Peter’s Prize #3

Alma drew her finger across her forehead as she recalled hesitatingly climbing into the car that day and feeling her nausea moving from her stomach to her throat. The car took off like a fire and Alma began to fade as she became the punching bag for hours of angry accusations. She used to try to fix the problems but had learned she couldn’t create the change for this man who found pleasure in her pain. By now she was a fixed statue, motionless, knowing from the past no fight, or plea would ease the troubled waters. From love, to fear,  desperation, to anger, and then to resignation,  she knew her place well.

Sure as it would be, his anger escalated as he grabbed her arm and pulled it backwards. She winced and almost passed out from the overwhelming pain,  but for the ironic mercy of his opening her car door and pushing her out.  Out on the highway,  alone and pregnant with no way to help herself home but to walk. One small memory in a mirade of painful memories. Alma carried them in her heart. It was white-collar crime. Beat her up, but not too recognizably so no one would know. They were well dressed caucasians after all and who expect what lurked behind dark walls of sorrow. “Where was God?” Alma said to herself one night in the dark hours. She was hardly dressed when he threw her outside in the cold and locked the doors. She wandered the streets where only the night creatures lurked. She didn’t care, death would be welcome as her life reflected the dirty sidewalks she wandered. “Where is God in my suffering?” she would say to herself. “In a world of suffering?” For her life was one defrauded, stolen and made for misery. Her mind came back to her child who sat looking at her with a troubled face. “Mommie?”

(to be continued)