When I Hit You

by Meena Kandasamy

  Protestations are seen as eternally damning proofs that I do not want to embrace motherhood. In his lexicon, not conceiving his child is one million times more outrageous than my previous avatar of being a petit-bourgeois poet-prostitute. My crime of being lackadaisical about giving birth to his heir is seen as a conspiracy to end his bloodline. In his mind, it equals a genocide.

  * *

  ‘I’ve killed three people. Three, not one or two. One of them wasn’t even a soldier. Now I’m telling you so that you know me for real. So, yes, look into my eyes. Face me. Here, this knife. Do you feel it. Cold, yes. It will be warm in a second when I slash your throat. Sad, isn’t it? The knife will not know you are a famous writer.’

  * *

  It is essential to act like a woman he can trust.

  It is essential to give him the feeling of, if not quite being loved, at least respected. It is essential to throw him off the scent so that I can begin to plot my escape. It is essential to pretend that I’m eager for motherhood. Because I have left him countless times in my mind, I find it easy to essay this role, for I now know how a woman who is leaving will behave and so I know how to play the opposite.

  * *

  The coming of the New Year brings with it the opportunity to make easy promises. I swear to him that I will turn over a new leaf. I tell him: this is the brand new beginning. At first, it is a made-in-Mangalore, manufactured happiness that I wrap around the two of us. I give up all the constructs of being a writer, a woman who has a thought, a woman with a life outside Primrose Villa. The daily news is what he tells me. Communication is restricted to the calls that he allows me to answer, only in his presence. Emails are only those I hear about through him. I wash my hair with the dirt-green bar of bathing soap, respecting his oft-repeated story about the austerity of comrades. When I develop lice and dandruff, I pretend not to notice. Domesticity binds us together. In the creator’s handbook, this is the mandatory calm that has to be orchestrated before an impending storm. In the more rustic world of my ancestors, this is the ceremonial bathing and garlanding of the sacrificial goat, a token display of affection before the axe falls.

  Peacetime lets me take a step back, to become the writer again, to closely observe my protagonists in laboratory conditions, note the changes in their behaviour. Peacetime lulls him into a zone of comfort, makes it easier for me to catch him off-guard. Peacetime allows me to plot. I collect together every scrap of information that I know about him. I fill in the blanks of his story. In my spare time, I read up on narratives of Naxalites, to build a profile of those who leave the organization: state agents, deserters, informers, cowards – I place my husband in two of these boxes. I try to decipher a pattern to our previous fights. I want to test my hunch about the duration of calm and the inversely proportional extent of explosiveness in the inevitable clash. I make mental lists of his possible triggers of violence. I also make lists of his favourite topics of conversation.

  * *

  My husband rejoices in the change in me. He sees it as validation of all his criticisms and corrections. Jubilation quickly gives way to tenderness, a sharing of his stories, a retreat that allows me access to his vulnerability.

  Stories about a disciplinarian father in the Army who came home only on holidays. About a summer of jaundice, and how his mother nursed him back to health. Bitter anecdotes of the rabble-rousing he had done in his workplaces. A shape-shifting story of how often he jumped across party lines – Marxist to Marxist-Leninist to People’s War to Maoist. Growing from leftist to radical to underground guerrilla, getting more extremist every step of the way. In the middle of all the adventurism, the dreams of the children he wants to have, the names he wants to give them, the places he wants to take them on holiday.

  Pity seems possible; I have a compulsive need to dole it out like small change, but the writer in me is stronger than the woman in me. One evening, when I’m setting up the rainy day snack of masala tea and freshly made onion pakoras, he comes up to the kitchen holding a pair of trousers that have long been left untouched and undisturbed in the wardrobe; he tells me that they belonged to a friend, a comrade, who was shot dead when their Western Ghats squad came under fire. He brings the dead man’s trousers reverentially to his eyes, and then he clutches them against his chest. I’m making mental notes, sketching out the narrative as he speaks. I ask him if he saw his friend die, if anyone else was there, if they tried to save him. It hurts him to talk about it, but I also feel that he is desperate to share the details with someone. I only have to allow the story to unspool. Did you manage to retrieve his body? Oh no, did you leave your dying friend there because you wanted to save your own lives? That must have been horrible. I know it is not your fault. No, it is not your mistake, my dear. I know why you blame yourself for it. Were you sure he was at least dead? What if the police tortured him later on? Did they at least give back the body? He is crying, gasping for breath, in his effort to fill me in with the details. His voice breaks but my resolve to drive him into despair has not been broken yet. I have gently talked him into a ball on the floor, weeping and hitting his head, hugging the trousers to his chest.

  I am amazed how indifferent I can be. As he falls apart at my feet, I simply watch, still taking notes, making numbered observations. 1) It is possible to play with him emotionally, to push him into distress, into anger, into anywhere I want him to go. 2) A pair of trousers makes a great prop.

  This is how the writer in me takes charge. What if someone were to choose to make a film about a courageous young fighter suffering the legacy of PTSD? What could they place in his hands? What is one of the few things that will not take away his masculinity and at the same time showcase his vulnerability? Trousers.

