Bless Her Heart

by Sally Kilpatrick

  “Of course, you also promised to love and cherish me, and we all see how that turned out.”

  “I will not have you disrespecting me! Go to the corner.” His voice broke on the issued order.

  “No.” I sucked in a ragged breath and looked him square in the eye. “But you should go get new underwear.”

  He howled in rage.

  I willed myself not to flinch. “I’d suggest the back door and never, ever coming near me again.”

  Sirens outside got louder.

  Chad leaned over the desk to growl. “We’re not finished.”

  I forced myself to lean so close that my forehead touched his. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

  He took off for the back door, no doubt because he wasn’t going to have his incontinence documented on a police report.

  “Hey, Julia, think you can tell me more about this Taser of yours?”

  She smiled widely and walked over, “We can order one right now thanks to the convenience of online shopping.”

  “Excellent. I’m thinking something not pink.”

  “Oh, we can do that,” she said as she passed over her phone so I could scroll through my options.

  If she noticed that I still quaked, she didn’t say anything. I practiced keeping my voice level as we chatted about volts and colors and reviews. I was going to fake calm until I made it.

  * * *

  It took forever to tell Len everything that had gone on, and it was embarrassing to admit I had been spanked. Especially after the third time Len asked me if I wanted to take a seat, and I had to say no thank you, a reminder to him that my posterior was still sore. Julia got an earful from him about having the Taser, but, technically, it was legal in the state of Tennessee. Mainly, Len didn’t want Julia to go to trial for having assaulted someone. No matter how much they deserved it. My mother, who’d shown up just after Len did, kept muttering about how she’d never even spanked me as a child.

  She neglected to mention that Granny had had no such aversion to the practice.

  At long last, we were free to go, knowing that the restraining order—or in this case something called a protection order—was in process.

  “I can’t believe it,” my mom kept saying.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” I asked Julia. “I don’t think he’ll come after you, but he’s done so many things I wouldn’t have predicted as of late.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Julia said. “I can handle myself.”

  Of that, I had no doubt.

  When we arrived home, Rain had ordered a pizza. We sat around the kitchen table eating pizza and drinking soft drinks. Miranda/Mabel had made a frozen dinner for Granny but had put it on an actual plate. Granny didn’t eat pizza. She even said the word with disgust, only she pronounced it more like “Pisa,” and I thought of the leaning tower every time.

  “You know I would’ve come to get you if you’d asked?” Mom said for the fourth time.

  “Yes, Mom.” I shifted on my sore bottom. “It’s not like he’d ever done this before.”

  “Abuse comes in other forms. Why didn’t you tell me? Or Liza? Or someone?

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Rain said. “He told you to stay away from us, told you that Granny and Mom didn’t care about you and that they loved me more because I was the baby. I heard him one Christmas when he didn’t know I was on the other side of the door.”

  I opened my mouth to contradict her, but in my mind I heard his words. At first, he told me not to bother Granny and Mom because they were too busy with Henny and Rain. Then he pointed out how they’d abandoned me. When I called him on the first, he told me I had to be mistaken.

  “Why did I believe him?”

  “Because he’s a master of gaslighting, that’s why.”

  “What is gaslighting? What are you talking about?”

  Rain rolled her eyes and put down her piece of pizza. “It’s when a dude does stuff to make you question your sanity. I’ve watched him argue with you over the stupidest stuff, just argue and argue to prove that he was still the master of the house. Remember that time you told him you didn’t like Adam Levine and he badgered you for half an hour as to why? Or that time you told him you didn’t like nutmeg, and he suddenly got up to get you a glass of egg nog. When you told him you liked it, he pointed out that it contained nutmeg and, thus, you liked nutmeg.”

  Rain didn’t even know the half of it. Originally, I had pointed out to him that Jesus hadn’t been the one to tell wives to submit to their husbands, but he argued the necessity of submission for two solid years, often bringing up the topic unexpectedly and accusing me of not remembering what I’d said or of forgetting particular pieces of scripture. By the time he left to form his own church, he had worn me down to the idea of letting him be the undisputed head of the household. Not long afterward, he sent me to the corner for the first time. He said I was spending too much money on clothing for myself, and he talked about how he was punishing me “for my own good.” When I’d refused, he implied he would spank me if I didn’t do as he said, so I went rather than cause another argument. He read all of these stats and testimonials about how happy these marriages with discipline were, spouting off about them while I stood looking at the corner of the bedroom where the drywall had cracked. It had been humiliating, but I’d done it. After twenty minutes, he had been so affectionate, like an entirely different man almost. He’d cuddled and hugged until we’d had sex, which I would’ve refused out of principle except for the fact I was ovulating.

  God, I had been so stupid.

  Rain had taken another bite of her pizza but put it down and daintily wiped her hands. “See, that part I overheard was actually the second stage where he isolated you from us and from Liza. You second-guessed yourself on everything—like that time we went Christmas shopping and you accidentally picked up flat front pants instead of pleated and broke down crying because you knew he’d tell you that if you really cared about him then you would’ve picked out the right style.”

  “I don’t even remember that.”

