Reconstructing Sara

This is what it’s like to be afraid of the dark. I’m huddled, scooting along the floor towards one corner, then along the side of the bed, but then I realize the corners are no better. They are just as hot. Then I just stay somewhere in the middle of the room, as close to the ground as possible without surrendering my mobility, keeping my feet below me, because at least down here the sound of his voice was not as loud. I feel my weight pressing harder against the floor squeezing out the blood from the edges of my feet, making them pale. I am desperate to fuse into the ground – my only way out. But the boundaries of my skin are too strong and I stay in the room, with Him.

He stands up and takes a few steps towards the door. Although I wasn’t looking, I knew what his coordinates were. He was hot like that. I felt relief with every step he took away and intensifying desperation with every step towards me. My heart pounds with the hope that this might be the end, that he might finally walk out of the room so I could be left to tend to my wounds. But then he turns around, I dig my nails into my knees in preparation – my painted nails that made me a whore - and as though out of nowhere the familiar whip cuts through my fortress of air and cracks against my raw trembling back.

The cracking sound is the worst part. It always surprises me to hear it so soon – and then the bite sinks in, followed by the deepening with the sting. I wouldn’t look at it. It would break me. I imagined that it was pristine, pale and perfect still, although I couldn’t deny the few strokes that stayed. I was reminded of them, however, only when they were crossed again. Pain is funny like that. I imagined that they were the delicate branches of bamboo in the painting. No, I couldn’t look. I had to believe my skin fortress was still intact. It was my last stand.

Silence follows. After an indefinitely long period of time, I breathe a shallow breath and finally pluck my nails from my knees to see the marks they left behind – my relaxed state. I breathe again deeper. My back stings back. So now I know my limits and I obey.

I thought about what was happening: his anger, his love taunting me, my pitiful body, my desire for his approval, his want for my everything that I didn’t know how to give. Then it really started to hurt. My chest collapsed with my heart in it and I squeezed, pushing out a few drops of tears from one eye but not the other – the only little pieces of myself that I could get out because I had nothing else. I took a deep breath and squeezed again. Nothing this time. Nothing left.

I dig my nails into my knees again, back into the small ditches where they belong, and I press harder and harder, feeling the pain pierce into me. I feel my body tremble with life – what little there is of it, it is still there. As though by natural instinct, because it kicks in in times like these, I begin rocking slightly, in the rhythm of infancy that makes the world feel like a dream – the first step to falling asleep.

My brother and mother standing in their own corners, stared at the ground, occasionally glancing over at me – their naked creature-sister-daughter-thing. They stopped pleading a while ago when they realized the more they spoke, the harder he hit. They stood aside though and between us was a moat they couldn’t pass, because this time he chose me.

In the spaces between the slashes my mind wandered into the darkness, into the things I could do besides digging my nails into my knees. The options were of another world, I knew, and I stood at the open door. I imagined what it would be like to strangle, to cut, to burn, to amputate. I imagined seeing shadows I couldn’t touch or feeling bugs crawl that I couldn’t see. I imagined hearing voices alone in the dark that I couldn’t prove were there. The world was tempting and he was pushing me in. I clung to the edge because part of me knew it was bad somehow, but part of me believed it was where I belonged from the start. This is insanity. This is Hell. I could fall indefinitely into it. It would swallow me whole and not notice any change in its hunger. No! I don’t want it! It wouldn’t give back. At least He reacts. Hell doesn’t.

I suddenly shut It out and return to my floor, my nails, my strokes of bamboo, and I am relieved. But I know It awaits. It will always be there calling. My chest collapses again but this time it is from anger. All this time I believed it was my weakness, my degenerate little mind, my pathetic yearning heart that led me to the abyss in love and challenges, but no, I was wrong. He was the one pushing me down this path – so many times that I’ve started to walk it myself. It was too familiar, too beaten from my own footsteps, through a forest that most do not entertain entering. He will continue to push me again and again because he doesn’t realize how close I am to jumping in. Or maybe he does and believes I deserve it. Maybe I do deserve it. Maybe I’ll jump.

I collapse again at that thought. It was a self-hit. And I savored the agony it brought me. I believe I am dry now because nothing is coming out anymore. I am paralyzed. There is nothing else to do when I am dry but to stay very still. There is no purpose in any movement now. There is no more reaction to my actions from anyone, including myself.

This is it: My naked body, sitting in a small smeared pool of sweat-tears-blood-fluid. My floor. The window. My bed. My brother and mother so still like furniture. And Him. I wasn’t sure if he had been yelling earlier. I had let sounds pass me by for a while now, because there was no point in listening when I was dry. He could hit me again but I no longer felt the urge to dig my nails into my knees. I was spent.

This completes the cycle. I’ll build up again, and we’ll talk and laugh, then he’ll snap, and I’ll fight just briefly, then I’ll huddle and squeeze and tear, I’ll peer into the abyss, contemplate jumping, then get scared and turn back, then I’ll be dry again and everything will stop. And the cycle starts again. He could hit me again but he didn’t. I don’t know when he left the room. It didn’t matter.

I breathe. I hold my head a little higher. I breathe a little deeper. It stings.

And then the other kind of tears was released – these were cool, refreshing, and flowed freely without squeeze, like the mountain stream. These were the tears of the artists, the musicians, the eccentric thinkers, the persistently misunderstood, I am certain. They blurred my view of the bed frame and the sheets that draped over the edge. They were me returning, and they were beautiful.