Jan 31, 1999

I hear footsteps on the stairs and imagine it's you, a strange settling on the bed as I lay half-awake and I dream it's you.

I used to know myself so well before you came along. I used to be happy, or at least experience joy. When we first met I used to long to hear your footsteps coming up the narrow staircase to my apartment. Now I dread the sound. I can anticipate the arguments and the lectures. I can map out the exact second you'll lay your swarthy form beside me and coldly settle one arm over my supposedly sleeping body. We'll both know I'm just pretending to sleep, but we'll both pretend I am asleep and that everything is okay. That everything is normal.

I know what's wrong; I just don't want to admit it. Most people still actually believe that when I say I dream of you that it's not a nightmare. A few know better. A few know that when I see someone who looks like you in my territory I jump. God forbid I'd have to talk to any clone of yours; I can barely handle myself then. I climb out of my skin hearing words shoot out of my mouth that aren't mine, but yours. I know it's stupid. I know that.

For some reason I can't forget things. For some reason I'm writing this right now instead of talking to you as you pack up anything of yours that remains in this apartment. I heard you stir in bed this morning at 4:30am while I was putting my stuff in boxes. I heard you mumble, "What the fuck?" as you reached over, turned on the lamp, and saw me taping a box up. I felt you leering at my bent and bedraggled form in my torn black camisole writing "CLOTHES" on the nearest box. I heard you muttering under your breath of all you've done for me; how I could do this to you. I sit at the table and pretend to be busy at writing up a final report for work. That seems like something any rational adult could be doing in a situation like this. I go into the bathroom and I hear you slam the door and leave. Maybe you aren't so rotten after all-you never slammed me as hard as you slammed the door just then. I throw on a sweatshirt and some jeans and take a box down to my car and see your car lights moving along the pavement some distance ahead. I have a sickening craving to call out to you, but I don't. I go back to the apartment, turn off the lights, and leave the other boxes out in front of the building for whoever feels the need to rifle through them and take what they want. Priceless-ironically that's exactly what you did to my soul.

Nothing would have it that this would be an easy escape. From one hell to another I suppose. I know you never actually raised a hand to me, I know they were just words, but here I am back on the steps of the home I left for you, well for whatever I thought I'd find. My sullen eyes settle upon the figure of the person who thought she'd taught me better. She doesn't say much, just looks at me with that disapproving look I think she was taught in the convent school.

"Mother Superior…" I begin, but she stops me there and says, "I have heard it all before, go upstairs, have a bath, then sleep. You'll be up at 8 with the rest of them." I plod upstairs with only one small box in hand. Why did I pack anything? I can't use much here. My pajamas, my hygiene products, that's about it. I know she'll ask tomorrow where I got the car. She'll ask why I cut my hair short and where I got the bruises. I'll lie and say they are from you. I'll lie and say I ran away to meet a boy I loved long ago. I'll lie and say I found you and that we were engaged, that you were bad to me and that I ran off. She'll ask why I ran from her home in the first place when she was never bad to me. She'll remind me how all the other girls love it here, how I am a bad example to them. She'll ask me if I was on drugs, if I took to the street. I'll maintain that you were my fiancé and you were bad to me.

I won't let on that I hated it here then, but that feel it is the safest place on earth now. I won't let on that for the first 2 days after I left I slept on a street only 10 blocks from this house. I won't let on that you "rescued" me, drove up beside me, stepped from your car, told me you were an undercover cop, and took me to that tiny apartment.

I won't tell that you sampled from me then, after giving me juice with some pills you said would get rid of my headache. Yeah, now I know the kind of headache you were talking about. She'll let me back into her house under the pretense I was waiting for marriage to consummate our relationship. She won't know that after that first night you had me out in the street every night. That you let all sorts of men take me home and use me. What was that old song? "Come along and be my party doll?" Was that it? That song was the only thing that let me think there was a possibility that this was all okay.

She won't be able to tell that I am bruised inside. She won't be able to see any bruises other than those she saw on my neck and cheeks tonight. The rest will be covered by my long dress tomorrow. She won't be able to fathom that the bruises she can see were made by the many men you didn't protect me from. She won't be able to imagine all the things I let be done to me for money or the things I did willingly for money.

She'll wake me at 8 tomorrow. She won't know how happy I am that the ache I have is now a day old and not nearly as painful as it was yesterday. She won't know the huge gash on my back makes it impossible to sleep any other way than on my stomach. She won't know the relief I feel upon waking, in the few hours I had to sleep, that you aren't laying beside me, your little possession no longer.

She'll have no idea how happy I am when a hot meal that is more than coffee is placed in front of me at precisely 8:30am. She'll never know how happy I am to sit and say grace among friends instead of walking the streets trying to attract the "before work quickie" market. Most of all she'll never know how brave I am. How I said goodbye to you and your lifestyle, how I escaped and remained alive. I will be so happy to have nothing left hindering me except the occasional awful memories when the priest asks, "How long since your last confession? What are your sins?"

She won't have a clue how hard it was to leave your grasp. She won't know how many of us you had under your thumb. She won't know next week when a girl two years younger than me shows up at her door that I know her, "in the biblical sense" as the saying goes. She'll never dream that we were often sent out together.

What she really will have no concept of is that because of you I am a stronger person than even God could have made me. So-Thank You.

I hear footsteps now on the stairs. It's my husband coming home. He knows my past, he's angry with you, even after all these years, and wants to kill you everyday he lives. I'm not angry at all anymore only the slightest memories, bruises on my soul, remain. I dream that one-day he'll forgive you because you have made me what I am partially, and he loves everything about me. As I lay here half-awake with his arms holding me close I can barely picture your face anymore.