She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament,
his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path
that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not.
In the four years since the day at the bathhouse, there had been six more cycles of hopes raised then dashed,
each loss, each collapse, each trip to the doctor more crushing for Mariam than the last.
With each disappointment, Rasheed had grown more remote and resentful. Now nothing she did pleased him.
She cleaned the house, made sure he always had a supply of clean shirts, cooked him his favorite dishes.
Once, disastrously, she even bought makeup and put it on for him.
But when he came home, he took one look at her and winced with such distaste that she rushed to the bathroom and washed it all off,
tears of shame mixing with soapy water, rouge, and mascara.
Now Mariam dreaded the sound of him coming home in the evening. The key rattling, the creak of the door, these were sounds that set her heart racing.
From her bed, she listened to the click-clack of his heels, to the muffled shuffling of his feet after he'd shed his shoes.
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