CHAPTER118
Lying in the dark, watching the reflections of the water on my ceiling, I’m still and numb with a sensation as though I’m floating on the ocean directly, but I’m still lying on my bed. It’s night and dark; I haven’t left, and I don’t want to.
I’ve cried so much that my body is ravaged and weak. I didn’t know that it could do this to me, release so much, so much doubt, insecurity, pain. I haven’t sobbed properly since I was five years old. Back then I didn’t cry over heartache; I only knew the tears from physical pain and illness. This is so much worse.
Crying over Jake must be the worst pain I have ever experienced; it leads to my breaking down over the way my life has turned out. The way I am. I think of my mother and wonder if she ever disintegrated like this over the men she dated.
Did she break this way over Ray Vanquis when he left?
Except I never dated Jake; he never left me in that way. I have no clue what to call this. I’ve never experienced her kind of heartache. Ray inflicted more than heartbreak on her. The thought of that monster makes me nauseated.
Did she cry when he beat her to a pulp and left her half-dead on her own floor? Why am I even thinking about this?
I never dwell on this; I don’t want to. It’s a thought that makes me ill. I can’t stop, though, in my emotional state; the walls in my head have been smashed, and I’m not in control of the thoughts and memories flooding in. The memories flashing into my mind are like a stop-motion movie, and I’ve lost control.
Ray and his ugly, screwed up face towering over my mother, her body broken and bruised after he had raped her yet again for making him angry. I witnessed so much cruelty and perversion when she was in a relationship with him, powerless to stop him and afraid to try.
My mind is like an open door now, without any ability to stop the memories; he’s in my head, and she’s there crying on the floor, but then it’s not her … it’s me, and I’m eighteen … memories I’ve tried so hard to push down for an eternity break through my fatigue-shattered walls.
He was a big man, strong and cruel. I had seen the bruises on my mother after being with him; she would laugh them away uneasily and say he was just a rough lover. Rough was true.
The first hit was a punch right in the face, a reaction to my self-defensive slap when he tried to force a kiss on me. It wasn’t the first time I’d been punched by one of her boyfriends. It knocked me down, made me groan, my head spinning with a warmth spreading over my lips. I tasted the blood in my mouth, fueling my rage; I tried to get back up, but he hauled me up by the hair and threw me against the wall.
He tried to push his tongue in my mouth; I fought with all my might, but he grabbed my clothes and started to tear at them, my jeans at the waist, bursting the button off, trying to thrust his hand down there. I kicked, bit and clawed until the floor was hard against my face with another jarring punch.
He yanked my jeans down when I was reeling and hunched over onto the wooden floor. He had knocked the sense out of me, and I knew what he was going to do; I had seen him hold my mother down this way more than once. She never knew I came home and saw it many times; I hid in the shadows and slunk away quickly, afraid to intervene. Ray was a devil, and he instilled so much fear with his aggression and bulk. He got off on this shit.
My pants were around my ankles and then he pulled my underwear down. I flipped in terror and rage, turned and twisted and thrust about, trying to save myself from him. His grip was strong, but I had a renewed strength as adrenaline coursed in my veins. I managed to gouge his face with my nails cruelly, and it angered him; he got up to rain more cruel kicks on my body, beating me down.
I remember chanting internally, “I’m not going to crumble; I’m not going to pass out; I’m going to fight,” in a bid to stay conscious. I reached for the table nearby and it fell, the vase smashing over the top of me; I scrambled desperately to grab a piece of it, but he grabbed my ankles and hauled me backward, my arms dragged through the broken mess until my blood was smearing the floor, my arms warm with the thick liquid. I kicked with my restrained feet, knocking him over into the couch, and it gave me time to yank my clothes back up and stumble to my feet. I was dizzy and swaying.
I tried to run, but he was on me with the fury of a psycho, beating me and pushing me into a corner, blackness wrapping around me. I thought he would kill me for sure, but then there was a thud … a low, hollow thud … and he stopped. His face turned blank, his eyes glazed over and zoned out, and he crumpled to the floor revealing my mother standing behind him.
She was holding a huge, twisted, wooden sculpture above her head. She glared at me, her eyes red rimmed, her face white and bloodless. But it’s what I saw in that look that will always haunt me, worse than what he had done, what he had been attempting to do, that finally ripped my heart right out and stomped it to death. All I could see was the anguish on her face and the accusation in her eyes which said, “What did you do, Emma?”
I close my eyes against the fresh torrent of tears as I try to push that memory away again and again, but her face stays persistent. My mother always blamed me for Ray leaving. I was eighteen by then, no longer a child, no longer her sweet innocent little girl, but she saw me as a capable woman who must have given him some sign that I wanted it. She felt betrayed by me; it’s the one thing I’ve never been able to admit to myself, her jealousy and blame. If she believed that of me, then, why wouldn’t I?
All of this with Jake, has it been because of me? Because I led him to believe I wanted these things from him?
How can I recall these things and feel like I asked for them? I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t ask Ray to try to rape me, but deep down, somewhere inside, that child is nodding at me and she’s saying, “Yes, Emma, yes you did. Why else would these men, one after the other, try to touch you? Try to take you? You must have done something, Emma. Your own mother believed it.”
It’s the guilt that I forever shy away from, the shame and misery of my internal battle. It’s what she programmed me to accept.
Is this what I do to Jake? Do I make him want to push things further between us? Like those men, will he take what he wants, then leave me broken on the floor, the way my mother was left. The way I was left.
Jake isn’t capable of such things, but I must be doing something for it to turn out this way.
What has Jake done to me? Why is he doing this to me now?
My mind is a messy scramble of thoughts and emotions, half of which make no sense, and I’m dying inside.
I didn’t drink before Jake Carrero; I didn’t like how it made me feel, like I lost control. I never kissed men ever, because all it did was bring back memories that made me feel ill. I never wanted anyone sexually, or even felt turned on by anyone, before Jake.
I never opened up and told anyone the things I’ve told him. I never kicked back and just let go, relaxed, had fun, before him. I never took my hair down, let alone cut it. I never cried. And now I can’t seem to stop."
