The Retelling

Earlier today, while settling into a nap, I heard the voice of my novel's antagonist share the story of something he witnessed when he was three years old. It was a story I was all to familiar with. The event actually took place, many years ago, to a woman in the family of my HAT (husband at the time). Whenever he felt I wasn't suitably demonstrative, he told me how lucky I was that he didn't tie me to a tree, beat me, and leave me to die.

I knew the story so well, I almost didn't recognize the three year old telling from my novel's antagonist as he stood by as witness. How the rope wound its way up from the bottom of the tree, first crossing her ankles, then corkscrewing around her knees, her thighs, her waist, the bulge of her breasts. And how something deep within her stirred and she cried, "The rope is too tight. I cannot breathe!" And what it was like to live with the anger of wishing she had remained silent. And wishing he had been big enough and strong enough to protect her.

I learned something from the retelling of that tale. I don't just write to deconstruct all that has happened to me. I write to understand what it means to be that three year old; to witness harm befall your mother at the hands of your father and to know no means of solace, no means of escape.