Whispers in the Night Read online

  I really didn’t know I was being abused. I thought it was love, love between men and women, the routine matters of the heart. My husband had hit me, repeatedly. I didn’t like it, but I put up with it. I’d look in the mirror and my face would resemble a beaten boxer’s face. Black eyes, bruised lips, twisted arms, aching limbs and ribs. True, he stomped and kicked me too. I believed he hated women. I knew he hated his mother but I think he hated females, women in general.

  At parties, he’d loud-talk to his men friends with their girls: “See, she dances like a white girl. She dances like she fucks.” He loved to shame me, embarrass me.

  In bed, he laughed at me, said I had no rhythm.

  My girlfriends said I should leave him, before he killed me. The papers were full of guys who wanted to control their women, gave them low self-esteem, and shot or stabbed them. I couldn’t leave him. I tried, but I couldn’t. So when I finally did, just ran away, I started to make up reasons why I should go back. I always returned.

  That day about three years ago, when I got off work, Jack, my husband, was waiting for me. I was headed to the bus terminal to get to my locker so I could change clothes and wash up, but he dragged me to the car. He had a gun. I didn’t argue with him.

  “What is it you want from me?” he shouted. “You want a divorce?”

  “No, I just want you to stop pressuring me about having a baby,” I said, trembling. “I love you, Jack. I still love you. Give me time, please.”

  “We’re married,” Jack yelled. “I’m the man. I’m your husband.”

  “But you don’t own me,” I yelled in return. “I’m young. I want to live life. I want to go back to school and get a career. Is that so wrong?”

  He poked me in the side with the gun. “Yes, it is if I say so.”

  “Why don’t you want me to go back to school?” I tried to stay calm.

  “Because I don’t want them to be filling your head with all that nonsense,” he said. “You don’t need a career. I’m the man. I can provide for you and the kids. I can provide for this family. All you need to do is stay at home and take care of the kids.”

  “Suppose you leave me and the kids?” I asked, watching him start the car.

  “I won’t do that,” he said, pulling out into traffic. “I love you. I just want you to do what I say. It’s for the best. If your mother were around, she would agree. All she wanted to do was to have you happy. I’m a good husband.”

  “I want to do the school thing while I’m young,” I said. “I can make you proud of me. You’ll see. Then we can earn money, then we can have our babies and a good home. I want a house in a good neighborhood. I’m tired of being poor.”

  We pulled up to a light. A cop car eased alongside us. My husband tucked the gun between his legs. He shot a bitter glance at me, keep cool, and leaned forward to talk to the police officer in the next car.

  “Do you know your turn signal on the rear left light is out?” the police officer was asking my husband.

  “No, I didn’t, sir,” Jack replied. “I’ll get that fixed as soon as possible.”

  “You better,” the cop said. “I’ll let you off with a warning.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” my husband said, smiling.

  The patrol car sped away. My husband didn’t speak to me until we got home. He didn’t ask me where I’d been. He acted like I had been at the job after a long day, but he didn’t try to figure out what I’d been doing. My mother warned me about him. She said he was a strange man.

  My husband marched me down to a gynecologist, or “pussy doctor” as my mother used to call them, so he could get me checked out. To see if everything was in working order. Jack was religious about doing the speculum bit, every six months, no abnormal Pap smear for me. He found a woman doctor, who was a friend of his mother. Sometimes, he would sit in there as she asked me questions. I hated it, no privacy.

  “Are you having any irregularities in your menstrual cycle?” Dr. Reina Amado asked me. “Bleeding heavier or lighter?”

  “No.” I loathed him sitting there.

  “Do you examine your breasts for lumps?”

  “Yes.” I glanced at him, this two-hundred-and-thirty-pound muscle boy, weight-lifting fool, watching me for any blemishes or flaws.

  “Do you inspect your vulva for lesions, warts, or abnormal moles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you examine your vaginal walls?” the doctor asked. “Is your discharge normal? Or is it indicative of a yeast infection?”

