Following
is a true story. My ex-husband's name was changed to keep the guilty
from bothering me. Blaming the victim is alive and well -- and few
people understand the true dynamics of domestic violence. Many
believe claims of domestic violence are overblown, exaggerated, and
-- the victim's fault -- or she must like it. In honor of Domestic
Violence Awareness Month, I'm sharing my story. The following
article was written about five years ago, about an incident several
years before that. Please know, how much blaming the victim hurts.
Small
Dogs, Small Men, and Mini-Blinds
I
don’t apologize for my grudges. Brutus, Mima’s nasty little rat
terrier, a dog I had known for seven years, totally unprovoked, tore
across the living room and bit me in the leg. Bobby, a small man and
my husband at the time, for no good reason, swung a rolled up set of
mini-blinds, swung like a baseball bat, connecting with my back and
nearly killed me. Still today I am wary of small dogs, small men, and
mini-blinds.
Back
then, my family, my friends, and more than one cop, asked me, “Why
don’t you just leave?” They all meant, and sometimes said, why
don’t you just leave Bobby? -- he hits you and you keep letting him
come back, and what is the matter with you that you allow it? Back
then, I never had an answer. It wasn’t love that kept me there.
We
were in my kitchen the day he almost killed me. Bobby and I
weren’t exactly married and we weren’t yet divorced. He had filed
divorce papers months before, but then refused to finish the process.
Our marriage was in limbo. He was back in my life, insisting that he
help work on the house. The house was a government foreclosure,
abandoned for over two years, a haven for neighborhood kids skipping
school, and in need of general repair. We found it together, but
bought it with my name, credit and down payment. During fights and
renovations, the house was in constant chaos and disarray -- piles of
block, stacks of sheet rock, tools, tear-out, and mess.
That
day in my kitchen, Bobby told me to go out to the trailer in front of
the house and tell the guy, our supposed laborer, staying there to
get out. I told Bobby no. I hadn’t let the guy move in there to
begin with, I didn’t think I should have to tell him to get out.
Bobby was holding the mini-blinds when I told him no. He was on his
way to hang them somewhere in the house. I did not tell him no
rudely, or add any other comment. Just no. I don’t remember the
blow hurting, at least not right away. I didn’t fall down.
Instantly
enraged, I yelled. I yelled at Bobby for hitting me, and what did he
do that for, and why doesn’t he go throw the guy out himself if
it’s that important. I imagine, but I don’t remember, I was rude
then, all the angry words I was yelling. I sat down in an office
chair with wheels that was in the kitchen for some unknown reason,
and pushed myself backwards across the kitchen floor toward the back
door, still facing Bobby and still yelling at him for hitting me like
that. I lit a cigarette to try and calm myself, but I couldn’t
smoke it. I couldn’t inhale, then I couldn’t yell anymore, and
then I couldn’t talk. I could only whisper.
Ten
minutes after the mini-blind blow in the back, sharp pain shot
through the left side of my chest to my shoulder. My left arm went
numb except for the tightening steel band above my bicep. I could
barely breathe, and I couldn’t talk. I whispered, “Take me to the
hospital or call me a f*** ambulance, now.”
I
could still walk so we took Bobby's truck. He sped through back
roads, running stop signs; now playing the hero rushing me to the
hospital. He talked non-stop: I’m sorry, I don’t want to go to
prison, please don’t make me go to prison, I’m so sorry, I didn’t
mean to hit you, I love you, we’ll say you slipped and fell, I only
just tapped you, we’ll say you fell down, I don’t want to go to
prison, please don’t make me go to prison. I listened and tried to
continue breathing. I thought I was having a heart attack.
At
the emergency entrance Bobby jammed the truck in park, jumped out and
scrambled for a wheel chair. He wheeled me through the double doors.
I whispered to the orderly that I couldn’t breathe. The hospital
workers moved faster than I had ever seen. I had been at that
emergency room only the week before, but the week before I waited two
hours for a doctor. The week before I had been laying on the couch
and Bobby had hit me with a wooden stool. That day he was angry
because I wouldn’t tell him where I had been. In fact, I had taken
my eight year old son to the video arcade. I hadn’t answered
Bobby's question only because he was demanding to know, not asking.
So he had hit me with the stool, bursting the thin skin on my shin,
rather than slicing it, while I lay supine on the couch. I still had
the stitches from the week before.
But
this day, a week later, the hospital workers quickly hooked me to
tubes, and put me in a bed behind a curtain. Bobby stuck by my
bedside, still talking to me about how much he loved me and how he
was going to make sure I got well. He didn’t talk anymore about how
he didn’t want to go to prison or that he was sorry he hit me,
someone might have heard. He was the attentive husband now. When
hospital workers came in, Bobby talked to them about football, and
whether I was going to be alright. When the doctor came in and asked
me what happened, I whispered, “I fell down.” Over the next hours
I dozed and woke up, over and over to stare at the big round school
clock on the hospital wall, the hands never seeming to move. Once I
whispered to Bobby, “Get somebody in here to convince me I’m not
dying.” The nurse Bobby fetched said they were waiting for a bed in
the Intensive Care Unit. She promised I wasn’t dying, and promised
to take care of me.
