Returning Injury

by Becky Due

  Although Rebecca’s sleep had been restless, she was feeling better. It was starting to lighten outside and that made Rebecca feel safer. Rebecca went back upstairs to make the bed and clean up. She started thinking about the self-defense classes she took right after Roy attacked her, she thought about what she already knew and what she had learned. Before she was attacked, Rebecca believed that she would stay and fight, turn anyone who wanted to hurt her into her victim. But after her experience with Roy, she understood the strength of a man who was crazy on adrenaline. She knew that a hit to the head rattled the brain and caused a fuzzy feeling of disbelief. She knew the first thought after the shock was, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” She also knew that the only logical thing to do was to get away and find safety. She was no longer naive about her own strength or ability to fight back.

  But Rebecca also knew that though a perpetrator may be physically stronger, he was not mentally stronger than a woman. Perpetrators were cowards who were scared, foolish and error prone. Rebecca knew how important it was to keep your cool, watch and wait for him to make a mistake so you can get away.

  From the class she learned: If he grabs you by the wrist, always pull away toward his thumb. It is the weakest part of his grip. If he’s in front of you choking you, extend your arms up through the space between the two of you, twist with your elbows out and spin back throwing him an elbow to the face. The elbow is one of our hardest surfaces. If he’s holding you from behind, you can punch him in the groin, kick out his knee or grab a weapon like a pencil and stab him in the groin. You can also stomp on his foot as close to his leg as possible. This part of the foot is easy to break and it will disable him from chasing after you. If he’s coming at you, you can push the palm or heel of your hand in an upward motion to his nose. Or if he is coming toward you, you can grab him by the shirt or shoulders and knee him in the groin as hard as you can. If you’re down on your back, don’t let him on you. You can kick at him for as long as it takes; he’ll wear out before you do. It doesn’t matter if your dress is up around your waist or you’ve lost a shoe, keep kicking at him. If a perpetrator has a knife or gun and you decide to run, run in a zigzag pattern. If you decide to carry mace, don’t depend on it alone; mace can fail. Depend on your hands, knees, elbows and mind to get you through—your brain will never fail you.

  Learning self-defense was empowering. The classes gave women some defense tools, but more importantly taught women to stand up straight with their eyes wide open. They gave women confidence that a potential perpetrator would see and then usually decide to find a less confident person to victimize.

  Rebecca wanted to be more confident, but she had this nagging feeling that Roy would continue to haunt her. It wasn’t just revenge she was concerned about; it was that she would spend the rest of her life living in fear. She wanted her life back.

  Rebecca went back downstairs to feed Lily. After Lily finished eating, Rebecca cleaned and refilled her water dish, then took her outside. Rebecca quickly ate some yogurt and a granola bar before going to her office. She found the Victim Services phone number and left a message with her questions and concerns. She worked for three hours organizing her office, filling another garbage bag with unneeded papers. She took notes on Angie as she worked and started to have a clearer idea of the direction her PR would take. Rebecca came up with three exciting ideas and emailed Angie to call her when she got a chance.

  11:10 AM

  At a little after eleven, Rebecca ordered pizza from the only place that delivered out that far and continued working in her office. She felt great. She felt strong, and she was certain that she had been making a big deal about nothing. How could Roy even find her? She had moved several times, and she was married. Besides, as crazy as he seemed, she really didn’t believe he would want to hurt her. She never felt he wanted to hurt her; he wanted to be with her. It was control that he wanted, and she wanted to believe she could handle him if he ever showed up.

  She could drive herself crazy thinking about somebody hurting her or breaking into her home. It could just as easily be the guy about to deliver pizza or the man who came over a few weeks ago to check and service all the door locks. They didn’t know him, yet he was in their home and had access to all of their locks. If she was afraid all the time, if she felt she couldn’t take care of herself, then she was no longer living. If fear became her life, how could Jack or any person respect her? How could she respect herself? This crazy fear could keep a victim in a constant state of uncertainty. She would never feel confident, secure or positive about her life if she didn’t stay strong and work through her fears.

  Rebecca heard a hard thud from downstairs. Lily heard it too and started barking, running to the stairway and looking down, but too afraid to investigate. Rebecca grabbed the phone and dialed 9-1-1 but didn’t hit the send button. Rebecca went down the first few steps, then leaned over to check that nobody was there ready to grab her ankles. Lily looked at her like she was insane. Nobody was under the stairs, so she hurried down the rest of the way with Lily following. Nothing was out of place. She walked into the gym and nobody was there. When she turned and started walking toward the bar and pool table, she saw two birds on the pavers outside of the large family-room windows.

  There was bird poop running down the pane of glass. One, maybe both of the birds had hit the glass. She felt awful. She hated it when that happened. “Damn it!” she said and turned to look at Lily. “Let’s just leave them alone. They may be okay. We’ll give them some time to shake it off.” She turned to head back upstairs but Lily didn’t want to go. “What, baby?”

  Lily started to walk toward the bar then stopped.

