I was thinking that I must have looked horrible with puffy, swollen eyes and a bruised face, a long-sleeved shirt on in the middle of the summer, but everyone pretended not to notice. I wanted them to notice and see what he had done to me.
“Mia, what do you want to eat, dear?”
“Nothing. I’m okay. I’ll just get a Coke.”
I walked over to the refrigerator to get a can of soda.
“Mia, get me another beer while you’re over there.”
I froze with my hand trembling on the refrigerator door because I wanted to scream at Brice to get it his damn self, but I knew better. I’m not a fool. I knew if I said something, anything smart to him, he wouldn’t hesitate to jack me up in front of everyone.
Vivica softly said, “I’ll get it, Brice.”
“No, Moms, I want my wife to get it.”
There was complete silence in the kitchen.You could have heard a pin drop. Brice still hadn’t looked in my direction or even acknowledged me except for the beer comment. I knew that he was testing me and wanted to prove to his father and the other men that he had me under control.
I went ahead and opened the refrigerator, got a can of beer and walked over and slammed it on the table next to him without a word. I was tempted to shake it up and place it on the table, but I didn’t have a death wish.
He continued to play cards without looking at me. “Put it in a beer mug, please, and don’t slam it down again, Mia. Do you understand? I said, do you understand? Answer me.”
“Yes, Brice, I understand perfectly,” I said as I looked at the floor. I had finally gotten his attention, but was too afraid to even look at him.
I controlled my anger and tears and put the beer in a mug and placed it gently in front of him. Brice grabbed my hand and said, “Thank you, baby.” For a few seconds, our eyes met. I saw victory and lust in his. In mine, I’m sure he saw defeat, fear and humiliation. I jerked away as if I had touched fire and walked into the living room and sat there watching, or should I say staring at, the TV for most of the night. After Brice’s card buddies left, he came into the living room and glared at me. I didn’t look up. He walked off with the comment that he wanted me in bed soon.
I sat downstairs for quite a while after everyone had gone off to bed, just thinking. Vivica had excused herself long ago, after once again apologizing profusely for her son. She hadn’t beat me. Her damn son needed to be apologizing. He was the one who beat the shit out of me. He was the one who treated me like he owned me. Like I was his damn property.The house was quiet, dead quiet, and I could think.
Why me? What did I do wrong? Why can’t he just love me?
Finally, I walked slowly up the stairs to our room; I couldn’t put it off any longer. If I didn’t go, Brice would only come down and get me. So why put it off? I knew what he wanted. Whenever he hit me, afterwards he always wanted sex. It was like the violence turned him on.
When I got upstairs, the lights were off and Brice was in bed, lying on his back with a thin sheet between me and his nakedness. I changed into a T-shirt with a lot of effort, and I climbed between the sheets as far away from Brice as possible. I had no sooner lain down when Brice slid over next to me with his chest pressed up against my back. My entire body instantly froze. I felt his hands, the ones that had hit me, as they started to search for the gap between my skin and the T-shirt. He whispered in my ear, “You won’t need your shirt or panties tonight. Get up and pull them off.”
He got up to lock the door, and he turned and looked at me. “Now, Mia.” I got up, trembling, obediently pulled off my shirt and panties, with little or no emotion, and laid back down with my legs spread eagle. He opened my stiff legs even farther and for most of the night was all hands, tongue and mouth all over my bruised, aching body. He had the bedsprings squeaking, my legs spread as he was humping and grinding inside of me. My mind was screaming, no, no, no, over and over again. I lay there with my eyes closed, tuned everything out, and took it as he moaned and groaned in my ear.
The following afternoon we left for home. I don’t know why I even got into the car with him. I thought briefly about going home to Mama across town, but I was scared. I knew he wouldn’t let me stay in Georgia without some major drama. I belonged to him, or so he thought. He had won. He had broken me. I didn’t give a fuck anymore, and I was scared as hell of him. I didn’t want to get beat down again. The drive back was mostly done in silence. Long silent miles. I answered his questions with as little communication as possible when I wasn’t pretending to be asleep. I couldn’t stand the sight of him, his smell or his touch. Brice made my skin crawl.
Mama always said that God didn’t give us more than we could handle. Well, I had come to the end of my rope. I couldn’t handle any more. All I had done wrong was love this man with all my heart and soul. And . . . this was the thanks I got.
24
Christian
Q
uit putting me in the middle of all your drama! Why is it that two people who love each other can’t seem to get along? Damn. Somebody answer that for me, please. Don’t put me in the middle of all your shit.
That’s why I decided to keep my distance, at least that’s one of my reasons. I’m not married to them or their many problems. And I’m not a fucking marriage counselor either. At first, my distancing myself was working, but then Mia would come and see me at my apartment. What was I supposed to do? Turn her away? I think not. I could never turn my back on Mia.
Here’s the scenario. I came home one day, about two weeks ago, after a hard day of work, and the only thing I could think of was a long, hot shower, but I saw this lovely angel sitting on my stoop waiting for me. So what did I do? I let her in; I let her vent and listened as her friend. That was the least I could do.
I don’t know what happened to them after Christmas. I thought Christmas had put them back on the right track, but some kind of serious drama happened when they went back for the second visit. My man will tell me about it when he is ready, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. He tapped that ass again.
Anyway, Mia will show up wanting to talk now and then.The last time this happened, I came home to find her sitting on my stoop crying silently. No words were spoken. She looked up and saw me, and I helped her up and opened the door to my apartment. When we got into the apartment she completely fell apart. She was crying about how Brice wanted her to have his baby and how she didn’t want to and how she was still taking her birth control pills and he didn’t know that and if he ever found out . . . well, she didn’t want to think about what would happen if he ever found out. Mia went on and on about him, sobbing and asking why he hated her so. I was thinking,
There’s a thin line between love and hate.
