as she could. She felt as though at any minute she might have the baby. She felt so tense and she was having so many contractions from her long night awake that she wasn't sure if she was in labor or just feeling ill.
“Don't be so goddamn square,” he shouted at her as she reached their bedroom, and she turned to him with a look of fury.
“Be quiet or you'll wake Vanessa.” But it wasn't anger she felt so much as terror and despair. Vasili's private demon had entered their life again.
“To hell with Vanessa, she's a little bitch anyway.” But at the very sound of the words Serena lunged toward him. With a rapidly flailing hand she attempted to slap him, but he caught her wrist first and flung her backward against the wall. She stumbled as she fell, and she groaned as she reached the floor, but more than hurt, she was stunned. He stood over her, and when she looked up at him with tears in her eyes, she saw that his eyes had the mad nervous gleam they had had before when he used heroin. It was like reliving the same nightmare and she felt as though she couldn't bear it. She felt a rage rise up within her that was almost beyond control.
“You make me sick!” She rose to her feet, with every inch of her body trembling, and she reached back as though to slap him again, and this time he beat her to it. He caught her across the face with the back of his hand and sent her reeling. She came crashing to the bedroom floor, and it was at this moment that Vanessa came running in. “Go back to your room!” Serena said it quickly, not wanting the child involved, but before Vanessa could leave, Vasili pushed her, and she landed in a heap beside Serena.
“There, two whimpering women. You belong with each other.” He turned away and then spat over his shoulder. “Fools!”
Serena whispered to the child to go back to her room, but Vanessa refused, with a look of panic in her eyes. “He'll hurt you.”
“No, he won't.” She was afraid he would too, but she didn't want Vanessa to see it.
“Yes, he will.” Vanessa began to sob and clutch at her mother.
“Darling, please.” Carefully she stood up and led the child to her room, and it was half an hour before she returned to Vasili. He was sitting in a chair, his head on his chest, a cigarette burnt out in his fingers.
“What?” He picked his head up as though she had just spoken and squinted in her direction. “I heard you.”
“I didn't say a damn thing.” She closed the door softly behind her, hating him with every ounce of her soul. “But I'm about to. I just want to let you know now, you son of a bitch, that when you come to tomorrow morning, I'm going to my lawyer, and then I'm going back to the States.”
“And what will that prove? Who will support your baby?”
“I will.”
There was something evil and vicious about him when he used drugs, and as Serena saw him that way she began to hate him. It was as though it canceled out all the good she had seen in him, all the hopes, all the dreams. All she wanted to do was run away. She began to leave the room then, but even in his seemingly sleepy state he suddenly sprang from his chair and leaped toward her.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the bed and then he pushed her onto it. “Go to bed.”
“I don't want to sleep here.” She was shaking but trying not to show it. And the contractions were so fierce that she could barely stand up straight. And then, in spite of herself, she began to try and pull away from him. “I don't want to be near you.”
“Why not? Do I disgust you?” The evil eyes gleamed at her.
“Let me go. You're hurting my arm.”
“That isn't all I'll hurt if you don't start behaving.”
“What in hell does that mean?” She knew better than to argue with him when he'd been using and yet she couldn't stop. She wanted to shake him. “Do you expect me to take this and stick by you? Well, I won't, damn you. You can go to hell. I'm getting out of here in the morning.”
“Are you?” He took a step toward her again. “Are you?” She trembled uncontrollably