by Roger Bruner
She had begun saving money several years ago to support herself if this day ever came. I hoped she would live long enough to use it. Her survival was far more important than the possibility of our being separated.
“And you!” He looked into my eyes.
Trembling with rage, he put his hand six or eight inches in front of my face and pointed his forefinger at my nose like a gun. Then he clinched his fingers into a tight fist. His biceps rippled as if they were anxious to help him tear into my face.
I kept waiting for the blow to come.
“You thought you were better than me, didn’t you? You thought being married to me and having my baby made you better. A poor piece of Mexican trash tricks me into marrying her by getting pregnant and then claiming I am the father. Then she has a freak baby and tricks me into spending much of my fortune getting the baby fixed just enough to be only one-fourth abnormal, but still one hundred percent a freak.”
I glanced down at Alazne to see what effect his brutal words might be having, but I could barely see past the fist that kept circling ever closer to my face.
She had to be more frightened than I was. None of this would make any sense. She had never experienced anger or violence—she’d never even seen it—and I had hoped she never would.
I had never witnessed Tomás’s rage at such close range myself.
Nikki and Mother Chalina had told me what alcohol and drugs could do to a person, especially someone who wasn’t very stable. They had warned me that—when Tomás got this way—not even the three of us together could match his brute strength. Whether we fought or cowered, the results would be the same.
“If he becomes violent, pray and pray hard,” they had said. But they hadn’t told me what prayer was or how to do it. Now wasn’t the time to ask.
Tomás kept ranting at me. Wouldn’t the neighbors hear and call the police? Keeping my sights on Nikki helped me ignore him better.
She was bleeding badly, her nose no longer straight and pretty. Had he struck her again? Or had his workouts at the gym made him so powerful he could do that to a defenseless woman with a single blow?
“Woman! Look at me. I am talking to you.” He spit out the words, and I turned toward him again. “You think you are too good to listen to your husband and obey him? You are too good to go to bed with your husband, yes? Instead you waste time trying to make yourself better than me.”
He coughed without covering his mouth and put the beer can to his lips. Apparently finding it empty, he flung it across the room. “You think you’re better because you read and write and help her…”
He pointed at Nikki, who was shivering on the floor cuddling Alazne protectively and trying to avoid his attention. But there was no place to hide from Tomás’s evil. His darkness filled the entire apartment.
“You have tried to make her better than me by teaching her to speak Spanish.”
He kicked out at Nikki, but she dodged quickly enough to prevent his boot from doing more than graze her knee. The injury drew blood, however—blood that trickled down her leg to the kitchen floor.
“You deserve to die, Rosa No-Name. But I will give you one last chance to be my wife. I will make love to you tonight, and in the morning I will decide if you live or die.”
“No!” I pushed my chair away from the table. “You won’t do that to me again! I didn’t understand what you were doing the first time, but I know now. You won’t touch me now. I forbid it!”
Tomás glared at me in disbelief. I couldn’t help turning my head when I saw Mother Chalina in my peripheral vision. Approaching him from behind, she moved quietly but quickly, her hands grasping a heavy metal frying pan.
I gasped when he turned toward her. Then I screamed.
Before she could hit him on the head, he easily wrested it from her and smashed her in the face. I heard the crunching of bones as she collapsed to the floor in a mass of blood, but I couldn’t look.
Tomás grabbed me by my long black hair and dragged me toward the master bedroom. “You told me not to enter your room without permission, but now that I’m taking you to my room, you must ask my permission. If you don’t, I’ll invite you in anyhow and you won’t say no.”
“Please, Tomás! This isn’t really you talking. It’s the drugs and alcohol. You are not a bad person. You are not evil. You are gentle…”
I used to dream I might one day look into his eyes and see something good in his heart. Something special. So I spoke those words I wished so desperately I could believe, frantically hoping they would help.
They didn’t.
18
When I awoke the next morning, Tomás was gone. I felt lifeless from the beating he had given me after discovering he didn’t like making love to a woman who fought back with rage and animal energy.
But he had still succeeded in having his way with me. This time I understood what was happening. And this time I knew what could result from it.
“If I am pregnant now,” I growled in a voice I didn’t even recognize as mine, “I will kill the baby myself.”
I had read of women having abortions to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. It happened frequently in America. I didn’t care how much it might hurt physically or emotionally. I could never love or accept another baby of Tomás’s.
I would assert myself by killing his unborn child. Surely Nikki and Mother Chalina would help me—if I was pregnant this time.
I would show Tomás I was the boss of my own body, not him. Perhaps he could make me pregnant by force, but he wasn’t man enough to keep me pregnant against my will.
Yes, my friends would help. We Three would face this situation together.
But were Nikki and Mother Chalina still alive? My memories of the night before were so horrifyingly real I had to force myself out of bed and stumble toward the kitchen, desperate to discern between nightmare and reality, hoping beyond hope the two weren’t the same.
But first I glanced in my room, where Alazne lay sleeping peacefully. I sighed in thanks, but to whom I couldn’t imagine.
