I was driving on the 580-freeway heading north along the golden hills of the East Bay. It was around 6:30 in the evening, raining, and traffic was moving painfully slow. I shared glances of frustration with other drivers as we relented to the stop-and-go motion of our cars. It was as if we were a herd of cattle headed for the slaughterhouse. The sky was grey and the rain was coming down hard on the windshield making it difficult to see. My wipers did the best they could to keep up. I had my window opened a crack to let out the cigarette smoke so as to avoid a fight with Charlie, my eleven-year-old daughter as she was known to lecture me on the effects of cigarette smoking. Drops of water occasionally hit my arm, a reminder that it was insane to expose her to my disgusting habit, but at that time we knew nothing about second-hand smoke. Charlie sat in silence, doing her best to look disinterested in me while I kept the Giants game on to fill the space between us. Because of the rain delay, the broadcasters were interviewing retired first baseman, Willie McCovey. Charlie hated listening to sports on the radio when we were in the car, but I figured if she wasn’t going to talk to me, then what was the harm.

I was abandoning her. I thought this, but my brain was not functioning correctly. The only rational decision I could make was to not go back there, and by “there,” I meant our home. I was determined that the abuse I had endured from her father would never be passed onto her. I thought that giving her a choice would keep her safe. I thought that with her father having her, he would not come after me.

“Charlie, please. Look at me,” I pleaded. Silence. Her ankles twisted up to her knees, my daughter refused to face me. She glared out the window at passing traffic, and I could see the tears streaming down her face and I could hear the struggle in her breath to hold back the cries that were welling up inside. Everything in me wanted to turn that car around and drive us as far away from her father, but I knew I could not do it. The helplessness I was feeling was nothing less than hallow and numbing. “This is the worst day of my life,” I thought. It was to be the last day I would live with my then, eleven-year-old daughter.

I tried not to cry, attempting to form words into logical sentences. “Charlie, you know I can never go back to living on Henry Lane. Your father refuses to give up the house. I want you to choose where you want to live.” Silence again. I reached for her hand. “Honey.” Her hands were balled up into two fists. “I understand if you don’t want to leave your friends and our home,” I tried again. But you can always live with your grandmother and me. I know it’s crowded but you can.” My younger sister, leaving a failed marriage, had just moved down from Suquamish with her two little babies. Divorce seemed to be our family curse.

“Great,” she said. “Then I’ll live with Dad and you can go live with Grandma.” This was a dig at me. “I don’t care. Besides, you’re much stronger than he is. You can live without me.” This was another dig, or so I thought. I would realize many years later that she truly believed this. Having witnessed her father’s attempt at suicide and seeing me withstand his beatings had a demoralizing effect on her.

As we pulled up to the dead end of the hill, I was filled with terror. The eucalyptus trees that lined our little dirt road whooshed back and forth wildly in the wind. Flooded by the downpour, the road now looked like a small river. I tried to drive up the road. The car swerved back and forth, fighting me, and the wheels spun idly from left to right. Mud splashed up onto the side windows and was just as quickly washed away by the rain. Charlie let out a sigh with an attitude of annoyance. I tried to get control of the car but only managed to stop it under one of the trees. This would do as a parking spot, long enough for me to try and talk to Charlie before she headed into the house. I put out my cigarette and turned off the radio. This was my final appeal.

Just as I was about to speak, our neighbor Eddy came speeding down the road in his El Camino. Like a bat out of hell, he was driving without any caution, completely oblivious to how his driving might endanger his two small children and wife. Charlie and I simultaneously said our usual, “There goes Eddy,” but this time we both flinched and shrieked as he just missed swiping Charlie’s side of the car. Just as quickly as he appeared, the back of his car disappeared over the hill. We could hear the sound of his tires screeching as he burned rubber. He and his wife had their fair share of fights as well and the Sheriff’s office was no stranger to either of our homes. Their divorce would follow shortly after ours.

