I cannot remember how long I have sat in this apartment, watching the planters hanging on the fire escape shift in the breeze. My body weights down into the couch, seeps into it, my immobility unmistakably a surrender. I will not have this silence to myself for long. Carl will move in with the wind and the door will slam as if by accident. Any accusation that the force of the door against its panel was purposeful will be met with deep rage. But I’ll meet it, like I always do.

I fish for my laptop under the unfolded pile of clothes beside me. They are clean, but I can’t manage to put them away. With one click, my computer, its screen faded and tinted brown with age, is on and I’m using its presence to ignore my moment of despair. I find distraction as I click through various social media sites, each switch to the next story a task I can complete. I decide to pause upon a headline that I am not accustomed to seeing on a page that I do not typically visit: BLACK TRANSGENDER WOMAN KILLED OUTSIDE ROCKAWAY BAR.

I click on the video under the headline and I watch as a news reporter in a green windbreaker grasps an umbrella as forceful drops of rain fall down around her. She manages a microphone against the wind to rest a few inches below her mouth. She gives the details of the report: a woman was found dead after there was a nondescript disturbance in a car nearby the adjacent bar on Rockaway Boulevard. 

I remember Rockaway Boulevard as a child, not having grown up far from there. The wind swayed beside where we stood on the sand littered streets as my family moved from the bumpy tar of the street onto the sidewalk that leads to the boardwalk. My mother grasped our cooler, filled with recently prepared tuna fish sandwiches and bottles of multi-color quarter drinks, and used her other hand to direct me as we descended into the sand. There was sunshine in those memories, but the light seems distant now.

My childhood bedroom was painted with characters from my favorite story books, my father’s gift before his sickness and passing. I remember those days at Rockaway Beach as they blended into my memories of sitting at our kitchen table, my feet barely touching the floor as I gazed out through the window that peered into our backyard. The clothes lines of Howard Beach connected like a network, hanging above and against the wooden fences like telephone lines. The kitchen is where I overheard many things. While the other children were playing, I was listening. I scribbled on my coloring book, not filling in the lines as best as I could had I been concentrating. I wanted to know about the world because when it took my father, it seemed like an enemy I should keep my attention on. It was at this table where I heard of a local disturbance, in a town that everyone forgets unless they live or have lived there. Broad Channel is a stretch of one boulevard that rests on Jamaica Bay, with perpendicular streets protruding from the main stretch of land that extend into the water. Small houses, some stilted on the bay, and many tucked into thick layers of sand along those streets are adorned with their owner’s kayaks, parked like cars. Broad Channel is where the A train meets the shuttle to Rockaway Beach. It is where my grandmother lived beside a swampy marsh of seaweed and forgotten boats where I would make mud pies as a child. It is where I attended Catholic School, racing my cousin’s neighbors to the edge of their deck in my plaid uniform, clunky black shoes, and itchy tights. Broad Channel is where a group of locals from the borough of Queens, including a few volunteer firefighters and New York City police officers rode down Cross Bay Boulevard in black face during a Labor Day Parade in 1998. I remember the physical warmth of Broad Channel from my childhood, the sand littered street burning my feet, but I also remember the black face at the parade and how even then I understood it as racism. 

The door slams before I realize anyone has opened it. Carl wipes the rain from his coat before placing it on a hook beside the door. The rain probably shook that anger in him like a rattle, that old emotion which formed so long ago slivering into every space of our present moment. Many things bothered Carl: the way the quarterback drops the ball, the kids in the park who throw their Popsicle sticks just outside the garbage can, the way I stutter when I speak to him for too long. 

My eyes shift from my computer’s screen to his shadow, skulking in the opposite end of our small apartment. He is shifting his feet, rubbing his bad knee with his swollen hand—the ailments of a mechanic. I think about moving but I am considering how quickly I can put the computer down on the table in front of myself. Should I wait for him to come over to this side of our small one bedroom apartment, or would standing up in greeting be more welcoming? He runs his hand through his greasy hair in a way that I had once considered to be a nervous gesture. I now recognize it as a purposeful psychological mechanism he uses to make one assume that he is nervous about something, when he really is not nervous at all.

