Long Blue Line: Based on a True Story (40 page)

The days went by, the pain lingered, and nothing changed for the better. Moving out of our home to get away from Donnie was only a temporary fix. In a sense, it probably heightened our drug use simply because we were able to go home at the end of the day and leave when he started getting crazy. Excitement was building around Casie’s pregnancy though. I put together a baby shower for her, and I got to meet her family. They were all nice, and definitely seemed like they were clean. Casie had two younger sisters. I started to see them more regularly as everyone was stopping by their house to see how Casie was doing. Eventually, it felt like they were a second family. Casie’s mom always seemed to stay positive and have a good attitude about things. It was refreshing to be around her. She was unaware of the drug use that was going on, and we were all pretty good at hiding it. On a cold October night, a few hours after Derrick and I had returned home, the phone rang. It was Marney. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked. “Oh nothing much. Just watching preggers here stand over the toilet and wondering why she can’t stop peeing on herself.” I laughed, “Really? I’m so excited! Is she getting contractions yet?” I asked. “Yeah, she’s getting a few. But she wanted me to call you to tell you what was going on. We’re waiting for her mom to get here to take her to the hospital.” I told Marnie that I would be there first thing in the morning, but to call me if she started progressing super fast.

Casie and I spent a lot of time together over the last months. It was her first pregnancy, and she always had questions to ask me knowing that I would probably had some helpful advice. My respect for her grew over this simple fact. She was paying attention to her pregnancy, and I thought that it was a good sign. Her maternal instincts were kicking in, and with the chaos that was always happening in that house, I thought that they should probably be in overdrive. Derrick and I had discussions about how Donnie would be as a father. There were rumors of him abusing Marnie’s children, and we knew that he had a violent temper when he was coming down from meth. His violent temper mixed with his delusions, which were happening more and more, was a very dangerous combination. I did some research on mood disorders to see if I could find out what was wrong with him. He was progressing into insanity more and more each day. I came to the conclusion that he was either bipolar, which became worse with the use of drugs, or he had meth-induced psychosis. Whatever it was, it was scary.

The next morning I woke up hours before the usual eager to get to the hospital to see how Casie was doing and if she had the baby yet. Derrick had to work, so he had to drop me off early at the hospital. I tried to tame my excitement when I walked into the hospital room. Casie wasn’t happy, which was a good sign! It meant that she would hopefully have this baby sooner than later. Her entire family was there, and we all quietly kept each other occupied. I was surprised to see that Donnie seemed to be calm and collected. He stayed that way for most of the time. I thought that perhaps he might have been sober. The baby wasn’t born until later that night. When it was time for her to push, Casie’s cries from the pain gave me flashbacks, and I had some anxiety over it. I thought I could handle it just fine, but because I remembered exactly what she was feeling, it freaked me out. Her mom and Donnie were the only ones allowed in the delivery room. I was glad, because I was on the verge of fainting. Her sisters and I were curious to know what was happening. We came up with a sneaky idea to go outside and around the hospital to the window of the room she was in. “Holy crap!” I whispered. “I can’t believe the window is open and the curtains aren’t shut!” I exclaimed. We sat on the grass, leaning against the wall of the hospital building. We were too scared to look, plus it just made us feel like creepers. So we listened. In only about thirty minutes, we heard a few cries of pain and suddenly, a squeaky cry. The baby had made it safely into this world and it was a boy! Casie’s sister had a tear streaming down her cheek and of course it caused a chain reaction. There was nothing more beautiful than the birth of a new life. The sound of this baby crying was so sweet and innocent, and I prayed that he would be safe and taken care of. I vowed to myself that I was going to be there for Casie as much as she needed me, and maybe I could, in some way, give back support and help protect him.

Derrick arrived at the hospital when the nurses were cleaning the baby up in the nursery. We were standing in the entrance doting and snapping hundreds of pictures. I stepped in a little further after the nurse told us it was okay to go in. I saw the same rocking chair that I sat in not too long ago, holding my own newborn baby, and grieving over her being torn from me. It all came back, abruptly and vividly. I was having a flashback. The nurse looked at me, and I think she could sense that something wasn’t right. My eyes were watery, but I held my tears in. “You can come in further to see him, if you want,” she softly offered. “Oh it’s okay, I don’t want to be in the way,” I smiled in response. “Are you sure?” she asked again, concerned. “Yes, I’ll get to see him plenty when he goes home, and I think my fiancé is here to take me home anyway,” I said, as I backed out of the room. I was flooded with emotions.

