Chapter 12: Ojos Negros
“Dance
is the hidden language of the soul” - Martha
Graham
http://youtu.be/_qgbFyl8JzM
Samantha
arrived to Zumba class late on purpose.
She was trying to avoid any sort of conversation before or after the
class. She had missed the last few
classes of Zumba the following week because the bruises were too
noticeable. Today, though she had just
enough makeup to hide her battle wounds.
Lucy’s energetic teaching style always helped Samantha get lost in the
music. When Samantha was dancing, the
whole world went away. She had been
diligent in exercising and eating more healthy.
She had cut out almost all sugar out of her diet and it was beginning to
payoff. She still allowed a little
splurge now and then. She couldn’t get
off chocolate cake overnight, right? As Samantha
looked at her reflection in the mirror of the aerobics room she was pleased to
see a figure that was what she always imagined herself to look like
anyway. She knew she would never be a
skinny-minnie, she just wanted to feel healthy and feel muscular. Her calves were becoming well defined from
all the salsa, merengue, cumbia, and regaetton dance steps. Her arms were becoming more firm as she did
Zumba Toning. Dancing with weights? Brilliant!
Samantha was feeling more energy than she ever had and so she was able to
dance with more passion than ever.
Lucy
announced the new song they were going to learn, Ojos Negros. The class followed along in a brisk salsa
with the upbeat tempo of the song. Now Samantha
wasn’t a linguist or anything but she remembered back to her Spanish 1 class in
high school and knew that “ojos negros” meant black eyes. As soon as she recalled the translation, she
looked in the mirror to make sure her long bangs were covering her right
eye. Try as she might, she could not
quite lose herself in dance…not today.
Not after what Darryl had done to her last week…
Samantha
had always justified Darryl’s abusive behavior because he had never physically hit
her. However, that had all changed last
week. A few weeks after the cinnamon
roll incident, Darryl had been hired on a construction crew headed over to
North Dakota. He would be gone for six
weeks at a time. Samantha secretly was
excited to have him away for so long.
During his absence, she reconnected with old friends that Darryl had
never approved of. She enjoyed going to Girls
Night Out Activities with some of her Zumba Sistahs, as she called them. They would go to movies, have craft nights,
and hit the sushi place in town once a month.
Samantha was allowing herself to be her own best friend. She was blossoming back into the beautiful
woman she had once been before Darryl had all but trampled her into a pile of
dust by his mean and degrading words.
Meanwhile,
over in North Dakota, Darryl was living in a wild-west type atmosphere. There were so many workers over there that
they didn’t even have enough housing for all the construction men migrating
over from Montana, Idaho, and Colorado.
One construction crew went over specifically to build housing just for
the men. They built what were referred
to as man-camps. These buildings would
house up to 200 men and were complete with cafeteria, movie theatres, weight
rooms, pools, and bedrooms. However,
they were obviously temporary housing.
Many of the crews just lived in trailers and without women around, they
were left to their own devices. The men
worked sometimes up to 14 hour days which left room for a little bit of gaming
on the xbox, eating…and of course drinking.
Darryl became a victim to the latter, unbeknownst to Samantha.
By
the time Darryl came back from his stint in North Dakota, he had developed some
horrible habits in a relatively short period of time. He showed up at the door one night at 10pm
saying, “Honey, I’m home,” only to find an empty house. Samantha wasn’t expecting him home until the
middle of the night so she had made a mental note to be back from her scrapbook
night by 11pm. By the time she arrived home,
his cheerful, “Honey, I’m home,” had turned into, “Where the Hell have you
been!” It was more of an exclamation
than a question. Samantha was shocked to
see her husband in such a disheveled form.
He had acquired a beer gut throughout the last six weeks that absolutely
repulsed her. His t-shirt was now too
short so his hairy belly hung over his faded, beat up Wrangler jeans. He still had on his steel toed boots which,
for the first time, somehow scared Samantha.
Darryl usually took his shoes off at the door.
“You’re
home!” she exclaimed with a pretended smile.
“Yeah,
and you weren’t! You’re supposed to be
here when I get home. Haven’t I made
that clear,” he slurred.
“Nice
to see you too…”
Samantha
could smell the alcohol on his breath and she set her bag filled with scrapbook
supplies on the kitchen table. She had
the strange urge to hold onto her fiskar craft scissors right on top of the bag. Why she felt she would need a form of
defense, was strange to her. She usually
just took the verbal and emotional abuse as it came but tonight felt
different. The thought of self defense
came to her so naturally that she didn’t dare ignore it and she sneakily
grabbed the scissors and hid them in her hoody pocket right as Darryl looked
down at the floor and belched loudly.
“You
cheatin on me, woman?” Darryl growled.
“No! No, I was at scrapbook night with Lexie and
Lucy. We had a great time learning new…”
“You
think I care what the H*** you were doing?
How many times have I told you that you are not to leave the house at
night? And with those divas? Seriously, Samantha…you do as good a job
choosing friends as you do picking out your frumpy wardrobe!”