“You’re not going to say anything? I just walked in.” He directs his voice at me, his body turning away from the door and pointing diagonally to where I sit on the couch.

“I’m just sitting here.” I say plainly, my hands fidgeting without the keyboard to press.

“Well, I thought you would have at least said something after that outburst last night.” He is accusatory which is only one of the regular elements of his persona. He is also often jealous, anxiously controlling with any or every activity, and persuasive, especially when I am not in the mood to offer sex to shut him up.

I consider last night, the room dimmed with the lamps we had picked out together in convenience stores where our wedding vows died. He had been questioning me about the hotness of his friend. To be frank, his friend is hot and much better looking than he is, with big, dark eyes, and long brown hair. I, of course, was dishonest about my consideration of his friend’s appearance, for his sake and, more importantly, mine. Any notion that I found his friend to be remotely attractive would have led to the usual questioning—had I secretly been dating the man who signed my time cards at the hospital last year? Why did it take me so long to bring the clothes to the laundromat, down four flights of stairs, past the park and an avenue? But, in all honesty, I had not actually ever considered the attractiveness of his friend, regardless of his attractiveness. In the moments when I was attempting to loosen the grasp on my husband’s control, I was thinking about painting, splattering the side of the old abandoned church by the Hudson River with a mural for the young people who have been dying without justice, or sitting on my fire escape with a sketchpad and noticing the way the light creeps into my neighbor’s kitchen, onto their hanging fruit basket, creating a perfect still-life model. Contrary to popular belief, bisexual cis women do not gaze out their windows and down the edges of the fire escapes on their apartment buildings, measuring their hair to see when it will be long and strong enough for a man with big muscles to climb up and propose. Our thighs do not helplessly moisten when a “hot” person walks past. We care about our passions, our dreams, and ourselves, which are left in the space where our abusive husbands do not walk. No, I won’t check out other women with you either. Regardless of my attraction to women, I respect them and I know a cis man’s gaze controls a specialized power that I do not have. It is steeped with a lack of empathy of being sexualized for a profit, of feeling owned simply by the eyes that watch you. 

Caught up in my thoughts, I did not realize that Carl had moved closer to the couch where I sat. 

 

“So, do you have any explanation for your outburst?” 

 

Ah, the outburst. It took place after I would not commit to the answer Carl wanted to hear—that yes, I thought his friend was hot, just as he thought I did, so that he could punish me, as I am sure he intended in a day dream earlier that day, with stonewalling silence, or worse, a favor to ask. Sex for comfort, sex for domination, sex for I’m sorry. Sex as proof that I was willing to make it up to him. Sex that I did not want.

I had rounded my hands into fists and slammed them on my thighs, as I sat, attempting not to lose the control in my demeanor that I had been so often accused of misplacing. I said, a growl deep in my throat, “I do not think of you, or your friend. I think of no one when I am alone here.”

I had given Carl the perfect excuse to move the conversation in a way that would assist in his manipulation of my own deteriorating self-worth.

 

“You see, this is your problem. You only think of yourself, Dawn.” He sat down on the couch beside me and leaned down, as if crouching, meeting his eye level with my own.

 

“I did not say that I think of myself. I said that I think of no one, including you.” My eyes shifted to face him only slightly, while my body remained turned away, my insistence to resist.

 

“Same thing.” He said this plainly, and stood up to move over to the bar across from the couch where he splashed together some vodka, seltzer, and lemon juice, mixing the drink with the twirl of his finger.

 

“How is that the same thing?” My lips might have quivered had I not been so determined to remain still.

 

“Who are you anymore?” He let these globs of exaggeration fall from his lips, only seconds before he gulped down his vodka drink.

 

I remained silent. The anger would only be used against me. The resistance to the manipulation would be framed as a betrayal.

