
02-11-2008, 01:18 AM
The chill of the water met her toes as she stared down at her reflection. Two years ago she would have seen a soft and motherly woman. A woman whose strength was in her gentle guidance, her softly voiced threats that forced her children to behave without hesitation and her alluring smile that bent her husband’s will.
What she saw now as the water reached her ankles was something very different. The chill of the water spread through her, like a preview of what submerging herself would feel like. The flowing black shirt just barely met the water, but already it was weighing her down along with so many other things that were dragging her down into the depths of the water.
She stared at her reflection, her expression distant as she watched the broken woman stare back at her in dismay. Her previously silky ebony hair was salted with stress and silver strands, and her eyes… They once shone with a warm love for her family, a new bride and mother. Eyes that would easily laugh. Now though… now they were dim. As if the light of life had already left them, although she was only knee deep in the water.
Knee deep. Knee deep in debt. In frustration. Knee deep in her husband’s rage, in her child’s needs, and in her job’s demands. With every step into the water that she took, she thought as her feet slid over the smooth pebbles of the lake’s shore, she gained a new analogy between her current actions and her life’s story line over the past year. The skirt was heavy now; the wet and cold had crept to her waist although she hadn’t gone much further.
All of it had started with the one step. The refreshing chill of the water at her toes, the excitement of marrying the man she’d loved for the previous eleven months. They had chosen a snowy December day, when the soft white covered everything, including the problems they knew would arise. There was no snow in the islands they chose to honeymoon in, and nothing else to hide their problems. The sex they been looking forward to happened to be wonderful for him, but it confirmed many of her fears. He had been violent with her, rough and selfish. Abusing her body and demanding complete control. By the end of the night she was curled up, covered only by the sheets, as her body ached in pain and bruises began to form. He sat, quite satisfied, on the foot of the bed. A cigarette rested balanced between his fingers and lips as he grinned and stared out the hotel room window at the crashing waves.
As if to aid to this memory the sharp chill of the water was just reaching her hips, the cold pulling her back to the present. Maybe she was having doubts… everything was pulling her down so coaxingly. The wet fabric, her emotions, even the cold air around her seemed to be pushing her down. It almost felt like she was being tricked, like she should go against such an overwhelming force. As if she had the will to.
The chill slid along the skin of her bare stomach. She had chosen to take off her shirt. It was one her husband had bought for her, liking it only because it displayed her cleavage and made her look like a common whore. His whore. His wife. His alone. She’d rather be found nude then in that shirt.
She wrapped her arms around her chest against the cold, the irony of it making her laugh softly. The idea that she would seek comfort in death. She wasn’t after comfort. She only wanted to end it. The small laugh sounded like an explosion in the surrounding silence, and she ended it quickly, afraid her husband would wake to it.
No more beatings from the man who claimed to love her. No more watching as he threatened to drown the child. No more calls from collection agencies. All of it, over.
Although thoughts revolving around her child had occurred to her, her mind blocked out the worry of what would become of the child. It would, after all, change her decision. The water eased through the white lace of her bra and her body was shivering violently now. It was getting harder to stand on the rocks of the lake’s bottom now, as the water wanted to let her float in a torturing balance of cold water and cold air.
It was winter again, almost exactly two years since she’d been married, and impregnated. The water was only a few degrees from being frozen. They water reached her shoulders, biting at her neck like an angry animal. It was hard to move. Her shivering had stopped, and she was paralyzed by cold. Her body ached, but the pain was almost pleasant to her. She was so close.
As the waster reached her mouth she swallowed her fear along with a large gulp of water. She choked on it, the cold now attacking her from the inside. She wasn’t done though. This time she inhaled. The water filled her lungs, causing her to choke and sputter. It hurt, and this time, the pain wasn’t any sort of relief. She turned, looking back to the house as she continued to cough up water.
That cursed building was small, yet it cost them all of their paychecks to maintain. The door was hanging open, as if to invite her back. But… she’d closed it, hadn’t she? Her eyed followed the trail from the door to the steps she’d walked to reach the late, and the flattened trail through the grass, all the way to the shore where here little girl stood at the water’s edge. She’d only begun walking the month before, how had she made it all the way out here?
The little girl looked overjoyed that her mother had noticed her. “Ah! Ahmah!” she cried. That little girl… her body perfect, her smile broad, oblivious to the problems that surrounded her. Too little to understand what she was watching.
“Honey…it’s okay…” She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t look her little girl in the face and abandon her with the man. The man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill the child the first time she bothered him. “Mama’s just swimming. Mama’s just…” Her eyes widened in horror as her daughter stepped into the water, trying to follow her mother. To where, she didn’t know.
