The Sky Grows Grey ~ Chapter 7

This Saturday wasn’t typical; this Saturday was all wrong. The buzzing finally stopped, and I could draw one of two conclusions. Either he had come home and is leading them toward the apartment, or they had finally given up and decided to have their fun filled day without me. I had hoped it was the latter. Though I missed my brother and cousin, I was not in the mood to pretend that all was well in my ‘happy home.’ I was in no mood to listen to Mother tell me how much of a failure I had become and how I could have had much more if I had only listened to her. I had, a long time ago, grown weary of her constant criticism. Furthermore, I had far too much going on in my pounding head to put on a show for anyone, so I had to figure out my next step was to be.

I waited by the bathroom door to listen for the key sliding into the lock of the front door. I was fully prepared to jump in the shower and make it seem as if that I why I hadn’t heard the buzzer. After several minutes, I knew there was no way that they had met up with him; so I was able to relax for a bit. I knew, though, that there would be a later when they would eventually show up.

I took a couple of the Lortab that I was prescribed several weeks back. I sat on the bed and read the label of the pill bottle. “Do not operate heavy machinery while using this medication.” Yeah, like I would ever be allowed to operate heavy machinery anyway. For the most part, I wasn’t even allowed to drive and had to do most of my errands by taxi or walking depending on the distance. Sure, I had my learner’s permit, but he absolutely refused to take me to get my license. I guessed that me having a license meant to him that I would be given a sense of freedom, and that was something he would never allow.

For a bit I contemplated on whether I should take the entire bottle of pills. I was in more pain than I ever had been, and when I slept, I did not sleep well. I thought of how nice it would be to close my eyes and drift from my body into the afterlife. I wondered if I would be stuck in purgatory, if there were such a place, if I let myself submit to peace. I figured if that were my fate, I would be better off anyway. I envisioned closing my eyes and letting myself drift off into darkness. To be able to truly rest and be safe was something that I had coveted my entire life, but it was something I had never known, and something that I may never have.

I snapped myself out of my fantasy, and I read the doctor’s name on the label, Dr. Quinley. I tried to remember what I went to see Dr. Quinley for, but I was having difficulty remembering. I reclined on the bed and thought about it, but was still coming up blank. “The date, maybe the date will trigger my memory.” I read the date to be September sixth. “September sixth?” I glanced up at the cross-stitched twelve month wall calendar a co-worker made for my Christmas present last year and realized that Labor Day fell on September sixth this year. “Oh, yeah! I remember now.”

…The big Labor Day party at Chewey’s apartment complex. He was allowed to invite five guests to the huge pool party. My husband and I were two of Chewey’s guests. The music was pumping and echoed between the buildings of the complex. Bikini clad girls were dancing around the pool, laying on the grass, and swimming in the pool. Four large barbeque pits were blazing, and the scent of hot dogs, hamburgers, and smoked sausages lingered in the air. Hundreds of coolers filled with sodas, waters, beers, and wine coolers were littered across the lawn.

I donned my new bathing suit that he had bought for me. Surprisingly, this bathing suit wasn’t as frumpy as the clothing he liked for me to where. It was a quite sexy one piece with its leopard print. The bathing suit was cut down to my belly button in the front, right above my rear in the back, and had only a one-inch strip on each of the sides holding it together. It looked like something Jane would wear from the old black and white Tarzan movies. Strips of material that looked ripped, worn, and torn pieces of a skirt dangled from the bottom seams of the suit. The shape of the suit accentuated my hourglass curves, and the suit looked as if it were made specifically for me. I was fairly surprised when he brought the bathing suit home for me to wear as he didn’t like for anyone to notice me.

He and I entered the chicken tournament. We were up against one of the guys he played basketball with at his junior college and some blonde cheerleader. I remembered thinking she must have had some waterproof makeup on because her makeup was perfect even after she ducked her head under the water before climbing on her partner’s shoulders. I climbed on his massive shoulders. My keeper had told me how important it was for him to beat this guy because they were always in competition for the same position for the junior college basketball team. Unfortunately, he and my husband had both tried out for the same position on the university team, and he beat my husband out of the position. I assumed that beating his rival out on this game of chicken meant that he could have beat him in one way or another so that he could have a little bit of vengeance and dignity. I felt we were pretty evenly matched and was confident that I could do well against the other girl.

The whistle blew and the competition began. I shoved toward her with all my weight, but she must have put an entire bottle of tanning oil on her body. My hands just slid over her shoulder, and I momentarily lost my balance. She shoved back and raked her acrylic nails across my skin.

“Hey! That’s not fair. You clawed me,” I muttered.

“If you can’t take the heat get out of the pool,” she answered.

“Fire!!! It’s fire you dimwit! If you can’t take the heat, get out of the fire,” I remarked as I shoved toward her chest.

