41 Witness
FORTY-ONE
Witness
You never forget the first time someone slaps you.
Nor do you forget the last. If I had any talent as an artist, I could paint every facial expression, bruise, and cut in colors that would bring the horror of those moments alive.
I could paint his face, and how its contours shifted when he changed from the man I loved to someone I didn’t know.
All those details are etched in my mind, like they’re happening now, in the present, and they always will be.
I’ve struggled with how to tell this because I don’t want to be a spokesperson for domestic violence.
I never wanted to call myself a victim, but here I am.
It’s part of my story whether I want it to be or not.
So, I’ll lay it all out here: seven years of mental illness, addiction, rage, abuse, and pain in just a few pages.
Don’t get me wrong, there were also good times—almost too many to count.
But good moments usually don’t leave scars like bad ones do.
I don’t remember all the dates and places, and I’d be lying if I said I remember every word.
But I’m not sure those details matter. What counts is that you watch it happen.
I’m making you a witness. Maybe, someday, what you’ve seen can help you save someone or yourself.
This is the beginning.
We open another bottle of wine and pour ourselves two big glasses.
We’ll hit the vodka after this, and it’s always Tito’s.
I’m back in my condo, sitting on my dining room chair, right where Dad’s place used to be, and we’re talking.
It gets heated, like a game of one-on-one, with the kind of fast-talk banter we excel at.
Brian and I could go on like this for hours.
I say something I regret. A chair scrapes against the floor, and Brian stands up, all six feet of him. He leans in toward my face and screams.
“What is wrong with you?!”
I flinch, and he keeps screaming.
His eyes are cloudy, like he’s sleepwalking, but he isn’t. He’s drunk. Too drunk. Am I sober? I’m so filled with panic that it feels that way. Brian has something in his hand—I think. It’s hard to tell with all the screaming. There is so much screaming.
I see a side plate on the table, and there’s a paring knife on top of it. The knife. I have to get the knife. I reach and grab it, then pull it toward me.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” I yell.
Brian’s face fills with rage—like I’ve never seen before. He gets angry, but not like this. Never like this. The knife’s too close to Brian, so I shift. He could grab it. There are a million ways I’d rather die than by a knife.
I lower my arm and toss the knife to the side, and it hits the wineglass. The crash is somehow worse than Brian’s screams.
CLAP.
I hear it before I feel it, the unmistakable sound of an open-hand slap. Then there’s burning on my cheek, like I’m on fire. There’s ringing in my head.
There’s silence.
The silence goes on forever.
A million thoughts fill my brain, but none of them are clear. I have no point of reference for this situation. If I could place it on a scale of one to ten, with one for pain and ten for joy, the number’s floating. It’s unquantifiable.
Brian walks away.
For days, I’m in an in-between place. We never talk about the slap.
I cleaned up the glass and put away the knife.
None of it happened, at least for me. If I think about it, it’s real.
But it wasn’t real. I can play tough and will it away and it’s gone.
Buck it up, then wipe it off the whiteboard and delete it from the tapes.
I love this man, and this wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him, not in a million years.
The slaps become hits.
One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks.
Another day he screams at me to run as far as I can in five seconds because I’ll need a head start before he throws the remote control at me. This is a man who doesn’t miss, I think. And he doesn’t. The remote control hits my face like it’s been thrown by a minor league pitcher.
He stands in the doorway of our living room, raging at me to give him my phone. He’s afraid I’m calling Wlad, and that I’ll tell Wlad about the abuse. I run up the stairs, and he follows me, hot on my heels.
“You’re not getting away!” he yells. “Give me the phone!”
I turn, slip, and fall on the steps. I look up, and there’s Brian. I raise my arm and hook it, right into his face. All that boxing I watched paid off.
I’m proud of myself. How strange it is to feel proud when you’re fighting for your life against the person you love.
Then punches rain down, hard.
My head hits the wall, and he’s straddling me, pinning me down using all his weight.
“Why did you hit yourself?” he screams as I struggle under him. “You’re all bruised, why did you do that to yourself?”
“Stop, Brian!” I yell, squirming and throwing punches that don’t connect. I break free and run to the living room toward the front door. I grab my keys and phone and consider calling 911. But I can’t. Then the public would know, and the public can’t know.
I slam the door behind me and run to my car.
There’s a book and a bottle of water inside the glove compartment for times like this.
My bedroom doesn’t have a lock, and I don’t want to go to a hotel.
This is my home. So, I sit inside, waiting, where no one will ever know.
If I can exist there, quietly, in this in-between, Brian will calm down.
I hear sirens down the street, and I know my neighbors called 911. Now the sirens are closer, then in my driveway. I slink down to hide, but this is out of my hands. The cops will question Brian, then me, and I’ll have to say the truth.
I hope Brian knows it wasn’t me who called the cops. It was our neighbor.
Brian’s booked on charges of felony domestic assault, and he pleads not guilty.
He argues that I was the one hitting myself—not him—and he’d in fact recorded himself saying “Why did you hit yourself?” as I fully lost control.
Later, he apologizes and claims he doesn’t remember what he did.
When he’s sober, he always says he’s sorry.
The judge slaps him with a restraining order.
I love and believe in Brian so much that I’m convinced he can change, that this isn’t him, and we break it. And we’ll do it again.
Four months later, the district attorney drops the charges.