Redemption (20 page)

After he let go, I dropped down on the floor into a little ball. I was freaking out. He reached down and flipped me over, yanking off my shorts. He raped me right there on the living room floor. A lot of times, I knew it was coming, and I could prepare myself by counting backward and going off to some other place. This time, it happened too quickly, and I felt everything. It was overwhelmingly painful, and I curled back into a little ball when he finished. I blacked out for a minute or two. I woke when he kicked me hard in the ribs.

He stood over me as he got $40 out of his wallet. He threw the money on my body and said, “Happy birthday. Go buy yourself something nice.” He walked away, and then left the house.

I just lay there hurting and breaking. When I could, I got up and found my new puppy in one of the other rooms. I held her and cried.
What do I do now?
I thought over and over. I could hardly breathe, and my ribs hurt from his kick. His words,
You’re mine
, were stuck in my head. I felt a new sense of hopelessness mixed with hate.

My blond hair was all over the place, and I had to clean it up before Christy returned the next day. I hid everything from her, as I had for years. She had enough of her own issues—he physically abused her nearly every day. So Monday morning, I went and got my hair fixed.

I also bought myself a $400 car stereo on his credit card—“something nice for my birthday.”

I became obsessed with getting out of that house. I applied to Mizzou. I hoped I might be able to enroll in classes in the fall. I prayed that I would find a way to live on campus, away from him. He wouldn’t let me work; he wanted me to be totally dependent on him. I had some time to plan. So I held on to the hope that I could get Christy out of Dad’s, and then I would be able to leave, too. If I didn’t cling to that hope, I had no reason to live.

I had started taking summer classes at Flo Valley, also known as St. Louis Community College—Florissant Valley. At least I had something worthwhile to do besides keep tabs on my sister and hang out with stoners. But Flo Valley was at home, and Mizzou was more than three hours away. I needed to get away. I filled out my application, which carried a $25 application fee. He saw me write the check and sign his name—something I often did. Then he watched as I tried to figure out how to fill out my application. It was supposed to be typed, and we didn’t have a typewriter. In what I believed was a rare moment of sober kindness, he offered to take the application to his secretary’s office to have her type it up. Despite his drinking, he was still working—I don’t know how. He didn’t keep jobs for long. Regardless, I wrote out all of the answers, attached the forms and the check, and sent him to work with everything he needed for my Missouri State University application.

He promised me that his secretary would send in everything from the office.

A few weeks later, he came home with an envelope with a Mizzou return address label. He waved it in the air and told me I had been denied admission for the fall semester.

“They don’t want you,” he said, standing by our dining room table, which was covered by his computer, books, and work papers. “Sorry to tell you this, but you’re too stupid.”

I wanted to read the letter, but he wouldn’t let me. He held it up in the air where I couldn’t reach it. He made fun of me. He said I was too dumb to even read it.

I didn’t know what to do from there. I didn’t cry or get mad. I didn’t say anything. I let him walk off. I just couldn’t believe it. From the time I was a little girl, my nickname was Tiger, and I was supposed to go to Mizzou. That’s where he went; that’s where my uncle and cousin went. My whole life, I had kept up my grades so I could attend that school. That was what I was going to do—study, choose a career, and finally have a life of my own. I’d work, get married, and have children.

Except that I couldn’t have children because of him. At seventeen, that chance got taken away from me. Then I’m told I can’t go to college. The military was out until Christy lived somewhere more safe and stable.

I was too consumed with self-pity to put it all together at the time. Of course, my father was lying to me about the admissions denial. Later, I went through his checking account stubs—he knew I had access to all of that stuff. I couldn’t find the canceled check made out to Missouri State. I checked the statements, too. Then I confronted him.

He said he hadn’t used the check I wrote but had paid the fee over the phone by credit card. I couldn’t find the credit card statements to check for myself. He continued to try to convince me that the school just didn’t want me.

