Bint Arab
Purples
That was the color of the teddy she bought after their first fight. She knew he'd like the cleavage and the super-short hemline. The black one was sexier, but he wouldn't like it. He'd say it made her look pale and old.
She would promise him that he'd be the only one to see her in it, ever. She didn't want him to get jealous like the day before, calling her nasty things and accusing her of even nastier things.
That was the color around her left eye. Small capillaries had burst with the force of the blow and left dots, little pinpricks of loose blood in a glorious halo around her eye. She tried to cover it up with make-up, but that just made it more obvious. Sunglasses also were too obvious.
He got angry with her when he saw it.
Are you trying to make me feel guilty? It's your own fucking fault. You made me do it.
He threw his dinner at her and stormed out of the house, warning her to "clean herself up" before he got back. As she threw her clothes into the washer, she decided not to ever make spaghetti for dinner again.
She lay awake all night listening for the sound of his truck pulling into the driveway, but he didn't come back that night.
The next day, she stopped by the supermarket to buy steaks. The cashier at the Save-Mart recognized her and gave her worried looks, so she kept her eyes down and bagged her own groceries to hurry things along before the cashier could express any concern.
Kind words would break her down.
That was the color of the nurse's uniform at the ER. She stared at it intently as the nurse asked her questions she couldn't bring herself to answer beyond childlike responses.
Do you understand what's happened?
Yes.
Has this happened before?
Yes.
How long has this been going on?
…
Okay. Then the hardest question of them all: Do you have someplace safe to go tonight?
She couldn't stop shaking and sobbing for the next half hour.
That was the color of his lips before the whole area around his mouth turned gray. The blood pooling around him started as a beautiful, rich red, but darkened almost to black by the time the police arrived.
Her world had become colorless. She could finally feel safe.
Born in Baghdad, raised in Brooklyn, living in Texas, Bint Arab is perpetually out of place and comfortable with that. She is an emerging writer, with stories published online at Toasted Cheese, Every Day Fiction, Yellow Mama and Expanded Horizons, and in print in Best New Writing 2013. She administers the writers' forum at bibliophilia.org/forum.