Later
on a nurse wheeled me in my bed to the Radiology Unit where three
nurses and a doctor picked me up by the corners of the blanket
underneath me and set me down on the scanning table. Before closing
me inside the MRI tube, the doctor instructed me to remain perfectly
still. I had no will to ask questions, think, or protest. Enclosed in
the tube, like a modern day mummy I was sent through the scanner, the
giant magnet encircling my body, radio waves aligning my hydrogen
molecules so that the doctor could see my pain.
Next,
now in ICU, the doctor told me my spleen had ruptured, and my pain
was from internal bleeding. The doctor told me a ruptured spleen is
serious, life threatening, and he might have to take it out. But, the
doctor continued, the holes in my spleen might heal themselves. The
doctor watched over me all night that first night. On the third day
in ICU, he told me my spleen had healed itself.
During
those three days I slept a lot. I was hooked to an IV and oxygen. A
nurse came in every few hours and gave me a morphine injection. The
medicine burned going in my hand and sent me off to sleep. When I was
alone and awake I made plans. I forced myself to call to memory a
friend’s phone number, and repeated it silently until I could never
forget it. I could have a nurse call my friend and tell her I was
here and then she could call my mom. I bargained with myself that if
the doctor wanted to operate, I would call Mom, in case I died on the
operating table, someone would know what happened. Mom was out of
town, on vacation in North Carolina with my son. I made myself
remember the name of her hotel. I didn’t want to call my friend or
my mom. I didn’t want to spoil her trip. I didn’t want to hear
the words, why don’t you just leave. I didn’t want to hear their
anger at Bobby and then at me. Not now, I had to get better first.
I
had visitors during those three days. Bobby came, talking about how
much he loved me. Bobby's boss came, a twice disbarred attorney now
owner of a telemarketing room. The guy, the laborer, who I was
supposed to throw out of the trailer came, I don‘t know why. A
social worker came. I considered telling the social worker the truth,
but didn’t. It would have been fine with me if they had put Bobby
in prison then and there and kept him forever, but I couldn’t
convince myself it would be that simple.
I
had tried to get rid of Bobby over and over. I had told him to leave,
go away and never come back, but he always came back anyway. I had
left him repeatedly and found I had nowhere to hide. I had sworn out
protection orders and no contact orders, only to see him immediately
violate the court’s order. He would call me or appear at my house,
and nobody cared. When he hit me, I called the police and Bobby would
leave before they responded and come back again after they left.
After
the cops had come and gone he would return to my house usually in the
middle of the night, angry and drunk. He drank vodka and grapefruit
juice, from noon to midnight, everyday. He never slurred his words,
he never stumbled, growing more agitated as the day wore on. Any
words I spoke could be the wrong thing, and set him off. By late at
night he was manic, talking incessantly. His words clearly uttered,
made no sense.
Within
minutes his words could range from oaths of undying love to death
threats. He called me every vulgar name and accused me of sleeping
around. He would say he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me
and that he loved me forever. He would put one hand on the back of my
neck and one on my chin; and tell me he could snap my neck. Just like
that.
I
tried to ignore his words and stay away from his fists. It didn’t
work. If I went to a bedroom and locked the door, I could hear him
breaking things; or he would finally break through the door.
Constantly talking, threatening, accusing, then saying he just wanted
to talk, make nice.
People,
my family, my mom, the cops, and the few friends I had left, thought
I let Bobby come back every time. I didn’t. He just came back and
then he wouldn’t go away. People thought I liked being his victim.
I didn’t. People thought Bobby kept coming back because I loved
him. I didn’t. People thought I was the village idiot.
I
went home to Bobby when I was released from the hospital. I felt
elated to still be alive. Of course, he promised to never hurt me
again; he always promised that. I didn’t believe him, I had nowhere
else to go. Four days home from the hospital he closed my arm in a
door.
Bobby
tortured me for over a year.
I
have an answer now for the people that asked, “Why don’t you just
leave?” I did. It took some time to escape alive -- but I did. My
son and I took refuge in a safe house, a hide out, and stayed for
weeks. When it was time to leave I invited another woman in hiding,
another refugee from abuse, to stay at my house. She helped me
through the scary days that followed. Bobby threw rocks through my
windows and set fire to my shed.
Ten
months after I escaped, Judge Warren cracked her gavel and pronounced
him guilty of one count of domestic violence.
Years
later, I am still wary of small dogs and small men. Mini-blinds are
now just ordinary, although I avoid them.
