Scenes from an Abusive Marriage: She Starts to Look Different

He had married a plumpish little woman with glowing skin and a cap of short dark hair. He liked the sharp way she dressed for the office, in Ann Taylor-type suits, but her skirts were too long, he said. And he hated those business shoes with no ties or straps. And she should wear her hair long, because women should have long hair. He hated makeup and pierced ears; the whole idea of holes punched in the body sickened him. She let her hair grow. It covered her ears.

He wore only jeans, sweatshirts, and t-shirts, never any other kind of pants and never shirts with buttons or a collar. He told his boss the standard painter's outfit of white t-shirt and white painter's pants was "fruit," and no one would ever dictate to him what he should wear. His boxer-briefs hung in rags. Now that he was her husband she bought him new ones, choosing the same brand and color. He was furious.

"Don't ever buy me clothes," he said. But eventually he did wear the new underwear. And because they were frugal she cut up the old underwear for dust rags. For Christmas she splurged on a leather jacket he really liked. It made him look good. And she was pleased to see him liking something. He got white paint on it and would not take it to be cleaned.

He talked a lot about society and how he didn't like it and was going to start his own political party. She'd heard that many times before and had wondered if she should marry a man who would never be happy, but she'd figured that by treating him well she could help make him happy. He hated work and cars and money and especially people who had money. He really hated that dripping kitchen faucet. She went to the phone to call the landlord to fix it. He jumped up and got in her way.

"Don't call the landlord! He'll just raise the rent!"

"But the dripping bothers you!"

"It wouldn't drip if you shut off the water the way I told you to!" (There was a trick to it.) "Get over here. Watch me. This is how you do it."

"Can't we just get it fixed? It shouldn't be dripping in the first place."

"It would be fine if you did what I told you to do!"

She grew her hair out. Her baby-fine hair grew only to shoulder length. Parted in the middle, it just hung, and didn't look very good, so she had it permed. When it grew out about six inches she had it permed again. And again. He didn't want her to cut it at all, but she did get it trimmed.

After their wedding he did not want sex. It had been troublesome before; he would do it only in the dark, and only at bedtime when she was kind of tired, and he said she had to shower first. At times when she had snuggled up he had shouted, "I don't feel romantic!" She suggested Viagra for their problem. He would not, he said, poison his body with drugs. She only wanted one thing, he said, and he was not going to do that, so there.

It was too much trouble to fight it, and sex was a trivial thing anyway, and they were married now and she was stuck, so she told herself to forget about it, and she did.

"Your breath has always been bad," he'd said. She said that was rude to say. He said it was the truth and he wasn't going to censor himself. She looked up and did all kinds of things to try to stop bad breath, becoming painfully self-conscious, avoiding conversations, always popping lozenges or gum into her mouth. Finally she went to the dentist and asked what to do about her breath. "You don't have bad breath," the dentist said. She did not believe the dentist. Maybe by chance her breath had been okay just that one morning.

She kept exercising and lost weight and did not glow any more. She got allergies and sinusitis and had to lie down a lot. She realized one day looking in her closet, that she wore black almost exclusively now. She bought a white shirt and blue shirt and wore them to work with black pants or navy pants and trouser socks and black oxford shoes. They were more comfortable than hose and heels anyway. The ends of her hair were sizzled by repeated perms. She wore rimless glasses that made prominent her reddened nose and the rings beneath her eyes.