Oyster Beds

A Story by Allison

A first draft of a short story about domestic violence.

Two men in thigh-waders approached me as I crunched through the oyster beds. I shouldn’t be out there, they said.

“An animal took off with my wedding ring, a raccoon, I think. It ran out this way.” The older of the two men cocked his head. I knew he knew I was lying, but all he said was “You’re never going to find it in this mud.”

I thanked them and began to walk back toward the highway. I was only 20 yards out. I think I could have found it if I’d have kept going.

When I got back to the house I took my shoes off but still dripped mud across the hardwood from the bottom of my jeans. Gene was asleep on the couch so I cleaned everything up before he saw it. When I went to bed I wondered if he would let me get a new ring since he was the one who threw it out there.

The next morning he didn’t remember what had happened. “I know what happened. You took it off when you went to get some dick,” he said. “You w***e.” He didn’t hit me though.

He got home from work later than usual that night, so dinner was cold on the table. He flipped a pot of mashed potatoes onto the dining room floor and watched as I cleaned it up. The dog came over and started licking the floor so Gene kicked her. He said stupid b***h and I wasn’t sure which one of us he meant. He has flipped the whole table before. This time he didn’t even break a dish.

We were each others first love. I have never been with anyone else. We got married young, too. He told me that if we got married, it would take the stress off of our relationship �" he would know that I was with him for the long haul and he wouldn’t constantly be worrying that I might leave him. So I agreed to it. He was nice to me in the beginning. He loves me still but I make it hard for him to show it.

I got pregnant when I was barely 19. I was going to turn the attic into a nursery. We were having a girl, but before I could paint more than one wall pink I lost the baby. Clots of blood the size of my fist were coming out of me. I spent the night in the hospital and when I got home, I cleaned the blood up.

Things got worse after I lost my daughter. You can’t do the one thing a woman is supposed to, he told me. And he was right. Gene began drinking more. Our stages of happiness became fewer and eventually his cruelty came to be what I expected. I worked hard to keep my head down but it wasn’t always possible.

It became a habit for me to go upstairs when I knew Gene had been at the tavern for some hours. Sometimes simply the sight of me enraged him �" especially when he was wild-eyed with whiskey. If I stayed out of his line of sight, he would often forget that anyone else was in the house.

One night, after hiding upstairs, I came down when I knew Gene had fallen asleep. From the dining room table, I could see that he was on the floor �" a couch pillow next to him �" arms splayed, limbs disordered. I walked in to pick up the empty bottles off the floor, no longer stepping quietly because there was no need. I stood over him, just out of arm’s reach. Drool spilled out of his gaping mouth. He coughed. I inhaled sharply, but he remained still. White vomit began to bubble in his throat. He coughed again, spraying putrid bile and alcohol into the air. I watched as his nose filled up and his breathing was overtaken. I watched as his shoulders jerked forward. He gasped and inhaled the sickness into his lungs until the flutter of his eyes stopped. And when he was done, I went back upstairs to sleep in my daughter’s room.