She yanked me by the hair, “Bitch! You are going down!”

I roped her ponytail around my arm and yanked with all my might. She wobbled to the left, and her partner lost his footing. She grabbed my leg to balance herself. However, the couple fell into the water anyway, but not without taking us down with them. Both teams were disqualified rule number one was ‘No pulling hair.’ Crap! Although we had gotten the best of them, I did not like the way this was going to play out.

I swam to the edge of the pool and pushed up on the tiled rim to pull my body out of the water. Suddenly, I was yanked down by strong hands clenched my waist, and my hands slipped on the wet tile. My forehead crashed against the edge of the pool, the tile tore into my skin, and I knew that this was going to be bad. Normally, I did well at holding my breath under water, for I had once been timed to hold my breath two minutes and forty-five seconds. However I wasn’t prepared to go under at that moment.

My body wanted to breath in fresh air, but there was none to be found in the chilly depths of the pool. I looked up beyond the hand holding my head under and beyond the bubbles escaping my body, and I swore I saw him smiling down out at me. He was getting pleasure from watching me struggle beneath him and fighting for my life. I couldn’t control my lungs any longer, and they drew in a deep breath of water. The pain was excruciating as my lungs drew in the liquid, and I felt little pinpricks that began in my lungs and spread throughout my body. I quickly began to lose the strength to fight any longer, and my vision faded. I drew in breath after breath of water, and the light in my eyes began to darken from the outside in. My body fell limp.

Suddenly, I awoke to the sound of the party around me. I heard people gasping “Oh! God!” and “Is she going to be okay?” I also heard him say, “Breathe, damn it! Baby, breathe!” His warm lips were over mine as he blew one more puff of air down into my lungs. I swiftly bolted my body forward as I coughed up water. My body violently wretched up more and more water with each breath I achingly pulled in. Sitting with my legs outstretched in front of me, I hacked up more and more water.

“You gave us quite a scare there, girl!” Chewey exclaimed as he wrapped a towel around my trembling body. “What in the hell happened? I saw you swimming over to the edge of the pool, turned around to grab a beer; and when I turned back around, your husband was pulling you up to the edge of the pool.”

I so wanted to tell Chewey exactly what happened. I glared up at my tormenter, and he furrowed his brow and glared right back as a warning that I better tread carefully when speaking. “Nothing, Chewey. I’m fine,” I snapped showing my disdain.

“Don’t you give me that bullshit! I’ve known you my entire life and you were always one of the best swimmers back home. What in the hell happened out there?”

“I just slipped and hit my head on the edge of the pool. The blow must have knocked me out.” I looked up at my keeper, and he grinned. I lowered my eyes with the shame of lying to one of my life long friends.

“Uh-huh. Right!” Chewey stated sarcastically. I looked toward him and saw he was glaring at my husband. “I don’t remember you ever being that clumsy growing up.”

“Come on, Chewey, you know better than that,” I lightheartedly replied. “Remember when I was in third grade and broke my arm skateboarding…”

“That’s because your sister threw rocks in front of the skateboard.”

“…and remember that I spent most of the summer in a cast. And, Mom had rented the pool for a pool party and couldn’t get her deposit back after my cast was put on, so I had to sit in the shallow end with a garbage bag over my cast while all of you got to have a blast…” I rushed as I spoke. “…and remember I only had my cast off for two weeks when school started, and we had that tornado come through town, and I fell in the hallway and got trampled by the other kids and broke my other arm?”

“That’s because Ramon pushed you down. I also remember you jumping off of the roof of the house onto the trampoline, which would propel you high in the air, as you would flip to the ground. Girl, I have never known you to be near as clumsy as you are here lately. Look at you! You are covered in bruises. What’s going on?” He asked again. From the scowl on his face, I could tell Chewey knew. Like he said, he grew up with me, and he knew me far better than most other people in my life.

“Awe, come on, Chewey! I am just the same old dare devil I’ve always been. I must be getting too comfortable with my abilities, so I’m not as careful as I should be.” I pushed into his upper arm offsetting his balance as I smiled. “Chewey, I’m fine. I am just a little overworked. I’ve just been really tired; you know?” I softly claimed with my smile never leaving my lips.

“Yeah, I know,” he repeated and smiled back at me. “You shouldn’t be working yourself as hard as you’ve been.”

“I know, but I work the way I do because I want to, not because I have to, or someone is making me. I make my own choices, Chewey. I work hard now so I can enjoy my life later, and I am happy working.” Chewey was only about halfway buying what I was saying.

“Okay, girl! Whatever! Come on. Let’s get that forehead of yours cleaned up.” Chewey helped me to my feet, and I swooned.