  “Come on, baby, I’m going up.” She knew Lily wanted to play downstairs like they had many times, usually after Rebecca had finished working out. Lily walked around the pool table sniffing the floor. Rebecca thought she saw shoeprints in the carpet. She stepped closer to get a better look. Nobody wore their shoes in the house. She knew that there shouldn’t be shoeprints in the carpet. She placed her foot next to the print to measure the size while trying to convince herself that it wasn’t a footprint at all. Lily continued sniffing the floor, and then suddenly took off running laps around the pool table. Rebecca laughed and started chasing her. Before long there was no trace of the footprints on the carpet, and Rebecca had deliberately erased any trace of them from her mind.

  With Lily chasing her, she ran upstairs. Rebecca was starving and couldn’t wait for the pizza. She decided to take a quick shower before lunch arrived. While in the shower, she thought she heard another thump, and again Lily started barking. Rebecca thought that maybe the pizza delivery guy was already there though that seemed impossible. She stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and walked to the bedroom window, wrapping herself in the towel. She saw somebody on her land, but the figure ducked behind the trees.

  She felt exposed with only a towel wrapped around her, so she quickly stepped into the closet and slipped into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. But she still didn’t feel covered enough so she threw on a sweatshirt. She looked out the window again, but there were no cars and the pizza wasn’t there yet. She looked past the trees to the open hillside. She looked closer to the house and as far to her left and right as she could. Nobody was there. She used to see her neighbor walking his golden retriever through the field, but he never would have ducked out of sight. If he had seen her, he would have waved. She kept watching to see if the person had walked through the trees and would come out on the other side, but nobody appeared.

  If she were to call the sheriff’s department to have them keep an eye on her home and if she told them her concerns, would they think she was insane? She thought about how it would sound: Somebody left footprints on my carpet; I think somebody spilled Polo on my stairs; I received a hang-up phone call at three in the morning; I thought I saw somebody walking on my property. “Yep. Crazy.” She decided not to call. She pictured the police calling Jack and telling him
not to leave his wife home alone anymore.

  Rebecca’s eyes watered, but she didn’t want to cry. She was starting to tell herself to stop thinking about Roy in the what-if sense and start thinking about when. She knew he was coming for her. She wasn’t imagining things, she wasn’t going crazy and she wasn’t going to call her husband or a security company for a bodyguard. She would take care of this. An odd calm came over her.

  Rebecca stood motionless, looking outside and feeling certain that this man would get his revenge. She was so alone, out in the country with neighbors too far away to hear her scream. Would she even be able to scream? Nobody would hear Lily bark. How long would it take the police to get to her? Would she get to the phone in time? She wiped away her tears. She was tired of living part-time in denial and part-time in fear. She knew something had to give.

  Rebecca grabbed the phone and headed downstairs. The doorbell rang and Rebecca jumped. Lily again started huffing and puffing as she ran to the door. Rebecca grabbed Lily’s leash and attached it to Lily so she wouldn’t run outside or jump all over the pizza delivery guy. She could see his truck with the logo on the side. She picked up the money she had set on the table by the door and remembered that she forgot to disarm the alarm. She started yelling, “I got it,” and she ran to the keypad. “No! I got it!” she yelled as she opened the front door. “Hi.”

  Lily was whining, wagging her tail and desperately wanting to jump on the pizza man.

  “Hi. Cute dog!”

  “Yeah, she’s our little watchdog.” “Oh,” he said, handing her the boxes. “Your total is twenty thirty-seven.”

  Rebecca handed him twenty-seven dollars and kept looking past him.

  He tried to give her back change, but she kept looking for the man who she thought she had seen. “You okay, miss?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Keep that. Yes, I’m fine. Listen, did you see somebody around here when you drove up the driveway?”

  “No,” he said and looked behind him in the direction that she was looking. “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, okay, my brother was supposed to join my husband and me for pizza. He lives over there… he usually walks over. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

  “Okay, have a good afternoon.”

  “Okay, thank you. You, too.” She looked down the driveway once more, then closed and locked the door, yelling, “Pizza’s here!” so the driver would think that she wasn’t alone.

  Rebecca knew she hadn’t been eating much lately. She didn’t feel hungry when she wasn’t doing a lot. Because she was just lying around reading, she didn’t think her body needed much food. But she knew that when Roy came for her, she would need the fuel for her body. Rebecca was still trying to think about Roy in the when, not what if.

  She grabbed a breadstick and started eating. Rebecca had never learned to cook or bake, and it had become the joke of both families and their friends.

  One day Jack and Rebecca went out to eat with Jack’s European friends, and they were looking at photos of their new flat in London. Bernadette was explaining the pictures as they went through them when Rebecca saw a picture of the kitchen and said, “That’s a really nice kitchen.”

  Bernadette leaned over to see the picture she was referring to and said, “Rebecca, you’re holding it upside down.”

  Rebecca was embarrassed, but started laughing, and the others joined in.

  Jack seemed to get the biggest kick out of it. “That’s my Reb.”

  Rebecca would fantasize about creating delicious meals and then pigging out, or she’d imagine having a live-in personal chef so she could eat anything she wanted without cooking or having to go to a restaurant.