Perhaps I could trick Alazne into forgetting about last night. Maybe I could convince her it had all been a nightmare—something that never happened, something she had only dreamed about. If her fall from Nikki’s lap left bruises, perhaps I could convince her the nightmare had made her fall out of bed.
But then I glanced at myself in the mirror over the chest of drawers. How could I make her believe in a nightmare when everything she saw would tell her otherwise?
Perhaps I was the one who had suffered a nightmare. One that was still in progress.
How I longed to believe that. But as I examined the hideous reflection more closely, I couldn’t convince myself I was only dreaming.
Both eyes were so black I looked like a child who has been playing with her momma’s makeup. Blood clots caked numerous cuts and abrasions. My face was so swollen I could barely remember how it was supposed to look.
The nightmare that caused those injuries had been real.
~*~
“Rosa? Rosa!”
Nikki and I glanced at one another briefly before breaking down in tears and collapsing in a hug on the love seat in the living room. We couldn’t embrace tightly, for each of us cried out in pain. Pain that made childbirth seem pleasant in retrospect.
I barely recognized her face; it looked worse—or so it seemed—than when I had last seen her. Had Tomás beaten her again after he finished “making love” to me against my will and then beating me almost senseless?
We wept together without talking for a number of minutes.
Nikki broke the silence. “I wanted to rescue you. I would have tried. But I…” Although she stopped in mid-sentence, I barely noticed. “I was afraid he would kill you even if I got to you in time. Tomás had locked the bedroom door, and I was too weak to break it. Believe me, I tried. Now that I see you in the morning light, I think he did kill you. You look like a walking corpse.”
I glanced briefly out the window. “There
is no sunshine today. Only fog.” I sighed. “I am alive, but I cannot say how alive. Would death have been better?”
“Perhaps.” I had never heard Nikki sound so negative.
“What about…?” I blurted those words out so suddenly I didn’t know how to finish the question. Just as suddenly, I began trembling in anger and grief. I already knew the answer.
“She is dead.” Nikki didn’t try to soften the news. She must not have had the strength to. “She died trying to save you. To save us.”
“No!” I shrieked. “She cannot be! Not Mother Chalina! Not dead on my account?”
We broke down once more. But we had been through too much to have many tears left. I had never experienced grief before, and I didn’t know anything about its various stages. I didn’t realize I had barely entered the first stage.
“Let me see her.” As I scrambled to get up from the love seat, every attempt to move shot pain throughout my body. I groaned at first. But then I screamed. “Where…?”
“Rosa, no. Please…” She grabbed my wrist with what little strength she seemed to have left and held on for dear life. “Seeing how she died will haunt you the rest of your life.”
“It will haunt me more if I do not.”
Nikki released her grip. “Then we’ll look together.”
I started to say, Thank you. But I couldn’t. I had nothing to be thankful for.
Nikki had lifted Mother Chalina’s head last night to doctor her, but laid it on the floor again when she realized Chalina was dead. A second strike with the iron pan had caved her face in. If this pathetic-looking body hadn’t been wearing clothes I recognized, I would have questioned whether this was Chalina or some stranger who didn’t resemble her in the least.
In my heart of hearts, I knew it was her. The remaining two of We Three wrapped our arms around our dead friend, our tear ducts found fresh tears, and we cried aloud for a very long time.
~*~
We spent hours cleaning up and bandaging the previous night’s injuries. I must have stayed in the shower thirty minutes. Although the force of the water made me cry out in pain, I didn’t care. Trying to wash away every hint of Tomás was more important, even though I couldn’t hope to wash away a pregnancy—if he had succeeded at being his so-called manliest with me.
The pain inside—not inside my head or body, but in my heart—was so unspeakable I could barely think of Mother Chalina without breaking into tears again. I’d been right in insisting on seeing her.
Without that, I couldn’t have accepted her death as fact.
~*~
Nikki and I faced a far greater and more immediate dilemma than waiting to see how long it would take our bodies to heal. And whether we would ever look normal again.
Before physical and emotional exhaustion set in and put us back to sleep, Nikki told me to call Señora Isabel, the neighbor who frequently babysat Alazne. She had a grown child of her own, she had told us, but no grandchildren, and she was always gracious about helping out, even at the last minute. I sometimes wondered whether she wanted Alazne to come more often, and I felt guilty for failing to arrange special visits.
Although Alazne and Señora Isabel seemed to get along as well as members of the same family, Nikki and I had never felt a desire to get to know Señora Isabel better. Perhaps that would change now that Mother Chalina was—I almost choked on the thought—gone.
Nikki told me what to say to Señora Isabel. The trauma—both physical and emotional—was so overwhelming I couldn’t refuse to lie. Nor did I expect to feel guilty about it.
I would do whatever I had to for Alazne’s well-being. We couldn’t let her wake up and see us black, blue, and swollen from head to toe. Nor could we allow her to see Mother Chalina’s lifeless, bashed-in body on the kitchen floor.
Although we had covered it with a blanket, Alazne would see it. Thinking it to be a special surprise, she would pull back the blanket, expecting something pleasurable.
What would the sight of Chalina’s mangled face do to Alazne? We couldn’t be sure she would be all right after what she had witnessed last night, but we couldn’t permit her to relive it again today. We would do whatever we had to do to prevent it.