I had left many times before with Charlie, hiding out at friends or with family, each time eventually to be tracked down by her father, my then husband. Just two months before this day, while Charlie and I were at my mother’s, he came to the door. Eerily calm, he asked me to come to his car to talk with him. As I bent down to get into his Corvette, he pulled out a gun. “Now, tell me the truth,” he yelled. “I want the truth about all your boyfriends. I want it now. I want this marriage to work out between us. So, you have to come clean and come home.”

To which I said, “It’s not going to work, Max. Isn’t it obvious? You have to use a gun on me. It’s over. It will never work out.” He stuck the gun in my crotch and then in my mouth and demanded that I come back home. He wanted a confession from me of boyfriends I never had. Resigned, I looked him in the eyes and said, “I want you to shoot me now. Kill me now but don’t cripple me. Just kill me.”

“Okay, go ahead and get out,” he said.

I opened the door and stepped out. As I walked away I thought, “It’s now or never God.” I made it to the front door, turned the knob, closing it behind me and fell to the floor. My mother and daughter rushed to me and held me as I cried. My mother locked the door. Her questions just whizzed past me, as I was now deadened.

I was finally leaving my husband, never to return. Here we were now, two months later, outside the home my husband and I had bought with my money, and I was asking my daughter what she wanted to do one last time. “Are you sure this is what you want to do? Understand that I will never live in that house again. I can never come back while your dad is still alive. If I come back here, I would never be safe in this house.” My eyes were so filled with tears. It was difficult to see.

Charlie’s eyes were wide open, and with no tears now, she answered, “Okay, well, I’ll go home then.”

I wasn’t surprised at the finality of her answer. I knew that she wanted to be with both her dad and me but I also knew she wanted her home, her bed, her things and her friends. Knowing this kept me sane at the times when I thought I would kill myself. She kissed me quickly and turned away with her head down. I sat in the car and watched her little body dart up the road, her duffle bag covering her head. As she ran up the stairs, rain and mud splashing her calves; her dad opened the door. They embraced. I turned away, my hands were shaking and my heart sunk. How could I possibly be leaving my only child, my daughter with a man who is so utterly violent and frightening? I couldn’t move and I couldn’t stand to stay but turning the key to my ignition felt like moving through concrete. Was I really doing this? I kept thinking I had to be the worst mother to birth a child. I was young, terrified and desperately lost. My decisions were not grounded in faith but rather in fear.

I started the car and I quickly maneuvered the steering wheel and began driving down the hill. Memories of our love story, the day we were married and the hope I once had came flooding back. Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird was playing on the radio. Tears washed the coldness from my face, warm tears, never-ending, and relentless, poured from the depths of my soul. I sunk there, driving and shaking like a feral dog. Caring less and less about the direction of the steering wheel. Perhaps I would accidentally crash into a pine tree and die. More likely I would just drive on home.

You are an utter distraction.  I think to eat, to bathe, to go for a walk or even exercise; all I want to do is hold one another in our gaze, feel your hands gently cupping me under caves and kissing the secret doors to my inner most corridors.  Tears beat inside my chest, begging to get out but I hold them by the hand and lead them into a waiting room.

            “Wait, not now.”  I tell him.  “I have a lot of homework and it has to be done by tomorrow morning.”  Max moves in on me.  Touching me gently between my thighs where my legs meet one another, I know I am in for it.  I am lying on my side, stretched across my bed with my math book in front of me.  Mama is working the graveyard shift and Daddy’s away on another trip delivering wine bottles to a wine-bottling factory in Southern California, which means he won’t be home until late tomorrow night.  It’s five o’clock and Max has come over after baseball practice.  He is sitting on my little white desk chair papa picked up for me at a yard sale.  He is covered from head-to-toe in red dirt and sweat.  His hands are large, the veins in them thick and the skin a very dark brown.  Tracing my knees now, he comments that I look adorable in my roller derby uniform.  Wearing white tube sox with blue and yellow stripes, and blue shorts with a white trim around the edge and up my hips I watch as he traces the lines from the hips, down over my thigh and swirling small circles around my knees down to the stripes in my sox.  He takes in the air in one fell swoop, reaches up for his baseball cap, removing it at the brim with one hand, the other stroking his thick black curly hair.  My stomach flips and my toes curl and placing one finger along my shin, the other to my face, just behind my ear, and then kisses me on the lips.  My top leg quivers and I reluctantly ask, “Don’t you have homework?  I’m supposed to help you with your math.”

