Free Memoirs of a Bitch by Francesca Petrizzo, Silvester Mazzarella Page B

was little I could do but shut my eyes and make room for him; the quicker I gave in to him the sooner he would be finished; he was always in a hurry.
    When he’d finished having his pleasure, he grunted to clear his voice and began his usual grumble: “Still no boy children.”
    â€œNo, not yet.” My voice was expressionless.
    â€œMaybe there’s something wrong with you, woman. You produced a daughter easily enough.”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with me.”
    â€œWith me, you mean? Is that what you’re saying? That I can’t—”
    â€œPossibly. How can we know? The gods decide these things.”
    My voice was flat, colorless. His drunken rages were usually harmless. That was why I had my back to him, so I didn’t see him raise his arm and hit me across the neck. Then he pushed me to the floor. I fell painfully, tangled in the sheet. He was on me before I could get up. I had nothing to defend myself with, nowhere to hide. All I could do was submit to his blows until he had finished. Then he went away without looking back, leaving a battered bundle by the wall. Something the slave girls could tidy away.

18
    A split lip, swollen eyes and purple bruises on my cheeks. With delicate hands Etra stitched my right eyebrow and cut the thread. No broken ribs, she said. She had bound my left wrist to a splint; promising it would heal quickly. I very tentatively swept back my hair and looked in the mirror. The woman I saw was someone else. My scornful smile hurt my lips and produced a dark laugh on the unrecognizable mask in the mirror. Poor Helen. Poor Helen indeed. The pathetic timidity of an unloved husband had suddenly turned to violence.
    Someone knocked hesitantly on the door. Etra, embroidering at the window, met my look. She too knew the timid knock of the man who in another life had been Menelaus. I nodded to her to open the door, carefullytidying a few loose hairs away behind my ears before turning. “Well?”
    He drew back, terrified. Now he could see for himself the marks of his violence on my body, he was repelled. A weak man. He sat down, or rather collapsed on to the bed. Giving way completely. Holding his head in his hands, feebly tossing back his lifeless hair.
    â€œForgive me, Helen.”
    So he was taking forgiveness for granted. Admitting he’d been drunk would not have helped. He would have done it again. He was asking me to excuse him, he wanted my forgiveness. I had no feeling for him in his misery. He had used up all my pity. I took a deep breath, then spoke in measured tones, without raising my voice; my wounded mouth still hurting. “Hit me again if you like, Menelaus. But no, I cannot forgive you.”
    Slowly he raised his head to meet my eyes and my composed, expressionless face. I’m made of stone. His eyes filled with tears that he made no effort to hold back. I realized what he was about to do a moment before he did it.
    â€œDon’t kneel down before me, Menelaus. It won’t help.”
    He ran away like a child, like the coward and fool he was. He ran away. Etra came back from the next room and took up her embroidery, which she had left on her stool. As she passed, she imperceptibly touched my arm.Less than a caress, but more than a consolation. She understood. I turned to the mirror again, and recognized in its depths the eyes of a devastated but extremely beautiful woman. On her wounded features she had painted a cruel smile.
    I dreamed of my soldier that night. As usual, I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him in the way one feels the sun, as a physical sensation on the skin. He held me close as he had never done in life, softly murmuring my name. That was all he said. But when I woke the marks of the blows I had suffered seemed to have disappeared. Menelaus would never touch me again.

19
    Hermione was tired. I knew it from the impatient way she pulled at my dress, hanging with her whole weight from its