 

“I’ve done a lot for you.” He moved over to sit beside me again, his chin turning with the intent of his eyes meeting my gaze. “Don’t you see that no one would have helped you, the way I did? And you don’t even think of me. You just stare at the wall and think of no one.”

 

I pulled the drink from his hand and dumped it onto the floor. The nearly clear liquid, slightly pulpy from a squeezed lemon, spread out between our feet.

Carl rolled his eyes and stood up, walked back to the bar, and began to prepare another drink. I cleaned up the mess before going to bed, stepping over his ankles that were propped up on the couch, as he slept with his head back, snoring like an annoying cartoon. He knew that I would want to avoid the fruit flies that were so thirsty in the summer. They found their way in on our banana peels and hovered until every dried splash of sticky sweetness had been wiped from the counters. I disliked hovering, the possibility of another nuisance that would prevent me from painting.

Carl stood before me now, asking for an explanation for my dumping his drink on the floor, as we had not resolved it the night before. As for an explanation, I said “I do not appreciate being referred to as no one and having my words twisted.”

Carl scoffs and rolls his eyes. He moves over to the bar to prepare a drink, shaking his head as he pours the vodka and seltzer into a long glass.

He sits down beside me, as he did the night before and levels his head with mine.

“I never called you no one. Come on, don’t do that. Don’t make me the bad guy.” He shifts toward me, and places his hand on my knee.

 

“I’m really tired,” I say, moving away from him. I have been very tired for a long time.

 

“Oh, don’t do that. We haven’t had sex in a week!” His voice rises like an impending riot.

 

I move farther away from him, turning my body and resting myself against the arm of the couch.

 

“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to have sex tonight.”

 

“Well, that’s it then.” He places his drink down, noticeably where I can not reach it, and throws his hands up. “We’ll do what you want.”

 

“Yep.” I say, plainly, and move away from the couch and to the other side of the apartment toward the kitchen.

 

“You know, you’re so selfish, Dawn. Why are you like that?” He props himself against the back of the couch, spreading his legs wide as he crosses his arms, like a defensive child.

 

“I don’t know. I guess it’s just how I am.” My tone is not sarcastic, but I am being sarcastic. Sometimes I agree with manipulation as I would an ignorant family member, always hoping it will go away. 

 

“You’re really messed up, Dawn. All those guys you fucked really fucked you up.” I find my way to the bedroom and close the door behind me. It is painful to be here at this moment. I find the bed in the darkness. I do not turn on the light to signal that I will be reading or doodling. My ear presses against the bedspread as I stare into the open closet. I let it become my focal point as I drift into a sleep that is a protection. I find solace there, in the darkness where Carl cannot find me.

I wake to the blasting of a song that I know and hate, by a band that I despise simply because the incessant playing of this progressive rock nightmare is forced upon me for hours on various occasions. The music is at its highest volume, the stereo blasting from the adjacent room. I notice a thin line of light between the door and its frame, as if it had been pushed slightly open. I was not dreaming, but had been existing somewhere much more peaceful, the shards of my shattered day falling into place in my unconscious mind. This is not abnormal for Carl. He often blasts his music, and when he does, he turns it up at night. I force myself up in protest to this loud anti-lullaby, my feet shifting my body from the bed to the floor, as the covers slide down from my thighs. I stomp toward the door, pull it open so that it slams against the wall and march toward Carl. The anger I had quelled earlier found its clarity with sleep.

“Turn this shit off!” I scream, waving my hands at him as he moves to the music, a clear drink in his grasp.

He moves over to the stereo and turns the volume down slightly. “What?” He yells back at me, his gaze accusatory as if I interrupted a moment of bliss.

My eyes shift to the microwave clock. 

“It’s 4am! Turn the music off!” I yell, just as loud, my voice bellowing over lowered stereo.

 

“Why are you screaming?” His eyes are black, his pupils expanding to the rims of his irises like a full drink.

 

“I can’t sleep. This music is like torture!” I yell, my feet digging into the area rug below me.

