A Woman Gone Mad (11 page)

Whoosh! I’m under. I’m under, and dammit, I can’t come back up. Don’t want to come back up—ever. I can’t breathe. All I see is stars, fireworks, and multicolored blinking Christmas lights behind my eyelids. In the distance, from underneath whatever world-rocking wave I’m under, I hear my screams pierce the night.

“…Don’t care if it takes all night…every drop…over and over…fill you up…” I hear him rasping against my neck as I start to float back up, “…hear, me Lil? …puttin’ my baby in you…don’t care how long…mine, you’re mine, and you’re gonna…my baby in you tonight, Lillian Shaw.”

Wait. Hold the fucking phone. What in the hell…?

I can barely hear it, but she’s there. Lilly is whispering from a hidden corner somewhere in my mind.
“Don’t tell him, Lil. He can’t handle it. Don’t tell him about the birth control pills we started. Please, Lil. Just let him think whatever he needs to think.”
At the end, when I’m trying to push Lilly out of my mind and get back to what the hell Leo is saying, I think I hear her mumble,
“Doesn’t matter anyway. Thank God summer is almost over…”

I feel Leo thrust, stabbing deep inside me, once, twice. Then shudders rack the entire frame of his body as I feel him pouring himself into me. I feel his hot breath bathing down my neck and onto my bare breasts. I hear him saying over and over, “Love you, Lil. Love you so fuckin’ much, baby. So much. Never loved anyone like you. Never. Never will. Always love you, baby. Always.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull his weight onto my body, cooing to him softly, “I love you too, Leo Phillips, more than I’ve ever loved anybody in my whole life, and I will forever, I promise baby.”

He looks up at me with his dark blue eyes twinkling and a boyish grin across his face and whispers, “I just put my baby in you, Lil. Been keepin’ up with you and your, ah, woman…stuff.” His huge smile splits his face and my heart crumbles at what I know. “And I just put my baby in you. You’re mine, Lil. No matter what, now I know you’re mine.” He starts raining sweet kisses all over my face. Then, cupping my head in his giant hands, he lowers his mouth to mine and sears me to my bones with a kiss I will never feel again with any other man for as long as I live.

I want to tell him so badly that I’m on birth control. I want to be truthful and honest with him, but I can’t make myself break his heart. I can’t watch his beautiful smile fade away by telling him that I’m not ready and that I made sure it couldn’t happen.

We lie there under the stars for hours. He brought a sheet, and it’s wrapped around our naked bodies that are wrapped around each other. We feed each other the fruit he brought in the picnic basket. And we talk. We talk about everything and about nothing. We talk about his plans for me, for us.

I allow myself to get wrapped up in his plans and become excited about what he says is our happily ever after. I listen to him in a trance as he tells me about us running away, stopping in Vegas to get married, then not stopping again until we hit California.

He tells me that he’s told his mother all about me, that she’s excited to meet me, and how we’ll live with her until he can afford to buy us our own place with a room for the baby. Every time he mentions the baby, I feel sick over lying to him. It also brings up the fears I have about what’s going to happen to us after I start school Monday.

After a while, Leo rolls me onto my back and makes sweet and tender love to me, using his whole body. His hands, his mouth on my mine express how deep his love runs for me and me alone. But the entire time Leo makes love to me, all I feel is him slipping further and further away as reality seeps in. And my reality is very far from Leo’s plans.

It’s funny. No, not funny—it’s odd. It’s odd because these feelings are the complete polar opposite of what he is expressing to me, showing me, whispering to me with his body. It’s an extreme contradiction of what I witness by looking into his eyes. However, none of what he is telling me with his eyes, body, and soul can ease the splitting, cutting, ripping pain I feel as reality shreds my heart.

Around five in the morning, Leo pulls his car up near my house and turns it off. I turn my body towards his and immediately see that he has tears in his eyes. “Baby? Leo, what’s wrong?”

“You tell me, Lil,” he whispers, looking down.

I watch big, fat tears roll down this man’s face. This man the size of a brick wall. This strong, domineering, no-holds-barred, and balls-to-the-wall man. “Leo, what the fu—”

“Just stop it, Lillian. Fucking stop it. Okay?” He’s looking at me, not giving a single fuck to even try to wipe away his tears. “You were there with me all night. You were right fuckin’ there. You were there, screaming my name bloody murder across the fuckin’ lake when I was slamming my dick in you. You were there, looking at me like a kid on Christmas morning when I was tellin’ you about how our life was about to change, holdin’ you, feedin’ you grapes and strawberries! You were right there, Lil! Now tell me where the fuck did you run off to in that head of yours when I was makin’ love to you, Lil, huh? Where’d you go then?” He’s screaming, I watch as his eyes plead with my soul.

“I was there then—” I try to get out, but I am cut off by his rage.

“NO YOU FUCKIN’ WEREN’T, LIL. DON’T YOU DARE FUCKIN’ LIE TO ME!” he seethes.

I’m silent. I watch my hands wring themselves together. I’m at a complete and utter loss of words.

“Where’d you go, Lil? Huh? Into that damn head of yours where you let shit get all twisted up?”

“Leo,” I whisper. That’s all I have. ‘Leo’ is all I have in my word bank at that moment. A sad and horrid sob escapes my chest through my throat, because now I know that, because of my stupid mind, the thing that was making me uncertain while he held me and made love to me, throwing out warning bells and red flags,
that
thing will be the reason I will have to admit that I lost him.

