He Lost Me the Day He Lost Our Baby

2: 2

Last Wednesday, we'd scheduled my prenatal checkup for the afternoon at the hospital where Stan worked.

That morning Savannah called saying her blood sugar had crashed and her hands were shaking, that she was afraid she'd mix up a prescription, and asked him to come help.

Before he left he patted my hand and promised he'd be back in time to pick me up.

Then I couldn't reach him all afternoon.

I clutched the appointment slip and flagged down a taxi on my own.

Just after we turned the corner, the driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a delivery scooter that shot out in front of us.

My belly hit the back of the front seat, hard.

Warmth spread out of me at once.

Everything went black, and the image flashed up from nowhere of my mother lying on the ground all those years ago, her eyes still open at the end.

That hollow, bottomless despair. I finally understood it now.

When I opened my eyes again, Stan had already reached the bedroom door, his back to me the whole time, never turning around.

"It's gone, so it's gone."

"You can't even keep a home in order. You'd never be able to take care of it anyway."

He said it as calmly as if it were someone else's business, and the moment the words were out he pushed the door open and went into the bedroom without a pause.

I had no expectations left for this man.

But hearing him say that, I still couldn't stop the tears from falling.

Before, no matter how small the thing, we could argue until dawn and he never once turned and walked away.

He'd always hold me and apologize under his breath, because he knew that when I was upset I couldn't sleep.

Now, less than ten minutes later, an even snoring drifted out of the bedroom.

This home suffocated me so much I couldn't stand one more second in it.

I laid the divorce papers on the desk in his study, took my keys, and walked out.

Only when the hot water poured down over me at the hotel did I finally catch a breath.

I stood there with my eyes closed for a while, and the scar on my wrist began to itch faintly.

I lowered my hand and turned the water cooler, and barely got it to settle.

Even after the shower, I still couldn't sleep.

I turned on the TV. The late-night news was running a story about a woman who'd been trafficked.

And I thought of that stifling summer day when I was a child.

I secretly set free a woman a household had bought.

I also stole three hundred dollars from the tin box where my mother kept her money, the whole family's living expenses for a month back then.

I led her along the back roads and got her away.

The whole way she gripped my hand, her palm slick with sweat, her whole body shaking.

She got on the bus and didn't look back.

When I got home my mother found the money missing, and I had to confess.

But she didn't hit me. She only told me not to breathe a word of it.

Afraid that family would come demanding I pay them back for their wife.

I was still small then, and didn't understand the twisted logic of grown-ups.

I just thought she was so young, married off to some old man and beaten every single day.

She had to want to go home.

But later I learned that woman was the mother of the boy who sat next to me.

Back then Stan sat beside me, thin as a bean sprout.

The bigger kids at school were always saying he was a motherless kid, like a stray weed.

They'd fling mud at him.

He never hit back. He just stood there, gripping the hem of his shirt, waiting for them to finish.

I felt it was my fault.

I'd set his mother free, and that was how he'd lost her.

His father took it out on him, and everyone at school picked on him too.

I always felt I owed him.

So every time someone hit him, I threw myself in front.

And then the two of us got beaten together.

But that scared little boy, thin as a bean sprout, who only clutched the hem of his shirt when he was bullied, later became the hero who broke in one night and saved me.

My mother and I had run from my father, a drunk who beat us, and rented an old house in a small mountain village on the edge of Harborough.

But he still found us.

That night he came reeking of liquor and pounded on the door for half an hour.

Afraid of disturbing the landlord and getting us thrown out, I gritted my teeth and opened it.

The next second his fist swung at me.

My mother, six months pregnant, threw herself over me with her arms around her belly to shield me.

He kicked her square in the waist and stomach, and she collapsed on the spot.

Blood seeped down her pant leg........

In the chaos, he turned on me and beat me half to death.

That brutal scene was exactly what Stan walked into, having come to drop off the math notes I'd left behind.

He was so frightened his voice shook, but he still shouted:

"I already ran to get the village police. They're on their way right now."

My father cursed and ran.

He scooped up my bloodied body and rushed me to the clinic.

After handing me to the doctor, he ran back with the villagers carrying the stretcher to save my mother.

Later, once the doctor had finished treating my injuries, he told me quietly that my mother had already stopped breathing when she was brought in.

The six-month-old baby brother in her belly hadn't made it either.

It was the door I opened that destroyed that little family hiding in the mountain village.