Samantha
raised her voice confidently as she said, “You’ve been gone for over six weeks
Darryl. Did you think I was seriously
going to just sit around at home eating chocolate cake and watching The Voice
on tv? For your information, I have been
making a lot of changes in my life. Look
at me Darryl…I ‘m getting into shape, I’m learning new things, I’m …. happy.”
As
the last word came out of Samantha’s mouth, she realized for the first time that
out of all the changes she had made, the one she loved the most was being happy
again. Darryl never allowed her to go
anywhere to find happiness. He didn’t
chain her to a chair or anything, but he might as well have. Darryl had been manipulating her into
believing she was undeserving of any sort of joy. Since he had left, she had found out that she
actually had a lot to offer the world. She
was promoted to assistant manager at the grocery store within two weeks of
Darryl leaving. People looked up to her
at work and she felt respect from her co-workers that she had never noticed
before. Samantha could hardly believe
how brave she was being this particular evening. She had never stood up for herself when it
came to Darryl. She clutched her pointy
scissors a bit tighter as if to draw strength from the pink handles inside her
hoody pocket.
Darryl
yelled, “Shut up woman! If I want you to
talk I will let you know. If I say jump,
you say how high? Where do you get off
talking back to me, you sassy good for nothing!” He lunged at her but tripped on the
barstool. Samantha took a step back and
unfortunately, it was a step in the wrong direction…she was cornered. Darryl grabbed Samantha’s shoulders to steady
himself. The weight on Samantha was
almost unbearable and it had nothing to do with his physical weight. Samantha calmly said, “Honey, I think we need
to get you into bed. Smells like you’ve
had one too many drinks tonight.”
“Too
many drinks? Since when do you tell me
what I can and can’t drink? Sheesh, Samantha,
who died and made you queen? If I were
you, I would shut your fat lips and sit your massive behind on that chair. I got some things I gotta say and I need to
make sure you hear me loud and clear.”
“Oh
I hear you alright standing right here, Darryl.”
“I
said, sit down lardo!” Darryl used the
tip of his steel toe boot to make her comply.
Samantha dropped to the floor in a scream of agony. Darryl grabbed her and heaved her into the
nearby chair. Samantha cried out wildly,
“Leave me alone!”
“Excuse
me, do you dare tell me what to do again woman?
Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Samantha
jerked her head hard to the right to avoid any eye contact with her raging
husband. She was shocked when Darryl
slapped her face yelling, “Look at me!” Samantha
again turned her head away this time to the other side.
“What
do I have to do to get through to you? I
said look at me! So you don’t want to
look at me? Two can play at this little
game honey…I’m gonna make sure you don’t get
to look at me.” He lifted his fist and then
things went dark. Samantha’s right side
of her face was pulsing in pain. He shoved
her against the wall and this time her lip split and she tasted blood in her
mouth. He got ready to kick her again
and she felt totally defeated and terrified but then she remembered the pink
handled scissors in her pocket. She was
not going to go down without a fight.
She waved her arms wildly and yelled, “Stop! Stop!
I promise I will look at you this time.”
Darryl set his foot back down.
“Yeah
that’s what I thought! You will look at
me whenever I want you to. You will
listen! You will obey me!” Without missing a beat, Samantha complied and
raised her face now bloody from the beating, she looked Darryl right in the
eyes. With all the composure she could
muster, she said, “Go to Hell!” In one
swift movement she grabbed the scissors out of her pocket and stabbed the newly
sharpened craft scissors directly into Darryl’s left thigh. He screamed in agony and grabbed his
leg. The distraction allowed Samantha to
slip off the chair and crawl under the table toward the back door.
“Get
back here!” she heard Darryl roar. “If
you even think about calling the police, I will kill you!”
Samantha
had only one thing on her mind…escape!
Please start, car! Please start,
car! Her car had never not started before but as she fumbled with the keys, she
was expecting the worse. Thankfully, the
car did start on the first try and she flew out her driveway almost hitting
Darryl right by the mailbox. As she
looked in her rearview mirror, she could see drunk Darryl yelling expletives at her while limping down
the road holding his leg. Samantha
refused to look in the rearview anymore as she put the pedal to the metal. She had no idea where she was going but she
knew where she would not be going
anymore.
She
must have driven around for almost an hour.
She had no idea who to call or where to go. She saw the 24 hour sign of the grocery store
where she worked and decided to park under a street light and figure out what
to do. She needed help. Should she go in and get help from one of the
night clerks? Maybe she could at least
go in and clean herself up and then use the phone. She had left her cell phone on the kitchen
table right next to her bag of scrapbook supplies. She was lucky that she had kept the car keys
in her pocket though. She bowed her head
to pray. She didn’t know what she was
praying for. What she needed was a
miracle! Her whole body ached and she
sobbed as she was racked with despair.
She reached over to the glovebox to grab a tissue and when she sat back
up, a man was standing at her car window.
Manterola, Patricia.
Ojos Negros.Rec. 5 Mar. 2002. BMG
Music, 2002.
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