No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

But imagine it’s not Rocky at Paul’s front door, beating at it, kicking it, screaming for a woman inside. Imagine it’s a stranger. Who wouldn’t call the police? Who wouldn’t try to intervene to stop the violence? And yet when it comes to people we know, people we see in other contexts—as fathers, brothers, sons, cousins, mothers, whatever—we have trouble registering the violence.

I’ve found, in the face of overwhelming tragedy, that women often talk and talk, and men fall silent. Sally carries a swirl of memories like a nest around her; Paul holds those memories like stones inside him.