I was sad and missing Danielle, and I was angry and jealous that Donnie and Casie were getting to take their baby home. At least Derrick and I had both been sober and truly wanted to stay that way. Why is the system so backwards? I asked myself, trying to find some sort of answer. I went back to the hospital room to say goodbye to Casie, but she was still being taken care of by the doctor. Derrick approached me, after he took a quick glance at the new baby. “So why the hell have you been talking to other dudes?” he quietly growled under his breath. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. I tried to blow it off, but he kept pushing me and pushing me. “Can I just have a ride home, please?” I asked, trying to avoid a repeat life-threatening situation. “You can fuckin’ walk!” he casually said. It was probably less than twenty degrees outside. I was wearing close-toed heels, which would probably cause me to slip and fall. I did not want to have to walk home. He wasn’t letting up with this accusation though, and he was beginning to get loud about it in the attempt to humiliate me. It was getting late, and I was tired and emotionally exhausted. I gave in and started walking home. I was freezing, but I walked as fast as I could to heat my body temperature up. I heard screeching tires behind me, and I quickly veered to the side of the road. It was sounding like I was about to be run over. Derrick pulled up next to me “Hey! Get in,” he yelled. “I’m not going anywhere with you!” I cried, wiping the tears from my face before they froze to it. I wanted him to actually act like he wanted to take care of me. I wanted him to at least pretend that he was sorry. He did none of that.

"Have fun walking then," he said as he sped off. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I knew for a fact that I had not been talking to any other man at all. I couldn't figure out where this idea came from and I didn't even know what I did to deserve the torture. It wasn't until later that I realized that he was probably acting this way because he was also grieving over the loss of our own daughter, and wondering why his brother was able to keep his child. Either way, the baby was adorable and we loved him regardless. We may have had some jealousy issues, but they were no one else's fault but our own. When I finally got home, I was surprised that Derrick hadn't even arrived yet. He's probably out getting high with his brother as a way to celebrate the new baby, I thought. I took off my jacket and I turned up the heater. I put my pajamas on and began to get ready for bed. Derrick came home, and he still had his cocky attitude. I was sick of it and I didn't deserve it. "What the hell is your problem?" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "I haven't done anything wrong to you at all, and on a day when you know that I'm sad and emotional, you go out of your way to talk a bunch of shit that doesn't even make sense." I yelled even louder. He was already amped up for some reason, and raising my voice was the worst mistake that I could have made at the moment. I was standing in the kitchen with my arms in the air staring him in the eyes. I saw red, burning fury. My intuition told me to run.

I bolted down the hallway as he was gripping the orange clay pot that held up an indoor tree; the tree had become all I had left to love and nurture. When I witnessed him angrily tear it out of the pot, the strong bamboo roots not standing a chance, I felt the fear of death pumping through my veins. Knowing my life depended on it, I leaped into the bathroom as I heard the whoosh of the heavy pot racing past my head. The loud shatter and storm of soil brought a gasp to my soul. Locking the door behind me, I knew that if he wanted me dead, this frail trailer door would not save me. I opened the blinds to the tiny window above the toilet, hoping that my older neighbor might be home to hear my screams. Silence overcame the weak trailer walls. The only sound I could recognize was the fast beat of my broken and empty heart. An overwhelming desire to surrender my life exhausted me, as I opened the door and fearlessly walked into the hallway. Pale, with clenched fists, he was eerily silent. The gaze of Satan on his face pierced my conscious awareness of where I was and who I had become.

I avoided his eyes all together, hoping it wouldn’t encourage any more violence. I was shaking as my hands reached for my purse. It was only a few feet away from him. I needed my anti-anxiety pills. I felt panic raging through my body, and I wanted to nip it before it got out of control, and pissed Derrick off even more. As I pulled the medication bottle out of my purse, he suddenly and fiercely slapped the bottle straight out of my hand. It fell to the floor. I couldn’t bend down to get it, because it would put me in a vulnerable position and he could easily knock me out. He snatched the bottle up, opened the lid, and walked into the hallway where the pile of dirt and broken clay was resting. He dumped all of the contents of the bottle into the dirt. “Derrick! Stop! I need those and you know that!” I screamed, in tears and begging him to have some sort of compassion. “Fuck you, and your pills!” he roared, as he began smashing them into the dirt and grinding them with his shoe. I couldn’t believe that he had gone to this extent when I hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place. When he was finished crushing up the only thing that took away my anxiety, which was mostly caused by him, he left the house. I sat on the floor in the pile of dirt, with it splattered all over my pajamas and face from his attempt to kill me with the pot, sobbing and trying to recover any pieces of my relief that I could. I felt just as filthy on the inside as I was on the outside. He showed me first-hand that I was nothing but dirt.

