Unmaking Grace

by Barbara Boswell

  It was on a night like this that Johnny hit her for the first time. She’d been waiting for him for hours and had found company and solace in a bottle of wine. He hadn’t called before he’d left work, hadn’t bothered to do that in a while. Grace lay curled up on a forlorn armchair, punctuating her swigs from the bottle with endless puffs from her cigarettes. The pleasant, dulling effect of smoke and wine had cooled the anger she’d felt rising earlier in the night, when he hadn’t walked through the door at seven. This time, she’d make an effort, she told herself. She’d welcome him, smile, ask about his day; really ask, and really listen to his answers. She’d rub his shoulders, kiss his neck, soothe him with her words and body. But Grace fell asleep and woke hours later to a still empty home. Three in the morning. Where was he? Mouth dry and head throbbing, Grace had started to carry her body off to bed when he appeared through the front door. Addled with wine and sleep, Grace lunged at him. “Where have you been? Who were you with?”

  “You’re drunk. Shut up,” Johnny countered.

  “Not even a call from you—nothing!”

  Grace pressed her face right up against his, rage oozing from every pore. She didn’t see it coming: the palm of hand—wide, hard—the same palm that had caressed and held her, flattened into the side of her face. She lost her balance and staggered backwards, almost hitting the wall behind her. She brought her hand to her hot, stinging check, wet with tears, while Johnny looked on with wide eyes, his face immobilized with shock.

  “How could you…?”

  Shame veiled his eyes. Before he could answer, Grace ran from the living room and locked herself into the bedroom. What had her life become? Aunty Joan’s voice rang clear in her head: swear to me you’ll never let a man hit you. Grace had sworn. She would never be that woman. But here she was—how had she gotten here? If he could do it once, he would do it again. This much she knew. Shivering and sobbing, she pulled herself into the furthest corner of the bed, incredulous still that her Johnny with the kind eyes had done this to her.

  Fear stalked her throughout the night. It skulked on the bed next to her, running its cold fingers up and down her back; came to sit at the base of her spine, where it mocked her: on your way to join your mother, cold and dead in the ground.

  She tracked Johnny’s movements, his every breath, in the next room; heard him pour some water, noted his shuffling up to the bedroom door and his waiting there, his listening. He didn’t utter a word, or knock to be let in, just stood for the longest time. A predator stalking his prey. Grace didn’t make a sound, didn’t want him to hear her fear. Some men fed off fear: it emboldened them, gave them pleasure. She didn’t yet know whether Johnny was such a man.

  Sleep came to her when grey morning light filtered through the bedroom blinds. Sleeping fitfully, Grace felt her everywhere: her breath, her presence, rocking her into an anguished sleep. She was a sigh, floating over Grace like a leaf, but there, present: Mary.

  Grace woke to the smell of food cooking and, for a dazed second, thought she was home with David. As she stirred, a cloud of stale cigarette smoke pressed down on her, bringing her back to the flat she shared with Johnny. Johnny, the boy with the dancing freckles and heavy lashes, without whom she could not live. And now the man who’d hit her. Perhaps she deserved it. She moved from the bed, body stiff and aching, and surveyed herself in the mirror. Bloodshot, sunken eyes looked back at her. Her skin was dull and grey, and lines deepened around her mouth. Twenty-eight years old. Her mother hadn’t been much older than she was now when she had died. Was she destined to reenact the drama her mother had not been able to escape? She lit a cigarette and inhaled, watching the tendrils of smoke soften the image of the woman in the mirror. Her shoulders unlocked. Take a good look, she told herself. Who have you become? Motherless, fatherless; life about to be wasted. If only I still had my mother…the voice of self-pity droned.

  But another voice, from a core of steel within her Grace was yet to find, surfaced, insisting on making itself heard. Look at the woman in the mirror, it chimed. Look! She’s all you’ve got. You’ve got to hold onto her, fight for her life. Be your own mother. Save yourself!

  There was a knock on the door. “Grace?” Johnny’s voice was barely audible.

