SAFE TOUCH DOWN - an excerpt 

It was a Wednesday evening... I think. Days blur together on the island. I knew Antoine would be home soon, so I was already shifting my energy. It was always the question: Which Antoine would come home—the one with groceries and a bottle of wine for me, or the one who was mad that I hadn't already gone to the store, even though, if I had, he would've been upset that I didn't consult with him first, regardless of the fact that he didn't answer his phone or let me know when he'd be home? 

I lived in a state of knowing that I had to ask for permission. It was a catch 22. If I waited to ask permission, he would be upset that I didn’t already make a decision and do something. If I made the decision to do something, he would be upset that I didn’t ask for permission.

There was no way to win, so I just shrank, and sat alone, and drank wine to soothe the pain of the inevitable.

It was one of those nights. The mosquitos began taking up space in my front room. I sifted under the counter for the black coil, fumbled with it until it snapped apart with a soft, chalky crack—delicate, like it could have crumbled in my fingertips—and when I lit it, it released a bitter, smoky scent laced with something sharp and citrusy, curling through the air as it rested in the mouth of an empty Belikin bottle.

Just lighting the coil and watching the first curl of smoke rise into the room provided reprieve from the bite. And masked the briny scent of sargasso that weighed thick in the night air.

I hadn’t gone to the store. I really didn’t do anything that day. I stood alone in my house, looking around my studio, wine glass in hand, wondering what I needed to take back with me, and what I could leave behind.

I had embraced apathy soothed by a bottle of red wine, chilled. Crisp, to offset the weight of the air.

I didn’t know exactly what I was setting myself up for, but I knew that I was pushing, I was pressing, for it all to finally be over.

And he knew that, so when he arrived home, after dark nonetheless, a bottle of Landshark in hand, asking what I’d bought for dinner and I looked him dead in the eye, took a sip of wine and responded, “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I was waiting for you to get home.”

He sucked his teeth.

“Yu just di drink wine all day?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “Yes.”

“Cho.” He interjected. Then sucked his teeth again.

He paused. Changed the inflection in his voice. Like, evil breathing through something he tried to make sound soft.

“Mona, mhek I ask you a question?”

I eyed him. I didn’t have to respond because I knew what was coming.

“Cho, yuh fuckin stupid or weh?”

I inhaled, deep, hard. There was no way out of this. And he wasn‘t going to escalate to physical, I knew that—it was going to be a long, slow burn.

If I didn’t answer, it would progress into: “Yuh deh fuckin deaf? Yuh noh hear weh I just seh?”

And if I did answer, “No, obviously I’m not stupid, I’m a well educated woman.”

He would follow with: “Chaa. I could never believe dat.”

My shoulders would tighten. I would shrink into myself. Fall onto my own sword and begin to engage in his game. 

There would be some kind of apology, beginning with an explanation, “Antoine, you know that I’m trying to figure things out right now. I called you three times and you didn’t answer and I didn’t know what you wanted so I just waited for you to get home to ask, but I’m under a lot of stress and a lot of pressure right now so you have to offer me some grace.”

He would respond with something like, “Chaa gyal, I noh haftu give yuh no kinda grace.”

And I would try to draw the conversation back to a place where we could accomplish something… ask what he wanted for dinner… “just let me go to the store before it gets too late.” 

The exchange would almost always end with me gripping my bag off the table and walking out the door to the store as he called behind me, “Gyal… GYAL! Weh di fuck yuh di go!?”

And I wouldn’t respond—I would take the short walk to the store, literally 30 seconds away, to breathe—to exhale, roll my head from one shoulder to the other. Any attempt to loosen my shoulders and come back into myself.

I would return with the same things that he would have wanted, that I knew I would buy anyway, but that's the Catch-22.

He would stand up, walk over to me, help me unload the groceries, thank me for going to the store and apologize.

“Gyal… mi noh know why I di treat yuh soh bad.”

I would fall under his spell and I would follow with something like this, “I don’t know why you treat me bad either.”

We would brush our situation under the rug, let apathy wash over us and fall into a quiet night.

But something shifted in me that night.

When he apologized to me, my chest tightened. 

The fruit bats started circling around our yard, faster, more and more chaotic, dropping  berries, staining the east facing side of our house. One after another, after another… like a machine gun rattling the siding of our house.

He walked toward me, I’m not sure why—maybe to offer a gesture and take the groceries from my hands, but before I could think, I released the groceries to the ground, lifted my fist and punched him in his chest and in less than a millisecond, his shin met the outside of my thigh with a force that caused my knees to buckle and collapse to the floor—the same floor that just months ago, he’d taken me by my ponytail and violently smashed my head against.

I laid on the floor, head resting in the crevasse of the arm that caught me, my struck thigh draped over the other… and quietly laughed as the mosquito smoke curled through the room.