Weekend Freewrite with prompts via @marriannewest

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Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark face and the extent of its passion. Felt sure in a way in which she could never have imagined when she exchanged vows in front of Judge Neilson at the county court house just six months prior. They had traveled the thousand miles to visit her mother and father three states away and she was getting ready for the day, combing her hair and applying make-up in the too tight, brown-shagged bathroom with poor lighting. He came to the door and began violently yelling at her using expletive’s she’d never heard come from his beautiful lips before. She began to laugh—thought this was all some kind of parody or joke of sorts, but he continued and when she asked him to slow down, explain that she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her or why he was so angry, he amped up his ire and his spittle at the same time reached her eye and lip. She sat down, legs shaking, on the lidded toilet already pressing at her legs as it crowded the mirrored space. He took her by the upper arms shook her while stating he knew what she’d meant when she’d behaved in such a way. He was a tall, smiling blonde most of the time, but now she saw a shadowy overlay, sweet and viciously sticky.

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Let your house do the dirty work. I am here, in my family house, my parents’ house, seeing that my fresh and happy husband is just as dark as my father had been and I am seeing this for the first time! Oh, waves of Daddy-does in coke-chocked steel-mill dust and Dad is the person I’d wished would die in a plane crash on one of his trips. How is it this time, this second choosing of husbands, the one who was a good-cop, people-pleaser, could now be too, one of those who suffers explosive rage? I again know the drill of making up my face to cover the cowering and shaking animal I am with a double-layer of painted on peach foundation, blackened kohl eyes and rose colored, glittered cheeks. My mother will see the missing look as soon as I enter the kitchen and she won’t hesitate to ask him, “what is wrong with her,” because it is me with the problem, I am the crazy one, the emotional, blue-roomed kid. I must be on my best behavior here in their house. I won’t let them know that I have again chosen the broken toy, been reckless enough, and been such a devoted follower to the destruction of growing up amongst torn apart house plants and Dad pitching our Siamese cat, Elizabeth, in an angry outburst from the balcony into the wet, February snow.

photo credit: Gaelle Marcel/unsplash

Helping Charlene to prepare some of the meal, I kept my head somewhat down and my eyes averted, asking her what she’d dreamed about last night and only half listening to many names of characters, but my ears perking when she starts to talk about being in a great theater, red, velvet curtains and large seats similar to the planetarium’s. An usher asks her to move seats and she’s a bit disappointed because it seems off the row she can’t see as well. And because of this, she is “chosen,” by the usher to be a part of the show, but she finds this means a sort of shanghaiing, in which a trap door opens beneath her seat and she is sucked into some abyss of recycling bins and old boxes before being resurrected, like a woman being sawed in half on stage for everyone else’s entertainment. Charlene’s dream seems prophetic in it being a morning mystic message meant just for me as I scramble an entire dozen of eggs trying to prevent my tears from soiling the yellowed, happy yolks. A house holds its ghosts and secrets and the rules, a throwing of ancestral runes and witches stir the potions, cast the humble prayers.