Burnaway

[cont.]
On the other side of the lushly carpeted lobby with its potted banana trees reaching nearly to the ceiling, the elevator stood wide open, all that brass shining and waiting for a passenger to serve. She pressed the black button for the eighth floor. Living here in this luxury was courtesy of Barbara. There was no way she could afford even a broom closet in this complex. It was one of the perks of being with her. That and the expensive dinners and maid service and access to the spa and the vacation homes. The apartment had two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a small balcony. The bedroom with no view was Barbara’s editing room. They would sit there for hours debating which shot should go first, what dialog should be removed. It was fun having her opinions matter so much.
When they were looking at apartments, Barbara insisted on a building with a gym and an Olympic sized swimming pool. Barbara liked being fit but didn’t want to have to mingle at a more public gym. She used both the pool and gym every single day. Maggie tended to get her exercise by taking long walks through the arroyos nearby, passing the people walking their dogs, startling the feral cats and an occasional coyote or skunk. She liked the smell of the eucalyptus after heavy winds or rain, although she no longer went on the trails when they were wet. As brick-like as the dirt normally was, it turned into the consistency of warm butter after even a half inch of rain. She discovered that the hard way by taking a step on her normal path and sinking straight down into it, caking herself with mud up to mid calf.
Barbara had been so upset about the mud. Sometimes her likes and dislikes baffled Maggie. Dirt seemed to offend her and the fact that Maggie did “manual labor” embarrassed her. Yet Barbara spent over an hour a day on equipment working up a sweat and accomplished nothing more than that. At least Maggie’s sweat meant she’d painted a wall, mopped a floor or hauled art around. Maggie tended to laugh off the derisive comments but she found herself spending less and less time alone with Barbara to avoid the barbs. Maggie wrote it off as stress from school. Barbara was trying so hard to do the best possible job. Maggie applauded that. Striving for excellence is a virtue.
When Maggie opened the heavy front door, she heard the music on really loud. It was some sweet bubblegum song, girls’ voices and lots of instruments. Something new she hadn’t heard before. Maggie picked up the Pop art book and popped her head into the editing room where Barbara was supposed to be working on her new film. Barbara wasn’t there but, even over the loud music, Maggie heard groaning coming from the other bedroom at the far end of the hall and a high pitched squeal of pleasure.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening. Barbara’s striped thong hung on the door knob and trail of other clothing items led to the bedroom. No one here wore chartreuse shorts.
Well, it was bound to happen. Barbara had told her repeatedly that she didn’t like restrictions. Odessa and a couple of friends reported seeing her kissing another woman. Maggie dismissed the reports, not that they didn’t happen but Barbara liked putting on performances, liked shocking people. Maggie could see Barbara messing around just to cause talk. But really, screwing around with someone else in the bed they shared? That was beyond insulting. Now Maggie had to make a choice: would she ignore this or leave?
Except it wasn’t actually a choice.
She had spent her childhood watching her father belittle Momma. She could hear his caustic tone as he objected to the way Momma dressed, the way she spoke. “Your friends are trash. Don’t bring them around here again, you hear?” And the tirades about the way she cleaned house and raised the children. Momma was a terrible housekeeper but since she was always pregnant with babies underfoot, how could she be otherwise? From the time Maggie could walk, she was helping out. The two of them didn’t have enough hands to keep the passel of boys clean, much less clean up after them to his standards. And lord help them if they asked the boys to help with the house work. “It’s a woman’s job to clean house,” her father would scream at them. Once when he was yelling at the boys for not following his orders, Momma suggested that maybe cleaning their own rooms would help train them in discipline. He punched her so hard she lost a tooth. Maggie had found it later under the couch, the blood still slightly sticky.
She knew from her reading that children from this kind of abusive background tend to fall into three types: to be immobilized with passivity, to mirror their oppressor, or to become champions of the oppressed. Maggie, quiet by nature, didn’t take crap from anyone.
In the first grade, a nun asked her why she was crying. When Maggie explained that her father had hit Momma really hard, the nun calmly told her that the Bible, according to Ephesians 5:22, demands that the wife be submissive to her husband, just as children must be submissive to their parents. “Always?” Maggie had asked. “Always,” the nun replied. “God is evil,” she told the nun. Even having her mouth washed out with soap did not alter her opinion.
When Maggie was a bit older with better reading skills, she did a thorough check of the Bible. The nun was right. Ephesians even clearly stated that employees were to submit to their employers, just as her father did to his superiors in the Army. But the Bible was confusing. I Timothy 2:12 clearly states, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” The nuns were teachers and were anything but silent even around the older boys and priests. Nuns wouldn’t knowingly disobey the Bible. And she was concerned about the application of obedience. The Virgin Mary was a woman with a husband. If she didn’t obey her husband perfectly, surely God wouldn’t want her beaten or her nose broken by Joseph. The book must have secret sections, a book of exceptions, that the priests didn’t share.