Breathe

Penny closed her eyes and pressed her face to the cold windowpane, trying in vain to synchronize her breathing with the croaking frogs.

The early morning lay quiet as the household slumbered. Time suspended between winter's stark weariness and spring's vibrant joy, a stark contrast to the chaos from the previous evening.

She tried to forget the state of the room behind her. Boxes were scattered in the middle of the floor. They were mercilessly torn through. Papers and books were thrown in lopsided piles, their pages bent and ripped. Clothing lay scattered across the floor, empty drawers hanging from the dresser. What little had been placed in the closet now dangled in shreds from half-broken hangers.

Opening her eyes, Penny clenched her hands. Even as the glass's chill eased the welt's stinging pain on her cheek, a sense of something wrong lingered.

A scream broke the morning silence, and Penny’s blood ran cold.

She hurried across the room, pushing boxes and piles of belongings aside. The chill of the glass settled in her stomach as she reached the hallway.

Entering it, she collided with her mother, Emma, as she came up from the darkened staircase. Her own wide-eyed terror reflected in her mother’s hazel eyes. As another wrenchingly desperate cry filled the early morning, the women turned as one to see the sleep-tousled figure stumbling down the hallway.

Penny stooped as the figure reached them and picked up the warm trembling body of her pajama-clad four-year-old. Lily crumbled in her mother’s embrace, her hot tears drenching Penny’s top as her tiny frame shook with anguished cries.

Turning bewildered eyes to her mother, Penny spoke with a calmness she did not feel. “Mom, please check on Piper and make sure she’s okay?”

Emma hurried down the hallway and around the corner without replying to check on her youngest grandchild. Penny remained rooted in place, waiting for her to return. Although only a few seconds passed, the world stood still as she cradled her sobbing child.

Emma sighed with relief when she returned to where Penny stood waiting. “Piper is asleep. Everything looks fine in their room. What on earth’s wrong with her?”

Penny gave a bewildered shrug, struggling with her daughter draped across her. Lily shifted, reaching to grab a handful of her mother’s honey-brown hair, twisting the long strands between her small fingers.

“Maybe she had a nightmare.” Penny turned towards her doorway.

Emma followed her daughter into the large, open bonus room Penny used as a bedroom. Penny glanced over her shoulder and, on seeing her mother’s tense expression, tried to view the room from her eyes. She flinched at what lay in front of her.

Emma’s voice turned hard and brittle. “What was Daniel looking for?”

Adjusting her daughter’s weight, Penny lowered herself onto the end of the couch with the only remaining cushion. Lily’s tears had dried, her desperate cries fading into half-conscious whimpers. She shook her head at her mother as she hummed a lullaby.

Several minutes passed as Lily’s breathing slowed into a deep slumber. Penny stroked her fingers down her daughter’s long blonde hair. She used the motion to gather the courage to tell her mother what had happened. “Daniel said he was looking for my wedding rings. I didn’t think he’d come back tonight. Not after backhanding me.”

Penny brought her free hand up to trace the welt with the tips of her fingers. She told her mother the rest, tears gathering in her eyes. “He wanted my ring to pawn and said he’d leave for good if I gave it to him, so I did. But he refused to leave. He only left after I said I was going to call the police.”

Penny took a moment to slow her breathing and keep the tears from spilling. Crying now wouldn’t be helpful. It would only wake Lily. None of it made any sense. Since moving back to North Carolina a month ago, she believed things were changing for the better with her husband. She knew better than to believe his lies.

“He got what he came for. And I wasn’t going to let him keep harassing me. He didn’t even have a reason for hitting me this time. He laughed about it. I don’t understand, Mama. Even when he least deserved it, I’ve been a good wife.”

Emma walked around the room, righting boxes. “What’re you going to do? This isn’t the first time Daniel’s done something like this.”

Penny turned her head towards the window. The blinds were still pulled high, the faint mark of her cheek where she had pressed it against the window earlier still visible.

She shifted her gaze to her mother. Emma’s short hair swayed back and forth while she tidied up the room. It showed her age, the coarse black strands having thinned as they turned gray. As she studied her mother, Penny questioned whether she knew the difference between being a forgiving and dutiful wife and being a doormat.

Her parent’s marriage had warped her view of what was normal in a healthy and loving relationship. Despite any feelings they had for each other, her mother and father were an explosive combination of manipulation and infidelity.

Every few weeks, like clockwork, one of her parents would leave the other after a volatile argument. Their separation rarely lasted longer than a couple of days. They both always moved on, defending each other’s behavior. At least until another argument broke out, and the cycle started all over again. They drew Penny into the middle of their fights for as long as she remembered. Growing up with it, screaming obscenities and punching holes in the walls were a part of everyday life. It got better as they aged. Their arguments no longer contained violent elements but never moved beyond the drama.

Her observations and questions deepened as she compared her parents’ marriage to her own. She began asking herself questions she wasn’t prepared to answer. Daniel would return with another apology, but she didn’t want to accept this one. He refused any responsibility for his unstable, impulsive, aggressive, and violent actions.

Penny had strong reasons to be anxious about leaving her husband. He owned their assets, including the new home they were due to move into, and she remained home since they married. Staying with her parents had offered her a small reprieve until tonight, but the house would be ready soon. A man bold enough to strike her in her parent’s home would do much worse when they were alone. His actions were escalating. How far would she let him go before she protected herself and her children over him? 

As the young mother explored the terrifying answers, Lily woke up and wailed again in earnest. Dread crept over Penny. Lily had always been prone to nightmares, but this felt different. The darkness she experienced before Lily’s first scream returned, washing over her with an icy paralysis. Blinking away from the fear, she turned Lily’s face up towards hers.

