“Oh, no, you don’t.” He charges toward the doors and fumbles to pull down the shades, then realizes they’re electric. “You fancy people.” The shades descend, blocking our view to the canals. The neighbor peers up from the flower she’s worrying. I make eye contact with her as her face disappears behind the taupe fabric.
The man’s shouting doesn’t do it. His thunderous footsteps. His sinister laugh. None of this wakes Opal. Instead, it’s the shades when he holds his finger on the switch for a moment too long. Completely unrolled now, they click as they try to go down farther. It’s a small noise. The most disruptive ones often are. Her cry from the corner is more animal than human. All baby.
At first, he doesn’t hear Opal. It must take every ounce of energy for Tessa to ignore her child. Her cry intensifies with the injustice of being woken up. He stops pacing and turns toward her bassinet in the corner. He is more animal than human too. All predator. He takes one step toward her bassinet, then another, like he has all the time in the world.
Chapter Forty
Tessa
It happens in a flash, so quickly that I don’t immediately feel myself attack. His back is to us as he leans over the bassinet, the knife suspended in his right hand. The moment he reaches for Opal, I pounce.
I’m on his back, biting his right shoulder until I taste blood. He screams and drops the knife as he stumbles away from my baby. His other arm reaches to tear me off him, but my teeth are still sunk into his flesh. I can see he isn’t a large man, now that he’s not holding a knife. As we stumble around the living room, the pain starts to creep in, throbbing. I’m certain I’ve ruptured my stitches. Momentarily, the burning distracts me, and I loosen my bite enough for him to throw me off his back. I hit the ground hard, shoulder first. That ache is nothing compared to the hot rage of my incision. He pulls me up by the hair. I stumble backward, forced to follow him even though I can barely walk. He throws me onto the couch and starts screaming, calling me a bitch, a cunt, a whore, all his spite toward women directed at me. I curl into a ball, enduring his rant until a voice forces him to go quiet.
“Mama?” Jasper bellows from his crib upstairs. The call is inquisitive at first. When I don’t answer, he starts to sob. “Mama!” The syllables stretch until he runs out of breath.
Maya’s husband lumbers toward the stairs, hands clenched into fists, face tortured, staring up into the space where Jasper’s fallen silent, waiting to see if I’ll answer his call. He doesn’t want to see my son, to be forced to act against another child, any child—even Gabe’s. That’s when I notice he’s no longer holding the knife. It’s on the floor beside the bassinet. I expect Barb to lunge for it, but she isn’t there. She isn’t anywhere.
I roll from my side onto the floor, catching my body with my forearms. My shirt is drenched in milk and sweat, my chin sticky with his blood. My stitches are ruptured, and I’m fairly certain I can’t stand. I use my forearms and knees to crawl around the far side of the couch, where he won’t see me. Every inch burns; my midsection begs me to stop. I’m focused exclusively on the knife.
When I make it to the end of the couch, the knife is only a few feet farther. I continue crawling, the blood soaking into the compression band where the incision must have opened. One more lunge forward and my fingers graze the tip of the knife. It makes a scratching sound as I drag it toward me. I turn to Maya’s husband, certain he’s heard it, that it will send him running across the room to kick me or use the knife against me. He remains paralyzed at the base of the steps as Jasper calls to me again. The sound of his voice flutters through the pain, giving me the strength to persist. I stretch my arm until I can grip the handle and push myself to sit, cradling the knife. I breathe into my core as I begin to lift myself off the ground.
Before I can stand, I hear a loud crack. I see Barb hovering above the man, who’s now motionless on the floor, my cast-iron skillet gripped in her right hand. She raises it again, about to strike, and reactively I shout, “Don’t.”
She hesitates, the pan still above her head.
“Don’t,” I say, calmer. The skillet slips from Barb’s hand and clangs against the floor. She gives the man a hard kick in the side. He grunts, indicating he’s still alive.
“You okay?” She hurries over to me, leaning my body against hers as we limp over to the couch. She helps me sit down. Vaguely, I hear Jasper,so desperate for me that he’s no longer callingMama. He’s screeching incoherently, ear-piercingly. I want to charge upstairs, to pull him to me, to inhale his sleepy breath and tell him everything’s okay. But my energy is zapped. I can’t move. The knife falls from my hand onto the floor below. Barb lifts my shirt to survey the damage. The compression band is covered in blood. Barb doesn’t try to remove it. She reaches for the knife, marvels at it in her hands, tries to decide what to do with it.
“T.?” I hear the familiar greeting as Gabe’s footsteps echo down the hall.
Jasper stops screaming, his voice now hopeful. “Dada?”
“Tessa, why haven’t you been answering my calls. Is everything—” He walks in, sees the man crumpled at the base of the stairs—and Barb, standing above me, holding the knife.
“Gabe, no,” I shout as Gabe charges Barb, pouncing on her, sending her flying to the ground, Her shoulder hits the coffee table. Gabe grabs the knife from her and throws it across the room.
“Stop,” Barb and I shout, our voices entangled. Gabe can’t hear us. He’s straddling Barb, holding her arms down.
“Who are you?” he shouts in her face.
“I’m Regina’s mom,” she says.
“Gabe, stop. That’s Regina’s mother.”
He doesn’t get off her, but he stops pressing her arms into the ground.
“Gabe, get off her.”
He climbs off and kneels at her side. Barb sits up, rubbing the back of her head. He holds out his hand to help her.
“Stay away from me.” She swats his hand away.
The living room is a symphony of wails. Jasper above. Opal in the corner. For the moment, Gabe focuses on me. He rushes over to the couch where I’m perched and touches the blood on my chin. Maya’s husband’s blood.
“Are you okay?” He rotates my shoulder, and I wince. “It’s not broken.”
Gabe leans forward and kisses my forehead. For this fleeting moment, we’re us again. Tessa and Gabe, Irons strong.
