Antonia
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy, please, no!”
Antonia bolted awake and jumped directly out of her bed as soon as her eyes were open. Daniel was calling her, but it wasn’t normal. She could tell that much already, just from the urgent, desperate tone in her son’s voice. “I’m coming, baby!” she yelled back. She bolted out into the hallway and dashed down the hall towards her son’s room. When she flung the door open, she saw Daniel curled up in a little ball on his bed, rocking back and forth. “What is it, baby? What’s wrong?”
“Dream,” Daniel mumbled, looking up at his mother through tear-filled eyes. “Mommy…” He reached out with his two hands, wordlessly asking for her to come forward and hold him.
Antonia walked over to the bed and gathered her son in her arms, holding him close to her chest and dropping soft kisses at the top of his head. “What was it, baby? What happened this time?”
Daniel shook his head and gripped at her shirt, wiping his tears on the fabric of her pajama top. “It’s nothing. It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered, but his small voice still trembled. He was clearly terrified, shaking in her arms. Antonia felt her whole body go cold in fear. This wasn’t normal. Daniel didn’t get scared like this. He was such a bright, happy child. Nothing ever fazed him. Even when Paul and Antonia broke up, he only cried a few times before he adjusted, remaining the same healthy, perky little child he always was.
Antonia cleared her throat and tried to speak as delicately as she could. “Honey, does it have something to do with the bruises? Did somebody hurt you?”
“No,” Daniel said immediately, shaking his head back and forth. “No, that didn’t happen.”
That phrasing made Antonia narrow her eyes, suspicious that her son was lying. “What didn’t happen, baby?”
“Nothing!” Daniel said, burying his face deeper into her shirt. “Nothing happened, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Antonia said. She shushed her son softly and rubbed his back, trying to get him to calm down. “Okay, we can talk about it later, all right? Why don’t you try to go to sleep and have better dreams, baby doll?”
“I can’t,” Daniel said, sniffling a little. “I’m scared.”
“Mommy will be with you this time,” Antonia said. She settled on the bed with her son still in her lap. “You can sleep. Mommy will hold you, baby. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Okay,” Daniel said, but he sounded like he wasn’t totally confident, remaining stiff in her arms for several long minutes before exhaustion finally got the better of him, and he slipped off to sleep.
Antonia sighed deeply, feeling crushed by the weight of her worry over her son. Slowly, so as not to disturb Daniel, she got to her feet, still holding onto her son as she crossed the hallway back to her room. She placed Daniel down on her bed and pulled the blankets around him tightly, keeping hold of his hand as she reached over to grab her phone from the nightstand. It was still early in the morning, but Bobby would probably be awake soon. Honestly, it was a miracle that he’d slept through the whole night, given Daniel’s multiple nightmares and the other noise that Antonia and Cal had undoubtedly caused together.
Antonia dialed Paul’s number, tapping her feet impatiently as it rang several times with no response. “Oh, come the fuck on,” she muttered as the call went to voicemail. She wasn’t going to give up that easily, though. She called back three more times until she finally got an answer.
“What?” Paul barked into the phone, his voice sounding a little clogged-up. Antonia figured she’d probably woken him up, but she didn’t really give a fuck. This was important.
“Hey. Did something happen to Daniel yesterday?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
“What? No,” Paul said back, scoffing into her ear. “What are you on about?”
“He came home with bruises he didn’t have before,” Antonia said, turning to look at her sleeping child, who was frowning in his dreams.
“So what?” Paul asked. “Kids get bruises all the time, Antonia. It’s a part of life. You can’t protect him from everything.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where they were from,” Antonia said sharply. “That means he thinks I’m going to be mad about what happened to cause them. So you better cut the bullshit and think hard about what he was doing yesterday that might have gotten him hurt.”
There was a long pause where neither of them spoke, although Antonia knew Paul was still on the line because she could hear his shallow, ragged breathing from the other end of the line. “Be careful about what you’re suggesting here, Antonia,” Paul said in a warning tone of voice.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Antonia said. “Except that you should be watching our son well enough to know what hurts him. Do you have a problem with that or not?”
“You know, I should really be asking you to take better care of Daniel, not the other way around,” Paul said.
“Oh, yeah?” Antonia scoffed. She rubbed her hand down Daniel’s back when he whined a little in his sleep, his brow furrowed up like something was wrong. “Yeah, you’re going to have to do a much better job convincing me that I’m the bad guy here if you want anyone to actually believe you,” she said, even though at the moment she felt a strange sense of guilt wash over her as she watched her son continue to frown in his sleep.
“I’m serious, Antonia,” Paul said. “You have him living in that strange house, with that strange man I don’t even know. I haven’t even met the guy. For all I know, he’s a child molester. How do I know he’s not hurting Daniel whenever your back is turned?”
“Because he’s never alone with Daniel!” Antonia said. “I would never let anyone touch my child. You know better than that.”
“Then stop suggesting that I would hurt my kid, Antonia,” Paul said in a firm, stern voice. “I mean it. You better quit it.”
Antonia sighed. She brushed some hair back from Daniel’s forehead, trying to smooth over the wrinkles of worry that had popped up in between his eyebrows. “Okay, well, tell me this, then. Why has he had two awful nightmares in one night? Both of which he refuses to tell me about.”
