Chapter 3 #2
“My last straw probably seems small,” Eve said, glancing around the room. “Me and my fiancé were remodeling our basement. We got into a fight one morning. I can’t even remember what it was about.” Snorting, she shook her head. “I was six months pregnant, and he shoved me.
“He went to work after that. I was upset, so I figured I would go paint some trim down there. Ease my mind, you know?” She twiddled with a fraying string on the fleece blanket over her lap.
“Anyway, I started working on it and I dropped my paintbrush. We hadn’t put in the floors yet, so it wasn’t a huge deal, but I bent down to pick it up, and I saw this hole in the wall. ”
The door in the far left of the room clicked open again. This time, Simone walked through.
It wasn’t her late arrival that had me squinting, though. It was everything else.
Wearing a pair of yoga pants and a black hoodie, she mouthed, “Sorry,” as she tiptoed across the room to join me on the sofa.
Her long dark hair was tossed up in a messy bun.
Not an ounce of makeup rested on her cheeks, nor her eyes.
Which wasn’t uncommon among the girls here.
I wasn’t wearing any either. But it was uncommon for Simone.
“The memory hit me like a bomb.” Eve’s voice grew somber.
“I was looking at that hole in the wall, and I remembered when he put it there. I don’t remember what that fight was about either, but I remember him kicking that hole in the wall.
He tried to punch one first, but he hit a stud and broke his hand, so he started kicking it, over and over and over again. ”
Tracing her tongue along her teeth, Eve let out a humorless laugh.
“And when I told him to stop, that he was gonna break his foot too, he said, ‘It’s better I hit the wall than you.’ He hadn’t hit me at that point.
But I should’ve known. I should’ve known then what it would progress to.
Because it did. That’s why I’m here. But looking at that hole in the wall?
That was the moment I knew I had to get out. ”
Troy, my ex, had told me that too. That it was better he hit the wall than hit me. Sure enough, one day, he’d decided to hit me too.
“I don’t think that’s something we talk enough about,” Rhiannon said. “Well, not we. The rest of the world. We always hear that boys will be boys, but good men aren’t violent. Good men don’t punch holes in walls.”
I didn’t disagree with Rhiannon. But with how I’d grown up, you just couldn’t convince me that violence was never the answer.
“What are we talking about?” Simone asked, leaning around Delilah. She spared her a smile and a quick wave while she was at it.
“The straws that broke our camels’ backs,” Rhiannon answered. “The moment we were done. Why we left. You want to share yours?”
It may have sounded presumptuous for Rhiannon to assume that Simone would want to share her experience. But not to anyone who knew Simone. She would tell the most tragic story from her past with a straight face, then shrug and say, “Shit happens. You live, you learn.”
Simone and Rhiannon understood one another. The ranch may have been Rhiannon’s, but the synergy those two had? I had the feeling Rhiannon was grooming Simone to take over in her place one day.
At that question, Simone tensed. Normally, she would’ve jumped right in. Hopefully I would find out why at dinner. If she still wanted to have dinner with me, that was.
“I guess I realized he was the villain,” Simone said, chewing her lower lip.
“It shouldn’t have taken me so long to see that.
Like when, a week after I gave birth to his daughter, he didn’t stop when I said no.
” Many of us cringed, but Simone only gritted her teeth.
“Or like when I was pregnant, and he gave me a black eye. Really, there were a million times I should’ve seen him for the volatile piece of shit that he was.
“But I didn’t. Not until I realized that he was worse than me.” Pulling in a deep breath, she leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees. Gaze on the ground, it took her a moment to continue. We all waited.
Eventually, she said, “I get in from work one day, and my daughter’s not there.
But he is.” An annoyed scoff escaped her nostrils.
“He’s nodded off on the couch. So I wake him up, and I’m screaming, and he tells me to calm down.
He just has to wait for a deal to go through later, and then he’s going to go pick her up.
From his dealer.” A humorless laugh. Rubbing her eyes, she shook her head.
“I don’t know exactly what deal he made.
But I know he owed the guy money. And for some reason, our four-year-old seemed like good collateral to him.
“We fought. Probably the worst fight of our relationship. Both of us were covered in blood by the end of it, and he was unconscious. I got his phone out of his pocket, and I called the guy. He wanted five grand.” Simone sucked her teeth.
“Which was every penny I had saved up to open my salon.