“Sugarbear, you’ve got to calm down. Take three deep breaths with me.” Penny placed her hand vertically on her daughter’s chest as she moved Lily’s hand into the same position on hers.

“Ready? Deep breath in, slow breath out.” Both hands moved in time as mother and daughter slowed their breathing. By the third exhale, Lily had calmed enough to wipe the remaining tears off her face.

Penny replaced her daughter’s hands with her own, cupping her wet pink cheeks.

“Please tell Mama why you’re so upset. I can’t help if you don’t.”

Lily’s eyes spilled over with tears again as her body shook. “Daddy’s never comin’ back!”  

Emma moved to place her hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Why do you think he’s never coming back?”

Hiccuping, Lily looked at her grandmother. “Nana, Daddy said he’s never comin’ back! He woke me up and gave me kisses. And he gave me the biggest hug. And he said he’d hurt himself dead, and it’s Mama’s fault. But it’s not! She’s the bestest Mama ever. But he said it, Nana! He said he’s never coming back.”

Penny lifted pained, panicked eyes to her mother. “Why would he say…”

Sensing the tension in the room, Lily trembled with the force of her renewed tears. “Mama, I didn’t want to go to sleepies after. My eyes were tired, and Daddy sang me a song. Is Daddy ‘kay?”

As Penny quieted Lily’s fears, Emma rose and moved across the room to grab the cell phone left lying on the nightstand.

Walking out of the room, Emma tossed the words over her shoulder. “Penny, I’m going to call and report this as a missing person. Let the police know what she told us.”

Lily calmed once more as Penny dealt with her tears. Hearing the deepened breathing that signaled her daughter was once again asleep, she rose from her seat on the couch. The emotional turmoil of the night appeared to have caught up with the child. Her exhaustion echoed in the sounds of muffled snores as Penny carried her to her bed.

After placing Lily next to her sister Piper, she stood there staring at her daughters for several minutes, her thoughts racing. They deserved more than this constant upheaval. Penny pressed a soft kiss on each of their cheeks, careful not to wake them up. She cracked the door on leaving the room and went to find her mother.

Penny walked down the staircase and into the living room. Emma ended her phone conversation with a “Thank you” as she approached, sitting beside her on the brown leather sofa.

Her mother opened her mouth and closed it again, hesitating.

“Whatever it is, tell me. I need to know.” Penny held her hand.

Emma wouldn’t look at Penny. She stared at the floor, even when Penny squeezed her hands. When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were brimming with fury. “They know where he is. He called them about an hour ago and filed a report.”

Shock left Penny speechless.

Emma rushed to tell her the rest when she didn't ask anything more. “He told them you hit him…that you have a pattern of hitting him.”

“He did what?” Penny jumped up from the couch and paced the living room. “This will never stop.”

Her mother must have opened a window at some point. Salt clung to Penny’s skin, and she smelled the ocean in the air. Her breath suffocated her as the weight of her marriage hung like an anchor chained to her lungs. The familiar feeling of the salt helped her find order in her chaotic thoughts.

When Penny spoke again, she faced the window and the new day's light. Her words held a serene clarity that she had never used before. “This will never end. It’s been seven years, Mom. Seven years of hell. Seven years of him doing the same things over and over while he escalates each time. He’s never going to stop doing this, and he’s involving the kids now.”

Penny's nose burned as her eyes filled with tears. She turned to face her mother.

“How could he involve Lily like that? He shattered her innocence tonight. Her father ripped her world apart and destroyed her sense of peace and safety. She’ll never be the same after this. We’re lucky Piper’s only two, or he’d have done this to her. How much worse would it have been if they were older?” The tears took her then. Penny doubled over, placing her head in her hands as she crouched against the window. Her tears melted into gut-wrenching sobs.

“You have to know that I love you and Dad. I can remember and appreciate all that was loving and good about our household growing up. But for all the love, it was hell with the constant fighting. The fear of what would happen next terrified me.”

Emma interrupted, a hard edge to her voice as she raised a hand to silence Penny, “Hold on a minute. You were spoiled rotten as a kid. We always made sure you guys knew you were loved.”

“I love you, Mama. But the good doesn’t change the bad. My childhood wasn’t happy. It was a living hell. Things are different between the two of you now, but the pain of everything that happened when I was a kid is still there.” Penny hiccupped as she pulled in another three deep breaths. “I won’t live like this again, with the violence, the infidelities, the uncertainty. Knowing someone loves you doesn’t make any of that okay or easy to live with. And I won’t place my children in the middle of this anymore. It’s gone too far this time. I grew up like that, and I never want my daughters to experience that the same way Lily did tonight.”

Penny walked over to the fireplace, her spine rigid. Their wedding photos sat on the mantle. It taunted her with its promise of a happy future she never received. She dried her tears, resolve hard in her voice. “Those two girls are the only thing decent that man ever did. He won’t get another chance to hurt them.”

She took the photo from its place, removed it from the frame, and tossed it onto the cold logs beneath the mantle. She grabbed kindling and a lighter from the basket of wood scraps next to the fireplace. It took a few tries, but when the kindling finally lit, Penny smiled.

She once read how some people burn the belongings of their loved ones after they die to keep their souls from being trapped as they pass into the afterlife. Maybe such a ritual would protect her and her children.

As the fire grew and the smell of burning ink and paper mingled with the briny ocean breeze, Penny turned towards the window and the morning light. The croaking frogs had quieted after sunrise, and for the first time in a long time, Penny breathed without restraint.