Roe v. Wade-related | The Betrayal, by Gayle J. Greenlea

CW: Roe v Wade-related; domestic violence, language

Red streaks marred her makeup, his handprint
throbbed beneath her skin. What would the guests think?
She couldn’t possibly go back downstairs, play
hostess, calmly set out olives for martinis,
wondering what they’d heard; voices flaring
in upstairs rooms. Lord, the walls might speak!
They spoke to her, echoing insults:
‘You yeast-infected slut.’
Her hand shook. She applied more foundation to cover
marks on her face, the place inside that wept
like a child for lost things — like her love. Smooth
Dior was no cover for betrayal; the broken
rib she explained away in hospital when the baby died.
‘Clumsy me, falling off the pier.’ The doctor cleared
his throat, the nurses looked away. No one believed her,
no one spoke a word of hope. She looked at her repair
job in the mirror: a porcelain finish as the ad promised.
Hardly a wrinkle at 40. ‘Slag,’
the mirror spoke to her, but not like the fairy tale mirror
spoke to the beautiful queen, assuring her she was fair.
No. Each time she saw herself in the glass, she heard
his voice, ‘You’re nothing.’ ‘What’s wrong
with your hair?’ ‘You put the spoons in the drawer
backwards.’ ‘Why can’t you tie knots in the plastic bags,
you stupid fucking cow?’
He was calling her now, ‘Darling, come serve
the smoked salmon, won’t you?’ Only the slightest
detectable edge to his voice, as if he were a patient husband.
She closed her eyes, wondering what the guests would think
if she floated down the stairs in her torn stockings,
her Jimmy Choo shoes with the broken heel;
what their faces might look like if she took off
her good shoe, drove the heel into her husband’s
forehead while they watched blood trickle
into their martinis. Dirty martinis; she giggled
at her own joke, took the bottle of pills
from the medicine cabinet, filled a glass with water
at the sink, calmly walked to the bed as the walls swelled.
She sat, listening as they struck her with the usual verbal
assault; then, white noise, as she poured the pills into her hand,
and swallowed the water like a baptism.