“No! Honey, no!” She couldn’t move. Her muscles wouldn’t respond right, and her heart was slowing. If the water couldn’t kill her, the cold would.
“Ah! Ahmah! Ahmah!” the little girl cried, not liking the cold, but trying to bear it to get to her mother.
She swallowed. She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t do a damn thing so save her child, in this case, or in life. “David!” She shrieked, putting all the hate into her husband’s name that she could, all the malice she could muster. “DAVID! HELP!” She shouted, hating herself for having to rely on that man. For having to trust him to save their little girl, when for all she knew he might just push her in to drown with her mother.
The man appeared on the porch looking angry at being woken, and confused at the commotion. “Alice, what in the hell are you bitching about now?” He shouted as he surveyed the situation. A look of realization overtook him, and he nearly tripped over his pajama pants. His bare feet sunk in the cold grass, but he didn’t slow down. The cold bit at his bare chest, but he didn’t notice. He may not have been the best husband. He may not have been the best father. Hell, they’d both be better off without him and it was his wife that was trying to kill herself. He pushed himself to run faster, skidding to a stop at the water’s edge to scoop up the child. He looked out helplessly at his wife as she slipped below the black surface of the lake. “ALICE!” He shouted in a panic. Yes, he was a terrible man. He could come to grips with that, but he still loved his wife. He faltered for a moment, having no clue what to do. He swallowed, then struck the little girl, just hard enough to make her cry. “Go.” He ordered loudly as he roughly set her down.
She tottered away from him, still crying. Away from him and away from the water. It might not have been the best way, but he’d accomplished what he wanted. He’d gotten her away and ensured she would stay away from the water for the time being. He pulled off his pajama pants, leaving himself just in boxers, then bit back all doubts and ran into the water. The moment it was deep enough to swim he dove, flailing as he got to his wife as quickly as he could. The water was freezing, and the sudden cold had sent his body into shock. Medically this was a very dangerous situation, but it was the best he could have hoped for. Unable to feel the cold he could focus on pulling his wife out of the lake. His hand closed around her arm and he pulled with all the force he could.
Even in her stressed and thin state, she was still heavy. He heaved her over his shoulder, his feet barely reaching the bottom. He slid the skirt off of her so it wouldn’t hold them down, then moved back to shore. She wasn’t breathing. He was too late… the worry was enough to get him to shore with movements faster then he’d been able to accomplish. He dropped her in the grass and checked for a pulse. He heartbeat was weak and slow, fading. He began performing CPR, draining the water from her lungs as he replaced it with air. After what seemed like an eternity she coughed and sputtered, but other then that didn’t stir. Her heartbeat grew slightly stronger.
“Ahmah!” The little girl finally cried, pushing herself to her feet. She fought back her fear of the man who had hit her and tottered over, falling back on her bottom next to her mother. David sat back, looking at his wife. She was breathing again. He collected his pajama pants and used them to dry her off the best he could, then lifted her bridal style. “Come on Honey…” He said to the kid. “Mama’s gonna read you a story, alright? You want a story?” He tried to coax the child into following.
The little girl sat up and teetered after him, falling from time to time. He hurried to the house, setting his wife on the carpeted floor and abandoned her just long enough to call 911.
An hour later he was seated in a poorly cushioned chair, his daughter in his lap, his wife’s cold and frail hand in his own. She lay now under a heated blanket in a hospital bed, still out. The little girl had fallen asleep in his arms, leaving him alone to reflect over the past two years that had led to this. All the things he’d done to her. And all the reasons he’d done them. Of course, those reasons all seemed trivial now.
A nurse came in to check up on them. “Sir, you need to leave now, she needs her rest.” The woman said as she checked the charts and screens around her patient.
“No. It’s too late to be a good husband, maybe too late to be a good father, but I can still become a good man.” He said, his eyes not leaving his wife.
“Sir…?” the nurse looked confused.
The man looked up at the nurse, “I’m not moving, she’s my wife.” He said firmly.
The nurse nodded, seeing she wouldn’t be able to sway him. “Here…” she pulled a spare blanket from the closet and wrapped it around his shoulders. “I’ll set up a bed on one of the carts for her…” The nurse said, referring to the daughter.
The next day Alice woke. Everything was white, but her beating heart told her she was still alive. Her husband was asleep in a chair, squeezing her hand so tightly it hurt. Her little girl was asleep on a pile of bedding on a cart next to her. Illusions that they could make the marriage work flitted through her mind, but reality took over. She’d file a divorce and take custody. When David could prove himself a better man, she’d let him come visit her and his daughter. She’d become the strong woman she had been so long ago, and she wouldn’t let her daughter down again.
The nurse smiled in at the three, “That’s a good man you’ve got there.”
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