Chapter One

My great grandmother’s china set was laying in pieces in the middle of the kitchen. There were too many pieces to count. The center of one plate remained intact, sitting in the middle of the shattered remnants, its beautiful pastel pink flower and gold trim screaming for me to pick it up and pull it out of the chaos.

I was too afraid to reach out for it. It lay a mere three feet from the toe of his boot, and the look in his eye dared me to make a move for it. Dared me to try to recover any of it. I took my eyes away from the flower and shimmied backwards, pressing my back against the counter and pulling my knees up to my chest.

Don’t cry, Alice. Keep it together.

His boots crunched more china as he took three steps towards me. I refused to look at the damage he was doing. He knew that set was all I had of my mother; he knew it was all she had left for me. He knew and he relished in it. I could see it in his face, in the way the corner of his mouth curled upwards in a villainous smile that made me wonder how I had ever found it so charming. I could see it in his dark eyes as he watched me do everything I could not to fall to pieces on the kitchen floor beneath his looming shadow.

He crouched down in front of me and rested a hand on my knee, rubbing his thumb over the red plaid flannel of my pyjamas. “I didn’t want to have to scare you like this,” he said, his voice husky and ragged from the exertion of tearing apart my kitchen like a rabies infected mad man.

I waited for the rest of the sentence. I waited for him to tell me why he had done it, what had driven him to such destruction. I knew what it was. Of course I knew. I knew the moment I had walked in through the front door that I was going to have to face him. I hadn’t expected him to go for the one thing in the house I cared about. I thought maybe he would destroy some of my more expensive possessions. Like my perfume collection or my first set of crystal that I had purchased myself. I had entertained the idea that maybe he would even smash the television. I wished he had destroyed all those things. That’s all they were. Things.

He continued his justification as he pushed broken china away from us so he could sit on the floor beside me. “But I had to do this. You didn’t leave me any other options.”

I fought the quiver in my chin and denied him the luxury of seeing me cry.

“I warned you. I warned you that you couldn’t go to work looking like a whore. You are mine. You don’t need to worry about making extra money from tips. I will buy you whatever you need. I will buy you a new china set tomorrow. Whatever one you like. Price isn’t a factor. But you will not leave this house dressed like that anymore. Understood?”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to scream at him. There were so many words floating around in my head, but they failed to make their way to my mouth, so I sat there on the floor in numb silence while he rested his head back on the cabinets as if he had won some sort of victory. Perhaps my silence was his victory.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk now. We can talk in the morning, alright?” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. Then he stood and surveyed the damage in the kitchen. “I’ll fix this all up in the morning too. Don’t worry about any of it. Come to bed.”

Words. Speak. Say something. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I managed.

He nodded and left me where I was. I listened to him run the sink in the bathroom and brush his teeth. I heard him spit and gurgle our mouth wash. Then he went to the bedroom. The light clicked off after five minutes or so and I sat on the kitchen floor until I was sure he was asleep. Then I went to the flower and lifted it in my trembling hands and clutched it my chest while I sobbed like a six year old with a skinned knee.

I thought of my mother’s apartment in Detroit, full of broken knick knacks and photographs of my father. I thought of her sitting alone and staring at those photographs, missing him, missing me, but being too bitter and too stubborn to ever pick up the phone and return any of my calls.

When she died I was the only family she had left. She had a will, and all it said was that the china was for me, and the rest of her belongings were to be donated to her church. The china was sent to me by one of her friends in her apartment building, and I never had the chance to go through the rest of it.

And now all I had was this broken shard that I was clinging to like it held my mother’s soul in it.

I hated him. I hated that smirk and the way his blonde hair hung over his cruel eyes. I hated his hands that were always on me. The hands that had ruined everything. I hated his voice and his lips and his god damn shoes that were always strewn around my living room.

I had to get out. I had to pack all my shit and get out.