The very next day after this fight, we sat down and had a talk. It was calm, and it was civil. He was the one that initiated the conversation. He must have woke up and felt bad about the night before. I slept on the couch, and being my stubborn self, I was not going to be the one to do any ass kissing. He opened up to me and told me that last night was extremely hard for him as well. He said that he was pissed off because his brother is such a screw-up, and did nothing to deserve the baby, but still got to take him home. Although I was still sickened by him, I shook my head in agreement and I was glad that he was at least talking about it. I told him that I felt the same way, and the way he treated me last night hurt my feelings even more and caused me to lose trust for him. "I want to be able to trust you Derrick. You are all that I have right now, and if I can't trust you, then I can't trust anyone. You make it hard when you suddenly accuse me of things when I do nothing to deserve that. Of course I'm gonna get mad and start yelling, you would do the same thing." "Listen. I feel really bad about what I did, and I know that there is no excuse for it. All I can do is apologize and try to work on my temper." I thought that it was a half ass apology, but I didn't really have anywhere to go, so I sort of had to accept it.

We got dressed and went to Donnie and Casey's house to visit the baby. Everything seemed like it was pretty stable over there for the first time ever. It just seemed like they were two happy parents, and the baby was content and sleeping. We passed him around, and left to go get dinner. On the way to one of our favorite restaurants at the casino on the very top floor, Derrick unexpectedly brought something up. "So, when are we getting married? Is that still even happening?" He laughed, only halfway serious. "I don't know. Do you still want to marry me?" "I don't know, you're pretty," he said, raising one eyebrow and giving me a grin." I sighed, "Okay, so that means yes." I gave him my snotty look that I knew he secretly loved. "Why don't we stop at that chapel that's on the highway that they just put in place of that old tax office?" I asked him. For future reference, I am curious to see how much it would cost to get married. I also thought it would be something fun to do before we went to eat. We pulled into the parking lot of the tiny chapel and rang the doorbell. A short, chubby woman opened the door and she was extremely bubbly and chipper. She invited us in and asked us if we were ready to get married. "Well, I don't know about right now, but we did want to find out what the fees are," Derrick said. I sarcastically made a comment in response to Derrick’s comment. "Now, we're just friends, but we thought it would be interesting to come to a chapel and find out all there is to know about getting married." The woman laughed, and I think I kind of confused her. She showed us where the ceremony takes place, and she went over the fees with this, which weren't as high as we expected. Derrick had just gotten paid, so we were actually entertaining the idea. We thanked the woman for the tour and went to our dinner.

While we were eating, we talked about it further. "So, do you just want to go get married tomorrow?" he asked me. He was getting more serious about it, and I had been bugging him about it pretty much since we got together. I wasn't jumping for joy, but I thought that maybe it would help our relationship, and it would be good for our daughter to know that we loved each other. "Let's just go for the marriage license tonight, and then we can think about it." We went back to the chapel that was open 24 hours, and the woman became really excited thinking that we had returned to get married. "Not just yet, but we did want to go ahead and get the marriage license. That way when we do decide to tie the knot, we will at least have some of the paperwork out-of-the-way." As we were filling out the paperwork and providing our driver’s licenses to the woman, we both became a little impulsive and just decided to pay for our wedding, which would be the next day. As we were sitting at her office desk, I shamelessly looked at Derrick. "We might as well just prepay for it now, because if we don't do that, we are never going to end up getting married." He shrugged his shoulders, with a look on his face that indicated he knew I was probably right. We paid almost $300 and knew that because it was such a good chunk of money, we were going to have to go back the next day and actually follow through. I had nothing to wear, so we figured that we would go to one of the department stores down the highway before we left for the chapel in the morning. I didn't want to get super fancy, but I at least wanted to look nice for pictures.

I had a very difficult time falling asleep that night. My mind was racing and I didn't know if it was from excitement or total, complete fear. We woke up early the next day because our wedding was scheduled for noon. We needed enough time to find something to wear and break the news to Donnie and Casie. While I was taking a shower and getting ready, Derrick said he was going to go down to the store to find something to wear. "Since we are running short on time, can you look and see if there are any cute white dresses for me? It doesn't have to be fancy, but I definitely want it to be nice." "Yeah, I'll look and call you when I find something." Derrick came back after what felt like only about 15 minutes. I thought that he probably didn't have any luck finding me a dress because he had been so quick to return. He had two bags in his hands, and with a look of curiosity on my face, I asked him if he found what we needed. He pulled out a white dress for me, and I was completely surprised because it looked exactly how I had envisioned it to be and it ended up sitting me perfect.