 

“Where do you have to go tomorrow?” Carl lowers the music so that he can speak at a normal volume.

 

“I don’t have to do anything in particular, but I’m tired and I need to sleep.” I was still shouting, my anger unshaken.

 

“I do not understand why you are yelling like that. I’m the one who should be mad. My wife doesn’t even want to fuck me.”

 

I march back to the bedroom and slam the door behind me before I fall into the bed. If I cry, he will find a weakness. He will talk me into giving him what he wants. My body retreats into numbness and I listen to the music, slightly lower now. I hardly sleep against the force of Carl’s late night personal concerts. He has negotiated with his boss to arrive at his shop late in the morning, so he will likely only play the music for a while longer. I will have to hear it as I drift to sleep, if I can drift. Over time, I began to recognize Carl’s insistence to blast his music as I was sleeping as a power play. He realized that if he could not bully me into submission, he would bother me. The repetitive chords, the high pitched shrieks of a lover torn from the comfort of the woman he called “easy,” are intertwined with the parts of my mind where I recognize that my anger at Carl could only be lessened by finding a place where I am not angry at him. He knows that without sleep, I am much less powerful. Without an ability to control my own environment, I cannot exist as I want. He realizes that he can wear me down, and so, when he slips into bed only a half hour later, he pulls me on top of him and I let my anger drift into a faux connection.

When I wake, Carl is gone. We never cuddle in bed, so I only know he is not there by opening my eyes and seeing the wrinkle of our sunflower printed sheets where he had lain his body for only a few hours. I roll myself off of the bed and walk into the kitchen. The space in the day when I make coffee and peer down and through the window at the busy uptown streets is the value I find in life. I have been out of work for only a few months since my breakdown. 

I had been working at a hospital for nearly five years as a nursing assistant in an inpatient psychiatric ward. I had intended to go further with my education, but we were consistently tight on money, and there always seemed to be something to tend to that Carl could not handle himself. When his sister had needed help after her C-section and her husband had to rush back to work, I drove out to Long Island almost every day I was not working, which was a good part of the week since I was often there for 12-hour shifts on some days and was not on the schedule the rest of the time. There was a short while in the months after she stopped needing as much help when Carl’s boss at the shop asked if someone could handle some of the phone calls and clerical work. I obliged, only to be helpful and to collect the extra money Carl claimed we needed. My nursing school applications remained unsent in our shared desk drawer, until one day I could not find them.

I often think of all the moments that led me here as I sip my coffee. I wash the dishes, peering out the window at the flat rooftops of upper Manhattan. There always seems to be a reason to put off the things I had told myself I wanted to do most. There has always been someone to help, but I never find the time to help myself.  

I often worked the night shift at the hospital, the brightness of the lights storming into my pupils as I roamed the diamond patterned halls during room checks. I would walk in on a woman, crying in her bed, a bandage on her arm to mask the place where she had forced her demons upon her skin. Sometimes, I would be caught between the punches of a patient suffering from a flashback and an orderly who was trying to calm him. I would find kindness on those beds, two patients who had found each other, talking in the dark as I passed their room, their hushed words whispers that were meant only for each other. 

On the rare occasion I would cover for someone and work the day shift, there were less intimate moments, but the friendships I witnessed were warming, even if they likely only lasted for a span of days. Patients met each other through card games, charades that they had been pressured to play by the staff, and group meditation and therapy. I recall a particular meeting when a woman joined a group therapy session to express her anger at being constantly mis-gendered. I could recognize her discomfort, the shaking of her hands as she patted the spots under the eyes where wetness gathered. The group did not erupt in usual taunting or anti-political correctness that one might see on a social media board or in their local tavern. The people here had been worn down by life, so I suppose they thought—as I did—who were they to put another person down when the likelihood of their own hospitalizations was due to another person or a system’s abuse. How many of us have found depression in unpaid bills? I have felt anxiety in being recognized as someone I am not. There is rawness in a hospital—the life and death that made the institution move also held the complaints of living that many could not shake, the wrinkles creased into skin prematurely, the depths in simplicity of ignoring treatment by trading it for the camaraderie one would find in a card game. When I found myself losing sleep due to my constant anti-lullaby—the music that was played loud when I did not want it to be played at all, the words that were said that did not help—I also lost my ability to piece words together. The stream of my thoughts were not joined and sometimes I did not even think to eat. I erupted into a chattering and confused version of myself who I did not recognize, trading my hospital employee badge for a seat at the card table. Since then, I have been here, turning these dishes over in my hands and thinking of every moment before this particular one.

