Unhappy New Year to me.
Yes, I was miserable. But Noelle was safe. And that was all that mattered.
february
“Come here, Belly.”
After serving Dennis his Valentine’s Day dinner—coq au vin that had taken me all day to prepare—I’d remained standing behind my chair as I always did until he told me to sit down.
Sometimes he “forgot” to tell me, and I’d end up watching him eat both portions of the meal I’d made.
But tonight, after exactly five bites, he beckoned me forward to his side of the table.
“I’m sorry,” I said before I even knew what I’d done wrong. “Is something not to your liking?”
“What’s with this pie?” He pointed to the chocolate cream pie I’d set on the table—made hours earlier so it would have time to set in the refrigerator. I’d sprayed a ring of whipped cream around its edges and carefully placed a cherry in the middle.
“Is that no longer your favorite dessert?” I asked. I’d been given no more instruction about Valentine’s Dinner other than it needing to be “worth ten years of prison time.”
“When I was in the pen, they showed us that movie—the one with the cute redhead and that lawyer fromHow to Get Away with Murder. You remember? Where the maid bakes a special pie?”
My brain fumbled around. It had been so long since I’d experienced any pop culture that it took me a few minutes to understand what he was insinuating.
“Oh, you meanThe Help?”
I actually wished I’d thought of that, but I shook my head, insisting, “No, I didn’t put anything bad in it. I wouldn’t. I mean, when would I even have the chance to?—”
“Here.” He handed me the dessert fork I’d placed next to the smaller saucer I’d planned to serve the pie on. “Why don’t you taste it first?”
I bent over to fork out a small sample of the pie that wasn’t made with love, but also most definitely didn’t have any human excrement in it. “Oh, sure, I can?—”
Dennis shoved my face into the cream pie before I could finish the sentence. Chocolate cream filled my nose and my mouth as he held me down. Choking me.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
But I made myself go limp, knowing better than to struggle.
Just when I thought he might drown me in my own pie, he pulled me back up.
“Nothing,” he seethed. “Nothingyou do will ever make up for all those Valentine’s Days I had to spend in jail. Now, go clean up and get yourself ready while I finish eating.”
I didn’t argue.Vacant Little Thing. Vacant Little Thing.
I washed my face and body in the shower and got myself ready.
“Getting myself ready” basically meant putting on a loose satin chemise with a built-in push-up bra. Dennis had bought it forme “to cover up all your problem areas.” Like my sagging A-cup breasts and my poufed-out middle-aged stomach.
Dennis hated the older version of the body I’d kept relentlessly tight as part of my duties as his wife, before over a decade of eating what and how I wanted, with peri- and full-blown menopause on top.
He loved that I was rapidly losing weight now that he was back in my life.
But that didn’t make up for my less-than-ideal body.
That Valentine’s Day, he brought his laptop into the bedroom, like he always did. It was already halfway through some video of two young, lithe women with dead eyes putting a lot of effort into pleasuring a paunchy guy who looked like a White version of Dennis—save for the impressive anatomy.
Dennis set the laptop on the pillow beside my head and climbed on top of me, pushing into me without averting his eyes from the girls on the screen.
