(Warning; contains descriptions of violence)
No one knew.
I told the world that I fell over the baby gate at night. That it was dark and I heard crying and I was half asleep and forgot it was there. That I crashed over it and somehow fell on my face and somehow, somehow it looked exactly as if someone had punched me in the nose. I laughed as I told the story to my co-workers, silly, clumsy me.
You see, I couldn’t miss work. That would have meant being late on the electric bill; which would mean that the car payment would get pushed back and there would be a penalty; and then the rent would be due, and it would be $80 short; and then the whole precarious, carefully balanced house of cards would come crashing down on me. You see, that’s what poverty is. You play a card, just wrong, and the whole thing collapses. Your tire catches a nail and you weep, because there goes the water bill. You miss a day of work because you’re sick, and shit, no lunch that week.
So I couldn’t miss work, not just for a swollen nose.
You see, I hadn’t wanted to have sex with him. But that’s not something you can tell polite society.
That memory, I don’t want to touch it. It’s part of a dark mass in the back of my brain. That time, those 6 years living with the sometimes-monster, they feel untouchable, dirty. My chest feels tight and my tear ducts are heavy, but dry, when I peer back into that recent past.
He had come into the room that night, pushing and pushing at me, into me, snarling. I’m not sure if it was even that night, but at some point there was a kitchen knife at my throat. The same tool that I used in the safe light of day to lovingly cut our tiny son’s avocado and strawberries into “birdie bits”.
And then he exploded my nose with his fist and there was so much blood, and a thin, high sound that I realized was me screaming and begging him to stop, please stop.
The next morning he had driven to the store to buy me spot cover make-up so I could go to work. It was $18. I found it in my car a couple years later and thought, oh yeah, the “sorry I raped you and punched you in the nose make-up”.
He had bought it with my credit card.
I had only used it once.
It was the wrong shade.
