Sunday, November 4, 2012

Fanny Barry bares all in her memoir. Here's the Prologue.


Prologue

I was reading under the soft white mosqutio netting that covers my bed when I heard footsteps. I looked up, inhaled and strained to listen. I hoped it was only the ugly possum that sometimes cut across my property. But the steps continued toward me, a two legged animal. Barely breathing, I quietly came out from the netting to stand in the candlelit window of my Mexican casita.

In the moonlight, I saw the moving shadow of a man. I felt a sudden chill despite the hot jungle night air. The dogs joined me in the window, slightly agitated. Ama, my yellow lab mix let out a nervous bark as I lit the shadow with the flash light I kept by the bed. He continued moving toward us. It was my ex, Amador. I froze. The dogs did not move. It seemed that even the geckos stopped chirping as he moved closer.

“Amador, go away”, I finally rasped through what felt like a desert in my mouth.

I prayed he would leave. Yet there was a part of me that liked that he would not stay away. It was a sickness born of some sort of insecurity and low self-esteem, I knew. I had read the books, been to therapy, talked to myself in the mirror. I knew I was better than this. I was successful. I was together. I had hired and fired men with real credentials, real values. Amador didn’t even wear shoes. God knew the last time he had brushed his teeth. Yet, still, I had loved him. Truly. Passionately. Desperately. Some, including Amador, argued I still did.

“No. I no go. I want to talk to you.” he finally responded, continuing to progress toward me.

The throaty, sweet, heavily accented English frightened me where before it had seduced me into thinking he was the man I wanted. I admit, it was my fantasy. But it became real enough on occasion: that first night he reached for my hand and led me onto the dance floor barefoot, the nights we slept on the beach under the stars, the days he led me into the jungle to find birds by the clear fresh water cenotes, the nights he softly snored by my side with his leg over my body as if to hold me down. Too, I enjoyed breaking the social status quo by being a white woman with an ethnic man, and more, with a beach bum. I never dreamt that my socialist attitude was giving a junkie access and money to feed his addiction. I was his ‘vieja”, happy and proud to be with him, anti–establishment, breaking contrived barriers to ethnic people’s success. I was the gringa—smart, beautiful, capable of taking care of herself, a writer and an artist, an engineer who was an expert in her field and I gave this man value. But once I realized with whom I was and how deeply I was in, I was terrified. Once I saw clearly, it was too late and things started to fall apart.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Amador. Go away”, I said firmly, as I watched him advance onto the porch and held my dog Ama’s mouth to keep her quiet.

I strained to listen as he came up the outside stairway and I jumped at the sound of breaking glass as he kicked a votive candle on the way. Then he was on the balcony outside the upstairs bedroom. I silently cursed myself. Again, I was dealing with the drama of a drug addict who had taken all of my money and most of my love. We had crossed the line from love to hate. I was no longer rich and he was no longer loveable. I had vowed never again to live in these repeated dramatic episodes, the victim of his tirades, yet here I was.

I went to the double door that opened onto the balcony. I could see the outline of his body through the cracks in the oversized planks of dark tropical wood. I could hear his breathing as I tried to control my own. I put my back against the door, exhaled heavily and closed my eyes, as I tried to gain the strength to refuse to engage him.

Then his voice snapped. “Open the door”.

I stood motionless not knowing what to do.

Oye, puta, abrir la puerta”, “Listen, cunt, open the door.” he commanded.

I put my back closer to it and closed my ears to his insults. I almost smiled as I remembered telling my friend over a bottle of wine that with Amador my nickname was “Pinche puta perra”, “Fucking whore and dog”. I lost the smile as I remembered it was after an episode that involved a police restraining order.

I answered, “No, I don’t want to talk to you.” and then, praying, “Please, just go away.”

“I not going anywhere puta. Open the door”, he said forcefully.

Then, he added in a voice filled with fatigue, “I just want my dry clothes.”

His voice was filled with pleading and reason as if I were over reacting. I hesitated, stayed silent and unglued my body from the door. I went to the bed, reached under the mosquito netting, and lifted my cell phone from the under the covers where I always kept it for emergency.

“The police?” I thought.

He would hear me dial and it would infuriate him. “30 to 45 minutes away at best”, I told myself. And I knew the police concept of emergency did not include domestic disputes. I kept the phone in my hand and walked to the open closet and pulled Amador’s clean, dry clothes from the shelf where I had put them that morning with love and the illusion that we could start again, maybe even have a life together.

“What were you thinking”, I asked myself critically.

I carried the clothes toward the bolted double door. Afraid to open it, I looked to the big screen window, opened that instead and handed the orange shorts and white shirt to him around the wooden support column. My hands were shaking as he took his things from me gently, touching my hands as if to hold them. I felt an electric attraction. He didn’t grab me. He just touched me, in a loving way. I was confused. He was quiet for a moment and I relaxed a little, thinking perhaps that was really all he wanted and he would quietly leave the way he had come: over the fence.

But suddenly, he pounded his fist on the door. I screamed, a high-pitched, girlish sound and then inhaled and chastised myself for the cry’s weakness. But no one was listening. I pressed my body back into the door.

“Don’t scream puta”, he commanded into the crack between the double doors.

I could hear the spittle on the sides of his mouth, like a rabid animal. I screamed again, fear overtaking my reflexes, and prayed for help. I knew my cries fell only on the jungle. My neighbors were close on either side but one set would ignore me, believing I deserved what I got from my ex-boyfriend. After all, I repeatedly let him back into my life. But what was I to do? Let him die on the street in front of my house? So many times he came to the door bloody and broken, or sad and with flowers, begging forgiveness and some food. It was hard to escape him and even more difficult to be hard.

On the other side of my house were Amador’s buddies and they generally returned well after 3 am. Regardless, abuse was another part of their routine.

“Don’t scream or I gonna knock the door and kill you,” he yelled.

Instinctively, I screamed again, loudly and forcefully, and searched for the correct buttons on the phone to dial the police.  Even in Mexico, they don’t condone killing their women.  As I hit the send key the door slammed against my back from outside. I fell to the floor on the other side of the room and saw the splintered deadbolt hit the floor next to me.  Amador followed, an animal looking for its prey.  When he saw me in the corner, he slowed and smiled cruelly as I pressed the phone to my ear.  He reached me in the exact moment that the call was connecting and, with the same twisted smile, ripped the phone from my hand and threw it against the far wall.  I screamed loudly in a rage of frustration. He grabbed my throat, forcing me to stop.  I started to choke under his tight grip.  Then, his face turned to an old photo negative and then disappeared as I lost consciousness.

 copyright 2012 @Fanny Barry

 

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