Make Me Sin

57

There’s a split second before Eric reacts when I think it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Then he lunges toward me, snarling, and proves me wrong.

He slams shut the door and wraps both hands around my neck. He pushes me against the wall and starts screaming. “You lying w***e! You f*****g b***h! You filthy little cunt, I’ll kill you!”

Over and over, he bangs my head against the wall. He’s breathing alcohol fumes into my face. His lips are peeled back over his teeth, his eyes are wild, and I’m convinced I’m going to die. The room gets fuzzy. I claw at his hands, desperate for air. I can’t breathe.

Then I jerk my leg upward, hard, and knee Eric in the balls.

He cries out in agony and doubles over, staggering back. I fall to my knees, gasping and coughing, one hand on my burning throat, the other splayed on the floor, supporting my weight as I struggle to stay upright. Eyes watering, I crawl forward, reaching for the door handle, but Eric has recovered. He lunges at me again. He drags me to the floor, falls on top of me, and starts tearing at my clothes. When I fight him, he backhands me across the face. Pain explodes across my cheekbone.

His class ring. That’ll leave a nasty mark. My brain is somehow removed from what’s happening to my body.

Eric savagely rips open the front of my cardigan. Buttons pop off and clatter over the wood floor. He leans over me, panting, snarling obscenities, grabbing my breasts and squeezing them hard. My hands flail at his face, but he easily knocks them away.

And suddenly I’m floating above myself, looking down. The strangest sensation of calm sweeps over me, like I’ve flown into the eye of a hurricane, where everything is silent and still. My mind is clear, detached, and I can think.

I remember a newspaper article about my father that ran in the Los Angeles Times last summer, after he’d been hired to defend a famous basketball player from charges of domestic abuse. All charges were eventually dropped when my father unearthed the plot between the player’s wife and her lover to try to cash in on the thirty-million-dollar contract the player had just signed. Subsequently, my father filed extortion, blackmail, and conspiracy charges against the wife.

The headline read, “Carmichael Goes for the Jugular.”

I look at Eric’s throat, pale and vulnerable above the open collar of his shirt.

Then I punch him in his Adam’s apple.

He makes an awful gagging noise and clasps his hands around his neck. I get enough wiggle room to move, and shove him off me. As he coughs and retches, I stagger to my feet, run to the kitchen, rip open the junk drawer, grab the bottle of pepper spray my mother gave me when I moved in, and run back over to Eric. I spray the crap out of him, all over his face and upper body.

He screams. Clawing at his eyes, howling and sputtering, he falls from his knees to his ass and starts rolling on the floor.

Panting, I stagger to the door. I have to get out of here. I can’t think of anything else but get out get out get out. I run out of the apartment, leaving the door wide open. Eric’s bellowing follows me out into the hall. I fall against the wall next to the elevator, banging my fist on the call button. Blood drips from my face onto my arm. There are splatters of my own blood all over my chest, my bra, the sleeves of my sweater. My throat is on fire; it’s almost impossible to breathe. Badly shaking, I pull the sides of my torn sweater together over my chest, and start to cry.

When the elevator doors slide open, A.J. is standing inside.

He takes one look at me and makes a sound I’ve never heard a human make before, a guttural rumble of pure rage. Sobbing, I fall forward, collapsing into his open arms.

“Eric, it’s Eric, he’s in my apartment he went crazy I left him inside!”

“I’ve got you, baby.”

I’ve got you. That makes me cry even harder.

One of the neighbors pops his head outside his apartment door. “What’s all the screaming?” He sees me and gasps. “Oh my God. What’s going on?”

A.J. lifts me into his arms. I cling to him, crying into his neck. He growls to the neighbor, “We need your couch.”

There is no refusing, not if the neighbor wants to keep his head attached to his body, which he clearly understands. A.J. barges into my neighbor’s apartment, sets me gently on the hideous, plaid, cat-hair-covered sofa, kisses me on the forehead, turns to the neighbor and snaps, “Call 911. Report an assault.” He pauses for a moment. The look that comes into his eyes is murderous. “No. Report two assaults.” He turns and strides out.

Moments later, there is more screaming from down the hall.

On the ambulance ride to the hospital, A.J. and I don’t speak. So he can ride with me, I’ve told the paramedics he’s my husband. He sits next to me, gripping my hand as I lie on the lumpy stretcher with tears silently rolling down my cheeks.

His knuckles are bloody. I find a perverse satisfaction in that.

In the ER, I’m taken straight in to see a bleary-eyed female doctor, although the waiting room is full. Apparently being covered in blood puts you to the head of the line. I haven’t yet seen my face, and I don’t want to; my cheek throbs so badly I feel it in my toes. I have a CT scan, which shows a hairline fracture of the zygomatic bone, then I get fourteen stitches to close the wound torn in my skin from Eric’s ring. The doctor is concerned about the bruising around my neck; apparently swelling is a common side effect of trauma to the esophagus, and there’s a risk my air passage will swell shut.