When we were all dressed and ready to go, Derrick called Donnie to see if he wanted to go along. Donnie was still sleeping but Casie was awake and said that she wanted to be there. We decided to just show up in our wedding attire, and woke Donnie up. He walked into the living room all groggy and confused. It was kind of funny. "Whoa, what are you guys doing? Are we getting married today, or something?" "Yep, do I look adorable?" Casie, laughed. "You look beautiful!" I did feel pretty that day. I had my hair down, and it was long and the ends were curled. I hadn't been dressed up for anything in a very long time. Casie’s mom and sister showed up just a few minutes after we got to their house. They were just as excited as the rest of us, and I gladly invited them to come along as well. I wanted to get a lot of pictures, and on top of it, I thought it would be a blessing if we at least had some people there. The closer it got to noon, the more nervous I got. I pulled one of my dirt infested anti-anxiety pills out of my purse and chewed it up. I couldn't tell if it was a normal case of nervousness, which most brides had before their wedding, or if it was because my subconscious was yelling and screaming and kicking and trying to tell me something. It didn't matter, it was going to happen, and I ignored my fears.

After the baby was dressed and ready to go our wedding guests followed us less than a mile down the street to the chapel. We walked in and I was worried that I was going to faint. The lady that was going to do the ceremony kind of made a big deal out of it - bigger than I really wanted. She actually made me walk down the tiny little three-foot aisle. She played really cheesy classical music on a tiny little radio, and I honestly just wanted to die because I was so mortified. I hated that everyone was staring at me, and I was rethinking my excitement over inviting everyone. I would've been thrilled to have a brown paper bag placed over my head. When my long and enduring walk down the aisle was finished, I stood in front of the efficient and Derrick was right next to me. She had us grab each other's hands. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it felt like she went on forever, and I just wanted her to shut up. I was shaking, and it was not going away. In fact, it was actually getting worse the closer I got to saying I do. After what felt like an eternity of awkward torture, we both finally got it over with. We kissed and we were done. We stayed in the chapel for a few minutes to get pictures, and I made sure that we got pictures with the new baby. I was sad that it wasn't our daughter that we were holding in those pictures, but I still was happy that the baby was there. That was it - we finally got it over with and were married. I never asked him, but I'm pretty sure that Derrick was feeling the same way. We just weren't very publicly affectionate people, and it was more of a pain than anything, but we felt like it was the right thing to do.

After it was official, we went home to change into more comfortable clothes and packed an overnight bag. We were going to get a suite in the casino and spend our honeymoon having fun at the poker table. Derrick hardly ever drank alcohol, and any time I did, he got extremely annoyed. He made an exception for tonight. Before we got to the casino and checked into our room, we stopped at the liquor store and got a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels. When we walked up to the concierge desk, we told the receptionist that we had just gotten married and it was our honeymoon. We had a suspicion that if we told them that we were there for a special occasion, we might get a discount on our room. The man behind the desk began to check us in, and with a grin on his face, he handed us a special card and said, "you can thank me when you check out. I'll want to hear how your stay was." I didn't know what we were going to be walking into, but I knew it was going to be awesome. It was even better than I imagined it to be when we opened the door. We walked into the bright room with Roman style couches and vaulted ceilings. We had a huge Jacuzzi, the bed was awesome, and the view was probably the best view that the entire casino could offer. We were on the very top floor, and looking out the window was truly breathtaking. Our room was overlooking the entire Lake surrounded by green forest. We invited Donnie and Casie along with her mom and sister to come say hi if they wanted to. It was still early in the day, and we probably wouldn't head down to gamble for a few hours. They stopped by and instantly understood why we were so eager to show off our room. They stayed for probably an hour, and I held the baby most of the time. He was so tiny and sweet, and he was so content when he was sleeping. From what I could tell he didn't really cry very much. The time that I noticed he cried was only when he wasn't being held. He was a little cuddle bug and I felt like I could hold him forever. It made me miss my own baby, and it made me sad that I had to miss out on those precious times with her. I snapped probably one hundred pictures of him in that hour and kissed him goodbye when they left.

After grabbing something to eat at one of the restaurants in the casino, we headed back up the stairs to get ready for some black jack. Because Derrick hadn't had anything to drink in such a long time, he didn't remember that his tolerance level was low. He got drunk pretty quick, and I had to convince him to take me down to gamble. He didn't put up much of a fight like he usually would, because he knew that it was something I really wanted to do. And after all, it was our wedding night. We stayed downstairs until about three or four in the morning. We had a blast at the blackjack table and our luck was high. We walked away with over $400. Our entire wedding had already been paid for in our winnings. We sat with some really nice people, and I think one of them might have been a man I should have recognized, but I was just too much of an 88 to know who he was. The other people at the table were looking at me like I was a total moron for not knowing who this guy was, but it wasn't my fault that I was too young! When we left the casino the next day, we both agreed that we had an amazing time. We knew that it was one of those nights that we would never forget.