It was sad, but she knew she had to leave. She knew it.
She wondered for a moment why she couldn't hear him. He seemed to be screaming at her. She'd heard muffled tones, obviously his voice... but she mostly just heard a whooshing sound. A sort of vibrating within her heartbeat. It seemed really strange to Sarah. It sort of felt like she was the backward heroine in a John Waters movie. She was really having difficulty comprehending this situation.
She was afraid, this time. She'd seen Rocket mad before, but never THIS angry. She looked past him, Toward the sky. The sun was shining, making his figure seem like a carnival shadow. The trees seemed to be waving at her. "Hi Sarah!", they seemed to be saying. "There must be a breeze...", she thought. Birds were sitting on branches, most probably singing. "This must be a really beautiful day," she was thinking. "But where is God?", she'd wondered. God definately seemed to be missing right now..
This thought struck Sarah as almost funny. She would have laughed, but Rocket was so mad already. It would have only made things worse.
~But where WAS God? She tried so hard to feel His presence within her. She just felt so out of sorts. It was really hard. She was so mixed up just then.
But Sarah knew that God was always with her. She wasn't really sure if God was some great 'fatherlike' being, or if God was some sort of supernatural energy that made everything flow naturally. But at that moment it didn't seem to matter to her all that much. God had never deserted her before. She knew it, and somehow she had to try to find Him.
She started remembering different little jagged pieces of moments. Like the horrible day she'd had to walk into her daddy's hospital room for the very last time. And how hard it was to say goodbye to the only parent she'd ever known. And how God's presence seemed to be strongly in that room, helping her to say goodbye... helping her to heal even after he'd left her. Even leaving her with a feeling that Daddy was still sometimes with her! This byte of memory brought some comfort to her just then.
Her mind switched again to yet another memory. When she was driving in that blizzard on Tenderfoot Hill with bald tires. She remembered losing control at the top of the hill. She started going over the cliff! Taking the fastest route DOWN into Cripple Creek! "God, HELP ME!", she'd screamed at the top of her lungs. And ever so gently, her car was lifted back up onto the road just like magic by some unseen giant hand. Sarah remembered her stiff knee from hitting the steering wheel.. And how grateful she was to have that knowledge of His Power working in her life. She was grateful. And grateful to her guardian angel, as well.
~She looked at Rocket's face, it was red. His eyes were bulging out, the veins in his neck were bigger than she'd ever seen them! What had she done? Nothing. She'd done nothing. Why wouldn't Rocket believe her? Why was he calling her a 'slut'? Sarah had never cheated on him. But that never seemed to matter to Rocket, did it? He always just believed what he wanted to anyway.
Another piece of memory came to her. She'd run outside in the pitch blackness to get something from the car. The dark stillness left her with a 'creeped out' feeling. "I'm scared!", she'd said outloud. Three porch lights turned on. As if just for her. Someone was always looking out for her. She knew this for sure.
Things like that were always happening to her.
In that moment she realized.. God was still there. God was holding her, and keeping her. Right there in that moment. Protecting her from this horrible, horrible......
Oh my God! In that moment Sarah realized that Rocket was beating the hell out of her with a broomhandle in the driveway. He'd drug her by the hair from inside the house. Down the stairs, out the door, through the yard, and finally through the gravel. She was bloody, bruised, scraped, and battered. She'd done nothing, yet she was beaten into a bloody pulp because of Rocket's imagination. "Oh my God", Sarah said outloud. "Oh my God."
In that moment, Rocket's temper began to wind down. Sarah couldn't believe she was still alive, though she wondered briefly if she was going to be allright. She did know with certainty, though, that she had to leave him. In that exact moment. She'd finally realized he was never going to heal. He was broken, and not Sarah, nor anybody else could save him. She started to cry. She wasn't sure if she was crying because she was starting to feel the dull throb of Rocket's abuse, or if she was crying because she knew her life was going to change forever. What was she going to do without him?
Rocket dropped the broom. "Sarah", Rocket cried, "why do you always make me do stuff like this to you?" He started crying, almost like a small child.
Sarah slowly picked herself up from the gravel, noticing the throbbing was getting worse as she tried to move. She went over to Rocket, put her arms around him and whispered, "I love you, Baby".
Finito~