  “Yeah, how much can you remember from the past ten years?”

  “Lots of things. I can tell you—”

  But I couldn’t find the memories—at least I couldn’t find good memories and even bad ones seemed to be suppressed unless something specific triggered them. Whole chunks of my life were . . . gone. Holidays and seasons ran together in such a way that I couldn’t tell one Christmas from another or what I’d received for my birthday on any particular year. I could only remember not wanting to make Chad angry or wanting to be pregnant. I could remember we argued all the time the first two years we were married, but then nothing.

  The arguing stopped when he started getting his way.

  Tears pricked my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I promise.”

  At first, my mother and sister let me cry it out.

  “Oh, Posey, please don’t cry,” my mom finally said. “We’re here for you now, aren’t we? We never left. And you did nothing wrong.”

  “Pose, it’s okay,” Rain said. “But I want you to be prepared because he’ll keep trying to make you doubt yourself. A piece of paper isn’t going to stop him.”

  I shuddered, still sniffing and struggling to regain control of my breathing. “How are you so young and you know all of this?”

  Rain sighed. “Last year I was going out with this senior, and he was doing all of this crazy stuff. My friend, Jenna, pulled me aside because she was worried about me.”

  She stopped to take another bite of pizza, and I had to marvel at how she could put it away. “She said I was depressed and didn’t want to hang out with anyone but my boyfriend anymore, and that just wasn’t like me.”

  “It wasn’t,” Mom said. “I remember that guy, and you were such a little snot while you were going out with him.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Rain said with a roll of her eyes. “Anyhow, at first I argued with her, but then I started paying atte
ntion. He’d be thoughtful one minute, but the next he’d find some way to guilt trip me into doing something he wanted to do. He accused me of locking his keys in his truck because I hadn’t picked them up like he’d told me to. I knew he’d said no such thing, but by the time we got done arguing, he had me confused.”

  I could empathize with that feeling.

  “Then I got suspicious he was cheating on me. He told me if I kept bringing it up, then he would cheat on me because I’d deserve it for doubting him. At that point, I was smart enough to talk to Mami.”

  My brash little sister had lived a taste of my last ten years to the point where she accidentally used her old pet name for our mother, “Mami.” The Spanish word sounded almost exactly like the English “Mommy,” but not quite. My heart broke for her. I wanted to break the kneecaps of the boy who had done all of this to her. “Then what happened?”

  My mother cleared her throat. “I told her she didn’t have to put up with any of his mess, and that a response like that meant he probably was cheating on her.”

  I looked at my rebellious little sister. “And you listened?”

  “Mom said if I didn’t believe her then to look it up, so I did. I fell down a rabbit hole of research about domestic abuse. I dumped him so hard, he’s still seeing stars, and I decided then and there that I wanted to be a lawyer who helped women who got tangled up with men like him.”

  “Wow.” So mature!

  Rain’s brown eyes sparkled. “I also put a piece of store-bought sushi in the glove compartment of his truck right before I broke up with him.”

  Maybe not as mature.

  Mom lifted an index finger. “That one was not my idea. I told her to let karma take its course.”

  “For one moment in time, I was karma. It took him a month to find the sushi, and no one wanted to ride with him for a while. He thought one of the other football players did it to him.”

  For once Mom rolled her eyes.

  “C’mon, Mom. You can’t mean to tell us you’ve always done the right thing to make sure karma went your way.”

  She stood and took her plate to the sink—no paper plates because they were wasteful. With her back to us so we couldn’t see her expression, she said, “Oh, I could tell you stories, but I’m not going to. The past is past. I’m living my best life now, and that’s what counts.”

  Was she really? Her voice held more than a hint of sadness.

  “I know what you can do to get back at Chad,” Rain blurted.

  “What?” I asked, even as Mom said, “Girls, no.”

  “That credit card. I think he owes you a brand new wardrobe,” Rain said, as she shook her head affirmatively.

  I had to admit I wanted no part of dresses, possibly ever again. And he did owe me underwear that didn’t cause a perennial wedgie. Maybe those cowboy boots Rain had suggested. He’d never allowed me to buy things that weren’t on the clearance rack, but every item of his clothes had to be just so. Also, I’d bring things home, and he’d make me return half of it because it showed too much cleavage or the skirt was too short or it was the wrong color or . . . whatever reason struck his fancy.

  “Maybe just a thing or two,” I said.

  Rain clapped her hands with glee, while my mother leaned over the sink and hung her head.

  Mom turned around, “Posey, you’re going to end up in debt!”

  My mind traveled back to when we’d obtained the credit card and something the bank teller said. He told Chad to make me a cosigner because then I’d be responsible for the debt. Ever cocky, Chad had said something about being in charge of me. He’d made me an authorized user. And that meant he was on the hook for any debt. “Actually, I’m not.”

  I thought of the embarrassment of having my soon-to-be-ex-husband lift my skirt and spank me. He needed the equivalent of the experience, and I needed pants.

  “Rain, why don’t we go to the mall on Saturday when Au Naturel closes early?”

  “You’re on!”

  chapter 16

  Wednesday afternoon I got the call from Ellery Elementary that I’d been hoping for.