But I drained my account, and I ran to his house in the middle of nowhere, and I got my baby.
“And it…” Another slow, calming breath. She shut her eyes and took a few more.
Her hazel eyes still on the ground, she continued through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know what those bastards did to Junie.
She wouldn’t tell me. But she freaked out when I tried to get her undressed to put her in the bath that night.
Maybe that means something, maybe it doesn’t, but I hope to hell and back that she was too young to remember it.
Whatever happened that day, I hope it’s buried deep in the back of her mind.
“But what the hell does that matter?” Tossing her hands in the air, her pace picked up.
“What the hell do any of my feelings about it matter?
What does matter is that I was stupid. I can say that I was young, and that I was in love, and that it was a cycle of abuse that I was born into because my mom let my dad treat her like shit, but at the end of the day, I was an idiot.
We spend all this time talking about what they did, and yeah, we should hold them accountable for that. But none of us did, right?
“That’s why we’re here. We ran because they’re monsters.
They’re monsters, and we’re fools. They’ll never take accountability for what they did.
David’s never going to feel sorry for what he did to me that day, what he did to Junie, and what the hell does it matter?
I can blame him until I’m blue in the face.
He’s the one who did it, but I’m the one who put up with it.
I’m the one who let that happen to my daughter. I’m the idiot. We are all—”
“Simone.” Rhiannon sat forward too, brows furrowed, voice firm. “A lot of things come up when we talk about this shit, and those feelings are valid. But if you were about to say that we’re all stupid, that we’re to blame for what they did to us, you know that’s not gonna fly.”
Simone took in one more deep breath, pinching her eyes shut. She shook her head. It took a few long heartbeats for her to say, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.” Rhiannon settled back in her seat. “But I just want to make sure we’re all clear about how things go in these conversations.”
“I know.” Simone rubbed her eyes. “It’s just been a bad day. I probably shouldn’t have come tonight.”
“The nights you want to be here the least are the nights you need to be here the most,” Rhiannon said.
“But I want to talk about that. What you just said, about how you put up with it. How that makes you feel like an idiot.” She turned her gaze to the rest of the room.
“Now I know we’ve all felt like that at some point or another.
Like we were just as bad as he was. Why do you think that’s the case? ”
Silence stretched on for a minute. When no one else spoke, I did. “Because they convinced us we were.”
Rhiannon’s eyes met mine. “And did you know that’s the very reason I opened this ranch?”
No, I didn’t.
“Not one woman in this room meets the ‘perfect victim’ criteria.” Rhiannon gestured around.
“We fought back. We defended ourselves. They convinced us we were just as much at fault as they were. Most of our husbands, or boyfriends, or whatevers, they were decent guys to everyone else. They weren’t the stereotypical woman beater you see in movies, were they? ”
David was pretty damn close to one. But Troy wasn’t. My ex-husband had been many things, but no one, not even the cops, believed he was an abuser.
“And that’s the only way the world likes a woman in a situation like ours.
” Rhiannon tossed an arm onto the back of the sofa.
“She never fought back. She had all the bruises, and he didn’t have a scratch on him.
Except for some bruised knuckles, maybe.
Out there, to everyone else, you’re only a victim of domestic violence if you never stood up for yourself.
But the moment you do, you’re the bad guy.
You’re the idiot if you stay, and you’re just as bad if you hit him back.
So my point here is, you’re right, Gwen.
They did convince us we were the problem.
But so did the rest of the world. There’s nothing the world loves more than hating a woman. ”
Chills rose over my arms.
Holding Rhiannon’s gaze, Simone chewed on her lip.
“You understand me?” Rhiannon asked, eyes wider, surveying her.
Simone nodded slowly. “I do. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Is it alright if I head home? I need some sleep.”
“You’re not being held captive.” Rhiannon softened her voice, nodding to the door. “Take some cookies for the road.”
Another nod, followed by a quiet, “Thanks.”
As Simone returned to the door, Rhiannon’s eyes settled on me. “Do you want to talk about your last straw, Gwen?”
I could. I could say that it was because he’d hit my dog and broken her tooth.
But that hadn’t been my last straw.
My last straw had been the thought that’d circled my mind when I’d seen that gaping hole in my puppy’s face.
If I don’t leave him, I’m going to kill him.
And I’d meant it.
But I couldn’t say that out loud.
So I said, “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”