Даниэла Стил - Neighbors

—

Downstairs, in their separate apartment, Jack was telling Debbie his plan. She smiled when she heard it. “It’s perfect. I like it. That should do the trick.”

“It will,” he said confidently. “I’m tired of helping all of them, and she hardly speaks to us now, now that she has them. She’ll want them out after this.” Jack toasted Debbie with his flask of bourbon, and then lifted it to his lips, and drained it before he set it down again. It was a silver flask that had belonged to Meredith’s father. Jack had found it in a box in a storeroom shortly after they arrived. She had never missed it or asked him about it. It had become his in the last fifteen years, like a lot of other things that Meredith had never missed.

—

Andrew had locked both children in the bathroom as soon as they got to the room. He had given them both their iPads and told them to put their earphones on. And as soon as he locked the door, Andrew had hit Tyla so hard she had literally flown across the room. She hadn’t expected it, not here, where someone might hear them, and she hadn’t braced herself for it. She fell over the rollaway bed that Will had been sleeping in, hit her head, and was dazed for a minute. Daphne was going to be sleeping on an inflatable mattress they had brought from home, since the children didn’t want to sleep alone. The room was big enough for all of them.

Tyla didn’t have time to recover before he hit her just as hard again. She cowered on the floor this time, with her arms over her head. She had learned how to protect herself and not to cry out, since their children were usually in the next room when he hit her. When she looked up at Andrew, her nose was bleeding from both nostrils, and her eyes were glazed. There was hatred in her eyes, but there was unbridled rage in his.

“How dare you go down to that filthy place without my permission. You probably got lice and God knows what else.”

“I administered first aid all day,” she said weakly. “I’m a nurse.”

“You’re nothing. You probably don’t even know how to put a bandage on by now. You haven’t worked in eleven years. You left our kids with that bitch of a housekeeper all day, and a blind man. Are you insane?” Tyla didn’t answer. He wanted to control every second of her day, and anything that might give her pleasure or make her feel good about herself was forbidden to her. “You don’t take a shit unless I tell you to! Do you hear me?” She nodded, and felt a pounding in her head where she had hit it on the rollaway. He was a master in the art of wife beating and knew how not to leave marks on her unless he wanted to. He bruised her breasts when he felt like it, and left marks up and down her arms and legs. He had left a footprint of his shoe on her back once, and almost broken it and could have crippled her. But he usually didn’t leave any telltale signs on her face. The rest she could cover with pants and long sleeves.

He had been beating her for almost ten years now. For a long time, she thought it would get better, but now she knew it never would. It had gotten significantly worse after Daphne was born. She wanted to leave him, but she saw no way out. She hadn’t worked in eleven years since Will was born. Andrew didn’t want her to. So she had no money to go anywhere or escape. She couldn’t ask her family for help. They needed what they had for themselves and their children. And the only money she had was the allowance Andrew gave her for the house. She had looked into safe houses for women once or twice, but without a job she would have had to go on welfare, and she couldn’t do that to the kids. With Andrew, they lived in a nice house and went to private schools. They had extracurricular activities, and a future. He would pay for college one day in the not-so-distant future. She told herself she would leave him when Daphne left for college in eleven years, if she was still alive by then.

Her family was poor and couldn’t take her in. Her two brothers made a decent living as a plumber and electrician, but one had four kids, and the other six. And her sisters were both single moms and worked as maids to support their kids. She was their success story, married to a rich doctor. He wasn’t rich, but to them he was. He made a healthy living, and having grown up poor himself, he saved every penny he could. He accused Tyla of coming from scum, of being shanty Irish, of being stupid, a bad mother and sleeping with other men, which she never had. She had never cheated on him, even once, and wasn’t sure the same was true of him. But whether he did or not, he was brutal with her. He had never laid a hand on the children, or she would have left him, poor or not, but she was sure that they suspected what he did to her. They knew. But she stayed with him to ensure their future. It never dawned on her that a college education and private school weren’t worth it. He was damaging all of them. She couldn’t believe that he had the guts to beat her while they were staying at someone else’s house. He pulled her off the floor by her hair, and threw her on the bed, and didn’t care that her nose and mouth were bleeding on the sheets. He gave her one more hard slap across the face, and then went to let the kids out of the bathroom. He was laughing when he did, as though something funny had happened.

“Your mom fell over the rollaway,” he said, “and bumped her nose. Isn’t that silly?” Both children saw that she was bleeding and she hurried past them into the bathroom to wash her face.

Will looked panicked. He had seen her that way and worse, many times before. “Are you okay, Mom?” he whispered when he came to stand next to her at the sink with a heartbroken look.

“Your mom is fine,” Andrew said, and dragged him out of the bathroom by the neck, as Daphne stared at them with wide eyes. Tyla had washed the blood off by then, and tried to act like nothing had happened, but she needed ice to put on her face and nose and didn’t have any. She didn’t want to go downstairs and get it, in case someone was in the kitchen and saw her. She had splashed cold water on her face instead. She could see a bruise starting on the side of her cheek when she looked in the mirror. She’d have to cover it with makeup. She had become an expert at that.

She put the children to bed and there was silence in the room. Andrew went to take a shower, and while he was gone, Will whispered to her from the rollaway. “Are you really okay, Mom?”

“I’m fine,” she said in a steady voice. “I just tripped.” One day, she would tell him. She had to, so they knew never to let it happen to them, especially Daphne. She was clinging to her dolls, and lay in bed with a sad expression.

“Does your nose hurt, Mommy?” she asked her.

“No, sweetheart, it’s fine,” she lied to them, as she had all their lives. And now she had to lie to the people at Meredith’s house too.

When Andrew came out of the bathroom, she locked herself in and took a hot shower. She wanted to get clean of him. He made her feel dirty every time he beat her, and even worse if he made love to her afterward, or raped her, which he did sometimes too, but not in front of the children. He called her a whore when they weren’t listening. His mother had cheated on his father when he was a boy, and then ran away when Andrew was seven, and he had a profound hatred of women. Tyla always wondered if his father had beaten Andrew’s mother too, if that was why she had run away with another man. Andrew had never forgiven her for leaving him. They had never heard from her again, and if Andrew was anything like his father, she didn’t blame her. She hoped to do the same one day, and run away, but not with another man. She would never leave her kids, and especially not with him. Her children were growing up in a house filled with hate and terror, but she kept telling herself it was the sacrifice she had to make so they could go to private school and get a good education.