A Fantasy For A While

I had a short stint as a small town reporter a couple years ago. It was nice while it lasted, though it didn’t take me long to see that job security was non-existent. In a few months I’d seen reporters with decades of experience here one day, gone the next. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I’d be on the chopping block soon. So, enjoy it while it lasts. All good things come to an end, I suppose.

During this time, I was the sole reporter in a city of about seven thousand people. My closest boss was a four hour drive away, and as long as I had pitches during the morning conference calls at 9, and submitted a couple stories a day, no one said boo.

So, being new to the scene, I stuck with some smaller local stories in the beginning to get my feet properly planted before I started diving into some municipal budget controversies which were certainly beginning to take root in the city, or the burgeoning drug problem.

I interviewed a senior named Judy, who held an annual Cranberry Festival at her little farm on the outskirts of town every fall. I interviewed local business owners who were partaking in the community through generous donations to our start-up music program, and a lot of music interviews for bar bands making their way up north. Stories that were nice, clear cut, and not strenuous to write.

The stories went well, and then during mid-November, I got a call from my boss telling me that November was Domestic Violence Awareness month, and that I needed to track down a survivor and get an interview for next week’s paper.

I instantly felt nervous at the prospect of speaking to someone who was nearly killed by their partner, and I wanted to come up with a reason not to do it. But going back to job security, I needed to write articles that were good for the analytics. The analytics showed whose stories were getting the most clicks, and leaders on the board had better chances at keeping their positions. Plus, I knew these stories were important. The hard ones usually were.

So, I told him I’d find someone, and during an interview with the owner of a consignment shop on the boardwalk, Patricia Owens, who was putting purple lights outside of her boutique for Purple Light Nights, said that a friend of her mother’s was a survivor of a brutal attack from her boyfriend. She said she travels the country telling her story. And that she would most likely be comfortable doing an interview. She gave me her name and number, and I went back to my home office, and despite crippling anxiety, made the call.

Her name was Natasha, and her voice was sweet, calm, and mature. She was well spoken, and instantly made me feel at ease. I said, “I completely understand if you’re not comfortable, but I’m uh writing a story about domestic abuse survivors, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in telling me your story?”

She said, “Sure. Ask me anything you’d like.”

“Can you tell me the story from the beginning?”

“Of course.” She seemed so calm. So at ease, like she was reading from a teleprompter.

“I met a guy in the summer of 96,” she said, “He was handsome, funny, athletic. He was just amazing. A real gentleman, you know? That’s what some people don’t understand. They always say why do you stay? And we say firstly because we’re scared, and secondly because oftentimes we know there’s a beautiful side to them. A side that’s fantasy and love, and we just want them to keep that side forever, you know?”

I told her I did, though I wasn’t sure I was convincing.

“And after about six months or so, he started to get physical. It was just an arm grab in the beginning, or a push during an argument. Red flags began to appear, but I wasn’t ready to ask him to get out. But then it got a little worse and little worse, and eventually a lot worse. He punched me in the nose during an argument, breaking it. And I told him to get out. Just get the hell out. That was the final straw.”

“And then what happened?” I asked, feeling my heart beating fast, at the realism of this story. This wasn’t a movie. This wasn’t a book. This was a real woman, telling a real story to a green reporter with no experience.

“He left. He left for nearly a year. But then on June 26, 1997, at 11:00 pm, a time I’ll never forget for as long as I live. I was laying in bed with my eight year old son, when the door was kicked open. I jumped up to check it out and there he was, standing in the doorway. And he said, tonight I’m going to kill you.”

She paused after this, waiting for me to ask a question. Wanting me to take part in the interview, but my mouth was dry and it seemed unable to move.

After a few seconds, I asked. “What did you do next?”

“I tried to run out of the house, but he grabbed me. He stabbed me over 30 times. I eventually broke free though, and started running through the town, trying to get him to chase me and get him away from my son. It worked. My son called the cops, and I was taken to the hospital.”

“Wow,” was all I could manage to say. I had been taking down notes of her story and writing at lightning speed, trying not to miss a single word she said.

Then she said, “It was a fantasy at first. A true fantasy. I thought he was the greatest man I’d ever known. That’s what makes it so hard. You spend so much time asking yourself how you could have missed the signs? But these people are experts at their craft. Though their craft is pain.”

“Did he get arrested?” I asked, feeling more confident now that the worst of the story was over.

“Yes. But not for long enough. That’s why this legislation needs to go through.”

Again, feeling like such an amateur, I had forgotten to look up the new legislation of domestic abuse. I went silent for a while, trying to look it up on my laptop quickly, and I’m sure she sensed my nervousness and unprofessionalism.

She said, “this act will allow background checks to be conducted on partners. If I would have had access to this, I would have known that he had a history of abuse. A brutal, violent history.”

I marked down in my notebook, look up new legislation, and told her thank you.

I wrote my story about her, and it’s still my proudest accomplishment as a reporter. They let me go a couple weeks later, and I should have been mad, but I just said thanks for the opportunity.

About a year later, I received an email from her, which read.

Hi! How’s everything going? I heard that you got the axe. I’m sorry about that. You deserve better anyway. I just wanted to say how much your article helped me. A lot of people read it, and now I’m working on a book, and a documentary about my story. None of this would have been possible if not, for you.

I doubted that was true, but it still gave me butterflies to read it.

I replied.

That’s so great to hear. I’m so happy for you. And as for the job, all I can say is it was a fantasy for a while.