Friday Feature: Alana Benoit

Alana Benoit, a first-generation Black American with Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Central American heritage, holds a BA from Union College, an MA from the University of York (UK), and an MFA in creative writing from the Mississippi University for Women. Her work explores Black diasporic identity, particularly for Black women, women's labor, memory, family, and mental health through her writing. Raised in Harlem and now residing in North Carolina with her family, she is currently editing her first novel and developing a poetry collection.

Bottle

You hear the charge—aggravated assault. You don’t remember the incident. Don’t remember holding the bottle and hitting him on the head. You just remember him grabbing you, his hands around your throat, your heart rippling through your chest, and you gasping for air. You remember him pulling on your hair, your beautiful hair, and calling you a bitch. You had just asked him if he wanted steak potatoes or shoestring fries, and he said, only a bitch, a true bitch wouldn’t know the difference, and he grabbed you. This time, he grabbed you by your beautiful hair, right in front of her, your daughter, and it was the look on her face that triggered it, a look of complete fear and despair, a look that said mommy’s going to die, and she and her beautiful hair are going to be put in the ground for the worms, and then you blacked out.

You see him sitting there, the bandage from his jawline to his eye; he’s been mutilated. He reminds you of a wounded deer that has crashed into the passenger seat of a car, fractured and inconsolable; he’s been crying. You can’t imagine him ever crying, but here he is, with tissues and shit, and you can’t believe what you’re seeing. You can’t believe that this nigga is crying. You swallow hard, hard because it comes back at first slowly, and then hits the silence —the glass bottle that you held. A Heineken, green and cold, his favorite, you held it tight, and in an instant broke the top. You broke the fucking top and flashed back to a time when you were seven, like your daughter, and a group of boys tried to trap you in a junkyard, and you picked up whatever you could. You ripped them apart, swiftly striking the biggest one — the one with the loudest mouth and most to lose — who, after the blow, ran.

You get a whiff of your lawyer's cologne, woodsy and musky. It reminds you of the cologne that belonged to him, which your daughter accidentally broke on New Year's, and it takes you back to a recent memory of her. Two days ago, you were braiding her hair. She sat between your legs, and you were halfway through giving her a head full of cornrows, beautifully designed into heart shapes.

“Is he coming back?” she asked suddenly. She was always very perceptive for her age. You don’t want to disappoint her, but you have to be honest.

“He might,” you said.

“I don’t like him; he scares me.”

“I’d never let him hurt you.”

“What if he hurts you?”

You continue braiding her hair. One strand over the other, intricately weaving the tendrils into a majestic array with cowrie shells and brown wooden beads at the ends.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m the adult, remember.”

You watch her play with the doll in her lap, braiding its curly black hair as you do hers. You can’t believe your luck to have a child so smart and lovely.

“All done,” you say and show her the mirror. She looks at herself admiringly and smiles.

“Thank you, mommy,” she says, and it crushes you.

You look at the judge who’s speaking to you now. How do you plead? Not guilty, you say. Your lawyer, next to you, wears a gray suit with tiny pumpkin pins on his tie, looks typically disheveled and uncoordinated for a public defender. He writes something on his yellow pad and looks at you with a grim frown. You just met. He asked you two questions: what will you plead? Do you have childcare? You answered not guilty and yes, because at the time, you didn’t remember. You return his frown with one of your own, and the look says, ask for fucking bail, you goddamn broken motherfucker. You can’t believe your own fury; he’s there to help you after all, but you can’t help but wish he chose a better suit. You know he’s overworked. Too many cases. Too many bottles. But this is your life. This is her life. You don’t know where the rage is coming from. In all your years with him, the mutilated one, you never felt rage, just a quiet contempt. You believed it was your lot. You don’t anymore. Won’t.

Your lawyer speaks: Your honor, my client has no prior history, has a daughter aged seven, and is not a flight risk. I ask that bail be waived. The judge looks up from her notes and stares at you again. Bail is set for ten thousand dollars, she says blankly. Her heavily powdered white face is resistant to any kind of appeal. You have savings, you’ll meet the bail bondsmen, you’ll be home within a day. You look for the first time at your mother in the audience. She’s crying. She cried out, NO! when the bail was announced. You tell her it’s okay. Mommy, you say, shush. She stifles her cry with her hands. You look again at him, at his face, at the bandage that surely covers a jagged line from jaw to eye, and realize that you must have been going for the eye, and you missed, you fucking missed, because there he is still crying.

###

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.