Coca Cola

The trauma shrink said that peoples' minds are like mailboxes; someday I'd fill the mailbox with other mail that could be taken out and examined at my discretion. That this incident would fade like newsprint on an old paper.

It was a sunny Sunday day in February, I had returned the previous evening from a five or six day trip to southern Mexico, Colima and Michoacan doing some undergrad work in petrology, vulcanology, some required classwork for a degree in geology. I returned to find my world turned and twisted like the broiling lava flows that I had been mapping for a week.

When a child smiles at you for the first time, when you see their newborn face, the whole world is right, the awesome responsibility is worth it. You are complete as an adult.

This child would never see the world. It ended it's life as a 12 week old fetus, sucked down some ungodly drain in some unholy charnel house while I was gone. Neat and tidy, the entire cost paid for by plastic credit card, provided by caring Christian neighbors.

I did not understand.

We argued.

She left, went down the street to those caring Christian neighbors.

I needed to know.

I drove down to the end of the street where they lived, knocked on the screen door which was open.

No answer.

Like a fool I stepped inside and called her name. No answer.

Then like a whirlwind, big, fat four hundred and fifty pound Tom Bell flew down the stairs as if jet propelled.

I tried to ask him where she was, but before I could get a word, maybe two out, he sucker punched me, and I crumpled to the wooden kitchen floor on my back.

Equally as fast, he was suddenly sitting on top of me, pounding my head into the dirty floor, as if hammering a nail. He was cursing at me and spitting in my face. I did not understand.

I was clawing and scratching, trying to breathe as the weight of his grossly obese body pinned me to the floor.

With uncontrolled rage in his eyes he screamed at me, fleshy contorted face inches from mine; "Why did you have to bring up the abortion?"

We struggled as I tried to break free.

Somehow, he managed to turn me over. I saw his thick arm snake out, near the base of the water cooler, where a stack of glass coca-cola bottles were. He grabbed a bottle, and as if in slow motion, closer and closer to my face it came.

I could read the logo.

I knew I was going to die.

The bottle hit me square between the eyes, and it was as if someone had turned on a faucet of red. Blood poured from my nose in a frightening stream.

Then the bottle came again, only this time I did not feel the whack, I only heard it, a squishing, wet sound of cartilage and bone shattering.

Oddly, I felt myself being handcuffed, but there were no police?

The bottle came one more time, and I disappeared into a netherworld of crimson, drifting vaguely away, detached and musing that if this really were the end, than there truly was an oxymoronic state between violence and the peace.

Then I saw other people standing there, I heard my oldest daughter screaming hysterically: "leave my Daddy alone!".

And someone else was there too, I recognized her.

And then I heard her say, emotionless: "That's enough Tom…."

I could sense the handcuffs being taken off, and I was pulled roughly by the hair to my feet, shoved toward the door.

All I could think to say, to tell him was; "I'm going to kill you".

Somehow, I managed to leave, get in my car, and drive home, knowing that this was the end. I tried to clean myself up best I could. I held my young son in my arms, tried to comfort my little daughters who had been at the house alone.

Soon the police arrived, and took the kids. I could not understand why, but did not argue.

I knew this was the end.

Tom Bell went to church that Sunday morning along with his family, even sang in the choir.

I went to the hospital.

There's a lot more to the story, hell, I even ended up victorious winning court battles, winning damage money from the fat fucker, but to what end?

Needless to say, I never did kill him, in fact I forgave him (in my heart), sent him on his proverbial way. Doesn't mean that I'd eat dinner with him, or even acknowledge his life or death, just that I'd no longer destroy myself with the awful burden of that day.

The trauma shrink was right, I eventually replaced the images, filled the mailbox with other, happier mail. But not before several years of flashbacks to that awful day, which robbed me of time and space as I tried to finish struggling through college (I eventually did).

So when I hear that abortion is simply a private matter for the woman involved, I think back to that day and want to tell them that it's bullshit.