Trini Melange

A few days later, Irene’s parents were startled to see their daughter’s condition when she arrived home one night, assisted by two unknown men. She limped badly, her right arm was bruised, her right eye was half closed and terribly swollen. Like a boxer in the ring whose eye was pulverized by his opponent. Irene spoke first, calmly. “I’m all right. Just get me to a hospital, Daddy.” She explained how her husband accosted her on her way home. Demanded her return to their marital home. She refused. He retaliated by raining blows on her. She fell to the pavement. Her screams attracted two young male students on their way home from night classes. Thomas was about to bang her head onto its concrete surface. Irene was unequal to the defence. The students wrested him away from her as the couple lay on the pavement struggling. The students escorted her home. Irene’s father obtained the assistance of an attorney-at-law and the courts in securing a restraining order for his daughter. This development enraged Thomas even further. He was outside their home once more, waving the order. He tormented his wife with his shrill angry words. “Irene! Yuh see dis piece o’ paper? It mean not’ing to me. Until yuh come back home, I go be in yuh tail.” Irene’s father immediately made a phone call. In a short while the tirade stopped and Irene heard ominous noises outside. A thud. A strangled voice very like her husband’s. Another thud. She got up to look. Her father commanded her. “Sit down, chile!” She hesitated momentarily, then disobeyed, moving to the window swiftly and purposefully. She witnessed the rest of the drama. Her husband Thomas was spread-eagled on the surface of the road. A heavy-set man wearing a stocking over his head attempted to punch him in the face. Thomas mechanically raised a hand in front of his face for protection. The big man punched the hand hard. The second thinner masked man kicked Thomas in his groin. Thomas groaned, clutching his private parts. The heavier man punched Thomas in his stomach. He curled, foetus-like, groaning more intensely. They punished him until he was both voiceless and lifeless. The two men lifted him from the road. They roughly set him down on the edge of the pavement in front of her parents’ home. They left him there, motionless. Irene sucked in her breath in fear, clenching her fists. “Oh my God, daddy, they killed him! They killed him!” Her father sat rocking calmly in his old morris chair. He spoke confidently. “Don’ worry, Irene. Dey are professionals. He will live to tell the tale and he’ll never bodder yuh again.”