I began to think of the woman who died in Rockaway, wondering how much she had suffered before her ultimate death. I wondered if she had been mis-gendered in restaurants, at school, in hospitals. Had I? Had Rockaway always been unwelcoming to those who did not fit the mold of the community that worshiped the same police officers who felt comfortable enough to wear black face and mock someone’s death years earlier? I, like so many others, had been conditioned to forget about anyone or any situation that pointed to our society and claimed that it needed to change.

I feel powerless, like I did as a child, the men in my community a symbol of control. To them, I exist—as an object, for sex, a figurehead at meetings, behind closed blinds, when I am not speaking up for myself or others. As I finish rinsing the last cocktail glass, I resolve that I will spend the day painting. With my anger at Carl and a world that seems so callously determined to silence those who do not meet the accepted standard of existing, my brush imagines a dense fire that engulfs a patriarchal pastoral setting.

When I hear the door handle jingle, it has been hours since I began rubbing the brush against the canvas.  

Carl opens the door quietly, closing it behind him with the same sneaky stealth. I am not facing the door, but sitting diagonal to it, beside the window, as I move my brush up and down the canvas. I can only see his shadow in the corner of my eye as I work on the farmer’s face, a man who had built a house bigger than his entire family, with enough rooms for the cows he will slaughter. I do not turn to face Carl and act as if I do not notice his quiet entrance. I do not look toward him until he is only a few steps away from where I posture. I turn away from the painting and look at him as he pulls a bouquet of red roses from behind his back, his tattered, green army jacket matted with grease. I feel my eyes widen as he senses my surprise. 

He moves closer to me, offering the flowers as he places his thumb under my chin. 

“You are a beautiful woman who deserves beautiful things,” he raves like a greeting card.

 

I wish to pretend that he has not wiped away so many parts of myself that once welcomed warmth. There are moments when kindness flutters out of me like a fat moth, deliriously searching for a light that will not come close enough to bask beside. I think of the patients in their hospital beds, whispering to each other. The woman on the street near a bar who was just trying to get home. I think of the decisions that guided me to choose Carl. The choices that led me to accept his proposal. The flowers lining the door the night he called “too calm to risk anything but staying in.” I thought of him kneeling before me like a smug churchgoer, saying a silent prayer to ask for forgiveness in advance—for the pain he would cause me.

I turn back to my painting and move the brush up and down, detailing a scowl into the farmer’s mouth. A swift blow to the side of my chin sends my head against the wall. I attempt to grasp my easel as I fall backward, the chair turning over under me. I am still for a moment, my eyes slammed shut, as a shocking numbness overtakes my ability to plan my next move. I feel his hand in my hair, his clench dragging me across the room to the farthest point of our shared life: the bedroom. It is there that it happens—the memory I will not express. It is the force of him that keeps me still, the shock of the blow that holds me in place. I exist somewhere outside the present once the bedroom door slams. I sink into the quilt, the one I slowly folded at the laundromat on a Saturday so that I would have more time to myself. Afterward, Carl lies on his back, a spot of drool in the corner of his open mouth. I leave him there naked, and move from the bedroom and into the kitchen. I throw myself into the bathroom, as if he is still following me.  