            “Yes, but I just can’t help but want to kiss your beautiful i-vor-y skin and touch these long, long legs.”

Max was really good at mixing words and meanings.  He made everything sound dreamy, and forbidden. I was only fourteen and still a virgin but I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.  Even though I was fully dressed he had a way of making me feel naked.  I had a good dose of Christian upbringing, enough to know that sex before marriage was a sin but what I didn’t know was that the potential for sex, the anticipation and the hesitation would feel greater than the consequences that may come if I did have it.  Max made it difficult to say no and although he didn’t ask me outright, his touch begged for it and my body fought for it.  My mind seemed outnumbered by these two powers.  Darn my church and darn my Grandmother’s voice that said, I had to wait till I was married.

My conscious won out that day and would continue to do so for many more.  I couldn’t help but wonder about my own parents.  I never noticed any passion between them.  Once Mama started to work they were always so darn busy.  Once in a while they still have their friends over for card games and drinks, but mostly it seemed they were either coming from or going to work.  If I did finally have sex, I thought Mama would never understand because she probably didn’t know what it was like to feel like Max and I did.  My parents met when my mother was seventeen and my Daddy was twenty-one.  He was already working as a truck-driver and mama had a job in the ticket booth at The Fox Oakland movie theatre, just off Telegraph in downtown Oakland.  They met during World War II at a dance hall.  From movies, I imagined my mother and father making out in the back seats of cars, kissing in corners of large dance halls, where dance lights failed to reach and smoking cigarettes.  She looked to me like May West, a full-figured woman, blonde hair, and deep red lips.  My father was a tall Englishman, proud of being from Texas.  He was a slick kid with slick friends and cool cars from the look of those old black and white photos.  I remember watching Withering Heights with her one day and she said it was a time of unrequited love.  At the time, I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But I asked her if she and daddy were in love and she gave a short laugh and said, “Of course,” and remarked that I was being silly for askin’.

“Hey Red!  Those people in lanes eight and night ain’t going to bus themselves!  Wake up from your daydreams.”

Yep, so here I am.   Nineteen years later.  Working at a fucking bowling alley as a cocktail waitress.  I untie my apron, place it on the bar and kindly remind my prick-face boss Wally that my shift ended twenty minutes ago.

           “Oh and I’m playing in a tournament in about an hour. Just waiting here for Jimmy to show up.”

I think to myself, what a prick or better yet, a vile little man unable to ever grow a pair.  I watch him saunter over to the counter to inspect the bowling shoes and fantasize giving him a swift kick in the ass.

            “Hey Wally, I’m going out for a cig.  If my daughter calls, please come and get me.”

I walk through the bar and out to the parking lot of the bowling alley.

“Charlie!”  I say her name just to feel close to her but it only ever makes me feel more distant.   My baby girl; what is she doing today?  Is she thinking of me or even missing me?  I’m tearing up and looking down at my outfit, this short jean skirt, these high heels and this loose-fitting blouse.  Charlie would hate them all.  She’d tell me to wear a longer skirt and ask why I have to walk the way I do and why I have to show my cleavage.  I feel the shame pressing down on me.  Tears well up and I begin to pray, begging God to fix me.   Just then I hear the sound of a car roaring up and the music of Journey spilling out of the window.  I look up and see that its Jimmy driving in his new pickup truck.  Charlie hates him.  He’s too young, she says and he’s gross and smells she adds, but I chalk it up to her being sixteen and hating everything I do.  The shame begins to subside and a heat of desire pours down my legs.  I put out my cigarette on the ground and light up another.  Jimmy walks up carrying his bowling bag and shoes in hand.  Strutting up to me, and planting a kiss right on my mouth, he grabs my ass.  I respond with a squeeze on his bulging crotch and flick my cigarette and put it to his mouth.  He takes a long hard drag.

            “Am I still coming over tonight?”

            “I don’t know.  Are you?”

            “No kid tonight?”

            Taking my cigarette back, “Nope.” Taking a long drag, I toss it to the ground and stomp it out with my foot. 

