When I returned to the living room, he stood in front of the window as if expecting someone. I walked up behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and laid my head against the back of his shoulders. The flannel of his shirt felt soft against my skin. “Guess I’ll drop off Callie’s purse on the way to take you in the morning.”
When he didn’t reply, I figured his mind must be focused on the long road ahead of us.
I nuzzled my nose into the crook of his neck, taking in his warmth. “I know this is scary, baby, but it’s going to be the best thing that’s ever happened for us. You’ll see.”
Without warning, he jerked around and shoved me so hard that the back of my head hit the wall. Confused and hurting, I stumbled to find my balance. His thick eyebrows knit together over eyes so dilated they were more black than blue. He looked both through and past me as his lips receded above teeth bared like fangs. I knew at that moment that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
Veins bulged on both sides of his forehead, like horns trying to hatch through flesh. His fingers, curled like talons, reached for me. I had the fleeting thought that this was probably the last thing Norma had seen.
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.” He grimaced, as if what he was about to do disgusted him.
Before I could react, his arm bent back and white knuckles met me, full throttle, in the middle of my jaw. I heard the crack of impact and felt an explosion of pain. Before I could plead with him to stop, he punched me again, this time in the gut. A gust of air whooshed out of me, along with the taste of blood and a pain as bad as any broken bone he’d ever given me.
When I tried to crawl away, his boot caught my side hard and fast. My scream must have woken you, because you shrieked like you were the one being attacked.
The sound of your cry stopped him cold. He shook his head like he was coming out of a daze. Slowly, he started up the hallway toward you.
“Don’t,” was all I could say.
He turned and sneered at me. “Don’t what? You told everyone you were afraid for your son, like I’m some kind of baby beater. Well, maybe I am.”
He turned again and tramped up the hallway while I struggled to my feet.
When I got to the bedroom, he was leaning into your crib as you screamed. “Shut up!” he yelled, snatching you up too hard.
I couldn’t think, Manny. I couldn’t even breathe. “Put him down,” I whispered. “You put him down right now, or so help me . . .”
Still holding you by your armpits, he looked over his shoulder at me and called me a name he had used so much over the years I’d almost started answering to it.
Your scream grew more frantic. When I reached for you, he yanked you back so hard he almost slammed you into the side of the crib.
They say when a person’s about to die, their life flashes before their eyes. At that moment, your life was the one flashing by—your first step into my outstretched arms. The school bus window you’d never wave at me from. The wedding you’d never have. The grandchildren you’d never give me . . . all because I’d risked your life by rolling the dice one last time.
If a sound can be a prayer, the groan that escaped me then surely was. In that split second, I promised God if he’d get us out of this, I’d never gamble again, not with you. I’d get help. I’d get out. Anything.
“Give him to me,” I begged. I saw then that he was holding you so tightly your arms had started to turn purple. Even though I’d seen him lose control plenty of times, I’ve never been that afraid before or since. It was one thing for him to hurt me. I always healed. But you were so fragile. One blow could kill you.
This is what Callie Mae had tried to warn me about. Some part of me must have always known the truth. How could I have deceived myself so thoroughly?
Reaching beside the dresser, I scrambled to grab Callie Mae’s purse off the floor. With your shrill scream echoing in my ears and Trent answering it with another demand for you to shut up before he gave you a reason to cry, I unzipped the bag, reached in, and felt cold, hard metal.
My hands shook so badly I couldn’t hold the gun straight. Blood trickled into my mouth as I said, “Put him down.”
He looked back at me, his eyes glinting with something that looked a lot like amusement. “What’s that, a toy?”
He was still holding you over your crib. If I shot him below the waist, even my aim couldn’t be bad enough to hit you. He would drop you to the safety of the mattress.
“It’s no toy,” I said.
He snorted like I disgusted him. “What are you going to do, kill me? Shoot me when I’m holding your son?”
“Put him down or I’m taking out your kneecap.” I felt like I was watching a movie starring myself. It didn’t feel real, but your cry and the pain in my jaw and side told me it was.
The humor left his eyes as he laid you back down. I decided then and there that would be the last time you cried because of him if I could help it. When he stepped away from your crib, I locked my elbows as I raised my aim from his legs to his chest. “Get out of my house. You can go to rehab, or you can go to the bar, but you can’t stay here.”
“Your house?” He crossed his arms defiantly. “You don’t even know how to work that thing. Look at you.”
I used my thumbs to cock back the hammer. It was harder than Callie Mae made it look. When it clicked the second time, I said, “Yeah, look at me.”
His smirk died. “Don’t be that way. You know you ain’t got it in you to shoot me. Everyone gets one more chance, ain’t that right, One Cent?”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” I said.
It was a hard thing to know he had always seen my forgiveness as just another flaw. Staring over the barrel of that gun, I realized that, indeed, it had been.
This realization made me want to shoot him, Manny, not to kill him, but to kill the old me. The me who thought she needed him. The me who believed she deserved the abuse he’d dished out all those years. But if I pulled the trigger, I knew I would have swung too far the other way and become just like him. There was a better way, and I promised myself if I made it out of this alive, I would find it.
