Spider

It wasn't my fault.

Yes we'd been arguing.

No I didn't push her.

I didn't fucking push anyone.

She'd always had a temper. She'd beat me up if I let her but I'm a big guy - it was easier to hold onto her until the mood passed and the crying started. One time she threw a bottle of milk at me as we walked back from town. People had stopped to watch on the other side of the street as she screamed at me. Sighing and shaking my head I began to walk away and moments later a white blur flew past my head. It exploded a few steps in front of me sending glass cascading into the gutter, the milk now glistening in the sun sharp and free.

This was different.

She was wearing shorts and a tee shirt. We were washing clothes after getting back from France and suddenly she hated me. Swearing and kicking at me she tries to slap me. I back away and she loses her balance a little. I smirk a little even though I know it's the worse thing I can do. The temperature in the room seems to rise suddenly as she tears her face into an even uglier expression of hate. She looks around for something sharp or dull but I'm standing near the open backdoor. I feel safe. Sensing she isn't going to get any satisfaction she storms towards the front of the house and away from me. I step forward again and watch her head towards the open front door. It's a hot day. I can see the sweat running down her back as she grabs the door and slams it with all her might. It's a big old-fashioned thing and sturdy but its centre is almost all glass. The door slams and the frame shakes but no satisfying cracks appear. I see her raise her arms and I know what she's going to do and even though I can see her doing it I just stand there and watch, not for a second believing its really intentional. She brings her fists down hard on the glass and it gives. She isn't ready for how easily her arms go through the door and she is suddenly off balance. Her legs twist around trying to get a better footing and her body follows. She moves sideways through the door, flailing now, but her body simply finds more space and glass. The door collapses around her and down she goes. I see the flesh give way easily in a dozen places up and down her arms. The largest piece of glass still intact at the bottom of the door gives under her weight and shatters back inside the house, finding her legs. She doesn't scream. The only sound is the falling of glass as it hits the path outside and multiplies. Then the dull thud and sound of boots in the snow as she lands on the shards.

This all takes seconds.

Suddenly I'm standing over her and she's looking up at me. A look of odd surprise on her face. Its only when she moves that she lets out a noise I never once heard her make before - indescribable. I reach down and my hands come away bloody. Telling her not to move I run back for the phone. My fingers leave blood on the numbers. Weeks later the blood is still there. Caked down between the eight and nine. My words stumble out. It doesn't sound like me when the police play it back to me a few days later. I sound scared.

Waiting for the ambulance I kneel down and hold her hand. Later that evening a nurse named Laura will stitch up gashes in both my knees but I never felt a thing and you can hardly see the scars.

There are tears now but no words. I hold her hand and say what you are supposed to say. I don't know if she believed what I was saying. The blood pooling out beneath her amplified the lies. Things looked far from ok.

Then the paramedics and neighbours. Faces and questions. Moving her and she passes out. A chunk of glass is dislodged from her ankle and the fresh blood starts to cool on the gurney. That one piece of glass severed her Achilles' tendon, sending a thin piece of her shooting back up inside the leg like a piece of elastic. They had to open her hip to find the end and then thread it back along the length of the leg - but that was the worst of it. All that blood was to spare. No veins were cut, no arteries nicked.

The doctor said she was lucky.

The police said I was lucky.

She wasn't pressing charges.

They'd be watching me though.

They knew the pattern.

No one believed she 'just' slipped.

We stayed together another year after that, but now, the only thing that I miss about her is the tiny spider-shaped scar near her left wrist. Only a couple of stitches but it never closed properly. I'd run my fingers over its dead surface as we walked hand in hand but it took me a year to find the strength to let it go.

25 June 2002