When the twins were small, I handled Thanksgiving and my ex, Lewis, did Christmas. The day after my feast, we’d go chop down the tree—the kids waddling in snowsuits so thick they could hardly bend, me half-asleep after cooking for 16 people the day before. The sky would spit snow while they ran ahead, and I trudged behind in a haze I didn’t know was exhaustion until much later.
Sometimes we would have people staying at the house with us as we got closer to the holiday itself. Most of the family was just a few hours drive away, so they came the day of, but sometimes we had people stay over. My sister would come from Wisconsin, or my brother would come from up north. My dad would come from Ohio. And one of those years, we were all hanging out, and Lewis made breakfast for dinner. It was his favorite thing to make: he’d scramble a dozen eggs and make a platter of bacon. He’d make a stack of toast and sometimes waffles, although it’s not the waffles I remember from this particular year.
It wasn’t anything he’d made at all. It was an orange.
There were at least six people around the table. I can’t remember who all of them were, but I know that the kids were next to me on my right, and my brother and sister were across the table. Lewis put all of the food on the table, and we all were sitting down. Seating was tight in the dining room with the table expanded and all the people sitting around it. We all were thanking him for making all the food and spooning it onto our plates, passing around the dishes and having side conversations like you do at a big family dinner. I looked down at my plate, and I remember thinking it was so much grease.
I looked over the kids’ small heads at Lewis. He was sitting right next to the sideboard with the fruit bowl on it. I raised my voice over the conversation and asked if he could please pass me an orange.
He picked one out of the bowl.
The next thing I knew, my glasses slammed into my cheekbone. A flash of pain. My sinus burned. My nose started dripping. My eyes watered, and before I could stop myself the words came out:
“Why did you do that to me?”
I reached up to my nose, and pulled my fingers away. They were covered in blood. There was a moment of perfect silence.
My sister laughed. My brother shot to his feet, ducked behind the crowded chairs, and disappeared into the kitchen. I sat frozen with blood on my hands, trying not to cry. He came back with a cool paper towel and wiped my nose. That small kindness steadied me.
I looked down the table at my husband, the man who had stood before God and promised to love and care for me, the father of my children, and he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at his plate and shovelling eggs into his mouth, muttering about how he was hungry.
Someone else at the table, I don’t know who, started talking about poor Lewis, it wasn’t his fault. The story gelled quickly. What a random thing to have happen, to toss your wife an orange and she couldn’t catch it in time. She’s so clumsy sometimes, it wasn’t his fault it happened to hit her in the nose and then all that blood… the poor guy. And everything was okay. The blood stopped relatively quickly and we all got to eat our delicious dinner of scrambled eggs (that were slightly cold), perfectly done bacon (that had zero nutritional value), and white toast (that I never ate because I hate toast). And after a few minutes, someone mock-whined, “why did you do that to me?” and everyone laughed. It became a family joke.
Years later, long after I left, I remembered something that made my stomach drop: he threw it overhand.
I was less than six feet away.
And today I realized he threw it inches from our children’s faces.
That asshole had everyone so well-trained.
But it isn’t one act that makes a thing abuse. Abuse is not the pain or the blood or the tears—I stayed another ten years after that dinner. Abuse is the moment you push down your own emotional response because you know there’s no point showing it. It’s knowing nothing you do will change anything, so you keep moving forward into a life that isn’t what you thought it would be. You adjust your reality until the unacceptable becomes normal and you become the problem. You up your antidepressants and getting something new to help you sleep.
I was lucky. I left. Most women don’t. Many are in marriages that resemble mine in some way. Not all were hit with oranges in front of their families, who then comforted the man who threw it. But many are lied to, minimized, or managed. Many have accepted a life that feels muted and inevitable because someone needs them to keep the machinery running. They don’t know their sepia-toned misery isn’t normal.
They don’t realize that our default is actually technicolor, just like we thought it was when we were kids.
I’m alone this Thanksgiving, but I know I’m not really alone. I can see in color now. Even if I’m the only one in my apartment tonight, I welcome the sisters who don’t yet know they’re my sisters. I’m laying the table. The meal is almost ready. Soon we can sit down together and say grace.
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