I lightly put my hand to my head. “Whoa, Chewey! That is not good.” I smiled, and I pulled my hand from my face. The bright red blood mixed with the water rolling down my face. “Chewey, am I bleeding?”

“Yeah! Will you let me take you to the emergency room? I think that you may have a concussion because of the way you lost your balance.”

My husband jerked me away from Chewey and in an aggravated tone barked, “I am perfectly capable of taking care of my own wife. Thank you! We’ll be going now.”

Chewey bowed out his chest and readied himself to defend my honor as he did time and time again. “I don’t think she needs to go anywhere with you! She has never looked as battered and bruised as I have seen her here lately! She has never been as solemn, timid, and complacent as she has been since she met you! I’m not saying she deserves me, but I know she deserves far better than you!”

He swung his fist out toward Chewey, just barely missing as Chewey ducked. I slid in between the two guys. “Now stop it before someone….” I started before his second punch landed in my right jaw. The force of the blow knocked me to the gravel of the playground area of the courtyard. The sharp rocks and sand dug deep into my skin. ‘Great more wounds,’ I thought as the two men threw punches into one another. I tried once again to stand in-between them only to be knocked to the ground again. This time, I landed on my left arm. The same arm that I broke skateboarding ten years earlier.

I tried to push myself back up, but cried out from the pain shooting up my arm. Chewey stopped fighting and bent down to help me up, but my tyrant delivered a forceful blow to Chewey’s right cheek. He lost his balance, and we both fell to the ground. The weight of both of us crushed my left arm, and I shrieked out in pain.

Dr. Quinley scolded me at the hospital for being so clumsy, and Chewey glared at me after hearing the story I told him. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and my lifetime friend shook his head as he closed the curtain between our beds in triage. The cast wasn’t as heavy as the one I wore as a child. I don’t think Chewey ever told the doctors or the police the truth about what happened that night. We were never invited back to Chewey’s home, and I didn’t blame him. I was overcome with guilt and grief at the loss of my friend; and for the first time since I married, I felt totally alone….

I must have dozed off after taking the pills because when I awoke, the sun had fallen and night enveloped the city. There had been no other buzzing for the afternoon unless I possibly slept through it. I had never taken two pain pills at one time before because just one seemed to bring about grogginess.

The room was dark and chilly. I grabbed my long, black, oversized, button-down sweater from the closet, and tightly wrapped my body in it. I walked over to the thermostat and turned it from sixty-five degrees to seventy-two in order to warm up the tiny apartment. I fed the fish and dug a cigarette from my secret hiding place. Although he smoked, I wasn’t allowed to even take a puff or drag from a cigarette because, as he put it, “It causes low birth weights in babies, and in the off chance that the doctors are wrong, I will not allow you to hurt my child.” I grabbed the lighter my brother had bought for me as a graduation present before I moved away. The lighter was a sterling silver lady’s Zippo with a large C★, for ‘sister’ engraved on the front.

I stepped outside the door and scurried over to the mailboxes where I could see him if he pulled into the parking lot long before he could see me. He never seemed to notice cigarette smoke on me because he smoked a lot, I never smoked in the house, I washed my face and hands after smoking, and I brushed my teeth right as well.

The bottoms of my feet ached from the cold concrete as I lit my cigarette. I took a long drag and held it in for a while because I enjoyed the head rush I got by holding in the smoke from the first cigarette of the day. Although it was already evening, I had not had a cigarette all day. I watched the puffs of exhaled smoke dance their way up toward the awning. Each tendril of smoke twisted and turned as it climbed up the side of the rough tan brick. I watched the smoke as it reached to the ceiling of the walkway. I watched as the smoke slithered through the air and wove in-between tiny silver strands of a long abandoned spider web. The vacant web provided a home to tiny ice crystals that shimmered from the glow of the yellowed overhead light fixture, which gave the illusion of an expensive woven diamond necklace. Each ice crystal sparkled every color of the rainbow.

I empathized with the carcass of a moth just barely dangling by a silvery thread on the edge of the web. I wondered how long it suffered as it hung trapped from that thread. I wondered if it met its end quickly, snuffed out by the spider before he left to find another home. I knew the moth must have suffered a great deal in its new home that clipped her wings; for I doubted the spider was anywhere around when the pale white moth discovered its new prison. The moth was just dangling by the thread and hadn’t been wrapped for preservation. I knew she must have hung there afraid that he was going to come back. She must have known that there was no escape and no way out for her. I wonder how long she struggled and fought before she just gave up and let the darkness overtake her. She must have known once she could no longer fly; and without her freedom, she would quickly begin to die. She was no longer free, and all the choices she had left in life had been taken away from her. And, I knew that I was her, already transformed in the image of beauty and strength, but ensnared within my own web.

...to be continued...