If those walls could talk...
Today I was on Myspace checking email and I noticed a bulletin titled "I just had a baby" or something to that effect from someone on my friends list. She is a friend of my friend and I only met her once but I knew she wasn't pregnant because I just met her and there was no bun in the oven...I read it and followed the link to her profile...read her LA trip post and my breath caught in my chest. They were hanging out with a friend of my exhusband. I felt sick. Naturally I don't harbor any feelings towards them hanging out with this guy who happens to be friends with my exhusband. I mean, I doubt this dude even knows me or recognizes me as he was coming into my ex's life as I was going out and I was very fat then. He wouldn't recognize me now but...if my ex came up with a profile on that site, he could easily find my profile through this guy and my friends...basically that would be the end of fun on that site for me which would be sad because I have met some really good friends on that site and I meet potential models all the time. The idea of him reading my thoughts and looking at my pictures, having any information to use against me in court which he has and would...this is a man who beat his pregnant wife, nothing is beneath him. Panic. Disgust. Anger. I wanted to stand in a hot shower for an hour and then curl up in my boyfriend's big safe arms.
Funny enough, I already had dinner planned with my girlfriend who is friends with the girl who I mentioned above. During dinner we talked about this and turns out that while hanging out with this guy one day, they met my exhusband! Ugh. My friend was shocked. She said, "What? THAT was him??? But...he's ugly." HAHAHAA God I love her. Hey, people appeal to you in certain times in your life and he worked that whole european Don Juan thing on me. I am a small town girl from PETALUMA for krissakes, I didn't know a french jew whose parents were from Northern Algeria would mean he was basically an arab who would end up treating me like his cattle.
Memories. Not good memories, mind you, have been swirling around in my head like an unwanted houseguest. We've all heard about domestic violence but until you live it, you have no idea. I was married to a man who systematically abused me. Unless you go through it, you have no idea what it is like to have your spirit broken down to shreds in the tread of his boot while you become a shell of a human being, of someone who was once YOU, you just are...lost. I remember being so fearful that I would prepare dinner in a way he disapproved of like the time I made a honeyglaze over a chicken...he threw his plate across the room and it shattered just a few feet from where I was standing, pregnant and trembling. I rushed the chicken to the sink and frantically scrubbed the honeyglaze off because I had forgotten that he didn't like to mix salty things with sweet things...my fault...stupid me...if I had remembered what he liked to eat, he wouldn't be so mad...my fault. Seriously. You begin to think like this. Even when he had my head under water while I was in the bathtub, it was my fault because I had let myself go and gain over 100 lbs while pregnant. I let my husband down. Yes he was right because I was fat and could not sexually arouse him. I was a pig. I deserved it. My fault. If I didn't let myself get so fat, he wouldn't be so mad. The way your mind starts to think is pathetic. Scary. Especially for a headstrong girl who never listened to anyone.
The last day I spent with him was August 8, 1998. My son was 11 months old and I had spent the night on the couch because we had gotten into a fight the night before. H wanted me to do ecstasy with him and I refused because I was still breastfeeding and objected to doing drugs in the house with our son. He flew off the handle saying I was ruining his life, all he does is work and I was taking the fun out of his life. He kicked me in the back of the leg and I locked myself in the bathroom. Talk about a Charlie horse. When I thought he was asleep, I crept out of the bathroom and slept on the couch. In the morning, I waited for him to go into the shower and I was going to take my son for a walk, leave before he got out of the bathroom to avoid more fighting...as I was walking out the door with my son in my arms, he yanked me by my ponytail so hard that my head snapped backwards touching my spine. A clump of hair rested in his palm and he pulled my son from my arms and shoved me out the front door, locking it behind me. He kissed my son's face and smiled at me through the window as I pounded on the door to get back inside. The feeling inside of me as he kissed my son and smiled in that evil way, that monster holding my precious angel. I was frantic, crying and pleading for him to let me in. Eventually he did. I held my son tight and tried to flee to the bedroom. He was too close behind and I just wasn't fast enough...he pulled my son from my arms and set him on the floor a few feet away. Very calmly, he turned and wrapped his hands around my throat. In french he called me a whore and a bitch over and over as he throttled my throat with his fingers. He spat a loogie in my face and banged my head against the wall...I saw my son sitting there crying, his little blue shirt soaked with tears...i barely even felt the punches to my face...i could only claw at his arms trying to free myself to breathe...my son was screaming and crying...it went black for a moment...I remember waking up on the floor, my husband left me there with our son on the floor in hysterics, he finished getting ready and then he went to work. I came to as he was pulling out of the driveway, screeching down the street, music blaring...my baby boy was clinging to my head and still crying. We were both trembling as I scrambled off the floor. With my baby and what I could fit in my little car, I headed north to my mom and dad. On highway 5 in the 102 degree heat, my tire blew. I swerved on the highway and came to a skidding hard stop in the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Carrying my son down the road in the heat to the emergency call phone, I jumped everytime a car would whir by. It was like they were going 500 miles an hour and were a foot away. I tried walking as far from the road as possible but the shoulder went down at a bad angle into a ravene. Finally I got to the phone and waited almost an hour for the tow truck. Once I got to the service station, I thought I would give my husband the benefit of the doubt. He knew we were leaving and we were in trouble. I called him for money as he never allowed me to have cash or a credit card, I only had a bank card from an account he put $200 a week into which was always spent on groceries and gas. I think there was $15 in it at the time. He said I was a disgrace as a mother. To put my son in that position. He hung up on me. Luckily my parents were always there to help and took care of it for me. I went back home with his thumbprints bruised into my throat, my eye filled with blood and lumps on the back of my head. I had bruises all over my ribs and buttocks from previous attacks. I was someone else. I was a sad broken ghost of a girl who was once named Rachel.
It's been a long, hard road back. But even now, I am reminded of the hell I survived. Things like what happened today throw me in it for just a moment. Remind me not to get too comfortable. Always be ready because he might make good on his promise...If you ever leave me, I will kill you, take my son to Israel and your family will never see him again. I will be long gone by the time they find your body.
On my way home from dinner tonight, I passed street we lived on together. My son was asleep and I made the hard turn and shot down the alley back to the street where it all happened. How many nights had I fled from the house and spent hours weeping behind a neighbor's car or anywhere I could hide? Too many to count. How many screams had risen up in the nightsky in this neighborhood? Too many to count. This is the place where I lost my soul. This is the place I died. I parked the car across the street and stared at the house. I felt like I was visiting a grave. The house looks different now. They even changed the location of the front door. Cheesy lattice all over the front yard to form some mockery of a fence. Just a reminder of how long ago it was but still, these memories are so fresh in my head that it could have happened yesterday. I can see his face inches from mine, snarling at me, the deep angry crease above in his forehead as he screamed at me...pulled my hair, threw me to the ground...kicked me in the stomach. Such horror within those walls...so much I have overcome...and still I have to smile when I drop off my son for visitation. Some things you cannot wash away. How do you forgive when there is no justice for crimes gone unpunished? He denies everything. I only had one measly hospital record where the doctor called the cops as it was obviously a domestic violence situation. One stinkin record. I had nothing. I guess what's in the past is in the past. But how do I share my son with a monster and be happy about it?
I can't.
posted by Rachel @ 10:28 PM
3 Comments:
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