“Walk to the living room,” I said, “and dial 911.”
He gave me a slow once-over with a look that would kill if it could. Dragging his feet, Trent trudged to the living room with his hands raised in surrender. He put a hand on the telephone receiver and cautiously turned around. “What am I supposed to tell them, that my wife is holding a gun to my head?”
“How about starting with telling them you murdered Norma?”
Panic flashed in his eyes. “You can’t prove anything.”
At that moment everything I’d been denying became as clear as your cries. “Why did you have to kill her?”
He looked toward the kitchen as if he heard something. “Why do I do anything? For you. Everything I do is for you, Penny. She was trying to blackmail me with lies. If I didn’t shut her up, she was going to poison you against me. I told you when I married you I’d never let anything come between us.” He got that look in his eyes he always did when he was trying to manipulate me into forgiving him. “Come on, baby, don’t do this. No one’s ever going to love you the way I do.”
“That’s right,” I said, forcing my mind to remain clear. “No one’s ever going to love me like that again.” A million thoughts went through my mind right then, but I refused to entertain any of them. Not with you still in danger. “You’ve never done anything for me. Everything you’ve ever done has been for you and you alone.” I wiped the line of sweat forming across my brow. “Pick up the phone and dial.”
He put the receiver to his ear as his finger hovered above the nine button. “You know you can’t testify against me. You’re my wife.”
“That’s a lie,” Callie Mae said as she emerged from the kitchen.
Startled, I jerked the gun in her direction.
“But even if she couldn’t, I would. I heard everything.” She forced a sm
ile at me. “I forgot my purse. You left the back door unlocked, by the way.”
I saw the terror in Callie Mae’s eyes before I felt Trent’s fingers wrap around my hand. I held onto that gun like my life depended on it, knowing it probably did. The struggle happened so fast, I didn’t have time to consider the risk of three people fighting over a cocked pistol.
Manny, there are moments in your life you want so badly to remember, but can’t. And then there are those that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to forget. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still smell the acrid stench of sulfur filling the air. Can feel the unexpected force of that gun unloading in my hand, and hear the ringing in my ears that drowned out the screaming. And to this day, I can’t get out of my head his blood spilling onto the floor like wine from an overturned glass, or the way he touched his shoulder, then looked at his bloody fingertips in horrified disbelief.
As he lay on the floor, writhing in pain, Callie Mae picked the gun off the floor and pointed it at him with one hand, while she dialed the police with the other. I ran to my dresser and pulled out the first thing my hands touched. I balled up the T-shirt and pressed it as hard as I could against the spurting wound, praying the whole time your father wouldn’t die. I wish I could say that prayer was for noble Christian reasons—turn the other cheek, heap burning coals of kindness, and all of that. But the truth of it was I still didn’t think I could live without him.
FORTY
SITTING on a gurney in the emergency room, I wanted to cry as the policemen questioned me about the shooting, but the tears wouldn’t come. I felt them trapped in my throat and in the pit of my stomach. My answers didn’t reflect that emotion, though. I refused to let them. They sounded strangely detached, as if I were simply regurgitating the synopsis of a book I’d read.
Between their questions, I paused as though I was thinking, but I was really listening for Trent’s voice. I knew he was there being treated as well. Was he okay? Would he get out and come after us? I heard only complaining patients, beeping machines, and hurried exchanges among the staff.
The place smelled like an old folks’ home, and in my small curtain-room, I felt claustrophobic with the two men. I wondered if Callie Mae was being asked the same questions at the police station. I pictured her trying to fill them in on the frustratingly little bits and pieces she had managed to gather, and I felt bad she’d been dragged into this mess I’d made. It was the thought of her that reminded me of the person I wanted to be. Of the life I wanted to have and what I must do to get it.
“I’m very sorry that happened, ma’am,” the older of the two cops said, though he couldn’t be more than thirty. “He’ll be charged with two counts of assault.”
They told me Callie Mae and I would not be charged, and that surprised me. Not that we wouldn’t be charged, but that we might have been. He stood, pulled the chair back from my bedside, and slid it against the wall. His partner was already standing.
“Is he going to be okay?” I heard myself ask.
“He’ll live,” the younger said.
I touched the crust of blood beneath my nose, not caring if it was broken. My only real concern was getting home to you. You were left in Fatimah’s care instead of social service’s, and for that I was grateful.
As the police gathered their papers, I stared at the gum wrapper sticking to the heel of the older man’s shoe. “There’s more,” I said, before I could lose my nerve.
They turned and looked at me expectantly.
I told them about Trent’s relationship with Norma. About his assault on her the night she was murdered, about his disappearing that night, and about the story he gave me when I questioned him about it.
They frowned and warned me of the penalty of lying, but I could see in their eyes they knew I wasn’t.
The new information disturbed them, but they promised to look into it.
They left, and I lay there for what must have been hours waiting for a doctor to check me out. A nurse popped her head inside my curtain and apologized for the wait. “It’s unusually busy,” she said. “And we’re shorthanded.”