She heard Paul groan under his breath on the other end of the line. “He’s five years old, Antonia,” Paul said. “Nightmares happen. They don’t have to mean anything.”
“These ones do,” Antonia protested. “He’s been a total wreck after them, and he won’t tell me what they’re about. He’s never done that before. Doesn’t that concern you at all?”
Paul was quiet a moment. Antonia could practically picture his thoughtful face, the way he always stuck his tongue out in between his teeth when he was preparing to say something. God, she used to love that face, but now even the thought of it made her want to hurl.
“You know, Antonia, I didn’t want to say this, but since you’ve pushed it this far…”
“What? Just spit it out,” Antonia snapped, too annoyed to pretend to be nice at this point.
“Maybe the nightmares have to do with the change in living situation,” Paul said.
“What do you mean?” Antonia asked. Her heart pounded harder inside of her ribcage as her anxiety swelled.
“I mean living in that house, with that man. Daniel won’t stop talking about him, you know. I don’t think it’s healthy.”
“What the fuck would you know about healthy?” Antonia asked. “And besides, you were the one that got us kicked out of the last place, all because you couldn’t keep yourself from threatening the landlord.”
“I never did that,” Paul said, but Antonia was too experienced with his lying to believe him.
“Sure, sure you didn’t,” Antonia said sarcastically. “And I’m sure you didn’t call my boss to complain about me either. Hey, asshole, guess what? Next time leave a fake name.” She rolled her eyes, amazed at how fucking stupid her ex-husband was. Sometimes she felt so ridiculously dumb for ever loving him, for ever marrying him, but then she figured it all happened for a reason. At least she got Daniel out of the whole mess.
Paul made a clicking noise with his teeth. That was always what he did whenever he was angry at her and trying to hold it back. Antonia shivered, even though she hated that he still had that power over her, to make her nervous. I should be over this by now, she told herself. He can’t hurt me. He can’t do anything to me anymore.
“I’d be real careful what you say to me, Antonia,” Paul finally said, his voice low and serious.
“And why’s that?” Antonia asked. She gripped a little harder onto her son’s hand, even though he was asleep and couldn’t possibly comfort her in this moment.
“You’re just walking on very thin ice with me right now,” Paul said. “Remember, Antonia, I’m the one with the stable job. I’m the one with the same house that we lived in while we were married. It would be pretty simple for Daniel, you know, if he were to come stay with me full time.”
A flash of terror washed over Antonia. Her face burned as she considered Paul’s veiled threat. “Why are you doing this, Paul?” Antonia asked, dropping her son’s hand and getting to her feet, if only to fool herself into thinking that she was actually taking action rather than feebly arguing with her ex-husband. “You agreed to visitation rights when we divorced. Why are you trying to make things more complicated now?”
“You were the one that made things complicated when you moved in with that man,” Paul said. No kindness or softness remained in his voice anymore. “You should think very carefully before you call me like this again. Have a good day.”
Before Antonia could come up with anything else to say to keep him on the phone, he hung up, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
“God damn it!” Antonia muttered to herself, biting down on her lip to keep herself from screaming out loud in frustration.
Paul was going to try to take Daniel away, or at the very least he was going to let the threat of it hang over Antonia’s head until she did whatever it was that he wanted from her. Maybe he wants custody, Antonia wondered. She paced back and forth over the whole length of her bedroom, checking to make sure that Daniel was still sleeping relatively peacefully every few seconds. No, Paul doesn’t want Daniel full time. Not really. He has too many flings to worry about, too many girls to fuck and then fuck over. He must have some other motive, some other reason for wanting Daniel around more often. But what could it be? And how can I stop him?
Antonia didn’t know what to do. She hated this feeling. She needed some kind of guidance, some kind of help from somebody she could trust. But that was the problem: there was nobody in her life that she did trust except for Daniel, except for maybe Bobby, and they were both children. So what could she do?
There’s Cal, some part of her whispered inside her mind. I could tell Cal what’s going on. Maybe he could help.
A thousand other voices in her head shouted the smaller one down, saying that it was such a stupid idea. She wasn’t with Cal, and anyway, she didn’t even want to be. If she tried to get him involved in a custody battle with Paul, things could get messy fast, and that was exactly what she didn’t want to do.
What other choice do I have? Antonia thought to herself. She crossed the room to stand across from the mirror, staring at her own pale reflection. None of the other voices in her head could come up with a solution.
So that settles it, she thought. She blew out her breath and stretched down to her toes just to feel in control of her body, at least for a brief moment. I’ll ask Cal. He’ll know what to do. He’ll help.
But first, she had to get the boys up and ready. Daniel had preschool today, and Bobby had his first playdate ever with a friend of an old coworker. She needed to focus on those tasks first before she could worry about Paul and his stupid bullshit.
I’ll focus on the boys, she said to herself as she dug out an outfit for the day. The boys come first.
Still, she couldn’t dislodge the festering knot of dread that rested at the bottom of her stomach, threatening to erupt and send her over the edge. I can’t lose Daniel, she thought. She breathed deeply to try to calm herself down. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t.