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He had a bad day.
He wasn’t himself.
It wasn’t his fault.
I should have been quieter. The list went on and on until I ran out of excuses. If I was being honest, I ran out of them a long time ago and still I did nothing.
“Momma,” my daughter whispered again. There was worry and fear in her voice. She was crying. I hated seeing my children cry. I blamed myself for that. I was supposed to protect them, nurture them, love them. Instead, my children watched as their father beat me, slapped me, kicked me until I gave in and did what he wanted.
I moaned, trying not to move. The very breath I took caused immense pain. I could barely form the word on my lips because they felt so swollen. Even my tongue throbbed as I realized I must have bitten it to stop from screaming out.
He didn’t like it when I cried or made a noise.
My daughter whispered as I felt her soft breath blow against my cheek. “Unka Tana coming. I called him,mommy.”
At only three years old, my daughter was so smart.
“Daddy bad.”
My daughter knew the danger before I did. I should have known when my daughter screamed her little head off when her father picked her up as a newborn. She sensed something dark inside him. I’d read somewhere once that kids had a sixth sense about people, that they knew who was good and evil.
Everything hurt.
I’d never seen him so angry before, yet I knew when he stared at me with those cold dead eyes, this time was going to be different. And it was. When his fist flew at my face, I knew there was going to be no stopping him this time, and I was right. No amount of pleading and begging would soothe the darkness raging in him. I fought him as hard as I could, but in the end, I wasn’t strong enough.
I was never strong enough.
When he came home, I was making dinner. The kids were laughing and coloring at the kitchen table when he walked in angrily demanding I sign another document. Well, technically, it was the same document, but that didn’t really matter because I refused to sign it. One thing my grandfather and brother taught me was to sign nothing without reading it first with Mr. Crisp, my family’s attorney, present. Since I hadn’t seen Mr. Crisp after my wedding and my husband refused to let me read the document, I declined to sign. Which pissed him off immensely. When his voice rose, our children’s laughter ceased immediately. From the corner of my eye, I watched my daughter jump from her seat and pull her brothers to safety. She was three and even she knew tonight was going to be bad.
I fell to the floor when the first blow hit, causing me to see stars as my head hit the kitchen table on the way down. A hot sticky wetness slid down the side of my head and into my eye as I reached to touch the throbbing spot on my head. My hand came away red as blood dripped from my fingertips. His foot connected with my ribs, robbing me of the very air in my lungs. Curling into a ball, all I felt was pain as he continued his vicious attack, but when he started ripping my clothes from me, I knew he was only gearing up.
I tried to scream and fight him, but nothing I did stopped him from inflicting his torture on me. I was helpless to stop him. I always was. I said nothing as he mounted me and took what he wanted as he continued to punch and slam my head against the kitchen floor. Even when he finished, he never stopped hitting me, but the second I felt the cold metal blade against my skin, I knew my time on earth had come to an end. My only thoughts were of my children. Who would love and protect them if I didn’t?
I didn’t remember much after the first strike of the knife, my body taking me away somewhere safe until it was over. It was my daughter’s cries that eventually woke me. Seeing the fear in her eyes was something I was going to have to carry for the rest of my life. No child should ever have to live with such fear. That was on me. I should have left sooner, but I wanted the dream. Even with all the bruises and broken bones, some minuscule part of me hoped that someday everything was going to be okay. That, if I got him help, maybe an anger management class, he would see the error of his way and want me again. Want his family.
The sound of the front door being kicked in made me flinch as I cried out in pain. Fear raced down my spine that he had returned to finish the job when I heard boots pounding closer to me.
“Kali!” a loud familiar voice cursed, then seconds later I cried out as I felt his hand cover the side of my neck. “Jesus Christ! What did that motherfucker do to you? Mercy, call an ambulance!”
“Is she alive, Prez?”
“Barely. Get the kids out of here, Vicious. Then call detective Montoya. Tell him I need him and to hurry.”
I moaned.
“No, don’t speak.”
“Babies.”
“I’m going to take care of them, sweetheart. Don’t you worry. Just don’t speak. Fucker cut your neck. I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch when I get my hands on him. Where is that ambulance?”
My babies were safe.
He was here.
Everything was going to be okay.
When I arrived at the hospital, I vaguely remembered the doctors and nurses cursing as they hurriedly rushed me straight into the operating room. I was told that it took the doctors over thirty-six hours to fix the damage my husband had done and to sew up all the cuts. I had so many stitches the doctors stopped counting after three hundred. Also gone was my spleen and appendix. I had a lacerated liver and two punctured lungs. My left artery had to be patched. He fractured my jaw in three places, forcing the doctors to wire it shut. I had several broken bones and my right ear and three of my fingers had to be sewn back on.