  “Everything is normal down there,” I replied.

  “Take your clothes off and slip into the gown,” she said and chatted to my husband while I walked beyond the screen. I returned and lay on the examining table.

  I saw her wink at my husband. Maybe they were lovers. She wasn’t that old. She put on gloves, rubber ones, and took out the speculum. Cold metal.

  “Watch again and let me show you how it is done,” Dr. Amado said, putting her hands on my body. “With one hand on your belly and two fingers inside your vagina, feel your uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Are your hands washed?”

  “Yes.” I hated my husband to see this. It was like watching me play with myself. I did as I was told, reluctantly.

  “Now, with one finger in your vagina and another in your rectum, feel the area behind your uterus,” the doctor said. “Good, that’s it. Explore. Feel anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No.” I was ashamed. Totally humiliated.

  “You might have a yeast infection, very slight,” Dr. Amado said, holding up a glove to see a thick, curdlike discharge. “I’m going to prescribe some Monistat. Do you get these often?”

  “No, it’s my first time.”

  “Is it VD?” my husband asked the doctor. “Has she been fooling around?”

  “No, it’s normal,” the doctor answered. “Some women just get them. It will clear up. Also, drink cranberry juice, lots of fluids. Okay, Maya?”

  “Yes, all right.” I knew Jack would be interrogating me all night, to find out if there was another guy, if I was fooling around.

  Later, Jack was jovial in the car, but upset at my angry face. I was pouting. He said he’d slap me silly if I didn’t lighten up. After all, he was my husband and not a stranger. I flinched when he raised his hand to slap me, but he stopped. He hugged me instead, cooing that he loved me, that he’d love me forever. He was the master of mixed signals.

  In the beginning, Jack was the kindest man I knew. My family loved him. When he was just a boyfriend, he used to pick up groceries for my household, take my mother to the Laundromat, drive us to church, even ride with my mother to the doctor’s office. He was so patient, waiting around when she went to the drugstore to get her medication. My mother had nine kids, but she was a lush, so the city took most of her young kids away. She couldn’t take care of them.

  And then she got liver cancer. The doctor told her that she would get sick if she didn’t stop drinking. She loved bourbon, straight up. She drank like a fish. She didn’t start drinking until the last of her husbands left her, and then she couldn’t stop.

  Yet my mother warned me about Jack; she could see through him. “Jack tries to act like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but I get a bad feeling about him,” she said just before she got sick. “He reminds me of Felix, my second husband. Something doesn’t feel right about him. Don’t marry him. Please don’t, Maya.”

  I was stubborn. I wanted Jack.

  When we got married, I wanted to stay with my mother because she was not well. He didn’t want to live with her. We got a place in Brooklyn in Brownsville, a dump, where we gave parties, drinking and drugging. I got tired of that. He didn’t want to leave the house. We got into a fight because I went to work as a secretary. I was always good in typing and stuff. When we went out, he would always put me down, talking about my fat ass.

  “Man, she definitely got a lot of junk in the trunk,” Jack said, teasing me before the guys. “She got a J-Lo ass and she can fuc
k. I got to give it to her, she can tire a nigger out, but that’s about all. She can’t cook or do anything around the house.”

  He told me he was screwing a coworker, bragged about it. One night, one of his crew told him about himself, said he should respect me. “You shouldn’t talk about how your lover swallows come all night,” he said to Jack, who wanted to punch this guy out.

  And jealous, oh man. Jack started to check the car’s gas gauge to see if I was going where I should go. He monitored the phone bill to see if I was making any calls to guys, itemizing it. He was slowly isolating me and I wasn’t having it. I told my mother about it and she said I should get out of there. He wants to control you, she said.

  My sister Inez said I changed. I got really quiet, shy, and meek. I never went anywhere except when Jack took me. I never went to family events, except for my mother’s funeral and Christopher’s baptism. He would snap his fingers like he would do for a dog and I would sit on his lap or in a chair near him. He would smack me in public or punch me and I never thought about calling the police. I was scared to go against him.

