My Domestic Violence Story

I went to bed at 5 am Monday morning, which is not unusual, I often work a ’third shift’ when the kids & hubby are asleep.

A little after 7 am I awake to the sounds of screaming. Hubby and my daughter often are loud & argue, so I listened for 30 seconds or so to decide what was going on.

I hear her scream, then it became muffled.

I ran downstairs. My daughter was in tears & afraid, but I wasn’t sure if she was afraid of me or him. Hubby was his usual angry self.

I ordered my daughter upstairs, and followed behind her for the story.

She was very upset, and I couldn’t understand much. Just that she said he had put both of his hands around her neck & throat, and pushed her onto the couch, face first. (My mind snapped to the sound of her muffled scream.)

I told her to stay in her room, and that she would not be going to school that day... On my way down the stairs, I wondered why I did that - I never have before...

When I got downstairs, I could see hubby was still very angry, and knew that between his anger & my lack of sleep, this would not be a discussion - it would be a fight. So I told him to take off his coat, that she would not be going to school, and went back up to bed.

I wasn’t going back to sleep really. I was going to lay down someplace quiet, to run the same old ’math’ if you will. To take the same information, the same circumstances, the same financial situation & see if I could find any new answers. As if the past few years have not been spent thinking that way anyway...

Of course, I found no new answers. Just the conviction that enough was enough, and like it or not, plan or not, this had to end.

At 1 pm I came back down. I heard the baby in his crib, not asleep, but upstairs, as was my daughter -- both away from where he & I would be talking. I figured we had an hour & 20 minutes before he left for work: enough time to talk, but not too much time to belabor it to death...

I entered the kitchen, he was doing dishes.

"So, what happened?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" he said, not even turning to look at me.

I ignored his dumb act and said, more pointedly "Where were your hands on my daughter?"

"No where" he replied, in his usual defensive mode, still not paying me much attention - you know, those dishes are a priority...

I repeated my question, and he answered, but did not turn to face me still. He said she was being lippy again (always blaming & defending).

I asked yet again "Where were your hands on my daughter?"

This time he turned around. He said she was on the couch & then demonstrated with his own hand on his chest how with one hand, he had pushed her all the way back on the couch.

I first asked him if he thought this was the right solution, the right way to handle things. He returned to the dishes, and made no response.

I tried a new approach. I mentioned that once again, the stories did not match. (You see, this is not the first time she has talked of his physical abuse, but the first time I had even been near it.) I told him that this was not working, and that I wanted to discuss a plan for us.

I had intended to discuss that since the 3.5 years of working with a counselor for how to parent my daughter, along with the almost 3 years of marital counseling, and over a year of meds, he has only gotten worse, that the time had come for him to move out - not just for a week, but until such a time as we could make more long term plans for divorce. If that took a week, a month, a year, a decade, whatever, so be it.

But I never got that far.

I started to talk, and he continued to do those dishes. I asked him to pay attention to me, that this was more important. He snorted, and kept his back to me.

The mother lion in me was building. I kept her still, and tried to get him to turn around. Each attempt was met with either silence, another snort, or a ’whatever.’

Then he moved to walk away. I could no longer hold back the lioness...

His back was turned to me, I took both hands & shoved him, saying loudly, but not in a full yell, that this time he would listen to me, after 3.5 years, he was going to listen to me.

He turned around alright.

Fists raised, he beat me for the 10 feet to the corner of the counters, where I was trapped. Once there, he continued, with more blows actually connecting - my arms, my chest, my neck, my head.

Then, suddenly he stopped. I looked straight ahead, but not at his face - still looking for another blow - and said "Now, I am fucking going to call the police."

He snorted & walked away - yup, right back to those dishes.

I ran to the phone, dialed 911. Now, 911 keeps you on the phone until the police arrive. The whole time, he alternates between these 3 activities:

1) Yelling he was defending himself, screaming that this was my fault, threatening me with his stance.

2) Placing himself on the couch, imploring me with his eyes, as he moans & cries "Oh what have I done! My wife! My wife!" Waiting for me to come comfort him.

3) You guessed it, doing the dishes.

And so he did his crazy waltz: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, until the police arrived. He remained at 3 for their arrival.

How the police handled the situation, and the courts etc is to be discussed at length in other columns, for now, I will only continue with what happened ’at home’ after he was taken away.

After about an hour, and I had calmed down a bit, I talked with my daughter. First to see if she had heard or seen anything of the ’events’ - she had not, & I saved that for ’later’ in order to keep her calm and get her story.

Her story, is even more ludicrous than his waltz, but first, you might want to know a few things.

My daughter has special needs, including ADD. The pills she takes for ADD affect her appetite. Since she at age 13 she weighs a mere 72 pounds, and is a prime candidate for eating disorders, both the school & I are in contact regarding her eating. They make special arrangements for her to keep lunches in staff places, to encourage her to eat. For example, allow her to keep yogurt in their refrigerator.

That morning, she wanted to take a can of Chunky soup to school. (Not condensed soup, the kind with the pull off top that you pour into a bowl & heat.) Hubby told her ’no’ and she insisted that she could, that the teachers let her use the microwave. This went back & forth a few times.

Ridiculous really. If she was lying about the use of a microwave, she would have a natural consequence of no lunch if she brought it.

But hubby had to argue, he was our own version of ’The Soup Nazi.’ (He has done similar things before: not allowing her to make/take half sandwiches for lunch, for example - don’t ask me why. Other than he is a control freak, there is no reason.)

So, here is hubby with a step child, arguing over soup, and his logical response to the situation is to grab her by the neck/throat & throw/shove her onto the couch.

While I am grateful that she has no marks on her body, they are surely on her soul.

My son, just 2.5 years old, witnessed their scene as well. Large marks on his young soul as well.

As her mother, I feel the pain of their bruises on my own soul. The ones that others can see are really less significant, but are the only ones allowed as evidence in court.