For a long while, I doubted myself. I thought he was right. I was a stupid girl with a GED. Then I started to question him. Since I couldn’t find proof of payment to Mizzou, maybe he had been lying the whole time. I didn’t know how to find out. Was I even allowed to call the university? I had no clue. Either way, I was distraught. I started to believe I was stupid. I even dropped out of Flo Valley.

I was consumed with my own negative thoughts.
What’s the point? Why should I go to school if I’m just an idiot? What good is school going to do if I can’t even get out of this house?

I became depressed. I was devastated; I felt like I would be trapped forever. Forever is a long time when you’re living in hell.

In those moments, I lost all hope. He was never going to let me leave while there was still breath in his body.

Pushed

y this point, I was saying to him, “If you don’t stop, I’ll kill you.” I had fantasies about what kind of life I could have if he weren’t in it.

He’d say, “Yeah, right. You don’t have the balls.” We both used the word
kill
obsessively—him especially. He’d describe all of the ways he wanted to kill Christy—and me too, while he was at it.

We had one bathroom in the house, and I still took ritualistic long, hot baths after attacks that were happening constantly. I’d be in the tub, and he would barge right in. It was a small room. When you walked in, the white ceramic tub was on the left, and the small sink and mirrored medicine cabinet were directly across on the right. There was an electrical outlet next to the mirror, and I kept a radio plugged into it.

“I can come in and throw this radio in the tub and electrocute you,” he said, snapping his fingers. “What would you do about it?”

The bathroom was very narrow. I bolted out of the tub to run from the room, but he blocked the door. Then he tossed me back into the water. As a strict rule, I stopped bathing when he was home. I was terrified. He’d say the same stuff to my sister, but he didn’t barge in on her like he did me.

Rickety wooden steps led down to the basement. He said he could throw us down the steps and break our necks. That’s another reason we used the basement window as much as possible. We didn’t want to give him opportunities to go through with his threats.

He said to me, “I’ll throw Christy down the steps and stab you and tell the police that you were trying to take my money to buy drugs.” He made up all kinds of ridiculous stories to scare me. Only they weren’t so ridiculous at the time; I believed him. His eyes were hardly blue any more; they had turned to pure fire and hate.

He started walking around the house holding his .22 caliber rifle down by his side to intimidate us. He was so out of control that no one could come to our house anymore. We were too scared to be there ourselves.

I started to wish he were dead in a way I hadn’t before. There hadn’t been as much urgency in the past. But now Christy and I were living in a nightmare with him. If things continued the way they were, one of us was going to lose our life. I didn’t believe I could be the cause of his death, or that I was capable of killing him myself.

But I didn’t want to die. I took his .22 to Ron’s so he could show me how to use it. Then I taught Christy how to shoot out in an old field in Alhambra. We both needed to know how to defend ourselves, just in case.

I took his gun when he wasn’t looking and slept with it under my bed. I thought,
Okay, if he walks through that door tonight, I’m just going to shoot him
. I tried to stay awake for a few nights, so when he arrived in the night (I never knew when), I’d be ready. I couldn’t do it. I kept falling asleep. He’d wake me up, and it was too late. I couldn’t reach the weapon that was right underneath me. How would I get my hands on it with him standing right there?

One night, he noticed that his loaded rifle was missing. He stumbled into my room at 3 a.m. and found it under my bed. He knew I wanted to kill him, and he laughed at me. He said I’d never be able to do it—I didn’t have the balls. But he could kill me anytime he wanted.

To prove his point, I had woken up with my hands and feet bound to the four corners of the bed with an orange electrical cord. I couldn’t move when he raped me with the very weapon I had taken to protect myself.

With the .22 rifle inside me, he pulled the trigger. I heard the soft click and welcomed death. I felt peace that he could kill me this way, and people would finally find out. They would know him for the monster he had become. My sister would be saved from him. As I realized that the gun had been unloaded before he terrorized me with it, I felt cheated. I was still alive as he left.