  “You don’t know what he would do to me,” I told my sister. “He’s crazy.”

  One Easter, he beat me so bad that I had to go to the hospital. He broke my jaw and busted a few of my ribs. The doctor who saw me never asked me about abuse, so I didn’t volunteer anything about my husband doing this to me. He never brought up domestic violence, so I didn’t either.

  I went that spring after the hospital visit to a place where women went for counseling. A woman who knew my symptoms understood everything about me. We talked and cried together, but I would not leave him.

  I took a long lunch with some coworkers, a few laughs and drinks, and Jack was waiting for me when we left the restaurant. He didn’t say anything when he called that afternoon. But when he picked me up, he was all smiles until he pointed the gun at my heart and said I was a bitch.

  “Who did you fuck?” he said.

  “I don’t know what you mean, baby,” I said.

  “I saw you with that man,” Jack said. “I saw you with him.”

  “That was my boss and there were four other people there too,” I quickly explained. “We were talking at lunch. We were celebrating a deal that came through.”

  “Are you fucking the bald white guy?” Jack asked. “Is that the man?”

  “He’s my boss, damn it,” I answered and he slapped me across my face with the gun, hard enough to bust my lip and bloody my nose. I saw stars for a time.

  He didn’t say anything until we got home. Then he started yelling and screaming about how I was going to have his baby, it was time for him to claim what was mine; then a baby would announce what was his. He blackened my eyes and I had to take off the next day.

  “You oughta thank me for killing your black whore ass,” Jack said, holding the gun in my mouth. “You know that. You cunt bitch! You will have my baby or I will kill you. That is final!”

  I left him after that, a second time. I switched jobs. I cut off all ties with my family, my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, everyone. I got a new place. I got a new man.

  I forgot all about Jack. I turned twenty-one.

  Then one day, I got off at my subway stop, on the number two train, and there he was. He was driving a red Honda, was wearing a suit, and leaning against the car.

  “Did you really think you could leave me that easy, bitch?” He held the gun at his side.

  I saw it. He knew where I lived. I lived only two blocks from the train stop. I was screwed. I silently prayed and continued walking.

  A day later, I got another order of protection, one of fifty thousand the city courts grant a year. The judge said it would be the only thing I would need to start a new life. The maximum time for the order was a year. I figured I could use that time to put my life together. The catch was that I, as a battered woman, had to accompany the police officer when he served the order. Since Jack had moved, we had no choice but to serve it to him on his job.

  The officer handed it to Jack, who was a salesman at a department store. He sold electronics, such as TVs and stuff. I didn’t want to go but the cop said I would be safe.

  A crowd of coworkers gathered around Jack as he was handed the order. The cop said the words and warned Jack not to come near me. A boss was standing near Jack.

  “You got me fired, you bitch!” Jack shouted. “You got me fired.”

  I knew that was not the last I would hear from Jack. I just knew it.

  Three weeks passed. Daniel was my new man. Tall, thin, quiet, and almost serene. He looked like a basketball player, but he didn’t play sports. He was a runner and ran in the marathons, the New York variety and the Boston one. He dressed very well, casual and classy. Always Bill Blass. I loved to drive his car, a vintage Thunderbird Sportster.

  Now I was in his arms and nude, like that first time, for he held my heart within his cupped hands, a love I’d never known with any other man. His kisses were soft and heated. I could dream with him of a future and possibilities, unlike Jack where there was only darkness and hopelessness. I felt his dick inside me, the fire of it, the surging power of the hardened flesh. He took his time to drink in my scent and my sensitive nub, causing me to buck underneath him, easing him farther inside until he flowed so sweetly and tenderly. Skin on skin, sweat, touching and writhing.

  Funny thing was that Daniel never liked to lie around with me. He kissed me on the lips and ran off to the shower.