  This is my line of thought. I am already transferring what I see and experience in the privacy of our home into art. I have put myself in a dangerous situation with this marriage, but even in this complicated position, I’m finding plot points.

  This is the occupational hazard of being a writer-wife.

  * *

  The suspicious, violent husband is a character, but already, just by being who he is, he is becoming the first semblance of a plot. It’s a plot that goes nowhere except in dizzying circles, and it’s a plot that remains tightly under his control. But, recently, I have begun to learn how to wrest it back – first, in my experiment with silence that ended in the surprising plot twist of corrective, disciplinary rape; the last time, in the episode of the trousers.

  I remind myself of the fundamental notion of what it means to be a writer. A writer is the one who controls the narrative.

  * *

  In the Marxist jargon that I have studiously picked up from my husband, I can proudly declare: there are tactics, and then, there is strategy.

  I have become a strategist.

  I indulge in picking over the delicious detail of the episode with the trousers. I remember that my defiance over the trip to the gynaecologist was enough to make him inflict burns on his own body with a glowing ladle. I begin to realize, for the first time, that his violence, which is forever directed against me, can sometimes be twisted to turn upon himself.

  It gives me hope. I know that his anger is a device that I can detonate at will. When the right time comes, I can push the red button, I can conclude this classic, kitchen-sink drama on my own terms.

  * *

  I decide that I will not allow myself to be portrayed as the hot-blooded woman who ran away from one man into the wide open arms of another. I will not allow myself to become the good wife, the good mother, the good-for-nothing woman that marriage aims to reduce me to. I will not allow my story to become a morality tale – about loose women, about lonely writers, about melancholic poets, about creative, unstable artists, not even about a war against head lice. I will give all of you an ending to this story to which you cannot object. I will hold out until I hand-deliver the finishing thread that will earn your teary-eyed, hard-won approval – a return to my parental home, to that s
tate of innocence, to a system of returning.

  To my parents, caught in the self-fulfilling prophecy of exemplary citizenship, I will bequeath to them the wounded pride they seek. When I come home battered, running to save my life, they can remind the neighbours just how hard we all tried to save my marriage, but just the fact that they are having me back is proof positive that I have done something right, or, my husband has done something unspeakably wrong.

  I phone them to prepare the way. I get the courage to share the shame of how I have been treated, what it means to live in the fear of being killed. I repeat my husband’s threat to scalp me word for word. I talk of my death. I cradle the menacing words like a militant’s hand grenade and pull the pin. ‘Next time he talks of murder, come home,’ my mother implores. ‘If he does it again, run for your life without even turning to look back,’ my father orders. ‘We are here,’ they say, finally, far too late, but in unison.

  * *

  Until then, I stay. I stay because I have no other choice until I am within touching distance of a permitted resolution. In the eyes of the world, a woman who runs away from death is more dignified than a woman who runs away from her man. She does not face society’s stone-throwing when she comes away free. In the quest to control the narrative, I still have to endanger my own life.

  * *

  ‘Whoever said you will walk out of this marriage?’

  It’s raining outside. The sky is dull, the falling light of an early January evening. I’ve no energy to answer. I bury my head on his chest. I hate him, but, so close to the end, I feel a writer’s sense of sadness at ending a character. He puts his hands around my shoulders, kisses me on the forehead.

  ‘We’ve proved them all wrong, no? We’re inseparable. No force can come between us. Those who said that you’re not marriage-material and only fit for one-night stands will have to eat their own words. You are my lovely wife. My perfect wife. I didn’t believe we’d end this way. Just look at us now. We’re perfect.’

  * *

  In the kitchen, I am shelling green peas and chopping up mushrooms and capsicum. I make a curry with aubergines and green chillies. The rice dances in the boiling water. I drain the rice, and set it aside. When I check, every grain is standing up as if in prayer. I call my husband to eat. He is busy marking answer sheets. Just then, a phone call shows up on my phone. It is a missed call. Then another. Then another. It is almost as if someone is playing a joke. He demands that I tell him who this secret caller is. It is a number I do not know, I do not recognize. When we call back, the person on the other end answers the phone, remains silent, ends the call. My husband rings that number again and again, and shouts into the plastic handset. Soon, the mystery phone is switched off, sending him through to an automated answerphone every time he dials. It upsets him. He turns towards me and demands to know who it is. He begins enumerating my past lovers, demanding to know if I have gone back to fucking the politician, questioning if I’m once more involved with an old university boyfriend. He tells me I disgust him; that I pollute him with my history; that I am not good enough for him; that I am once again ruining our marriage.

  I see my chance and sharpen the blade.

  ‘But darling,’ I say quietly, ‘why all this hypocrisy? It is you who already has one failed marriage behind him.’

  I slip the words between his ribs like a stiletto knife. He actually gasps. His eyes widen. For the first time since I met him, he has no response. And as I watch him, trying to give shape to his confusion, I know I have won. His open hand slams into my throat and tightens. He hoists me up against the wall, holding me by my neck alone. My legs dangle. I cannot breathe. My mind is on an endless chant: This will end this will end this will end this will end.

