Another. 

She sat in the back during all the Sunday school classes and listened as they spoke of love and understanding.  She felt as if someone where whispering in her ear that she was home, that she belonged.  She was welcome there and her heart warmed in her chest. 
          Although she had tried to blend in with the walls in the back row during the services at least one person in each meeting hugged her and shook her hand, she was glad she had come.
          Brianna and the children sat in the waiting area by the chapel entrance. She idly thumbed through a phone book that Chelsea had found and put in her lap. Brody was standing by her knee pulling on her dress for balance. He had a crayon in his hand was just about to draw on the page when she looked down, she took the crayon away, and said “No baby, this isn’t a coloring book.”
          She went to put the phone book back, but not before she noticed the advertisement listing the contact information for the local battered women’s shelter.  Without a second thought, she jotted down the number with the crayon in her bible.  She grabbed the kid’s hands, together they went outside to play in the grass, and wait for daddy. 
          Mike knew Brianna was struggling to act normal.  He had stayed up most of the night after he’d hurt her the night before.  After he carried her and tucked her in bed, he’d fed the children, and got them ready for bed.  Chelsea and Brody had taken to sleeping in the little toddler bed together.