A Stream-of-Consciousness: A Domestic Violence Narrative

November 1, 2014

I didn’t know. I tried my best. I was sure it was my fault. If I had only controlled my temper. But what could I have done differently? I kept going on and on and on in my head about how the prior night could’ve played out; sitting sat on the floor among dust and webs in my secret hiding place in the hidden closet in the attic. My whole right face was throbbing. I thought of my mother. I thought deeply and strongly of her. How she looked then, cold and afraid, permanently ingrained in my head.

What is that hanging on her lip? Is that actually part of her lip? How can it be so deformed? Will they ever get back to looking the same way they were before? Those red lips that were naturally puckered? That always made people smile, carried with laden with strength and assurances? The same lips that can now barely pronounce my name: “Jane.”

I also thought of my mother’s eyes. Those big, wide, radiant eyes which I proudly refer to as my greatest heirloom. We shared the same eye color and shape and I had heard in countless occasions how we shared a likeness in our eyes makes us nearly identical. I was proud to be a mini-version of my mother.

Now we still share the same likeness, now in the way we bruise. I trembled as I heard more rustling and loud voices downstairs. My mother’s voice, strong but aching, resonated in my ear: “Run, Jane! Hide!” But I knew that this was the only place I could hide. I felt a tinge of guilt. I wanted my mother with me in the safety of my secret hiding place. He wouldn’t be able to find them here.

Once, when I saw a spider, I screamed and started jumping so loud that I got a sore throat. My mother, with her calm, soothing voice told me that there was no need to be afraid of spiders. It’s true that how they look and behave might scare me, but they shouldn’t; don’t deliberately try to harm me. She told me that that we should respect the spider’s space and the spider’s existence. Those were powerful words for me. Because of that, I was brave. No other 6-year-olds like me have the same bravado. Those words strengthened me. They served as comforting and an assuring dogma for me to justify my need to be in my special room when need be, even if it means sharing the spiders’ spaces. It was their place; they have their cobwebs all over the attic. I knew that the cobwebs are where the spiders live; it’s their house. Much like my and my mother’s house, but I could not fathom how Devon, this filthy, ape-like monster could not respect our space. How can he barge into their home and in a drunken fit of rage start hitting me and beating my mother.

It didn’t start out like that. I remember in the beginning, a few times when Devon was kind and would bring me stuffed animals. Devon and my mom worked at the hospital together. She was the head nurse of the surgical unit and Devon, an independent, young nursing student was working as an orderly to get him through school. She liked Devon for his drive and motivation. She was five years older than Devon and recently divorced. I cringe every time I remember my own father.

I was barely five when he walked out on us. He was scarcely around to begin with and the few times that he was around, he was not pleasant at all. It took my mother all her strength to recover from him leaving the young family he began. She never really had her closure. She was, on all accounts, hopeful that her war hero husband and her beautiful young daughter were all she ever needed to remain happy. But he left us alone.

Now we have Devon, slamming my mother around on a daily basis and shoving her into walls. I think she’s as afraid as I am, but for now, I find solace in the serene sparseness of the attic and in the special space I share with spiders. *This is a work of fiction written by an anti-domestic violence advocate. This story aims to examine how domestic violence makes victims of everyone in the family unit.

Copyright @ 2006 Bobanny (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons