***
I guess I relegated Quinn to second place. I was so focused on my pregnancy, especially after I found out I was having twins. Quinn surprised me by coming with me for the ultrasound. When he saw the two tiny sacs on the screen, the two heart beats, he nearly passed out. The doctor laughed, said that a lot of expectant fathers do then become so attentive, they drive their women crazy. It was prophetic. Quinn went on a buying spree of books on pregnancy and child rearing (although Mom said that the only way to learn about raising a child was to do it). He made sure I exercised, ate properly, got enough rest. He even drew up a timetable. This time his need to be in control was kind of cute but I was no longer letting him rule over me.
Being pregnant sent my mind on all kinds of flight patterns. I began thinking about bloodlines—who I was, who Quinn was, and what other mess of characteristics would run in my children’s veins. I wanted to make a present for them—a family tree showing their lineage as far back as I could trace it between then and when they were born. I started by asking my mother what she knew, but all she could tell me was that her mother worked in a pecan orchard two hours north in Osceola, and that when she was three years old, her father was charged with nearly chopping a man’s hand off. He fled up to Canada—my grandfather, that is—and no one ever heard from him again. Mom wasn’t curious about what blood ran in her veins. She said that if she started going around stuffing all kinds of irrelevant information into her brain, her head would probably explode and then she’d be no use to anyone, including herself. The idea tweaked my brother Bobby, though. He lectures sociology at the university and he sent me over to the archives to do research. Now I had time on my hands. I dug deep.
My African heritage was a given—I’m milk chocolate dark with kinky hair when it isn’t straightened to fall between my shoulders. I even expected to discover some distant European—Spanish, most likely, for obvious geographical reasons—diluted out of any expression in my features. What I didn’t expect was the trace of American Indian—Timucuan and Calusa—back around the mid 1890’s. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised considering how close Vero Beach is to Lake Okeechobee, but finding Indian blood made me feel less of a garden variety African-American. I got interested in the culture and day to day life of the ancient indigenous people.
It was fascinating.
Quinn didn’t make another pass at me for a month. Again it was at night, in bed. He rolled over and cooed in my ear, “Come on, baby. It’s been so long. Soon I won’t be able to get my arms around you. Let me love you. Please?”
It could have been the muskier-than-usual aftershave he’d splashed on after his bath, or that by then my moods were swinging like yoyos in time to the occasional puffiness of my hands and feet. I was getting hot spells, feeling moody. The idea of suffering through sex after all this time of being left blessedly alone just wasn’t appealing.
“Quinn, I’m not in the mood. Let me sleep. Take care of your own business if you need to come so bad.”
He stiffened up and rolled away from me. I heard him breathing deep and slow, felt the bed give as he got up. I drifted back off to sleep.
I came fully awake with the first blow. Stupid, disorientated, instead of rolling out of reach, I turned to figure out what the hell was going on. The next blow hit me square in the belly and jackknifed my head and legs.
I screamed. “No! The babies!” but the silhouette looming over me in the dark, wielding something long with a bulbous end, wasn’t hearing or caring. Another blow came down and I twisted my lower body, raising my hand to deflect. My hand ricocheted off something hard and struck the side of my own stomach. For a split second, it hurt worse than whatever Quinn was battering me with. I kept screaming as the blows kept coming—four, five, six, more…to my belly...chest…back…and belly again, from every direction. I couldn’t get away. I didn’t hear my own screams anymore, stopped feeling the blows; I stopped moving. Finally, there was a ‘thump-bump’ on the carpet where his weapon dropped then his mouth close to my ear.
“I’ve put up with your shit long enough. Your body is mine. When I want it, I get it. Don’t you ever forget that!” Then he was gone.
My body drew up into a tight ball all on its own. I knew I should get up, try to get to the hospital, but I couldn’t move. Not that I didn’t want to, you understand—I couldn’t. I was shivering, my joints couldn’t unlock, my brain couldn’t turn thought into action. I stayed there balled up in the dark like an unhatched chick, trying to figure out how I got there. At some point, I must have passed out.
I woke up just before dawn in the same position. And alone. I uncoiled, sat up, dizzy and disconnected, switched on the nightstand light.
All I saw was red. Everywhere. The sheet and my night gown were soaked in blood. The cloying, raw smell of it filled the room and sucked up my nostrils. I looked down on the floor and saw Quinn’s black and purple beach towel—it was red, too—along with three tennis balls. Red.
I screamed.
Quinn came barreling into the room, panting, looking like he’d been just jolted out of a sound sleep to face an unexpected scene. He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look me in the eye. I don’t know how I let him touch me but he cleaned me up. He was like a spoiled child and I was his favorite doll. He’d dragged me through the dirt, now he doted on me again.
Afterward, he dressed me and drove me to the hospital.
The doctor and nurses looked at me sideways when they heard that I’d accidentally fallen off a step ladder while trying to hammer nails into a wall. After they examined me inside and out, their looks were even more suspicious.
I stayed in hospital for two days while they ran tests and tried to get me to tell them what really had happened. They talked; I pretended to listen. I didn’t need them to tell me that I had to get away from my husband, that he needed help that I couldn’t give him. But I had made myself into a pathetic disaster come to pass and I was ashamed, embarrassed, and resentful that someone else figured they had to tell me the obvious. I built a wall around myself.
But behind that wall I was making plans. First, I would go back home, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat every time I looked at Quinn or heard him apologize to me or lie to someone else about what had happened and how I was doing. Once I got back on my feet, I’d wait until he was at work, pack some clothes and my passport, withdraw all the pageant money that was still sitting in the bank gathering interest the last six years, and drive my car into a used car lot somewhere. I’d trade it in for something cheaper and head north, just like my mother’s father had done all those years ago. When I was far enough away I would call and let Mom know I was okay. I might even tell her why I’d left. Maybe. Mom would probably just tell me that running away never solved anything. I wouldn’t call Bobby—he was a man and I wasn’t in any frame of mind to deal with another one. I never thought of calling Sherry. Sherry sees the world in black and white—if this is the problem, that is how you fix it, and all the agonizing and recrimination is just unproductive, emotional bullshit. My sister would doubtless tell me that Quinn couldn’t have chipped away at me all those years if I hadn’t let him, as if I didn’t know that. She wouldn’t understand how I could let things get this far. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. It occurred to me that if Grandpa were still around, I could have called him. Something told me he would have understood.
Anyway, that was my game plan when morning rolled around on the day I was to be discharged from hospital. Then, before Quinn got there, the doctor came and told me what all those ‘tests’ they had run had really shown. By the time he was done, my game plan was too, but he didn’t know that and he stopped trying to be subtle, still trying to get through to me.
“Mrs. Tooley, if what I suspect is true, your husband should be imprisoned.”
I didn’t have a thing to say.
“You shouldn’t even consider going back to him. Next time, he could kill you.”
Still nothing.
/> The doctor gave up, looked disgusted, and left me alone.
That was three weeks ago.
That doctor couldn’t fathom how I could go crawling back to Quinn but I couldn’t just leave. Not now. New things were going through my head—things I had read about the Indians, the people who ran in my blood—and I was making new plans. I was going to stay…at least until Quinn realized fully what he had done.