Chapter 2 #2
But the coat from Noelle was more than a gift. It was poetry I wasn’t expecting. For the first time since I’d stoically accepted my fate, I nearly cried again.
But I couldn’t let Dennis know how much Noelle’s thoughtful gift meant. He’d just find some way to use it against me.
Holding back my tears, I hardened my voice. “Orange doesn’t go with my new look. I don’t want it. I’ll send it back to her.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Dennis agreed. But instead of sending it back, he hung it up on the coat rack I kept next to the door.
Probably to mock me. Every time he left the apartment on vague errands, with threats of what he’d do to Noelle if I wasn’t there when he got back, I’d see that awesome orange coat hanging there. Gold buttons glinting like treasure I’d never be able to enjoy.
january
I spent New Year’s alone, watching people set off illegal fireworks on the street below. Wishing I could call Holly and Noelle. Even though there was nothing I could say.
Unhappy New Year to me.
Yes, I was miserable. But Noelle was safe. And that was all that mattered.
february
“Come here, Belly.”
After serving Dennis his Valentine’s Day dinner—coq au vin that had taken me all day to prepare—I’d remained standing behind my chair as I always did until he told me to sit down.
Sometimes he “forgot” to tell me, and I’d end up watching him eat both portions of the meal I’d made.
But tonight, after exactly five bites, he beckoned me forward to his side of the table.
“I’m sorry,” I said before I even knew what I’d done wrong. “Is something not to your liking?”
“What’s with this pie?” He pointed to the chocolate cream pie I’d set on the table—made hours earlier so it would have time to set in the refrigerator. I’d sprayed a ring of whipped cream around its edges and carefully placed a cherry in the middle.
“Is that no longer your favorite dessert?” I asked. I’d been given no more instruction about Valentine’s Dinner other than it needing to be “worth ten years of prison time.”
“When I was in the pen, they showed us that movie—the one with the cute redhead and that lawyer from How to Get Away with Murder. You remember? Where the maid bakes a special pie?”
My brain fumbled around. It had been so long since I’d experienced any pop culture that it took me a few minutes to understand what he was insinuating.
“Oh, you mean The Help?”
I actually wished I’d thought of that, but I shook my head, insisting, “No, I didn’t put anything bad in it. I wouldn’t. I mean, when would I even have the chance to—”
“Here.” He handed me the dessert fork I’d placed next to the smaller saucer I’d planned to serve the pie on. “Why don’t you taste it first?”
I bent over to fork out a small sample of the pie that wasn’t made with love, but also most definitely didn’t have any human excrement in it. “Oh, sure, I can—”
Dennis shoved my face into the cream pie before I could finish the sentence. Chocolate cream filled my nose and my mouth as he held me down. Choking me.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
But I made myself go limp, knowing better than to struggle.
Just when I thought he might drown me in my own pie, he pulled me back up.
“Nothing,” he seethed. “Nothing you do will ever make up for all those Valentine’s Days I had to spend in jail. Now, go clean up and get yourself ready while I finish eating.”
I didn’t argue. Vacant Little Thing. Vacant Little Thing.
I washed my face and body in the shower and got myself ready.
“Getting myself ready” basically meant putting on a loose satin chemise with a built-in push-up bra. Dennis had bought it for me “to cover up all your problem areas.” Like my sagging A-cup breasts and my poufed-out middle-aged stomach.
Dennis hated the older version of the body I’d kept relentlessly tight as part of my duties as his wife, before over a decade of eating what and how I wanted, with peri- and full-blown menopause on top.
He loved that I was rapidly losing weight now that he was back in my life.
But that didn’t make up for my less-than-ideal body.
That Valentine’s Day, he brought his laptop into the bedroom, like he always did. It was already halfway through some video of two young, lithe women with dead eyes putting a lot of effort into pleasuring a paunchy guy who looked like a White version of Dennis—save for the impressive anatomy.
Dennis set the laptop on the pillow beside my head and climbed on top of me, pushing into me without averting his eyes from the girls on the screen.
Holly had forced an unneeded lecture on me about the importance of lubrication with age, and I’d learned over the last month that was absolutely true.
Sex hadn’t been great with Dennis before the change. But now it just hurt.
“Still tight.” Dennis glanced away from the screen long enough to grin down at me. “At least you didn’t let too many other guys hit this while I was gone.”
My chest filled with shame. I hated that the number of guys was even smaller than Dennis assumed. Zero. I hadn’t had sex with anything but a small clit stimulator because I’d been too scared to date after Dennis. And I’d had absolutely zero interest in sex.
Sex had never been particularly good in my experience, but at least Holly’s bartender father, Naheem, had occasionally switched positions and made sure I had enough drinks to get in the mood.
Dennis had made me feel like just a body for his deposit from the start, and he’d been so disgusted by the changes in my body after Noelle was born via C-section that he’d told me he just had to bring porn to bed for extra stimulation.
He made it sound like I ought to be grateful he was willing to have sex with me at all. Looking back, I could see that he was poking at my boundaries. Tenderizing my self-esteem so I’d eventually start taking his abuse—which, of course, was also all my fault, according to him.