  Now, I sat on a stiff and too-tiny chair outside the principal’s office waiting to be interviewed for the first grade supply teacher position.

  Ms. Varner herself stepped out into the hall and asked me to come to her office. She wore a tailored suit and wore her dark hair slicked back into a no-nonsense bun. To me, she looked more like a high school administrator than an elementary school principal. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though.

  “Have a seat, Ms. Love.”

  Fortunately, she had a couple of adult-sized seats in front of her desk. I sat down.

  “I’m going to be honest, I was all set to hire you until I heard about some of your escapades last weekend.”

  “I, ah, won’t let that happen again,” I said, willing my blush to subside. It didn’t.

  “I would hope not. Seems my options are down to you and an older lady who sometimes falls asleep when she’s substituting. Last time, a fourth grader drew a mustache on her using permanent marker.”

  I winced. “I don’t plan to fall asleep.”

  “And you have some classroom experience?”

  “It’s been a while,” I admitted, “but I completed my certification and my student teaching, and I’ve kept my certificate up to date.

  For the next twenty minutes, Ms. Varner quizzed me on IEPs and curriculum standards and integrating technology in the classroom. Much had changed in ten years, but I did well with her scenarios about how I would handle certain disciplinary problems because, well, kids were still kids.

  “I need to think on this,” Ms. Varner said as she leaned back in her chair. “But I have to make the decision sooner rather than later, so you’ll hear back from me one way or another by Friday.”

  “I, uh, have my portfolio from when I was a student.” I pulled out a binder from my college days that contained sample lesson plans and all of my test scores as well as my original certificate.

  She did me the courtesy of flipping through it, but, of course, I had no recent experience and was ashamed to see that some of the pages had yellowed in what had once been my pride and joy. She handed it back to me with a thin smile. “I’ll be in touch.”

  And just like that I was dismissed.

  Next I had to go to the Public Safety building for a background check. Getting my fingerprints inked took longer than the interview with the principal, and having someone else ink my fingers and press them on the paper made me uneasy even though I knew I hadn’t committed any crimes.

  Yet.

  Yeah, I probably shouldn’t go on that shopping spree.

  It’s not a crime if you’re authorized to use the card.

  That shoulder devil sure could twist things around.

  I’m kinda with her, my shoulder angel said. So much for her integrity.

  Even so as I stood outside the Public Safety building with my floral dress flapping against my legs in the brisk March wind, I knew I needed a different wardrobe. Not only did dresses now make me uneasy, but I’d watched the other elementary teachers come and go while I waited for my interview. Unlike when I was in elementary school, they no longer wore dresses and heels. Now, most teachers appeared to wear nice but casual tops and pants, sometimes even jeans. I spotted Lexi Lynne Richards, a kindergarten teacher, wearing tailored jeans and a nice top with her hair in a messy bun. She looked as though she was ready to get down on the floor and finger paint with her kids. Knowing her from First Baptist, I could imagine her doing just that. Or playing tag. Or conducting science experiments that left so much goo she’d have to leave the janitor a tip.

  I decided then and there I wanted to be more like Lexi Lynne.

  For now, however, it was back to Au Naturel—the store, not the lifestyle.

  * * *

  I entered through the back door, flinching as I walked through the storage room that had so recently been the scene of yet another humiliation. I rolled my sho
ulders back. One way or another, I would get rid of Chad Love. Hiding my purse in a half-empty box of kale chips because no one would look for it in there, I walked out into the store proper and ran headlong into John O’Brien.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here.”

  “I, uh, I think I owe you an apology for my behavior the other night,” I said even though I couldn’t take my eyes from his lips.

  “And I was hoping you might want to go to dinner sometime.”

  Was I hearing those lips correctly?

  “John, I don’t—”

  He held up a hand, “Forget I said it. Probably stupid to ask.”

  He turned to go, but I grabbed his arm. “No, I would love to go to dinner with you, but I need to get through this divorce. I wasn’t thinking logically the other night.” Okay, so I wasn’t thinking at all. I was feeling, nothing but feeling. At the moment, I wanted to kiss him again because I remembered the feel of his lips on mine.

  “Weren’t thinking? Did you only say those things and kiss me because you were drunk?”

  “No, I meant them. My inhibitions were . . . relaxed, though.”

  His blue eyes met mine. “You’re probably right. I need to work out some things before I start a relationship, too.”

  “So we’re not saying never.”

  “I never say never,” he said with twinkling eyes and tempting dimples.

  I sucked in a breath. “That’s good to know.”

  “For some reason, I couldn’t get you off my mind after that kiss.”

  He couldn’t stop thinking about me? “I might’ve thought about you once or twice.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, but his smile suggested he was pleased.

  I smacked his arm lightly and immediately felt thirteen all over again.

  His expression faded into seriousness. “You know where I am if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out as a whisper because my throat had closed up at his kindness.

  He held up a jar or honey and a pack of organic dog treats. “If you don’t mind?”

  “Of course!” I jumped to the register and rang up his order. He started to say something else, but decided against it and left with a little wave.