And as soon as this realization dawns on me, I’m ripped over the console. Now I’m straddling his narrow hips. He yanks the seat back to allow us more room. Then both of his hands grab and pull my face to his, our tears mixing, our breath mingling, our souls combining. Finally our mouths are fused together as we eat, bite, lick, and kiss each other back into a frenzy.

Our emotions are palpable. They’re so thick and heavy that anyone in a mile radius of us can feel it.

When he pulls his face away, using his hold on mine to pull me back and look me dead into my eyes, Leo Phillips declares as calmly and surely as possible with tears shining in his eyes, “I won’t lose you, Lil. Not to any other man, not by time, and not by distance. And for damn sure not because of that fuckin’ head of yours.”

I watch his eyes continue to rain tear after tear down his face through my blurry vision, and then I witness his determination and resolve come up around him like a steel shield.

“You understand me, Lil?”

“I understand, baby.” I keep my bloodshot, teary eyes on his. “I love you, Leo. No matter what, I always will. When I made you that promise, I meant it, okay?” I whisper kisses along his jawline, down his neck, up to his ears, and back to his mouth.

“Hey,” he says quietly with a smile spreading across his face, “There she is. There’s my baby girl.”

“Hey,” I whisper to him.

“Look at me, Lillian. Don’t leave me again okay, baby? Don’t like it when you leave me.”

“Okay, I won’t leave you again.”

“Gonna marry you, baby girl. You hear me? I will marry you, Lil.”

We lean into each other and kiss until we become breathless and we’re gasping for air.

“Go on and get your sexy little ass in the house before I have you riding this stick, shifting down on it.”

I see my Leo again. When I see him surface and know the sad serious Leo is gone for now, I smile. Laughing, I scoot back over to the passenger seat and grab my shoes and purse. I look over my shoulder and stare at him then whisper, “Goodbye, baby. See you later. Love you.”

“I love you too, Lil.” His smile is so fucking beautiful. He’s so fucking beautiful.

I take a mental snap shot of him so that I’ll have a still frame of this exact moment that I’ve committed to memory, for when things grow dark. I can’t tell you how I know, but I do. This is an unknown turning point in my life, another mental camera snap that will come back and haunt me throughout my entire life.

If I would have known now what I’ll know in the future, I never ever would have fucking gotten out of that car. And I never ever would have gone into that house on that early Saturday morning.

It’s Sunday night and I’m watching the movie Dazed and Confused in my room. I have it cranked up pretty freaking loud because of the soundtrack alone—Slow Ride by Foghat, Low Rider by War, and damn Sweet Emotion by AEROSMITH, baby!

The thought is just crossing my mind that I haven’t heard a word from Leo all day when my dad comes slamming into my room. Allen is hot on his heels. So is my mom, yelling, “David! I told you, this stays between
us.
Dammit!”

I watch from my bed in absolute confusion as my dad first tries to turn my TV off. Then he grasps the cords in the wall and yanks them out, busting the plastic outlet covers and splitting the drywall as he continues to pull until the TV falls silent.

“Daddy?” My voice cracks and is seeping with fear and confusion. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean to have the volume—”

I’m cut off by my Daddy’s roar. I then hear Allen pleading, “Dad, Dad. Listen, whatever it is you
think
she did, she didn’t do it, Dad. I did it, okay? Dad!” I watch in amazement as my baby brother seems to grow in front of my eyes. He’s gathering his determination and sureness. Once he has it, he stands taller and sternly says, “DAD! I did it! Don’t look at her. She didn’t. Look at me, Dad. I did it!”

“Unless, SON, you’re the one that’s probably knocked up by some
PIECE OF SHIT.
Unless, SON, you’re the one that acts like a whore and goes to, where, Katie?” I hear my mom mutter something, but I can’t be certain because all I hear are the loud puzzle pieces clicking together and the sound of a little girl’s heart shattering—the sound of a little girl, if it had a sound, becoming a slut, a piece of trash in her daddy’s eyes. However, through all of that, I hear my Daddy scream, “Airport MOTEL!”

I can’t tell you exactly what happens after I realize that my daddy is looking at me like I am the carrier of airborne AIDS. The next thing I remember is being slammed against the wall and my bare feet leaving the carpet with my daddy’s right hand around my throat. I remember everything going black right as I watch my baby brother tackle my daddy from behind.

My last coherent thought is,
What in God’s name have you done to your family, Lil? Your mom is huddled in the corner, screaming at your daddy to stop choking his daughter, and your baby brother, who is two feet shorter than your daddy is trying to pull him away, punching with every ounce of fight he has in him.

As my vision tunnels and things go dark, I hear Lilly whispering,
“Thank God summer is fucking over.”

Then my world turns black.

R
emember that mental snapshot I took of Leo right before I got out of his car? That is the image I cling to night after night for an entire year.

Because I never see Leo again.

He becomes like a ghost, a myth, or something I may have dreamed up. And at times this makes me question my own sanity. Darkness and depression become my refuge; they comfort me like close friends.

I don’t eat, and when I sleep, I wake up screaming in pain, clutching at my heart. I stop speaking to anyone and everyone. My grades sophomore year plummet, and I barely pass the eleventh grade.

In this dark recess, I lose any friends I may have had. I do write; I fucking write constantly. I write poems. I write Leo’s and my story over and over again. And in the stillness of the night, I slip outside the house with my cigarettes and I read our story until dawn.

I read our story only for the purpose to feed these new masochistic urges that have recently surfaced within me. If I feel the pain, if I pick at the scabs and scars on my heart and make them bleed, it solidifies that the love Leo and I had was real. It was real and beautiful and now it’s gone.