Blood coated his trembling fingers. He looked me in the eyes.
“You made me do this.” His breathing came out in ragged spurts. “Why?”
I crossed my legs in hopes that the pain would disappear, and along with it, my guilt. But the pain radiated through my body, starting in my abdomen, and ending . . . nowhere. This was never-ending agony, a swirl of pain forever racing through my veins.
The tree branches above me reached for each other like lovers inviting each other to dance. I lost myself in the rhythm of the wind carrying the branches this way and that. The breeze whipped down and froze against the trail of tears still resting on my cheeks.
I closed my eyes, praying to be back in my bed, but the crunch of crisp leaves under his shifting body proved my prayers would go unanswered.
He had not stopped crying and joined me on the forest floor, lying beside me as he looked for comfort. I couldn’t give him any. My body wouldn’t move — the sting of my own choices paralyzing me, keeping me in my place in the dirt.
The last rays of the sun faded behind the tops of the trees. The chill of the air consumed us, his chattering teeth too much to bear. He unfurled himself from my body and lifted me, slipping my jacket off and wrapping it around his shoulders, holding it close to his chest. The bite of cold air was agonizing.
My eyes glossed over to him; my head refusing to move. I always knew it would come to this, but I was too naïve, or perhaps powerless, to stop it. This was all set in motion before I was even born.
I’d been a foolish girl, doing the one thing I’d promised myself I never would. Watching my mother cycle through a parade of men who didn’t have one redeeming quality should have taught me my lesson. The sounds of screams and broken glass and flying fists were all the same, one man after the next, an unending procession of cruelty.
But like my blue eyes and wavy brown hair — now caked in mud and frozen against my neck — some things are just hereditary. My mother taught me this life well — a trait that ran in the women of our family and passed from one generation to the next. It was a tradition of sorts. A tradition not easily broken.
I stared at him as his chest rose and fell over and over again. His tears did not last long.
We were in love, once. It happened fast, and it happened hard. I knew exactly what a man wanted from a woman — to know when to keep her mouth shut, and when to keep it open. I did both well.
Within a month, I’d bid my mother and that life good riddance, and he and I hit the road. We spent our days driving, while nights were saved for getting high and having sex. After sixteen years, I was finally free. The beatings only came every once in a while — and they were all my own fault anyways. But the day the stick lit up, they wouldn’t stop coming.
I told myself to go then . . . I should have listened.
But every baby deserves a father. If he was gonna stick around, then that was good enough for me. Maybe I would have been better off if I’d had a father.
We found our home in the woods, far from anyone else. It was just the two, soon to be three, of us out here.
The pains came early. Too early. He didn’t like that, and he didn’t mind showing me.
I never should have been out here on a night like this, but I had to get away, and he kept the truck keys hidden somewhere he knew I would never find.
Maybe being there wasn’t enough. Maybe the endless suffering didn’t have to be so endless.
I had to protect the one inside me. She needed me. The cycle would stop right here, right now, with me. Never again would the women of our family be punished for the lives we couldn’t escape — for the burdens put on us by our mothers. My little girl needed me, and no one was ever going to lay a hand on her, least of all her father. I wouldn’t incumber her with the inheritance that no child wanted, no child deserved. I could break the tradition.
I just needed to get to town, find a car, and go. I should have known he would follow. The sounds of my childhood surrounded me, the fear hitting just as it had as a little girl.
The chase through the maze of trees was unfair. This body couldn’t run fast, and his was in pique condition. After a lengthy game of cat and mouse, he’d found me. I was on the ground in an instant, rolling down the hill and landing hard on my back, a rock as my pillow.
It was the first time I’d ever seen fear cross his face. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t let me. The only thing it allowed was the touch of pain.
I screamed as he dug her out of me. It was a pain beyond anything I ever thought possible. The blood wouldn’t stop, and neither would the tears.
Howls kept us where we were. It was a miracle the wolves hadn’t found us, but if we dared search for the way home now, well . . . they had the advantage. Here, we had the cover of trees surrounding us.
But this was my chance. I had to get up and protect my girl. We could make it. All I had to do was the most basic of things; get up and walk. I struggled against myself, pushing the ground with everything I had. The truth of the situation refused to sink in.
The sun came up after the longest night of my life, casting its judgement over me. He stood and looked down at me as I lie in my agony, pulling her from his chest and re-wrapping her in my coat. It was the last gift I could give her as they walked home.
I was a prisoner to my grave.
I left my body the night before, the moment I’d made contact with the rock now cradling my skull, but I couldn’t leave my girl. I tried to follow her, my body refusing to cooperate.
Though I guess it was no longer my body.
Once I accepted that, the pain dissipated, and I looked down at my girl from the treetops. I watched her father take her into the house. When they walked over the threshold, my world went dark, and I had only one last thought before I was taken to oblivion.
The tradition lives on.