I asked how much longer. She grimaced and shrugged.
I signed myself out against medical advice, feeling the disapproving looks from the staff as I left. Using the courtesy phone in the lobby, I called Fatimah. My stomach cramped as I waited for her to pick up. The last thing she had said to me was that I was dead to her. But I had no one else to call.
“Hello?” Edgard said.
I exhaled in relief. “It’s Penny.”
“My friend!” he exclaimed. “I am so sorry to hear of your terrible ordeal. Fatimah has much concern over you. I must ask if you are all right.”
I hesitated, not knowing the answer to that question. “I think so.”
“She is okay!” he yelled.
I listened for her reaction and your cry. I heard only Fatimah. “Tell her Manny does well but is hungry.”
Before he could relay the message, I said, “I heard. I hate to ask, but can you pick me up from the ER?”
“She wants me to collect her from the hospital,” he said, but didn’t wait for Fatimah to reply. “I come now.”
When Edgard opened the door to his apartment, I saw you and baby Penny lying side by side on an orange blanket on the floor. The two of you exchanged gurgling noises, and I breathed a prayer of thanks to God you were alive and well. It could have turned out differently. The thought threatened to bring me to my knees, but I had no time to collapse because Fatimah rushed at me with open arms.
Only when I saw her tears did the dam holding mine finally break. She held me, making a soft cooing sound. “You be okay, Peeny. You be okay.”
I let her hold and rock me until my tears were spent; then I pulled back and wiped my eyes. She showed me to her bedroom, which was decorated in bright colors and smelled of incense. I fed you, listening to you gulping furiously. I thought of Trent and wondered if he was in pain, and if he’d retain full use of that arm. Then I reminded myself he wasn’t my problem anymore. He made his bed, and he was the one who would have to lie in it. I would have to make a new bed for myself—and for you.
The thought felt good—freeing and right. I’m on my own now, I thought, but what used to terrify me brought me a small smile. “It’s just you and me now, Manny,” I said, just to hear it.
Your eyelids grew heavy as I fought to keep my own open.
Callie’s voice jolted me awake.
I found her sitting on the bed beside me. Her eyes were red and free from makeup, her clothes wrinkled and disheveled. She placed a hand over her heart. “Thank God you’re okay.”
Confused, I squinted at her, then around Fatimah’s room, and I remembered—the nightmare was no dream.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “I should have listened to you.”
“You should have,” she agreed as she drew me into a motherly hug.
“You saved my life.”
At that she pulled back, still holding my shoulders, and looked me square in the eye. “It’s time for you to start saving your own life, Penny Taylor. Manny needs his mother.”
At the sound of your name, I listened for your cry, but heard only the muffled sound of the television in the next room. “I was dreaming about the statue you gave me.”
She looked at me intently.
“I dreamed I had stained-glass wings just like her. I kept flapping them with all my might, but my feet wouldn’t leave the ground. I was about to give up when I noticed the vine wrapped around my ankle.” At last the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. “But all I had to do was cut it, and I was free.”
Callie Mae gave me a tired smile. “It’s about time.”
I felt myself blush. “I’m a little slow on the uptake, huh?”
She tried in vain to brush a wrinkle from her top. “No, you just had to know that you had done everything you could to make it work. I respect that. So many of us pic
k and choose what we want to believe from the Bible and leave the difficult stuff untouched. Right or wrong, you wrestled hard. Something tells me, to God, there’s beauty in that battle.”
A torrent of emotion moved through me, but I wasn’t ready to let it pour out just yet. As I sat there looking at Callie Mae, I thought of all the things she and Fatimah had been trying so long and hard to tell me—that there are things even more important to God than the preservation of a marriage; namely, the people in that marriage. I found solace in understanding, for the first time, that remaining single, with healthy relationships, wouldn’t feel half as lonely as I’d been.
“I’m proud of you,” Callie said.
I tried to smile, but couldn’t. “I’m proud of me too.”
FORTY-ONE
TRENT TAYLOR slunk out of my life wearing an orange jumpsuit, a pair of handcuffs, and an attitude I couldn’t wait to take my eyes off.
To this day, I’ll never understand why he didn’t just throw away that stupid slag hammer he used to kill her. Instead, he washed off the blood, leaving just enough DNA to convict him, and placed it back among his tools. While he was still in St. Joseph’s recovering from the gunshot wound, he was charged with first-degree murder.
Neither I nor the jury would ever learn exactly how or why he had killed her, because he pleaded the fifth, declining to take the stand in his own defense. Whether this was his idea or his attorney’s, I never learned.
Instead, we heard theories from the prosecution. His motive, they said, was nothing more than jealous rage. Norma was prostituting herself and he couldn’t stand it. It took the jury less than two hours to deliberate.
In the courtroom, Callie Mae sat on one side of me, Fatimah on the other, as I watched the back of Trent’s freshly shaven head. Even through the hushed chatter surrounding me, I could hear the tap of his heel against the floor. He leaned to the left and whispered something in his lawyer’s ear. She nodded, while looking away from him toward the door, as if she couldn’t wait to bolt.