Shut up and take it.
Someone tried to clasp my hands, but I wouldn’t let him. I whacked him again.
“You’re fighting something that’s not me. Tell me what you see. Ruth, where are you?”
I blinked and I was half in the woods, half in Papa’s study.
Adam was trying to calm me, trying to make me think this was not my fault.
But it was.
I made this happen. I claimed to want truth, but I only wanted a sliver ofmytruth.
The piece that said honorable wife, aggrieved widow, desperate mother—that’s what I wanted known. The other piece, the one that proclaimed me a victim, a victim of the worst kind—I wanted it buried in an empty bottomless hole.
“Ruth, it’s me. Whatever is going on, let me help.”
Wycliff was better than the rest. He forced me to own all the labels.
“Talk to me.”
His raspy voice wasn’t loud enough to cover the mocking laughter, the slurs, the taunts. The sounds of me dying and hurting.
Then I shut up and took it.
Volcano me erupted. The speed at which I slapped at the shadows increased. “Jokes, jokes. Jokes.”
I knew Wycliff didn’t deserve this, but lava rushed my veins. I couldn’t stop.
I hit at him for failing Chris, for the shop glass I’d walled around me.
I punched at being stuck at every step.
Harder. Faster. Heavier.
I beat at the bottle glass that had become my lenses, the headaches that descended daily—the darkness that would come.
I knocked. I pushed. My hands were red, but I kept fighting.
No more shutting this up in me. No more taking it.
No more.
No more.
“Let it out, Ruth. I’m not going away. Fight with everything that you can.”
The raspy voice resonated. It filled up the hollowness in my chest. It might just make up for the heart that had died four years ago. I looked up and Wycliff’s eyes were closed. He mumbled a blessing, then other things I couldn’t discern.
I didn’t want to.
The shame of striking him, of punishing him for things he hadn’t done was too much.
Now I had to be rid of him. He was nosy. He’d figure things out, if he hadn’t already.
My hand pressed at his throat to stop his sweet words. He winced and caught my fingers. Holding them at his side, he took a step back. “I’ll be the proxy for this fight but tell me what we fight.”
His voice was worse. It was as if by touching his neck I’d hurt him and made him hoarser.