            “Come on hot stuff.   Let’s get in there.  I thought I’d throw the ball a little before my game and afterwards we head to your place.”

He opens the door for me with one hand, his metallic blue bag in the other.  The sound of the action on the lanes pours passed us out of the door as if it were trying to escape.  We go in.   The sound of laughter from the bar, the pinball machine’s ringing, the gliding sound of bowling balls and the smell of smoke and liquor swallow us back in.

Just as Jimmy said, after the tournament we head back to my place.  As I open the door, Jimmy’s hands were on me, his grip strong and forceful, my head spinning and realizing he had lifted me up.  His arms were long and lean and surprisingly strong.  I laugh and squirm a little.  His mouth was on my breast, biting my nipple and wetness seemed to pour out of me in a way I had never experienced.  My body opens up to him completely and before we make it to my bedroom, he’d lays me down on the floor and is taking my clothes off.  I shake with excitement and a little terror and I cling to him more tightly.  My legs grip around his waist and I try to pulling him into me.  His back muscles are strong and wide; as I lift his shirt over his head, his skin appears like a moonbeam in my dark little living room. Standing up, he quickly undoes his pants, I stare at his long legs, strong and defined like a horse and then he leans over me, hands on my hips thrust his size and weight into me.  I gasp for air and surrender.

I lay awake in bed, Jimmy next to me, sound asleep.  I look over at Charlie’s picture on my nightstand – she and I at a park by the Marina.  That day we ate crab sandwiches and onion rings and took turns pushing each other on the swings until we both felt sick.  I asked a stranger to take our picture with one of those disposable cameras I bought at Clayworth’s.  It seems like so long ago; a time I cannot get back.  I push the picture away from me and whisper, “Good night Charlie,” and look over at Jimmy.

Our naked bodies stretched out, sweaty and depleted.  He snores intermittently, not too loud, just enough for me to find him endearing.  I wanted more from him at that moment though.  I felt angry with him for sleeping.  I get up, grab my pack of smokes, the bottle of gin and snag the picture of Charlie and head out the front door of my place.

The silence in my home was deafening.  The pain, too big for any room to contain, let alone my head.  No matter how I try to silence the endless thoughts of Charlie, I cannot.  What is her day-to-day routine?  Does her father pray with her at night?  When she wakes up in the morning, what are her first thoughts?  Is she wearing pajamas or nightgowns now?  Does she miss me?  Has her voice changed?  Is her hair long or short?  Does she miss my help with her homework, movies on Sundays with popcorn and braiding her hair?  I could not stop the questions.

            After leaving Charlie with her father two years ago, I eventually moved out of my mother’s small apartment and into my own place.  It wasn’t big but it provided everything I needed. It had a small living room, which wasn’t much bigger than a doctor’s waiting room, a meager kitchen, with just enough room to stand in the middle of the sink, stove and refrigerator.  My bedroom was quaint, tucked behind the kitchen and hiding a small toilet and stand-up shower.  I referred to it as a “grandmother cottage.” Hidden behind the house of my landlord’s family, who were strangers to me.  They didn’t keep track of my comings and goings. Their house barricaded mine from the street.  Sheltering me from the possibility of Charlie’s father finding me.  I felt safe with the newfound anonymity it offered. The one downside though, was that the cottage was built adjacent to train tracks.  The only thing separating my small bedroom window from the train was some dried-up weeds and an old wire fence.  The train would rattle the windows and wake me at all hours of the night.  It was a constant reminder that there is always something bigger than me out there.

