You don't know how she does it.
She can sit there, lip swollen and split, sporting a wonderful shiner that puts many of your friends to shame.
Her black hair is slightly matted with God-knows-what. Her clothes have been torn, shirt hanging off her frail body like some sort of macabre wedding dress. Perhaps it's some sort of dedication to the event, to what this day stands for. She can sit there, a smile on her face and ask you how your day was.
She knows.
You know.
There's no point.
You could ask her the same thing, and yet both your stories would be relatively the same. An argument, a fight, bruises to show off later. Maybe you should both know by now, give up on this pointless routine. It's a circus act, a performance for anyone who cares to watch. But you'll keep going on like this, your little circle of dialogue carrying on into oblivion.
Perhaps one day you'll stop her. Maybe one day you'll shake some sense into her, tell her that Christopher is no good for her: that he ought to drop off the face of the earth and just leave the two of you be.
And perhaps the world is just.
It's never going to end, just as Christopher's incessant pleas for more beer and his constant abuse of her will never quit. You can hope, you can pray to a god that has never been there, but in the end, it's just you. You and what you can do.
'It was fine, mom. What about yours?'