A few days later, I was leaving the house to hang out with friends, and sober Dad told me to call him if I couldn’t drive home safely, and he would pick me up. He gave me a lecture about drinking and driving, pointing out his many accidents. He’d had another near-death car wreck right before I left for Guam. Miraculously, he walked away from it.

I was headed to Ron’s, and I had a ridiculous 10 p.m. curfew because I hadn’t cleaned the house well enough. It wasn’t a big deal, and half the time, Dad wouldn’t remember my punishments anyway. But he had told me to call him if I drank or smoked too much. I was thirty minutes away from home when I looked at the clock. It was 9:45 p.m.

I called Dad. I said, “I’ve been drinking, and I shouldn’t drive. I should wait a few hours.” I’d had only one drink, but I could still feel it. I was too terrified from all of Dad’s wrecks to put myself in that position behind the wheel.

“Get your fucking ass home right now,” he yelled. Drunk Dad had answered the phone. He could hear people in the background. Ron wasn’t having a party, but two or three of his guy friends were over. Drunk Dad could hear them. “How many men are you fucking right now?” he said, screaming. “You little slut. Fucking whore. You have twenty minutes to get back home.”

I started crying, and Ron walked over and stood next to me. “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” I told my father before hanging up. I wasn’t going to drive, and I prayed he’d be passed out by the time I made my way back to St. John.

Ron asked me what was wrong. He wore dark tinted eyeglasses all the time. He had curly red hair and lots of freckles.

I said, “I just wish he were dead.”

“That can be arranged,” Ron replied.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I wish.” That was the end of the conversation.

There were four conversations like that, and Jason heard one of them. I never, ever brought it up to Ron. Instead, I’d be over at his house—I never should’ve kept going back there—and he would nudge me with his elbow.

“$2,500, and it’s done,” he said.

Every time, I played it down. I knew I couldn’t say how I really felt. Instead, I said, “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But I don’t want to go there.” It would’ve been so easy to say,
Yes, let’s do it. Here you go. Here’s $2,500
. But there was still a part of me that was sane.

Ron had run-ins with the law. For example, he had been in trouble for taking off with an underage girlfriend. I didn’t know that until much later. Ron and his girlfriend, Theresa, were simply two of the only friends I had. They knew I had problems with my dad, but they didn’t know the specifics.

The truth was, I did want him dead. I fantasized about it more and more often.
What if he did kill himself in one of those car crashes? What if I hadn’t picked him up from The Edge that night he was so drunk he couldn’t walk? What if I had let him lie there on his back, unconscious, while he vomited? What if I hadn’t turned him over to his side? How many times have I saved him?

Then my brain snapped back into reality. I’d think to myself,
Damn, I am so wrong. I make myself sick
.

I knew I should do no harm.

I never thought I could do harm.

Wishing for someone’s death is wrong
.

One of my father’s friends from college was a man named Denny. He was the general manager of one of the Marriott hotels—I didn’t know which one—in St. Louis. He was a well-known local businessman, and my dad always talked about him with reverence. Everything was so out of control, I needed someone—anyone—to talk to. I thought maybe this guy Denny could speak to Dad. Maybe Dad would listen to someone he respected. I knew I couldn’t handle the situation by myself anymore. I had my speech planned out. I was going to tell him that my father’s alcoholism had reached its breaking point, and he needed help. I was going to explain that we were living in a dangerous situation and ask for help.

I called the Marriott at the airport. It was a big Marriott, so maybe he worked at that one. Surely, the operator would just connect me.

The operator wanted to know who I was, and then she said she couldn’t connect me or give out his information. So I drove to the hotel, went up to the front desk, and asked if he was there. I knew he had to be in one of those hotels somewhere. I was desperate. The receptionist finally agreed to take my message asking my father’s friend to call me. For the next few days, I waited anxiously to hear from him.

He never called.