MARIJEAN OLDHAM

The light was red. You put the car in park and unbuckled your seatbelt, and opened the car door, despite the traffic, the holiday, despite all sense.	 
         In the dark, I could see some early Christmas lights twinkling through the trees. The other man got out of his car, too. I knew there would be fists and blood, and I hoped that was all.  
          I unbuckled my seatbelt, put the leftovers on the dashboard, and slung my purse strap over my shoulder. I opened the passenger side door and got out. Closing the door quietly behind me, I walked on the side of the road in the slushy snow toward the beacon of the florescent grocery store lights ahead. At the store, I asked the woman behind the customer service desk if I could use the phone, and obscured behind the window clings advertising cartons of cigarettes, I called my father to tell him I needed help, to come get me, that I wanted to come home. A cashier spirited me away to the employees’ break room where I could cry in private, until my father arrived and took me back to my hometown where I enrolled in community college, then got my real estate license, then moved to a bigger city and had a successful career. My picture is on billboards.  
         I unbuckled my seatbelt, put the leftovers on the dashboard, and slung my purse strap over my shoulder. I opened the passenger side door and got out. Closing the door quietly behind me, I walked to the right, making eye contact with drivers behind the car until I saw a woman in a van with kids in the backseat. Her hair was curly and brown and she gripped the steering wheel in gloved hands. “I need help,” I said, speaking through the window of the passenger side door. “Get in,” she said, and that’s when I met Sandy, who drank Diet Coke by the gallon and loved her bulldogs as much as her kids. Sandy took me to a friend of hers that volunteers with a women’s shelter and the two of them helped me get the fresh start that saved my life.  
         I unbuckled my seatbelt, put the leftovers on the dashboard, and slung my purse strap over my shoulder. I opened the passenger side door and got out. Closing the door quietly behind me, I walked through the slushy snow to the side road that led to our neighborhood. I walked another block in the dark on the wet sidewalk before you drove up, creeping along next to me. You rolled down the passenger side window. “Get in. It’s cold,” you said. I stopped and thought about it for a few seconds. It was late, and it was cold, my feet wet from the snow. I got back in the car. It didn’t happen that night. It was a few years later when you lost your temper again after dinner was something you didn’t like, it was late, and you were hungry, and when I complained I was too tired after working all day that you snapped and you didn’t mean to squeeze my throat as tight as you did; I know this, I do, but you did, and I died.  
         I unbuckled my seatbelt, put the leftovers on the dashboard, and slung my purse strap over my shoulder. I opened the passenger side door and got out. You turned then, and saw me standing on the other side of the car, just as you were about to haul off and slug that guy, the man from the other car. Something about me standing there in the dark, in the slush, under the streetlight with all the other cars around us honking their horns and the other man, standing there in his shirtsleeves on that winter night, woke you up. “Sorry,” you said to the man, and got back into the car with a wave of your hand, closed your door and leaned over to the open passenger side and said to me, “I’m sorry. Please get in.” 
         The car behind us honked again as I sat down, closed the door, and buckled my seatbelt. I turned and looked in the back seat. Our children, three and seven years old that year, watched and listened, their eyes round, their mouths pressed shut. I looked at them and felt ashamed that they witnessed this, that I would stay, that we would continue home and I would hope for change and we would limp along with bursts of violence followed by quiet until they grew up and I’d finally leave and meet someone new and calm and lovely.