  She thought about the time when Jack had really wanted a grilled cheese sandwich but didn’t feel like making it. Rebecca had watched him make grilled cheese sandwiches, so she was confident she could make him one. She got out the bread, butter and cheese. She was pleased to do this for him, and she was going to make the best grilled cheese sandwich he had ever had. She buttered the bread slices and placed them in the pan. She opened the cheese and waited a few minutes before adding it. It was not going well. The bread was getting soggy and the cheese wasn’t melting, so she turned up the burner and the bread started to burn. Rebecca started to pout. “I can’t do this,” she hollered to Jack, who was in his office close by.

  “I’ll come and help,” he said as he came to the kitchen. “What happened?” he asked gently.

  “I can’t even make a grilled cheese sandwich!” Rebecca whined.

  Jack walked over to the stove and looked at the burning grilled cheese. He picked up the spatula and put the burnt sandwich on a plate. He turned toward her and said, “Honey, just… tell me what you did. And start with when you took the cheese and butter out of the refrigerator.”

  Rebecca started to laugh through her tears. “I’m awful. I’m a horrible wife.”

  “Honey, you can’t cook, but you are a wonderful wife,” he said. “How about I make us each a grilled cheese sandwich?”

  “No,” Rebecca said, sulking, “I’ll eat the one I made.” Rebecca felt like such a fool. She didn’t know how she could screw up a grilled cheese sandwich. After taking a few bites of the burnt, soggy sandwich, she agreed to let Jack make her one of his great grilled cheese sandwiches.

  Thinking of this and eating most of the buttery breadsticks, she laughed at her total lack of cooking skills. She took out a slice of pizza and closed the box. Lily started licking her food dish so Rebecca decided to give her a little extra dog food as a treat. Lily hastily ate a couple morsels and started choking reminding Rebecca of another time she regretted not being able to cook.

  Jack and Rebecca were in a hurry getting ready to go out with friends, and Lily started choking on her dinner. They waited on the couch with Lily trying to decide what to do, hoping Lily would have one good cough and she would be fine. Lily would cough a little then seem fine, then choke a little, then she was fine again. Worried, they decided to take her to the emergency hospital because all the veterinarian offices were closed. By the time they arrived, Lily seemed fine, but they wanted to be sure. The veterinarian was glad they brought Lily in and she checked her over thoroughly. She gave Lily a liquid medication to ease any pain in her throat and requested that Rebecca make chicken and rice for Lily for about a week because it would be much easier on her throat than the hard, dry dog food.

  Rebecca was stunned by the doctor’s request. Speechless, she stared at the vet.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” The vet asked. Then she turned to look at Jack and back to Rebecca who was still staring.

  Rebecca couldn’t get the words out, so Jack helped her out. “Let me put it like this. If Rebecca is cooking chicken and rice in that house, it better be me who gets it for dinner, not Lily… Rebecca doesn’t cook.”

  The veterinarian started laughing. “I understand now,” she said looking at Rebecca. “You looked dumbstruck.”

  “I was,” Rebecca laughed.

  “Don’t worry, we have some canned chicken and rice. I’ll send you home with enough to get you through the week.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Rebecca said while holding her hands to her heart.

  That canned chicken and rice had looked and smelled so good that she was tempted to have a little herself. And Lily loved it. Rebecca felt bad having to go back to the dry dog food the following week, but at least they found some with smaller morsels.

  Rebecca finished eating and was tired. She thought about going upstairs to watch some TV and maybe have a nap. Instead she decided to go back downstairs to check on the birds. One of the birds was still there. She looked closely and noticed a few feathers sticking out, but the bird looked fine. She hoped it wasn’t in pain. She stepped a little closer and suddenly the bird flew away, surprising Rebecca. “Well, that’s that,” she said to Lily, thankful that the bird was okay.

  They went back upstairs to the kitchen to get her Diet Coke. Rebecca suddenly had the urge to rearra
nge the furniture in their living room. She turned on the stereo and put in an Aaliyah CD. She started dancing around the living room, as she tried to figure out how to change things. She liked the way their living room was arranged but hated a bookcase that stood against a wall at the bottom of the stairs.

  The bookcase was light oak with glass shelves. She tried to figure out where she could move it, she wished she could put it in Jack’s office because he loved it, but she didn’t think there was room. She wanted to set it out in the garage and use it for storage, but Jack would not be happy if he came home and found his bookcase in the garage with paint cans on it. Plus, she had no idea where she’d put the knickknacks, glass sculptures and books that sat there collecting dust. Not only was the bookcase out of place, but she didn’t like the glass pieces it contained: a wolf, which too closely resembled a coyote, and a bear. They were beautiful, she had to admit, but they weren’t her taste. Just because they lived in the country didn’t mean their home had to resemble a cabin.

  Jack hated her moving things around. Rebecca remembered the look on his face every time he came home to find everything changed. His disapproving look didn’t last long because there was one thing that made it all okay—he loved her. And when she was happy and proud of her decorating, he was happy and proud, too. But they both knew her need to rearrange was a distraction from work, and at the moment she felt the need for a distraction very much.