the first time, it was so fast or I didn’t expect it because I didn’t
believe it was possible, I didn’t understand what happened, or
how it could; but I remember it and the only thing that means
is that it isn’t the worst. I know how to calibrate torture— how
to measure what’s worse, what’s better, w hat’s more, w hat’s
less. Y o u take the great morbid dark blank days and you have
located the worst. Y ou pray it ain’t buried like Freud says; you
pray God burned it out like I say. Some weeks later he wanted
to have dinner with his sister and brother-in-law. I could limp
with a great deal o f pain. I was wearing dark glasses because
m y eyes had cuts all around them and were discolored from
bruises and swollen out o f shape; I don’t know when m y eyes
got that way; the time o f the wood beam or in the weeks I can’t
remember after; but I had to wear the glasses so no one would
see m y eyes. Them kinds o f bruises don’t heal fast like in the
movies. They all played cards and we had cheese fondue
which I never saw before. I walked with a bad limp, I
concealed the pain as best I could, I wore the dark glasses, I had
a smile pasted on my face from ear-to-ear, an indelible smile,
and brother-in-law brought up the limp and I said smiling
with utter charm that I had tripped over the beams and hurt
myself. D on’t w orry, I whispered urgently to m y husband, I
would never tell. I would never tell. What you did (hoping he
doesn’t hear the accusation in saying he did it, but he does o f
course and he bristles). I’m on your side. I wouldn’t tell.
Brother-in-law, a man o f the world, smiles. He knows that a
lot o f stupid women keep falling down mountains. H e’s a
major in the military; we say a fascist. He knew. He seemed to
like it; he flushed, a warm, sexy flush; he liked it that I lied and
smiled. There’s no what happened next. Nightmares don’t
have a linear logic with narrative development, each detail
expanding the expressive dimensions o f the text. Terror ain’t
esthetic. It don’t work itself out in perfect details picked by an
elegant intelligence and organized so a voyeur can follow it. It
smothers and you don’t get no air. It’s oceanic and you drown,
you are trapped underneath and you ain’t going to surface and
you ain’t going to swim and you ain’t dead yet. It destroys and
you cease to exist while your body endures anyway to be hurt
more and your mind, the ineffable, bleeds inside your head
and still your brain don’t blow. It’s an anguish that implodes
leaving pieces o f you on the wall. It’s remorse for living; it’s
pulling-your-heart-apart grief for every second you spent
alive. It is all them cruel things you can’t remember that went
to make up your days, ordinary days. I was in the bedroom. It
was dark blue, the ceiling too. I’d be doing what he wanted, or