By the time Noelle was in high school, I’d learned to dissociate. When Dennis was hitting me, when he was moving on top of me, I’d figure out how to mentally leave.
Vacant Little Thing.
As the porn actress’s moans filled the air, I stared at the ceiling. Numbing my mind. Putting my real emotions into a box that I kept locked inside the part of my brain responsible for survival.
Then I went to my happy place. The studio room at UMG’s College of the Arts, back when I was twenty-one and free. Chiseling that slab of purple-veined soapstone, hearing it tell me where Prince was hidden inside.
In real life, I’d sold the half-finished slab to another art senior for pennies to be broken down and reimagined as stones for her fantasy garden installation.
But in my mind, during those long winter nights with Dennis, I chiseled and chiseled my way through the coldest season…
march
…until one day it was early spring, and I walked into the bedroom to tell Dennis that we were out of mushrooms for his omelet.
I found the room empty and realized two things: 1) Dennis was in the shower, and 2) He’d left something on top of the dresser I was now forced to share with him. Something I hadn’t seen since December when he made me talk to Noelle.
My phone.
I looked over my shoulder, my chest stuttering with real emotion for the first time in months.
Was this a test? I froze, just in case.
But no, the sound of the shower continued. I had maybe five minutes. Maybe less.
With a deep breath, I took my chance and picked up the phone.
***
HOLLY: Mom, I don’t know what’s going on or why you didn’t answer any of my texts about Noelle.
I know you’re back together with that abusive POS I went out of my way to help you and Noelle escape ten years ago, but you really have to call me back.
I’m worried about my sister. YOUR DAUGHTER. Seriously, it’s important.
My stomach twisted with guilt as I read the last of the angry messages Holly had sent me—apparently, all the way up until February, when her messages had abruptly stopped.
Had she completely given up on me then? The possibility filled me with equal parts relief and hopelessness.
It was raining again. A crash of lightning announced that spring was in full boom outside the apartment.
Dennis would be out of the shower any minute, expecting breakfast. What I needed to do was get into the kitchen and start cooking so he wouldn’t have an excuse to get angry again. Or know that I’d dared to check my own phone.
I started to set the forbidden device down, but then it buzzed with a new message.
This time from my youngest—Noelle.
I hadn’t heard from her since before Christmas, when Dennis had hovered like a shadow, forcing me to lie to the daughter who’d just been dismissed from her job. “She keeps calling. Tell her you don’t want to see her,” he’d commanded before handing me my own phone. “Tell her you’re fine.”
Four months later, I drank in her latest text like a woman dying of thirst.
NOELLE: Happy Spring, Mom! Big news! I know this is coming out of the blue, but I’ve moved to a small mountain town in Canada, and I’m engaged!
!! Also, I’m pregnant with twins, and we’re planning a summer wedding.
Mom, I’d really love it if you could come.
Could you call me? Please? I’m so, so happy, but the situation I’m in is kind of a long story, and I don’t think it’s explainable over text. Also, I’d love to see how you’re—
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The phone was yanked from my hands before I could even finish reading the text.
Heart clenching, I looked up to find Dennis hovering over the bed where I’d sat to check my messages since he “moved back in.”
His paunch, which he didn’t see any reason to be ashamed of, hung over the towel wrapped around his waist. Water droplets and shampoo lather were clinging to his thinning halo of curls. Apparently, he’d been mid hair wash when he realized he’d left my phone out where I could find it.
I hadn’t even heard him come out of the bathroom. I’d been too wrapped up in the joy of Noelle’s news—twins. Twin grandbabies.
But Dennis didn’t look happy as he scanned the message.
“She’s getting married, and she didn’t even think to invite me?” His lip curled. “The grandfather?”
The joy that had swelled in my chest only moments ago curdled into something cold and sour.
Of course, Dennis would make it about himself.
And, of course, I couldn’t act as overjoyed as I was. That would give him something else to hold over me. I could see it now—him threatening to show up at her wedding, then making me beg him not to ruin her special day.
“Aren’t you going to call her, Belly?” He dangled the phone like a carrot, using the new nickname he’d been shaming me with for months. “Ask for a plus-one?”
I shook my head quickly. “I don’t care,” I lied, keeping my voice small and empty. “No use calling her back when I don’t even want to go.”
He stared at me with narrowed eyes, and I made sure to keep my expression downtrodden, the way he preferred it.
But my subservient act wasn’t good enough this time.
“I don’t think you understand,” Dennis said, his expression twisting to mean and petty. “I’m not asking.”
So, this was how it was going to play out.
There was no right answer. No safe choice. If I refused, he’d punish me. If I called, he’d find a way to hurt our daughter.
It wasn’t a choice, really. The decision had already been made.
I felt the familiar deadening inside me, the shift where I stopped being a person and became a shell.
Instead of the art studio at UMG, I went to another happy place. A new one, this time.
A church pew. Twin grandbabies—soft and warm—snuggled close at my sides as I turned to watch Noelle walk down the aisle in a gorgeous wedding gown.
“Mom, I’m so happy.”
And I was happy for her. Even as the back of Dennis’s hand cracked across my cheek, the blow snapping my head to the side.
It didn’t matter. The pain couldn’t touch me. Because Noelle was no longer a sitting duck in Gemidgee.