  Grace braced herself, put out the cigarette and unlocked the door. She looked into his eyes, which were clouded with shame. They stood like this for a few moments, each on the other side of the threshold, surveying the other.

  Grace broke the silence. “You hit me. You know me, know my story. You know about my mother, and you hit me.” Her voice was flat and emotionless. “You of all people.”

  Johnny lifted his hand to his face, rubbing his jaw as if in disbelief; as if Grace was recounting a story about a stranger. When he spoke, regret came pouring out of him. “I’m sorry, so sorry, Grace. I didn’t mean it…don’t know what came over me…” The lines of an old, old song. “It’s just, you were screaming in my face. It was too much. I know it’s no excuse…I swear this will never happen again.”

  Yes, she knew every word to this song. There it was, the refrain. The it-won’t-happen-again reborn, repurposed. A hand-me-down from a previous life being dressed up with a new bow. A second-hand gift from the man she loved. How many times had she heard these words from her father? Here they were again, the exact tone, inflection; the same guilty cock of the head to one side—her father’s voice through her lover’s mouth.

  Johnny took her hand and led her to the kitchen table, where he sat her down. In front of her, he set down eggs on toast with a steaming cup of coffee. He had made a similar plate for himself.

  “Please have something to eat.”

  Grace just stared at him.

  “Please, just eat, Grace. Let’s eat together and then we can talk, okay?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was hungry and started wolfing down his food. It turned her stomach. He felt her gaze, looked up at her like a little boy who had been caught doing something bad. “Please eat, Grace.”

  Grace took a few mouthfuls of food, tasted nothing, and turned to the coffee. It warmed her, loosened her; the feeling began to come back into her shell-shocked limbs. She watched in silence as Johnny cleaned every morsel from his plate. When he had finished, he stood up and in one stride was at the other side of the table, kneeling at Grace’s feet. “I am so, so sorry. You have to believe me. I would do anything to go back and undo it.”

  Grace shook her head slowly, deliberately.

  “I don’t know what came over me, Grace. Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never done that before, and I’ll never do it again. I swear, on my life, on my mother’s grave. Never.”

  Her silence was an accusation that filled the air.

  Still kneeling, Johnny buried his face in her lap and started crying. Great, heaving sobs wracked his body and traveled through hers, loosening something in her. She sat quietly, one hand still ensconced in his while the other stroked his curly head. After an eternity of tears they sat like this, his head on her lap, she comforting him, while each remained shuttered in their own private world. When all of his regret had left his body, Grace tilted his face up toward her and took in everything: his shock, his shame, the freckled face which had deepened in color over the years, the curls that clung to his head. His questioning eyes, burning with love. She felt sorry for him. This was the man who had saved her on that day at high school so many years ago, who had saved her in so many other ways. How could she have driven him to this? He had risked his life for her. This was the same man she’d sat with under the tree in her back yard as a child, the one happy memory of that place. He was gentle–gentle then and still now. If she had not screamed at him, provoked him…. If she hadn’t turned her back on him because of the business of Sindi, this would never have happened. He would not have hit her. She couldn’t really blame him for doing it—he had never done it before. She’d pushed him so far it was no wonder he had snapped. He was a human being, and she had overstepped. If she did better, stop
ped blaming him for the loss of Sindi, things could go back to the way they were in the beginning, when they had loved each other fully and without condition. Looking into his eyes, she saw all they could be. Love flooded through her: Johnny, her Johnny, who had been gone for so long, whom she thought had died. Nothing on God’s earth and beyond it would make her give him up.

  A quiet little voice cautioned: if he hits you once, he will do it again. It echoed and spread through her like a climbing vine, one Grace chose to clip right there, in the thrall of Johnny’s pleading eyes. He loved her. For the first time in her life she felt truly loved, completely understood. Where David was safe and predictable like a mild summer’s day, he had never inspired the feeling of wanting to lay her whole life down before him. Grace needed that tug at her heart; the turbulent, majestic drama of the summer storm she found in her love with Johnny. It made her feel alive. And here she was, embracing him now, forgiving all; more vibrant and alive than ever with her twin soul. She brought her lips to his face and kissed his tear-stained eyelids. “I forgive you,” she said.