  I lay in the soiled covers, smelling the aroma of freshly made love, and wondered why it was taking so long for Daniel to shower. I listened. No water, no splashing. The door was ajar. I tiptoed to the closet, grabbed my robe, reached for the gun in the top drawer. It was loaded. I opened the door and eased down the hallway until I pushed the bathroom door open.

  “Oh, shit,” I gasped. Daniel was sprawled on the tile floor, his hands up to his throat, a gaping hole in his neck. Blood poured from the wound with every beat of his heart. He tried to speak, tried to warn me, motioned with his limp arm toward something.

  I turned and faced Jack, his ugly face wearing a distorted smile worthy of his deed.

  “If I can’t have you, nobody will,” he said, matter-of-fact. His gun was held down at his side. “I told you that I will kill you and anybody else that got in the way of our happiness. You will have my baby.”

  I shot Jack. He fell against the wall with the first shot, then pitched forward. I shot him again, this time in the chest. He slumped over with his gun hand trying to lift up, and I kicked the gun out of his grasp and shot him one last time. The bullet went through his forehead.

  I dialed 911 and asked for help. They put me on hold. Daniel was still alive, but barely. His eyes were glassy and his hands were twitching. He was losing a lot of blood. He was going to die.

  I went crazy that summer. They locked me up. I don’t know how long. I was crazy as a motherfucker. Totally insane. I did shit I wasn’t supposed to do. Early on in my imprisonment, I stuck my hand through a pane of glass. My mouthpiece tried to get me put in a minimum-security prison, but they decided on a place for the criminally insane. One of the guards there tried to dry-hump me, thrusting himself on my leg and ass, like a dog in heat. I felt his dick. It was soft and limp against my butt.

  This blondie made him leave me alone. This other son of a bitch with him followed me all day. I kicked him in the balls and he yelped like a scalded cat. Every time I tried to get some shut-eye, somebody fucked with me.

  These folks were real nuts. One girl swallowed crushed glass. Another chick jammed something jagged up in her pussy and bled to death. I would catch the inmates having sex all the time with each other, or with the guards.

  When I told my sister Inez what was happening, she said nobody liked a tattletale. My other sister, Barbara, brought a couple of her church sisters to pray over me, made me hold a cross and read from the Old Testament.

  “A woman is born of sin and trouble,” Barbara said, pointing to my hea
rt. “The Bible says that. Read the Old Testament. Remember Eve led Adam to sin. She ruined him. She turned him from God and all of His glory.”

  “What are you saying, sis?” I asked.

  “You killed him, a man,” Barbara replied. “God will never forgive you. Killing is a cardinal sin. Didn’t matter what he was doing to you. You should have left him. You don’t kill him, for heaven’s sake. Now look at you, locked up in here like some animal.”

  I remembered how Barbara was working as a clerk on a temp job about two years ago, just barely making ends meet, and her boss, a cracker, offered to give her a raise if she would let him feel her ass. If he could see her bare buttocks. And she let him. A woman is a sinner, yeah, right. Damn hypocrite!

  A year into my sentence, I was put in a straitjacket following a stunt I did. I tried to cut an assistant’s throat with a jagged can top. They put me in a harness so I couldn’t do any more mischief. That was when I made friends. Selma and Jan, both nutcases of the first order. Jan would tell the most outrageous lies imaginable. We would all listen to her and howl with laughter.

  “When I was an actress, another actor brought in a soiled Kotex in a mayonnaise jar, saying it was used by Barbara Stanwyck,” Jan laughed, cracking herself up. “Do you believe that?”

  “No.” Every woman patient on the ward screamed in glee.

  “My father got drunk one night and called the FBI, saying he shot J.F.K.,” Jan continued. “My mother thought he was crazy. She left him after that with a deacon from church. The old man went queer and ended up with a sex change in Soho as man and wife. My brother said the last he saw of him was when he spotted him with a bunch of skinheads in the Village, wearing a red Mohawk.”