I dreamed of this day—when the pain that existed only in my mind would be translated to a physical ailment that others could see. I was not waiting for it in anticipation. I dreaded the thought of these moments and told myself that they would not come—that my pain was much less than other women who deal with real issues. I cheated myself by not coining my marriage as the word I dreaded most: abuse. I throw water on my face and gather myself. I open the door slightly and I peer into the room, the bathroom light casting across the floor and onto the crumpled bouquet I had not grasped. I hear Carl’s snores, muffled by our distance. I carefully leave the bathroom and hurry to the front door.

I move down the dimming streets of West Harlem, stopping intermittently to process the extent of what happened to me only hours before. The streets are dark, dimmed lights shining out from the bodegas and restaurants that have not yet closed. There are people standing out in front of packed bars. Many of them look about my age—some older, some younger. Was it a weekday? I had not been in a social setting at a public place in a long time, and it had been even longer since I had spent time with other people without Carl. I consider going into every establishment I pass, almost abandoning my mission. But I know that it is too important to let my nerve go when I had so recently found the strength to grasp it. I had passed this particular police precinct on many trips to the shops on 125th street. It is tucked in the middle of a residential street, curated art of jazz musicians moving up the towering apartment buildings. I stand across from the precinct for a moment and shift my feet, which I now realize are hurting. I decided to travel to a precinct that is a bit farther from my home, to guarantee that Carl will not find me if he wakes. I watch as a uniformed police officer pushes open the metal doors of the front entrance and heads toward one of the patrol cars parked across the street. His exit prompts me to move, hoping not to seem suspicious as I wait on the street. I walk toward the front door and push it open with two hands. I enter the precinct, the front waiting area with its metal chairs and aroma of disinfectant sterile with lifeless gloss. There is an officer standing behind the counter when I walk in, staring down at a stack of paperwork. As I approach the counter, the officer looks up and stares in the distance, as if he is looking at something behind me.

 

“I need to file a report.” I stammer as the words fall out of my mouth, my hands involuntarily shaking.

“What?” The officer says plainly.

 

“I was raped.” I say, looking down at my fingers as I twist them together while holding a part of my dress.

 

The officer’s eyes shift and his mouth tightens, giving a serious expression. 

 

“Okay ma'am. When did this happen?”

 

“Tonight, a few hours ago.”

 

“Okay, you will have to take yourself to the hospital to get yourself checked out.”

 

“The hospital?” I question.

 

“Yes, you will have to go there first before we can file a report. They will have to do a rape kit.”

 

“But I came here first so that you can find him and remove him from my house. I am not safe there.” I was almost breathless as I bleated my words.

 

“You are telling me that the intruder is still in your house?”

 

“Yes.” I lower my eyes, my shame more apparent under the extreme brightness of the overhead lamps. “He’s my husband.”

 

There is a silence. I look up to see if the officer has left, but he is still standing there. The seriousness that has been stamped across his face is now drifting into a slight scowl.

 

“I’m sorry ma'am. We don’t handle civil disputes. That’s for civil court.”

 

I feel that the conversation should continue, but how can I ask for help when it was already denied? It was not a direct denial of helping, but a shift of responsibility that would allow the question of who should help drift in the air until someone claims it. The officer stares at me as if he expects me to leave. My eyes drift down to the counter where he continues to focus on the stack of paperwork. I imagine the gun on his belt behind the sterile wall he places between myself and the illusion of justice. I leave the precinct and walk in the direction from where I had come. As I turn the corner, I use the empty space on a brick wall to bolster myself as I cry into my hands, that salty excess of release not giving the peace it once had. I consider where I should go as I walk around. I think of renting a room with the cash advance from a credit card. From my joint account with Carl? It would not be likely. I wander the streets until I find myself on my own stoop. The overwhelming shock of the denial after the surprise of the escalated abuse numbed me into a submission I could handle for the moment. I pragmatically considered that everything could be the same as before. I would not have to move or buy new belongings. I could start applying to jobs in the morning and find the space in my own life to remedy a marriage that was broken. My breathing is labored as I make my way up the four flights of stairs that I have grown accustomed to climbing with three bags full of fresh clothing. I let myself in. The lights are still off, as they had been when Carl had come into the apartment. When he presented the roses to me, I was still using the light from the day to paint. I close the front door behind me, quietly, as Carl had done to mask his entrance. I walk over to the stereo where Carl often sways, blasting his anti-lullabies, the music that I recognize as a trigger. The songs that mean if I hear them I will not sleep—that I will die if I hear them for too long, at my hand or his. I turn the knob on the stereo down low enough to only hear the words as I sit with my ear against the speaker. I listen to a song that I like for the first time in months, a Gothic and moody melody with a slow beat that turns fast for the chorus.

