Muddy Lane Magical Realism

TW: emotional and physical abuse

"Are you gonna love me?" My voice little more than a squeak, "We haven't been intimate in some time, I..."

"What? Is it this you want?" He jumped up, grabbing my hair, not in the good way, and spun me around. "Here," he ripped open his fly just enough and tore up my skirts.

"Shhhh... No! Plea...se! The kids!" My whisper was strained. In ten quick movements the deed was done, "There are you happy now? He threw me down, his face contorted in disgust, and puffing his chest like one of those ruffling birds during mating calls, "You got a piece of this!"

He sniffed, "You stink!"

'Undone.' I lay where I fell silent, but he couldn't let me be weak. I was jerked upright.

"Kkkkccckkk," I strangled as I dangled there, where his defined forearms and hands thunked my head against the bulwark cedar beam of our mountain cabin. I could feel the menstrual flow down the inside of my skirt, twisting around my legs. And the smell of blood in my nose and on my tongue. My lips and face drew up with a tingling as CO2 levels increased, but weren't replaced by the oxygen saturation they were designed to trigger.

Never quite the white knight he projected to the congregation. Russ gave no homage to the congregation above. His own victimization, a source of torment spewed onto others. 

I looked to the picture of the crucifix over his shoulder and a human hand piercing the flesh with a spike, "Please dont let anything on my face push him over the edge," My babies asleep upstairs added to my distress.

Russ dropped me then like I was a piece of hot iron, and picked up the phone, I could hear the buzzing of the landline, "I hate you, I'm gonna kill you, you're crazy, I'm gonna take your kids away," Then three beeps.

'9-1-1...' Psych!

He hung up. "You took it more extreme than I meant it," He gaslighted, accusing me.

'I hate you, I'm going to kill you,' I took mental note of his actual statements, 'You're crazy, I'm going to take your kids away,' with a 9-1-1 emphasis call, for manipulative control. 'I wasn't wrong. And I am not exaggerating.'

It was midnight, I ran out in that Muddy Lane where half-thawed refrozen snow banks lined my path. I need to believe once again for what was stolen from me.

A spiritual tenderness wrapped around me, and I slowed my pace, my breathing. I looked up to see the majesty of the Milky Way, and billions of indiscernible stars providing glitter for the path. I wasn't broken, abandoned, forgotten; rather, it was his mirror that was shattered.

Magical realism is just a phrase used to describe a holystic relationship of a spirit inhabiting a blood and bone experience. 

I should know, I'd had a number of open visions from the time I was young. Some saved my shame, some my humor, and some my life. 

Often they came on an epiphany like this, at a moment I was ready to recalibrate and do better for myself, my family, my life, and my world.

He was a dark bubba figure, hair curling to his shoulders, kneeling in the Muddy Lane without a spot on him. 

He wore very little clothing but held linen towels with a large wooden bowl filled with reeds and water.

The latter near to the Master Herbalist heart of me. 

Wordlessly, he gestured an offer to wash me up. 

Dirty, bloody, bound... I recoiled. He shook his head, and lifted his eyes to mine, 'No shame,' Compassion emanated from his eyes. The eyes of a god. Psalm eighty-two.

It was a promise, a restored faith in a strong empowering man. Not just any man.

I walked back to the house feeling the sutures of this stitching in my heart and spirit.

With simple boundaries set, my husband chose to move on when I would no longer play the passive aggressive game of a narcissist.  

Russ sat there in the family counselor's office, supposedly a last ditch rescue effort, but after more than an hour of victimized venting, arrogance again distorted his features in a pied piper's grin. It was in anticipation, his neatly woven tale would stupify the multitudes to become his mindless followers.

"Who do you think you are," The counselor asked simply, "And what are you doing here in her life if you've openly admitted you don't love her."

"I'm Bill," Came the unexpected reply.

Russ stretched out his legs, once more attempting to own the room with his charisma, he yawned, "I'm here to kill her. And there's nothing you can do to change that." The chill in the Spring air rivalled that of my soul.

Indeed nothing had happened yet, so nothing could be done... At least not without adding publicity to my children's shame, and they'd already lost childhood cheer and joy... And a father.

Enough said.

It was a sunny pleasant afternoon for the first football practice of the season with Wade's community team. A last minute text interrupting my pre-work rituals, 'You'll have to get Joe to his football practice yourself,' The text came in, 'These are my date nights, and it cramps my life.'

'You're dating...' I replied, 'As in dating?'

'Yes, but I don't want a divorce and if we want to get together sometime when it's mutual... then it's legal.'

'Shouldn't intimacy always be mutual,' Shaking my head at the abundance of relationship ignorance, I texted a reply, 'How interesting, you think you need to explain yourself. 

As for Joe, You promised him, and you've never made a game yet, in six years.'

'Let him walk,' Came the callous, although not surprise response.

'I dont want the kids walking.' I affirmed, 'I'm officially breaking a life cycle unconditionally. I was confronted by a guy accosting me on the street the other evening, pulling me into an alley, and asking me for a treat to satisfy him on his long trip home. I shoved him over, and made it home to safety, hitting the porch wall, for my sons. Chaz, whose pounding footsteps were heard above my head met me at the door. I'm not a rapist the voice called out from the dark. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably.'

There was a long break in texts, 'What did you do to promote it? Guys dont just attack women without encouragement,'

'You're one of them!' I had words suddenly, 'You're a demon. Go to hell!' I threw the phone in as much fear as anger. How could I have unwittingly participated in this man's inhumane choices for years.

Rome knelt in an offer to clean my scrub pants, gesturing with wipes to the place where an elder had dumped the contents of her brief before I could manage the situation as desired.

His ponytail flipped over one shoulder as he looked up at me... I'd seen them before. The compassionate eyes of a god. Psalm eighty-two.

Previously, a barely accessible memory, the time for the realization of my vision to naturalize, was now. As usual, I could only see in part what promise it held.

One thing I knew it did, I could trust Rome to be a true friend, a man, regardless of whatever this partnership was when we finally named it. 

The knowledge was a precious gem. And it was mine. I was becoming a wealthy woman, I'd collected a grip of these now.

Once upon a late night round, roust, or rescue, Rome told me he'd just received a call from Russ, "Are you Gia's friend... boyfriend?" The conversation was relayed.

"What's it to you?" Romero gave his best streetwise huff.

"Then he just hung up on me." Rome said.

A text alerted on my phone, it was from Russ while Rome and I were discussing this latest development, 'Wow!' Russ' only unique sarcasm was ugly, 'Your strong-man, Indian-friend is sure dumb as a post!'

I didn't respond.

"Rome..." Beside myself, I came back to our conversation and continued to do what could only be described as whining, "I don't know..."

"Stand your ground Gia," His voice low, slow, and more than a little firm, just the way we offered a bridge of strength for those in our service, "You're better than this, stronger than this, have more faith than this. I've seen you at work, I've seen you with your kids. You need to lean hard into your faith right now. I'm gonna hang up now, let you handle your business. I'll talk to you when morning comes." Click. 

'He'd really hung up!?!' 

The momentary shock wore off.

I shifted focus, 'No one's ever believed in my ability to depend on my own choice, strength, and faith... That I could or would do well. What a friend.'

The struggle for any consuming hero-wannabe dissolved... And it left here only me in my redesignable palace of peace.