Sunday Scribblings: Chocolate

This theme of this week's Sunday Scribblings is chocolate. To read other Scribblings or to submit one of your own, click here.
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Of course, she's wearing fuschia and black, because, after all, its 1989 and that's what you wore to the prom then. Ostentatious yet sophisticated. Don't you see her whimsical, fish-net gloves?

On her feet, there are stiletto heels and when the video zooms in--his dad coughing in the background--you can get a glimpse of the beaded, clip-on tassels. She couldn't afford those tassels but wanted them in a desperate way, so he'd said, I'll buy them for you, both of them knowing how grateful she'd be. She worked at a donut shop. He was the doctor's son. There was no comparison. She took the packages--peasant skirts, Italian dinners, flaming red cowboy boots, cartons of cigarettes, vacations on the lake--that he tossed her way.

He hadn't been allowed to park in her parent's driveway, had to pick her up beside the mailbox on her dusty road. Her mother couldn't tolerate his controlling ways, and her father--well, he backed her mother, 100%. So, she'd stumbled down the incline of her driveway in her heels and climbed into his car, and he'd revved the engine at her parents, watching from the porch, as he'd peeled away. She'd seen her parent's faces crumple and wanted to cry, but didn't; it might ruin her makeup. Besides, she didn't want to make him mad.

But at his house, they'd been greeted like Charles and Diana, and they'd stood, at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer, being filmed. His mother told him that his older sister coudn't make it for the "send-off," and he'd started chewing on the inside of his mouth, something he did when he was agitated, right before he hit. He fiddled with a camera, holding it to his crazy eyes, and for a second, you could see the monster pull off his mask. But just as quickly, he put it back on, and then he reached over and slid the corsage onto her wrist, the same one he'd bruised the month before.

Before they left, he handed her a long, thin, white box, and for a second, as his parents applauded, she thought that there was a gun inside. He'd threatened to hurt her often, for little slights (she'd talked to a friend) and for big ones (she'd smiled at a customer as she handed him his change), and she imagined him pulling out a rifle and shooting her, his parents, and himself--I'd rather see you with your face through a windshield than with anyone else. But inside--and she noticed them breathless--there were chocolate roses from Pulakos, a dozen solid bulbs.

I know you love chocolate, he told her.

Chocolate for guilt, and she mistook his attention for love.

The video doesn't show the motel room, cold and bare, that he took her to after the prom. Nor does it show her crying and asking to go home. It doesn't show the way she wanted to open the door of his car as they flew down the highway, and hurl herself out, onto the pavement, under the wheels, and she could almost hear the crack and the crunch of bones being crushed but that was okay, much better than the slow grinding that occurred when he opened her all up and pressed his insecurities into her soul.

The video doesn't tell the story of the later, but it tells of the now. It is reel-to-reel tension, the wincing at the sudden flicker of a hand, the chasm between a smile and tears.

It is chocolate roses mistaken for a gun. It is contempt and fear, mistaken for need and love.

It is tassels on stilettos, mistaken for sophistication, when everyone knows that going to the prom is just playing at dress-up, anyway.