I consider my thoughts from earlier that day, of feeling powerless before my power had been taken. I tried to reclaim my power, but it was not returned, moving from my husband’s thrusting to a police officer’s empty stack of files. I was not served nor protected. Who decides who takes power and how can we keep it? Can we grow it ourselves? The officer’s lack of responsibility for a woman who was in need of protection has awoken a beast inside of me that can only hold power, appearing beautiful to some and representing ugliness to others. How many people had walked into that precinct who were not helped? I think again of the woman who wanted to go home at the end of the night, beside a bar, out in the dark and alone. Would her killing be followed up on? I did feel powerless as I left that police station, but tonight was the first time I ever attempted to turn my back on Carl during our five years of marriage. I let him diminish my soul, quicken my speech, slow my thought process, and break my spirit. This is where a woman’s depression sometimes lies—in the hands of men.

Losing my power gives me the opportunity to grab it back. I know it moves—in and out of circumstances. I feel powerful that I can recognize the flaws of a system that exists on the inconsistencies of sexist, transphobic, and racist principles. As a white woman, I recognize my own silence as a perpetuation of this system. This slowly ceasing ignorance and power in recognizing, awareness that is not fully formed, comes with responsibility. Can I take it, if it had been left in the air to grab? I sleep on the couch, keeping the stereo on low so that I can only hear the cadence as I rock myself in and out of sleep.

I wake up briefly as Carl readies himself for work, opening one of my eyes when I feel his back is turned. I listen as he brushes his teeth, hearing his spit hit the sink’s bottom and knowing it will be stuck there. When I hear the door close, I wait a few minutes. In the bedroom, I open the closet door and rummage through an assortment of outfits and clumsily folded blankets. Here, I find a bag that is large enough for substance and light enough for travel.

 

The bus pulls up and I leave my inner world. I always get lost there, in my mind. I hope to leave it more often to confront the physical world where my problems fester. I hop on, going nowhere, but somewhere that is better than where I am. If I am going somewhere, I cannot tell you. I cannot trust that this information will not be delivered to Carl by someone who saw me leave, a neighbor who just wants us to work things out—those who have never existed inside the walls of my house. You have to respect my boundaries and frankly—it is none of your business to know where I am going. The bus pulls away from the curb and I look around to see if there is anyone I recognize. There are only a few riders at this time after rush hour. I sigh and tuck myself into a back corner seat, my eyes not closed, but peering downward. I watch the world pass. I like moving. I like resting on this bus seat while zooming above the ground, and putting the distance between myself and the past. Because that moment when I was just standing on that curb, and every moment before it, is in the past, and I am safe—for now. But I am just resting. I will not forget it. My memories will not let me. 

I will be painting to tell you that we women and domestic violence survivors do not need a police force that brutalizes our neighbors as they dismiss our violent homes and deaths as a symptom of the way the world spins. I will pick up my brush as soon as I am done resting and get to where I am going. I rock myself, thinking of my mother, her grip firm on mine as our feet hit the sand, all those years ago, those moments of light.

 

This piece is a work of fiction, but some incidents discussed in the story are based on true events, including the Labor Day Parade in 1998 where a few New York City locals, including NYPD officers and volunteer fire fighters wore black face and parodied James Byrd’s death on their parade float. Read the New York Times article published on 9/11/98 about this event here. 

This is a story about a survivor of abuse, written by a survivor of abuse, who was also turned away by the police.