I bite down. I bite down so hard my teeth meet in the middle. The man jumps back and screams. Blood and vomit coat his lap. My mother is passed out, her chin on her chest.
The man lunges at me, knife raised and sinks it into my shoulder so deep he hits carpet before standing and running outside.
It takes me a few minutes before I am able to calm myself from the nauseating pain enough to wiggle my hand out from the cuff and remove the blade from my shoulder. Strings of flesh and thick carpet fibers cling to the rusty blade.
I look over at my mother, and for a moment, I contemplate shoving it deep into the back of her neck while she sleeps.
Instead, I run. As fast as I can I run into the night, down the road, three miles to the fire station. Naked, covered in blood and vomit, I knock on the door, and when it opens, I fall into the arms of a large black man wearing a blue t-shirt and red suspenders.
I went for help.
I was hoping for death.
Jake needed to know all of it. He needed to see. I sucked as much air into my lungs as I could. “Can you turn on the lamp, please?” I asked. While Jake leaned behind him to do as I asked, I lifted my shirt over my head and tossed it to the floor. I wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could clearly see all of me. I sat on my knees on the bed and waited for him to see who I really was and what I really looked like.
No more hiding.
When he turned back from the lamp, his eyes went wide. Matching slashes covered the tops of both of my breasts. The redness of the injuries never truly faded to white as I had hoped they would. Burn marks, patches of uneven and stretched looking skin—from cigarettes, from cigars, from lighters and the steaming radiator my mother had once handcuffed me to—ran down the length of my right arm and my upper back. In contrast, my left arm was virtually mark-free. The worst damage was a jagged, red scar that ran from below my left breast down to the top of my right thigh, traveling through the inside of my legs, only a half an inch or so away from doing real damage.
My injuries hadn’t been inflicted to cause me to not function physically. They’d been meant to scar my body.
I held my breath.
“These are my punishments,” I said. A hot tear ran from the corner of my eye. Jake leaned into me and licked the line it left on my face. He was trying to take on my pain, consume it.
He sat up on his knees and reached out for me. Slowly, he ran his hand over each of the scars on my right arm. He bent his head and kissed along the lines marring the tops of my breasts above each nipple. They weren’t kisses meant to titillate.
They were meant to heal.
“Mom’s in prison. She got life for what she did to me and for the drugs they found on her. She had a ton of priors so they threw the book at her, no parole.” I exhaled and closed my eyes.
I was done. Exhausted and done.
Jake cupped my face in his hands. He looked me right in my eyes when he finally spoke. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered.
It wasn’t what I expected him to say. I expected him to run.
“Just the way you are, Bee. These scars don’t make you ugly. You don’t need to hide them from anyone. Fuck anyone who thinks anything on someone like you could ever be anything but beautiful. You should be proud of them, baby.”
“Proud?” How could I be proud of the ugliness on my body, left on me courtesy of the ugliness in people?
“Yes, proud. They make you powerful. Each line is a road traveled, an experience you had, whether it was good or bad. Each mark is proof of pain in the past, not the present. You are a survivor, you are a warrior. These are the scalps hanging from your fucking belt. You took the beatings and here you are, in front of me.” He kissed me softly on my lips and my mouth opened to him before he pulled away again. “You are fucking amazing.”
What?
“How can you not see how fucking beautiful you are? He lifted my right arm to his mouth and trailed kisses and caresses from my shoulder to my hand, like he needed to experience with his lips each and every mark, dent, line, and poorly-healed patch of skin on my body. My mind reeled from bringing to the surface the memories I had pushed deep inside since the very night it happened.
Jake didn’t hesitate. He pulled me into an untamed embrace. “She should die for what she did,” he said.
I nodded. She should have. I wished I would’ve killed her then. I wished it every day.
Jake held me tighter, but we weren’t close enough. He raised himself up, just enough for him to remove his shirt before pulling me into him again, with my back to his chest. He leaned into me and pulled the tip of my ear into his mouth. He gently sucked and licked, working his mouth and tongue down to the sensitive spot right behind my ear. I closed my eyes, relishing the feeling of his mouth.