Title: The Woman in the Mirror
Writing contest for a forum/A day in the life of...
A day in the life of a battered wife with somewhat of a split personality
Outside, the rain came down in sheets, pounding on the windows, leaking through the roof of the run down rental house so that the sound of water hitting rotted wood floors echoed continuously around the room.
Inside the room where the rain splattered onto creaking floorboards and the candlelight flickered endlessly, the one buffer against the ongoing storm, the woman looked out of the mirror. Her washed out face was accented by dark purple bruising. Her wheat-colored hair hung limply around pale, thin lips, a small, button nose, and baby blue eyes that raced to the door each and every time it creaked.
I sat in front of the mirror, unable to believe the woman staring back was me.
How had things gotten this way for the woman in the mirror? He had seemed so nice and sweet when they were going out. He had beaten her for the first time a week after the wedding.
The figure in the mirror picked itself up off of the floor. She stood, and the blue eyes full of sorrow and terror stared at my stomach instead of into my own matching eyes. Last month the woman in the mirror had been pregnant. He hadn’t known. She hadn’t found the way to tell him yet.
And then they had gone dancing. The mirror had shown the woman as she dressed in the clothes he picked out for her, the clothes that once there he decided were too revealing. She had gotten flirtatious glances from other men, and cringed at every one, knowing that upon returning to her mirror she would see a bruise left over from a fist for every look sent her way.
But that night he had used a belt.
She would never forget the way it felt the first time it hit you. The stinging pain was so shocking you thought you had to be dreaming. Soon enough your cries were more animal than human and you could barely tell one strike from the next. He had beaten the baby out of her so that as she curled, sobbing, into a ball to ward off the worst of the pain from the belt she had felt an awful pain in her abdomen as had lost the baby.
She had not returned to the mirror for ten days, because she had spent those ten days in bed, recovering from the worst of blows.
Tears rolled down the woman’s face, and I felt the same tears sliding down my own.
I had to get out. I needed to run. There were places I could go, people who would take me in. Hospitals, shelters. The sheriff. I could run to the sheriff.
The woman in the mirror gazed sadly at me, reminding me of the last few times she had spoken to the sheriff.
She’d fallen down the steps, that was all. She was just such clumsy person. She had told this to him as I watched, somehow departed from the part of me that was this woman in the mirror, and screamed at her to tell him the truth, only to have her shut the door and watch in absolute horror as the man she had married came at her again.
He had seen her talking to the sheriff in the street, just a casual thing, and she had been beaten for it upon returning to the hell she called home.
I had to get out. I needed to run. The woman in the mirror continued to watch me. I needed to get away from her, from him. I needed to run.
It was too late. He was back. There was nowhere I could get in time.
He opened the door and stood there, framed in the doorway, letting the rain come pouring in. His hands, such big hands, clenched, then relaxed. He smelled of whiskey and looked like he had spent the day in a bar instead of at the factory where he worked. He probably had.
“Sugar, I’m home.” It should have been sweet, something that the heroine would hear before her hero swept her off her feet and showered her with kisses. Instead it sounded exactly like the one kiss he gave me. Both were hard, harsh, and more than a little bit mean.
“Why isn’t my dinner on the table?” Behind him, I saw the woman in the mirror shudder.
“There’s no money for food, and we’re out. I can go get some now, today was payday wasn’t it?” I tried to keep my voice light, and watched her cower in fear as the first blow was landed.
I couldn’t watch the rest of what happened. Even as I felt it I was somehow departed from both my body and the figure in the mirror so that it didn’t seem real. The scene appeared to move slowly, as though it was underwater, or in a dream. But it wasn’t a dream at all. It wasn’t even a nightmare, because there was no waking up at the end of it.
He pummeled her with the first of those big, heavy hands, and when she faded into unconsciousness, that place of nothingness where nothing could be felt and nothing mattered, so did the figure in the mirror. And with them both, I slid away, back into the body that was being covered in a fresh set of bruises.
.
Get your own Free Website now!