Divorce the Bottle
Nia turned the grey knob, and water flowed freely from the water spout. Turning it to the left so it became hot, she rose slowly, rubbing her neck. Nia had too many aches and pains; she was too young to be so plagued by the evils of life. She stared at her own sad reflection in the bathroom mirror, the lines of misery and worry etched deep in her face. Like windows to her soul, her eyes shone with tears she could not shed. Long ago she learned to just close her eyes; shut the blinds and block everything out. No one could ever truly reach her. Nia was a prisoner in her own barbed wire body. And such a fine body she had. A body no man had yet resisted. A body that drove men to madness; a body that made men secure in their belief that if he could not have it, he would take it…
    Nia hid from her reflection. She found she did not recognize that woman in the mirror; nor did she want to. Nia refused to believe the sobering truth about her eyes, and the soul that lie beneath them. Rubbing her bruised neck, she tenderly shed her body of her tattered clothing. Wincing, she removed all of it, tossing it into the trash. She wanted no memories from last night, or any other night from the past week. Liquor had robbed her of any solid memories, though fragments tortured her at night; she hadn’t slept fitfully in weeks.
    She stroked her hot belly; it was still warm with that burning liquid; the intoxicator, the impregnator, the annihilator. There was life beneath that hot surface once; a gentle stirring that gave her false hope. Once. Gingerly, she climbed into the shower, shutting the cheap plastic curtain behind her. The shower tile was cold; it sucked the remnants of warmth from her already numb fingers. Hot water streamed down her body, giving her life, feeling, meaning. It thawed her frozen heart and brought her numb body back to life. Nia turned the knob until it was burning hot, until she felt the dirt melting off her chocolate body. Sometimes she fancied herself to be a woman made of chocolate; so easily deceived and melted by that hot liquid, the burning water, that liquor with which she had such an unhealthy infatuation. The steam burned her bruises, cleansed her wrists. Tears scalded her cheeks, as she stared at her red wrists. Jagged lines ran across them, puffy red, the skin barely broken. Yet they brought back so much pain, too much pain for such a young one.
    Memories ran past her closed eyelids, a private cinema. Her lids were movie screens, recalling all that plagued her, all the relationships that left her broken, bruised, damaged. She was damaged goods, Daddy called it. Unworthy of any kind of love he screamed at her, his love affair with the bottle so evident to her and no one else. A love affair he neglected from the pulpit. Striking her again and again with that bottle, until her and the Jack Daniels became one, their love affair evident now; a marriage arranged from birth.
    Tears kept staining her chocolate cheeks, eyelashes stuck together with the steam and heat of it all. She placed her palm on the cold tile, once again, sobering her. She lifted her hung head slowly. Nia faced the hot water, felt it spray across her face as it erased the tracks her tears left behind. The water ran burning hot down her womanly curves; curves too many men lusted after; curves that drove males to madness; curves that drove her father to the bottle, drove him to that same conclusion every man in her life reached, that if he couldn’t have them, he would take them…
    Her lip was swollen and busted, bruises marred her soft skin. Velvet skin like peach fuzz he said to her. The gentle man with lamb eyes who took her home and slept on the couch after she ended up where she always did: passed out in the gutter. He spoke softly to her, never as harsh as the others did. It was of him Nia thought as the white lather caressed her soft skin, skin like peach fuzz…
    Eventually the hot water ran cold, though she didn’t notice until she began to shiver. Turning the water off, she stood there a moment, a hot fog enveloping the bathroom. She breathed out slowly, watching the fog swirl around her. Nia stepped out of the shower, leaning on the towel rack. At that moment, something dawned upon her: until Lamb Eyes, she trusted that towel rack with her life more than any man she’d ever met. Reaching for her towel, her fingers intertwined with the soft fabric, and she wrapped it slowly around her damp body. She exhaled one last time, feeling lamb eyes’ strong arms holding her tighter than her snug towel. Nia let everything that plagued her go with that breath; she watched it swirl into the fog until it was no more...