“Black and Blue”
Bi-Mia Thomas 
2nd Place Winner, Prose Category

The night I turned 22 I ate dinner at B.B. King’s. Rick’s eyes were so blue then. Clear blue. Sky blue. My blue. The spirit of love and hate and miserable, messy obsessive love reverberated through me-plucked me, played me, my sinew the six string. Each sad note, each blowsy bluesy note vibrating, shaking me, altering me until I was the blues and the blues were me. Musical possession- the demon, playing me- plying me, making ready to receive the next evening’s sorrow.

The Belt, a coiled black snake above me, poised, ready to strike. What it struck in me was fear. Fingers around my neck, darker than my dark, tightened with each attempt to grasp for air. Light blurred the edges of the darkness, and each slam of my head on the wall sprinkled my mind’s night sky with stars. Muffled sound traveled through an avalanche of icy cold snow. Fight. Fight or you’ll die like this. And somehow I broke free.

My shame was black. I stood with my face silhouetted against the white wall as the officer shot photos of my wounds. “you shouldn’t have let them take pictures of you Vonda whispered. “they’ll keep it on file and use you in a line-up. 

And my hair, before so carefully arranged, was disheveled, torn from my scalp and strewn across the floor in tufts like black cotton. BlackBlue. Black men. Blues. Black eye. Blues. Black heart. Blues. Black men black heart black eye blues.

“It was supposed to be my birthday,” I told the officer. “Yeah, but your birthday was yesterday, “he replied curtly. And so it was. My da. Birthday. Birthday blues day. Rick’s blue eyes, Alfonso’s black heart. A photo negative.

Rick – tall. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Bisque skin against my mocha. I loved to see our bodies woven together in the mooonlight. He would almost glow. And my dark warmth brightened him, elevated him, and his large soft hands on my brown skin accentuated the blue blood in his veins. But it saddened my heart to watch his hands. To see his watch sweeping slowl, marking the time and making me feel like a cheap black whore. I gave him my back, for I couldn’t face his watch. And my back pleased him, and he pulled me snugly close.

Alfonso-tall. Black hair. Dark eyes. Darkest soul. What do you call a tone on tone pattern? That’s what it was like to be tangled in his arms. He took my hand and slipped it down his pants. What they say – it’s true. I kept feeling more, more more of his warmth in my cold hands. Endless warmth, stores of incredible warmth. First fear, then feelings – feelings in deep places I never had feelings. Long, dark yearnings in deep places I never knew existed. Then release – release after waiting so long, waiting my life for that screaming discharge of volcanic lava to flow, flow from ancient secret places hidden from all non – native explorers. Natives understand the volcano, understand its fearsome power. And I was its virgin sacrifice.

The beatings I suffered at the hands of this black man – they were as brutal as sugar is sweet. And it was this very juxtaposition of danger and longing that intensified the relationship. I was dancing at the edge of hell, stripping my soul bare to Satan. But I became muddled and confused. Since sex can’t be consensual whern you’re seven, Alfonso was my first black lover. But the experiences were no differrent. At firs, it felt good, scary good until fear and enjoyment were one and the same. And somehow in it all, I became again seven, and I was weak and small and no one could hear me scream.

To alfonso, there was no word “no”. And what was once sex became rape. Rape of my core self, again a splitting, again a maladaptive response to the inexplicable combining of longing and fear. Rape  of my spirit. Because I couldn’t say no. I don’t think that anyone who knows me, or knew me understood that I was not a woman making her own choices. I was a child and I was trapped with a phone cord around my neck and the TV firing rapidly in the dark. He raped me, and did it again and again while I lay there still believing I was helpless.

The uber – scary film noir effect of the rapidly flashing TV in the dark illuminated the room like machine gunfire at night imprint the scene indelibly in my mind. White, black. Black, white, whiter, black, white, black white – like being beeat senseless – some things I see very clearly and others are forever plunged in darkness. Being snatched up like a rag doll with useless limbs. Twisted woolen pigtails bejeweled with a rainbow of plastic barrettes being slammed down again and again and again. Useless, hopeless thinking of escape. Watch the wall. Watch the TV slam light against the wall. I lay there utterly, completely powerless.

I am a battered woman. I am locked in a struggle that really only began when the abuse stopped. So many nights I am in the tempest, being thrown and shaken and dashed upon the rocks. I wake up drenched and cold and bleeding from wounds I thought had healed. My doctor calls it major recurring depression. But I’ve just been beaten black and blue.