  She went down on her knees to meet him. They embraced and tasted eternity with each other in that moment locked together. They renewed their love and themselves.

  Buoyed by a new energy, later they left the dark flat and took a drive to the beach, where they frolicked in the surf like children. Afterwards they lay stretched out in the sun for hours, slipping into new skins. As the day ended, they bought ice-creams on the promenade and found a bench to sit on, where they giggled and bantered as they took in the salty air and the dipping sun. When darkness fell they remained on their bench, hand in hand, the sharp night air prickling their skins while waves lapping against the breakwater wall soothed them. Funny—as children they had lived so close to the beach but never even knew it. Patrick took her and Mary maybe once a year, if at all. Now, here it was, at their feet, and Grace felt like they owned it. Their own private beach. The moon shone only for them, winking through the clouds, blessing their love.

  They returned home from the beach, relaxed and happy, to find good news. David had left a voice message. After speaking to a few different people, including Sindi’s pediatrician, he had decided that Grace could have her for once a week visits. Grace howled with joy as she listened to the message. She flung her arms around Johnny and kissed him.

  “See, didn’t I tell you, Grace?” Johnny smiled. “He won’t stay angry forever. He has to think about the child.”

  “Yes, you were right! Oh thank God, Johnny. Thank God!”

  Yes, God was smiling down on them. Things were getting better. With Sindi back in her life, Grace would stop worrying, stop snapping. She just needed her daughter. She would stop being this bitch who made Johnny do things he had no control over. They’d save a little bit and then get a bigger place. This was the beginning of a new life. The terrible thing that had happened the night before would soon be forgotten.

  After a quick call to David, they arranged for Sindi to come over the following Sunday. Grace flitted around the flat, unable to contain herself. She was going to see her baby again; she could hardly wait! Johnny would finally meet Sindi.

  “Are you nervous, Johnny? Don’t be nervous to meet her. She’s gonna love you!”

  “Why would I be nervous? It’s a baby. It’s not like she has a choice about liking me.”

  Such a simple statement, but it gave Grace pause. Sindi might be a baby, but she was a real person, with likes and dislikes. Johnny needed to be careful with her. But she said nothing, choosing to focus on the impending visit.

  Later that week, Johnny came home with a tiny box of the type that sets women’s hearts aflutter. Inside nestled a dainty ring, not the kind you present to a woman you want to marry, but nonetheless studded with three little diamonds.

  “It’s not much, not what I’d really like to give you.” He smiled. “But in any case, there’s nothing that can match the way I feel about you. I’ll love you forever, Grace.”

  She had no words, just a smile and moist eyes for Johnny, her lovely Johnny. All the harm they had so carelessly inflicted upon each other (for Grace had now convinced herself that she was just as much at fault for him striking her) was forgotten as they kissed.

  Chapter 20

  The second beating was not so easy to forgive. After the first slap in the face, their happy ever after lasted exactly two weeks. Then another weekend came around. Johnny was out again, late; he arrived home smelling of liquor and perfume. Grace exploded. He said nothing as her insults crashed and bounced off him like big balls of hail. The longer he failed to react, the angrier Grace became until she ran up to him, lunged at him, and tried to force him to look at her, to look her in the eye and tell her where he’d been.

  Johnny snapped. This time, the benign open palm was not to be. Knuckles connected with her eye socket, then went on to do their work on her lip, splitting it open and leaving a flourish of blood on her face. Grace retreated into the bedroom and tried to lock the door, but this time he came after her with a rage that had overtaken hers. He pinned her onto the bed by the shoulders while a knee pressed down hard into her thigh. She couldn’t move, could not even scream. The more she tried to free herself, the harder he pushed.

