Beat

A. W. 

According to Wikipedia, a beat is the moment in a scene at which increasing dramatic tension produces a noticeable change in the consciousness of one or more characters. An event, a decision, a pivot.

Beat.

Someone suggested Big Little Lies as a good lockdown watch. I remembered to breathe and then remembered turning the page to the first tellings of domestic abuse in that book when I read it years ago. It made me shake and cry. I didn’t see it coming. I’d bought in completely to the perfect smiling family, because it must be so, because look at the pictures on their wall.

Beat.

These are some of the things I could never get right: my clothes, how I walked in relation to him, the ends of sentences. He would hold his anger in until we were alone and I was grateful for that effort on his part because I didn’t want other people to see how stupid I was even though they probably knew and then, of course, I would apologise.

Beat.

When I went to the doctor, every time, we would check my vitals and it would turn out I was fine. When I went to A&E because of the hammering heart, I sat in a bed and people were kind and the hammering went away. When I went to the doctor and said I was leaving him, they said I could get urgent counselling if he had been violent and had he been violent and I said no.

Beat.

Most mornings now I get dressed without second-guessing myself. I am learning to finish sentences. I often leave the house without crying.

Beat.

Because if one of my friends said to me he only hit me the one time and he didn’t really mean it I would not know how to, I do not know how to finish this sentence.

Beat.

Most domestic abuse in New Zealand goes unreported and still the stats say that this is happening to 50 percent of us and every time it looks a little different and how could I report it when I couldn’t tell it to myself?

Beat.

Also, as Carmen Maria Machado points out in In the Dream House, her devastating memoir, “Most types of domestic abuse are completely legal.” I read it over lockdown and it took three days, endless cups of tea and the kind of sob-strewn cheeks that make Fleabag look like an amateur. But this time I knew why I was crying.

Beat.

According to Wikipedia, audiences feel uneven or erratic beats. Between each beat a sequence occurs. This sequence is often a series of scenes that relates to the last beat and leads up to the next beat.

Beat.

Big Little Lies is a reminder, if you need it, that domestic abuse can happen to the socioeconomically privileged. In The Dream House digs archival for a history of abuse in queer relationships. Janelle Monae, who we weren’t talking about just before, sings “Everything is sex / Except sex, which is power / You know power is just sex / Now ask yourself who’s screwing you.” Margaret Atwood, who we may be talking about forever, wrote this in The Handmaids Tale:

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn’t about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”

Beat.

Every time a news article says he was such a nice guy, I can’t finish this sentence.

Beat.

I suppose you’re going to go around telling people I was bad to you, he said. You’d better not say tell anyone I was an abuser or anything stupid like that.

Beat.

Should I sign my name to this? Should I not?  What does it matter when half the players on the pitch are having similar experiences? That right there is the obligatory sports metaphor to make this more relatable and less threatening. And to distract you from the name issue because I won’t because I’m still scared.

Beat.

According to Wikipedia, what most people remember are the beats.

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A. W.

See also, on Corpus: ‘Free with his fists: trying to make sense of it’ Part One and Part Two by Carolyn McCurdie.