I picked up the phone. My finger hovered over the keypad, but I couldn’t seem to focus. Nikki reached out for the phone, and I placed it in her hand.
We hadn’t considered the possibility that Señora Isabel might not be home; her apartment was on the tenth floor of our building. Judging by our limited contact, she didn’t seem to have much life outside her apartment. She could drive, she had once said, but didn’t own a car. She was free to borrow her son’s car whenever she wanted to. She didn’t work, and he paid her living expenses. She must have been proud to have such a wonderful, thoughtful, and loving son.
None of that mattered today. I just needed to get Alazne out of the apartment while she was still asleep. Her usual wakeup time was just minutes away. Although her experiences last night might have worn her out enough to make her sleep later than usual, I dared not count on it.
Señora Isabel answered on the third ring.
I kept my eyes on Nikki. As I listened to her side of the conversation, I was so glad she had taken over. I couldn’t have made that call.
“Señora Isabel, this is your neighbor Nikki…”
“Yes, the best friend of Alazne’s mother. I…”
“I’m not doing very well, thank you. That’s why I’m calling. Rosa and I both became so violently ill during the night that we can’t look after Alazne today…”
“We will recover, thank you, but it will be several days before either of us is well enough to take care of Alazne. This isn’t much notice, but—”
Although Nikki kept talking, she got up and closed the kitchen door. Since Señora Isabel wouldn’t have any reason to go there, Mother Chalina’s body would be safely out of sight.
“No, Mother Chalina has the same illness, but hers is much worse. We are concerned about how hard it has knocked her down. It—the illness—hit her much harder than it did Rosa and me…”
Weird. Nikki was trying to suppress a laugh. Why was…?
Only when she put her hand over the mouthpiece to keep Señora Isabel from hearing her did I realize what she had unwittingly said. Despite the stress of the situation—or perhaps because of it—she could barely maintain a serious tone.
I wanted to laugh, too. I didn’t know much about psychology, even though I had read a few books about it. So I didn’t understand how badly we needed the release laughter sometimes brings.
But I couldn’t laugh while Nikki was on the phone. It would make her lose control. I could hear Señora Isabel now: What kind of illness makes you laugh so hard?
“We don’t want Alazne to catch it. You are a mother. You understand…”
“Yes, thank you. Please come now. Before she awakens. We don’t want to expose her to our, uh, germs…”
Nikki’s face tightened. What was wrong? Didn’t Señora Isabel believe her story? Yet why would she question a reasonable request from a normally reasonable neighbor?
“We’ll leave the front door open. Come down the hallway to the second door on the right. The only one that will be open. Alazne will still be asleep. You should carry her back to your apartment in the wagon, and make sure you get her crutches. We wish we could help you lift her into the wagon, but we don’t want to infect either of you by coming close…”
“Yes, thank you, please come and go as quickly as you can…”
“I can’t thank you enough. We will let you know when we are better…”
“One other thing. Alazne had a horrible nightmare last night. I don’t know if she’ll remember it or try to tell you about it. If she does, please assure her it was only a dream. And tell her that her momma and I will be fine…”
“Yes, thank you. We hope to recover rapidly, too. Goodbye now.”
Only after hanging up did Nikki and I dare to laugh aloud at the truth she had accidentally sp
oken about the illness that “hit Mother Chalina much harder than it hit us” and “knocked her down.”
Even though nothing about Mother Chalina’s death was humorous, we couldn’t stop laughing at what Nikki had said. Whenever there was a break in the laughter, she and I looked at each other and the laughter erupted all over again.
Even so, we must have fallen asleep by the time Señora Isabel came for Alazne, because neither of us heard her. She must not have heard us, either.
Nikki woke up first, and I was more awake than asleep by the time she broke the silence. “Rosa. The body. Chalina’s body. What are we going to do with it?”
I looked at her and shrugged in confusion. What…?
“Rosa, we can’t keep it here.” Her voice quivered. Frantic would best describe her overall demeanor.
I shook my head while trying to think of an answer. “This was a crime…a murder. Don’t Americans call the police when there’s a murder?”
Somehow, I knew Nikki would disagree. I couldn’t imagine why.
“Normally, yes. But the criminal—the perpetrator—is Tomás. What would he do to us if he evaded capture long enough to punish us for calling the police?”
“Nikki, I can’t testify against my own husband. It is the law.”
“You don’t have that quite right. The law can’t make you testify against him, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t permitted to.”
Did I look as shocked as I felt? I couldn’t speak for several seconds. “So nothing—legally, at least—prevents me from telling the police that my husband beat both of us up and killed Mother Chalina?”
She nodded. “Nothing legally. But what if we have him arrested? He can afford the best lawyers. He’ll be out on bail before we learn of his arrest. He’ll come for us. He’ll watch and wait and make us disappear when no one is looking. We can’t testify against him if we’re dead or missing, and they will drop the case—just as if he was innocent.”
The accuracy of her reasoning struck my heart like a dagger. “He would do that, wouldn’t he?” I was trembling too hard to say anything more.