I assured her that he didn’t hate her because Brice was crying on my other shoulder about how much he loved this girl but how he always let his temper get the best of him. Brice didn’t want to lose her. That was his greatest fear. He thought having a baby would bring them closer together and make them a real family. He went on and on about how Mia was so immature and needed to grow up and be a real woman for him. He said that he didn’t need a little girl. I wanted to tell him that he had known her age, known all of this, when he married her. I kept my comments to myself, though I had plenty to offer in the way of my observations. Like, first of all, beating the hell out of somebody wasn’t going to bring the two of you closer together, or if Mia would quit her flirting and making the man crazy to begin with, there wouldn’t be so much conflict.
But, hey, I listened and was a sounding board for Mia and for Brice. The last time Mia came over she was upset about the baby issue, but she left laughing and almost back to normal. I told her, I don’t know why I did, that I would talk to Brice for her. That pleased her.
25
Brice
I
know now what it means and feels like to walk on eggshells because that is exactly what I have been doing around Mia since we returned from Georgia. I have apologized over and over and over, but I can tell that Mia is still afraid of me. I think the fear has overpowered the love that she felt for me. I think that the only emotion she has now is fear. I don’t want my wife afraid of me, regardless of the advice Daddy gave me years ago. When Mia looks at me I want to see love, affection, admiration, lust and respect reflected in her eyes, anything but fear in her pretty brown eyes.
Mia asked me if I would go with her to see a marriage counselor. I wanted to tell her what I was truly feeling, which was absolutely, positively “hell no,” but instead I told her I had to think about it. We don’t need anyone to fix our marriage for us. We can do that for ourselves. I don’t want to tell some shrink intimate details about myself so that he can blame everything on my parents. I’m not crazy. I just need to control my temper.
Moms called the other night. It’s been two months since we were in Georgia. She ended our conversation advising me to look deep within myself before it’s too late. She said I needed to confront Daddy and get some answers from the source.
26
Mia
T
oday started out as one of those days that goes on and on and on . . . just like that annoying Energizer bunny. I couldn’t focus or concentrate in any of my classes. Even my favorite professor, Dr. Hembrick, couldn’t break through my thoughts today as he discussed the needs of the exceptional children in the ever-changing educational system. So, thankfully, I had only one more class to make it through. And then . . . I could put all my stress and headaches behind me for the entire weekend. Heaven.
My wonderful, sexy husband was taking me away for a stress-free, romantic, relaxing weekend. Brice surprised me the other day when he suggested that we get in the car and keep driving until we ended up somewhere, anywhere.
He wanted to get away from Fort Bragg as much as I did. So I could hardly wait to hit the road, but unfortunately I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
Whenever we went away, it was always a wonderful, magical time for us. Brice devoted all his time and energies into pleasing me both mentally and physically. It was like I had the Brice that I had fallen head over heals in love with and we were totally into each other. It is almost like a honeymoon.
As I alternated between checking the huge white clock over the classroom door several times and trying to listen to Dr. Hembrick, I could hardly remain still in my seat. Finally, class was dismissed. Damn, one more class to go until freedom and Brice.
I still had several more minutes before my next class, which just happened to be in the same building, so I casually strolled over to talk to a few classmates that I knew from other classes. Their conversation was always the same. These women talked about who was sleeping with whom, what they were going to buy at the mall for the fraternity party over the weekend or if some basketball player, football player, whoever, was going to call them back after screwing them the previous weekend. I couldn’t relate, and therefore, I always felt like an outsider even though I was around their age.
Their conversations seemed like they had happened to me light-years ago. Hell, I was a married woman with a very demanding, passionate husband. My biggest concerns were to not make him upset with me and to obtain my degree so that I could gain some sort of independence. I desperately needed financial independence. My husband refused to let me work in any form or fashion. Therefore, I received an allowance from him each week, like a child. If I ran out of money, too bad. And he wouldn’t bend in his decision. He said I needed to learn some discipline. So I never quite figured out if I envied them for their carefree lifestyles or pitied them for their lack of knowledge about real life and responsibilities.
Anyway, when I looked up the narrow hallway, I saw Brice walking towards me. That came as a shock, and I did a double take, because it was kind of an unspoken rule that the campus was my territory, my domain. The campus of State University, strategically placed about three miles from base, was one place I felt I could be myself and not have to worry about my every action. Actually, it was my sanctuary.
I don’t think Brice had ever visited me on campus. He used to tell me all the time that he was going to buy me a pager so that he could get in touch with me while I was on campus. I lied and told him that it was policy that pagers had to be turned off on campus. Hell, he wasn’t going to monitor my every move. It wasn’t like I had anything to hide anyway. Guys didn’t try to talk to me on campus because they all knew who my husband was, and if they didn’t know then they soon found out. So I was usually kept at a hands-off distance. There were a few men who were nonmilitary who I chatted with casually.Yet Brice was so afraid that I was talking to some college boy that he was forever questioning me over nothing. I barely had any friends. Hell, I didn’t have any.
Brice was walking my way, dressed in Marine fatigues, motioning for me. I quickly walked over to meet him, and I could feel the eyes and stares checking out my man from head to toe. He did look finnnne! I still loved to see him in uniform. It was so sexy. My man had the body and the looks. Yeah, Brice had it going on. When I wasn’t angry with him, he could still make me weak from just looking at me that certain way. I always knew what was in store for me later that night. Good loving.