It’s two forty-five am. I’m just getting home from a night shift at the bowling alley.  I was a bookkeeper by day and a cocktail waitress by night. From the front door, I reach toward the kitchen light and switch it on.  I fling my shoes off at the door and unbutton my blouse.  “Shit!” I noticed a button missing.  “Damn,” I thought, “one more trip to my mothers.” Taking it off, I throw it on the arm of the chair in the living room.  Walking into the kitchen, I smell something rotten, like death.  Resigned, I open the fridge and pull out the bottle of vodka.  I pour myself a tall glass, adding some vermouth and call it a martini.  The smell seemed to be coming from the back of my refrigerator.  Sitting at the kitchen table, I placed my feet up on the table and stare long at the base of that fridge.  “What the hell is that?”  For a second I think it could be a dead mouse.  Too tired to move that fridge I hope it would just disappear.  Perhaps it’s just the garbage that needs to be thrown out.  I escape those thoughts and reach for my cigarette case.  I pull out a cigarette and lighter and light the cigarette.  Taking a long drag, I tense up my stomach and my shoulders creep up to my ears.  But, as soon I let that smoke go, my muscles relax.  The tobacco moves through my body like a golden elixir smoking out any regrets or fears I may have. I imagine I am Lauren Bacall in To Have or Have Not.  “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”  These women made femininity look so effortless and powerful, but I didn’t have any power.

Finishing that first drink now, I attempt to drown the impending doom with yet another.  Foregoing the vermouth, I pour the vodka into that tall water glass.  Swirling it around.  I watch how the alcohol leaves an opulent residue on the empty spaces of the glass, just at the top. There was no lover; there was no Charlie and no real sense of where I wanted to go in life.  I was going down and going in circles.  I pried myself out of that chair and took off my pants, leaving them on the floor.  I turned on the radio next to my bed.  Marvin Gaye was singing Sexual Healing.  I lowered down to my bed and remembered what it felt like to be touched.  I hadn’t thought to ever touch myself.  Max was still my first and only lover.  We were only fourteen when we became sexually active and I had never even explored masturbation.  I repeated the lines of Bacall to Bogart and imagined I was her and Max, Bogart.  My hands touched my breasts.  I moved my hands down my thighs and fell back onto my bed.  I touched myself, imagining Max touching me.  I attempt to shut out the violent images.  My eyes close.  All goes black.

I wake up.  The sound of the morning train rages through my bedroom window, over my bed and out through the kitchen and living room.  I open my eyes.  My head hurts and I discover that I have wet my bed again.  “Shit, I have to stop drinking before bed.”  I jump up and dart to the shower.  Its eight fifteen and work begins at nine at the paper company.  I cannot be late again.  The radio is still on from the night before.   The disc jockey is giving the weather forecast: more clouds, more rain and more cold.  Typical for February.

Charlie’s birthday is just a week away and I make a mental note to call her and see what else she wants for her birthday.  I’ve ordered her a coat she saw last year but I wasn’t able to afford it then.  I need to tell her it will be arriving late because I couldn’t order it until my credit card balance was paid down after buying my season tickets to the Giants.  “Oh shit, who am I kidding?  She’s going to be disappointed again,” I tell myself.  Even I am getting sick of my excuses.  Everything I do always seems to fall short of me being a good mother.  I am constantly letting Charlie down.  Turning the water on, I unsnap my bra and pull off my underwear.  Flinging them both into the sink, I hop into the shower. The water is still not quite hot but I have no time to wait for it.  I just need to get the smell of booze and urine off of me and wash out the cobwebs in my head.

“Momma,” Charlie’s voice whispers. “Momma, wake up.” Her small hand brushes away my hair. “Mommy!” Her breath quickens and she begins to cry. Unable to move my head, my heart begins to race. I drift out of consciousness.

“Eva, its Mary,” the voice of my mother-in-law pierces my head. A rapid thrust of awareness, then shame. I flinch with nowhere to hide. I tighten my hand into a fist, doing my best to conceal my face from Charlie.

“Granny, what’s wrong with her?”

I try to lift my head off the pillow. Is this my pillow, or is it my hair? It is my hair, matted with blood and tangled into a tuft, a towel tucked under my cheek, soaked with water and blood. My neck is stiff, making it nearly impossible to turn or look up at the voices coming from the sofa. The sun blasts in from the balcony doors and the two figures sit shadowed in its glare. I stretch out my hand, my fingers, purple and red with dried blood. My right eye focuses in on two fingernails, torn too close to the flesh, stinging as I press my hand forward and into the mattress. Determined, I try to lift my head and turn to look at my daughter and Mary.

