After Our Wedding, My Husband Tried to Hit Me So I Hit Back, and He Ended Up in the Hospital

The parlor smelled of cold rosewater, dried hydrangeas, and the sour wool of Harlon’s Sunday coat, which hung on a peg behind the organ.

The tin box sat behind the heavy oak clock that had stopped at four minutes past seven the year Harlon’s grandfather died.

My hands were warm now, but they were precise.

I didn't tip the clock. I reached behind the brass pendulum, my fingers touching the cold, rusted lid of the biscuit tin. It came out with a small, dry rustle of paper.

Inside were six items: Three silver dollars wrapped in tissue paper. The registration for the forty-two John Deere tractor. A lock of black hair tied with a blue ribbon—Colton’s, from when he was six months old. The tax receipt for the lower pasture. And the deed to the thirty acres of bottomland.

I didn't take the silver. I didn't take the tractor paper.

I took the deed, folded it twice into a narrow square, and tucked it inside the lining of my right shoe, right under the arch where my heel would keep it flat.

"What are you doing in here?"

Darla stood in the dark doorway leading from her bedroom.

She was wearing her nightgown—a thick white flannel affair that buttoned up to her chin, making her look like a tall, grey pillar of salt. Her hair was down, hanging in two thin, grey braids over her flat chest.

"I took my deed, Darla," I said.

She stepped into the room, her bare feet silent on the rag carpet.

"You don't have a deed," she said, her voice dropping into that low, venomous whistle she used when she spoke to the women from the church. "You're a Briggs now. Everything you brought through that door belongs to Harlon and Colton. Even the clothes on your back were paid for with Harlon's hogs."

"My father bought these shoes," I said.

"Your father is a broken-down old man who couldn't pay his fertilizer bill without Harlon’s signature," she spat. "He sold you to us because he didn't have anything else left to trade."

She reached out, her fingers hooked like bird claws, aiming for my coat collar.

"Don't touch me, Darla," I said.

I didn't raise my hand. I didn't move my feet.

I just looked at her with the same eyes I had used when Colton had come at me six days ago—the eyes of a woman who had spent three years learning that people who bark loudest are usually afraid of the sound their own boots make on an empty floor.

Darla’s hand stopped two inches from my neck.

Her eyes dropped to my right shoe. She saw the slight bulge near the heel where the stiff paper was tucked into the leather.