  “Now you listen to me, crazy bitch. I’m not going to take this shit from you. You stop this. You stop this madness or I will beat it out of you.” The words hung in the air as he waited for them to have the intended effect. He was deadly serious, knew what he was doing. “I’m not a man who needs to beat a woman to feel like a man. But by God, you keep on pushing me, and this is how it will be. You push me up against a wall, and I will fight my way out. This, right here, is the consequence of the mess you made. You hear me?”

  They stayed locked in this grotesque embrace for a while, him on top of her, both heaving. Grace closed her eyes, trying to get away from him and the angry hot breath assaulting her face. She wanted to die. Oblivion seemed the only way to erase the pain tearing through her. Then she went limp, and after a few calculated minutes Johnny rolled off her, sinking next to her into the bed.

  Grace fought the urge to jump up and run through the flat and out the door. But where would she go? She was motherless, fatherless; Aunty Joan was gone. David, out of the question. She’d had a life, a good life, one she’d carelessly discarded. This was it, this room with its stench of cigarette smoke and stale wine, this was her home, her prison, the only place that could contain someone as low as her. Look around you, she told herself, this is where you belong; in filth because that’s what you are. Filth. You made your bed, now lie in it.

  The second time a man hits you, in the face, with his balled fist, there can be no more denial. Once can be passed off as an accident, a temporary loss of mind: he wasn’t thinking, was drunk, was stressed; got away from himself. Twice? No. After the second time you can be under no illusions—you are inducted into that silent army of women. You see them everywhere, members of an invisible sisterhood of the downtrodden, their eyes vacant and their spirits sagging. Being one of them, you recognize them by the curve of the back, the stoop of the shoulders, the downcast eyes; and sometimes, not often, the residue of a bruise. You catch the wounded eye on the train, on a taxi, and the moment of mutual recognition becomes the same instant in which you look away, ashamed. We are sisters, yes, but we daren’t reach out to each other, and for heaven’s sake, definitely mustn’t talk about it. That would be betraying our men, ourselves. Shame settles like an invisible cloak around the shoulders of the sisterhood, impossible to shake no matter what they try. And after a while, as Grace found out, it becomes part of you—you believe you were meant to wear this garment, that you deserve no better because wasn’t he the sun and the stars and the moon at the beginning? Didn’t he love you, pursue you, adore you? Why would such adoration just go away if you hadn’t done something to make it dry up? That indefinable something you must have done wrong, that made him stop loving and turn to punishing instead. It must be something in you; something
innately unlovable or despicable about you to turn a man into that. And so you wear your shame, get comfortable in it, make indignity your home. It happens so gradually yet so quickly: the love that once lifted you tramples you down, and you start to believe that this is love. This is love. He hits me because he loves me. Loves me so much.

  After the second beating, Grace could not get out of bed for three days. She lay there, stiff, her body bruised as if it had been hit by a truck. Johnny came and went as if nothing had happened. There were no earnest pleas, no rings, and no walks on the beach this time.

  When he left the apartment, Grace produced a mirror from her nightstand with which to examine her face without leaving the bed. She stared at the woman in it for hours; the woman who looked like Mary on the day they went to the department store to get makeup. Grace stared through days, as the flesh around her eye went from purple to blue-black, and finally turned a sickly dark yellow. She would not be that woman who went to buy potions to hide the fact that her man had beaten her. Grace refused to be that woman, to have the glare of contempt and pity reflect at her from the eyes of strangers. Fuck that.

  She called work and lied about having a bad strain of flu. Sindi was due for her second visit that weekend. The thought of David seeing her like this sent her heart racing, but she couldn’t put off this hard-won visit. Sindi had come for five hours the week before. The visit had not gone as it had in Grace’s fantasy. Sindi, afraid in an unfamiliar space, had moaned and fussed, refusing to leave Grace’s arms. She was scared of Johnny and turned her little body violently away from him when he tried to take her from Grace’s arms. Johnny had mumbled something about her being spoiled and left the flat. Grace felt heartbroken. No one had co-operated to create the cozy family scene she had imagined, and Johnny’s departure had spoiled her reunion with Sindi. She spent the rest of her time with Sindi fretting about what Johnny was getting up to.