A person dear to me is going to court tomorrow for a domestic violence restraining order.

I'm sort of worried about it, not so much about the outcome but because of the stress it will put her through. I wrote this as a creative writing exercise to vent my own stress. Hope you like it.


If Martha Stewart ever wrote (which she wouldn't) advice for abused spouses appearing in court the show might go something like this,

"Good morning everyone. Today we're going to talk about skin care for the abused spouse on her court date. This is Jason, my makeup guy. See that shiner he's got on his left eye? Well that's a real one. He got that shiner from the bottle of Fiji water I threw at him when he neglected to have the correct Clinique product in stock for me. But no matter, Jason has learned his lesson and he gets be on my show."

Jason nods, looking scared of Ms. Stewart.

"Now its no secret that I'm a veteran of court proceedings but it was for something a little different. For my case we needed a media consultant, but for this type of case we need some ordinary household things. We start with some run of the mill supermarket charcoal. Now you smokers out there, beware of the match light variety - and it might irritate your eyes anyway. But anyway lets take the charcoal out of this wonderful charcoal cozy that I had an indonesian woman knit for only 3 cents per day. You can get it at K-Mart of $19.99 and a percentage of your purchase price, (mumbles indistinctly) gets donated to cancer research."

"Anyway, we're going to take this charcoal briquette and, oh, Jason did you bring the mortar and pestle from last night's staff team building exercise?"

Jason squeaks and looks at Stewart in terror and hands her the tool.

"Ah, nevermind viewers we're just going to have to clean it out a bit." She runs her finger around the inside of the tool and it comes up coated with white powder, then runs it across her upper teeth. "I just love nummies, don't you?," as she looks earnestly into the camera. She taps out the mortar and pestle upside down and a quantity of white powder falls out onto the table onto a glossy square corner of a page from this month's Martha Stewart living. "Bear with me while I do this quick little origami project," as she expertly folds the squared magazine corner into a square. She looks offstage as if someone is motioning to her.

"Oh, it seems I have to adjust my lapel mike just a moment - isn't live TV fun?" As she adjusts the mic the bindle gets palmed inside her bra.

"Now Jason we're going to have you fixed up good as new. What's your cover story?"

"Uh, I fell down the stairs Ms. Stewart."

"Excellent lets keep it that way," she says brightly. The mic doesn't quite pick up her unintelligible mumbling in which the words "wire transfer" are vaguely audible.

"We're going to take this charcoal briquette and grind it up into a fine powder. Jason, would you do that for me?"

"Sure." He grinds it up.

Martha takes out a jar of petroleum jelly. She looks at it sort of hard then opens it, cautiously sniffing inside and then looking relieved. "OK, we have the right jar of petroleum jelly, good job Jason. Now hold still."

Jason looks at her with trepidation.

"Would you dump just a little bit of that charcoal powder into the blob of jelly in my hand, dear?" She mixes it together and moves her hand towards her staff member's other eye.

He flinches.

"Now don't move," she says with a hard edge to her voice.

She uses a q-tip to mark up his eye and blacken it and then grabs two silver pens out of her pocket. "Now these are a couple of other wonderful Clinique products, this is called the Quickliner for eyes. List price is $14.99 each at the local makeup counter. If we'd just had one of these in 'roast coffee' Jason wouldn't have gotten to volunteer for this demo for the folks at home. See this lovely navy blue and this violet? We're just going to add some bluish-purple accents to the dark charcoal around his eye for realism."

He flinches again as she adds the accents. He seems to flinch on the lower right side of his body as if he's been kicked in the shin but you can't see them behind the table so who knows....

"There, isn't that wonderful? Can we get a closeup?" The camera pans in and you can see the tears well up in Jason's eyes. "See how they look pretty much identical?"

"Now for the folks at home, this can work on any part of the body. You just have to have some petroleum jelly, some charcoal powder and a couple of these wonderful Clinique Quickliners - again, this one is in navy blue and this is violet. It's perfect for any court date although you should be careful not to get any of this on your outfit of course - later on in the show after the break we'll show how you might remove the stain!," she says brightly.

The camera makes a tight close-up of her face and she says "Now I know for our California viewers some things are hard to get. Charcoal is hard to find, colored toilet paper, things like that. I recommend that you shop at Wal-Mart because they're kind of forgetful about those pesky California environmental laws and ship those things into the state for sale anyway. Those of us in the know who just have to have accented toilet paper for our beach homes in Malibu always shop there! Now don't touch that dial! After the break, stain removal....."

The camera pans out as the audience applauds and the show fades away to a commercial for some kind of morning after pill...