Just feet from my bed the two of them sit on the Davenport Max’s mother had given us when we first moved into this house. Now that we could afford our own furniture we moved it upstairs into our room. I imagined that it would be nice to have guests, like my sister, sit and visit with me in our room. Or, perhaps Charlie would enjoy a bedtime story before being tucked into bed there. Instead, today I had Max’s mother and my daughter trying to pry me out of unconsciousness. I could not imagine what Charlie was thinking as she saw the brutality on my face. I could not meet their eyes or muster the word hello to my mother-in-law. My eyes were swollen shut; the taste of blood filled my mouth.

“Momma! What happened to you?” I don’t have to see Charlie to know that her tiny frame is stiff, her eyes frightened and her face distorted by what she sees. I have seen this look on her before and she has seen me beaten before. However I sense this time is worse.

My mother-in-law gently asks, “Eva, did you and Max have another fight?”

I nod yes.

“Oh Lord Jesus and Mary. Eva, one of you has to learn to shut up.”

Charlie defends me, “I heard them Granny. They were fighting all night. He hit her all night.”

I fluttered my eyes a tiny bit, opening them for brief intervals, enough to see the horror on my child’s face and the sincere naiveté mixed with horror and shame on my mother-in-law’s face. I lay crusted to the bed in disbelief at what she was saying. Did she really think that me shutting my mouth was all it would take to stop her son from beating me? I tried to raise my body a bit to get a look at what my face looked like. Instead, I saw through the crust of my lashes the look on baby Charlie’s face. I drift to a place, my mind falling back into a deep hole until everything goes black like when the doctor gives you anesthesia and asks you to count backwards from one hundred: One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety- and out cold.

What makes a woman stay when her husband beats her? People judge her as stupid, as crazy. They say cruel things like, “She must like getting hit.” They get fed up; tired of hearing the same old stories. “Just leave him,” they say, as if it were that easy.

I don’t know why I stay. I do. But if I had to defend it, I realize how stupid it would sound. Something in my emotional makeup keeps me chained to my husband. Fear of destitution, fear of failure fear of complete loss of identity and fear of never being loved again; I don’t think it has to make rational sense, but I am not rational. My mind is in madness. One thought completely contradicting the next. Complete and utter madness of terror. Everything is cranked up to high. On paper, you would hate me. On paper, I hate me. In my heart, a place you cannot see, I want love. I am a frightened little girl who never got enough love and affection. How cliché. I don’t care because it is true. I had wobbly knees, freckles and red hair. I was teased constantly. However, when he came along and took notice of me, admired the contrast between his brown and my white, it ignited something in me. And now I was here, lying in this bed, both I and the sheets, one mangled mess of blood, hair and teeth, like a baby miscarried because it never fully formed, the parts clearly human but the whole unrecognizable and disfigured, dead. Lying in our bed, dead to the soul.

#domesticviolence #metoo #justiceformothers #nomore #believeher #beleivesurvivors #whyistayed #whyshestayed

You are an evil, twisted boy

Disguised in a man’s body.

Lasciviously lurking

Under beds and

Hiding in dark closets.

My truest opinion of you would not be fit for a status update.

It would shame you and call name to your brand of evil.

Avarice the Beast.

You’re a monster devouring the breath of small children.

Licking up their little dreams, haunting them in their sleep, rapaciously squeezing every Dimes worth of their priceless souls.

She screams in silence – where no one can hear her - and

Swallows your potions and pills, but even

Sixty-two blocks and eleven years away her cries awaken her mother.

Breath stolen.

Stillness in the room and a piercing blade through her heart -

Pasting and pounding an inarticulate and mournful cry.

When you shut your eyes, is hell all you see?

Is that why you never sleep?

Capturing, calculating, consuming is what you do.

In eleven years, the time totaled is less than one.

For every year you keep her is another lifetime of your own demise.

Your demons, kept chained and starved, wait eagerly

For their rise and your fall.

Your eyes can see

Yet you are blind to the mindfulness between good and evil.

Evil turns you on, until it turns on you 

and takes you down -

Too fast, too hard, too strong for you to handle

Awake, you can no longer control the fear that consumes you;

Or so I keep telling myself.