  ‘Death scares you. That is the difference between me and you. I’m not afraid of death. I can kill, but in the same breath, I can die. Both are the same to me. Not to you. You are hungry, greedy, begging for life. Look at you now. Scared. I can only laugh at you. Look at you. You will never, ever be a revolutionary.’

  He takes his hand away and I collapse. My lungs heave and struggle for air, but when I catch my breath I look up at him and defiantly smile. My voice finds it difficult to escape my crushed throat, but the words I need begin composing themselves into perfect sentences; they find their way, painfully, like the angry cry of an animal that watches another being slaughtered; forcefully, like rain-bearing wind searing itself through palm fronds. My heart beats in my throat to the rhythm of imagined machine gun fire.

  ‘Revolutionary? They shot your friend dead, and you abandoned his body to the enemy. Don’t pretend you are a revolutionary. Don’t tell me how brave you are. A brave man doesn’t run. A brave man doesn’t rape and hit his wife. You, my husband, are not a brave man.’

  I exceed my written brief. He shouts and screams at me as he pins me to the floor of the living room, but I no longer hear him. He is holding my face down with his foot, his toes digging into my cheeks, stamping on my ears. This is how he demands my silence. I see his lips form words – whore, bitch, cunt, pros-ti-tute – but his voice no longer reaches me. On the floor, my hands clenching his ankles, I look like a woman offering prayers, like someone pleading for her life. The blows rain down on me and then, finally, the ringing in my ears is broken by the phrase I have been waiting for: ‘I am going to bring this to an end. Now. You are going to die. I should have done this long ago.’

  For the first time in my marriage, I’m not afraid. I know that my words have stripped away his manhood, they have shamed him into impotence. I know that my words have rendered him incapable of acting on his threat, and that now, in the space between us, there is his invisible cowardice that has been called out by name. But his verbal threat to kill is enough. It’s what I came for. He is scripting the ending that I wanted for us. I generously allow him this authorship. He is dishing out the black and white version demanded by this world. I close my eyes and I wait for him to finish.

  * *

  All that I need, I carry with me in a shoulder bag. Passport. ATM card. Laptop. My phone that he never let me use. All of this is mine. This is all I could think of taking. This is all I had the time to take. This is all that I wanted to take.

  I call home. I tell my mother I’m coming to her. Bruised but alive. The moon is on my back. The auto-rickshaw races into the night. I shed this miserable city like a second skin.

  XIII

  one thing I dont need

  is any more apologies

  i got sorry greetin me at my front door

  you can keep yrs

  i dont know what to do wit em

  they dont open doors

  or bring the sun back

  they dont make me happy

  or get a mornin paper

  NTOZAKE SHANGE,

  FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED

  SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF

  For four months and eight days I had been off every radar. No phone, no email, not even the curated happiness of Facebook.

  No news is bad news, but most people do not know it yet.

  Did anyone ask for me?

  A friend says he assumed my silence was a need for privacy. That things were going well and that I had dug myself deep into the land with my new husband, and to call me or to track me down would disturb me and that I would climb out of my little warren when I felt the need to feel the sun on my face.

  We thought that no news is good news.

  We thought that you wanted the space.

  We thought you would call us when you were ready.

  We emailed you, your husband replied saying you’ll write to us soon.

  We thought you were out of Facebook as you were busy with that project, no?

  And everywhere, people only encountered normal-ness, an ordinary state of being, the absence of any trouble, because that’s what they had set out to find.

  * *

  I am considered lucky to have walked out of a bad marriage in four months. I a
m considered too unlucky to be invited to friends’ weddings, as if my embittered and embattled aura will pull apart the four-poster bridal beds.

  You cannot always have it all, baby.

  * *

  Even after hearing my story, women hide their husbands from me.

  You’d think it would upset me, make me ponder on female rivalry and insecurity. No. I’m thankful for small mercies. I once had a husband I wanted to hide from the world, too.

  * *

  In place of a firing squad, I stare down the barrels of endless interrogation.

  Why did she not run away?

  Why did she not use the opportunities that she had for escape?

  Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims?

  How much of this wasn’t really consensual?

  Let me tell you a story. Not mine, this time around.

  It is the story of a girl we call after the place of her birth, lacking the integrity to even utter her name. The Suryanelli Girl.

  Forty-two men rape this girl, over a period of forty days.

  She is sixteen years old.

  The police do not investigate her case. The high court questions her character. The highest court in the land asks the inevitable. Why did she not run away? Why did she not use the opportunities that she had for escape? Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn’t really consensual?

  Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape.

  The shaming is in being asked to stand to judgment.

  * *

  I am not the damsel-in-distress. I am not the picture of virginal innocence, someone whose parents hitched her to a man in an arranged marriage. This is the kind of thing that can happen to a helpless woman like that.

  But I am not that. I am rough, gruff, tough. The one who has written these mad and angry and outrageous poems about life and love and sex.

  I am not afraid of men; I have fashioned myself in the defiant image of its exact, uncompromising opposite – the woman men are afraid of. I am anti-fragile. I’ve been made not to break. That is one of the reasons why it becomes harder to talk about the violence. Who I am proves to be my own undoing.