Karma Day 25. Will I Make It?
When I entered college I traded rural Mississippi for rural western mountainous Maryland. It was a big change for me in many ways but in some ways nothing changed. I studied hard when not in class and I worked as much as I could at a nearby pizza joint. Nose to the grindstone, no time for the kind of social interaction. Just like high school I didn’t date, I stayed home or worked. I knew I struck my dorm room mates as a stick in the mud but I didn’t care. I had my eyes focused on a future that didn’t include food stamps or having to make do and no handsome flirty boy or booze was going to derail that. Besides, I’d seen first hand where that lead from my days living with my momma.
The biggest change for me was losing the musical cadences of the various southern drawls of Mississippi and losing the melody of the passing trains. That unique southern music left my live. I felt as if I had invaded yankee land, going up north past the Mason Dixon line.
Plus it was cold, colder than anything I’d ever experienced in Mississippi. The coat I brought was perfectly serviceable in Mississippi but here in the Allegany mountains the fall wind cut right through it like I was wearing mere newspaper. That first winter I suffered from chill blains most cruelly even if I was thrilled to see snow for the first time.
All four years I studied at the Catholic college in Maryland slid by in a haze of work and school. I took the train home every holiday to see my grandmother and took occasional weekend side trips to Baltimore and Washington.
By the time I’d met Michael I was one year out of college and working in Silver Spring, Maryland as an OR nurse. I’d settled into a nice life in suburban Maryland, buying a new car and furnishing my first apartment with furniture from Ikea.
We had a very quick romance, going from dating to engaged to married in just under a year. In fact, we married on opening weekend at the Renaissance fair dressed in period clothing. After sending my grandmother copies of the wedding photos I got a lengthy letter telling me that this was just simply not done. You do not marry at a fair! I laughed reading her shocked words as she clucked over the fact that I’d trampled on her precious etiquette during my wedding.
I lay on Marvelette’s sofa and tried to figure out what had gone so terrible wrong between Michael and I. Those first years together we got along so well, so much in love. Michael and I bought a condo in Crystal City and planned a life together that looked bright.
The only dark cloud on the horizon was that Michael completely cut his family from his life. He complained that since he’d left law school they’d been dunning him for every dime that they could. I tried to never mention Michael’s family to him because it only put him in a terrible mood. It was five years before I had a chance to meet his parents.
And then I got pregnant after we’d been married for five years. We had never discussed having kids, it was just one of those things that seemed to loom way off in the future, a some day occurrence but not now. I’d been on the pill but ended up pregnant anyway. I remember the night I told Michael we were going to be parents.
The whole subject made me nervous because we’d never really talked about having a family so I had prepared to tell him the news carefully. I made sure the condo was immaculate and that I’d prepared all of Michael’s favorite foods right down to triple chocolate cake. I took care with my hair and makeup and I wore the dress Michael loved the most, form fitting, slinky and black.
But not matter how carefully I prepared he still flew into a rage when I told him we were to be parents and accused me of planning this to tie him down to responsibility. But after a few days he came around and said it would be good to start a family, in fact, we should look for a new larger home, something in the Virginia countryside, invest the money from the sale of my grandmother’s home. Which led to another fight.
Michael had been after me to do something with the money for months now. Once my grandmother had passed on her possessions had all been left to me. There wasn’t much to be had, some of her ancient furniture and the house. I packed up some of her things to take home but the majority had been auctioned off. The house sold quickly and I deposited the money in my name only at our bank. Michael was upset with me for not putting his name on it too. It should have been a tipoff, a warning sign but I was too much in love to see anything.
My pregnancy triggered an eighteen month search for just the right home for us. I was adamant I wanted a small farm or a rural homestead while Michael was insisting on a plastic sided house on a cul de sac in one of the thousands of identical neighborhoods encircling Washington DC like the outer rings of Saturn. We fought over what type of home and fought over prices.
Every weekend for months was filled with excursions to all the far flung outlaying regions of the Greater DC area, from southern Rhode Island all the way down to West Virginia and almost to Richmond. I fell in love with the Piedmont region of Virginia, the gracious rolling green hills fenced with white board held some of the finest horse flesh in all of the US with the looming Blue Ridge mountains in the not too far distance. Hard to believe such scenic bucolic landscapes existed within a ninety minute drive of Washington.
But when I first laid eyes on the falling apart farmhouse cobbled together out of an old log cabin I knew I’d found exactly what I wanted. The trouble was convincing Michael. He didn’t mind the drive, but he seemed most to mind that it was a farm. The fact was that Michael didn’t do farming or rural very well. I begged, I pleaded, I threatened but the purchase of what he called sarcastically ‘Tilted Acres’ came down to two things. That it would be much better for our child to be raised in a rural setting as opposed to the gritty inner city childhood he’d experienced and that I would be paying for the entire place with the money from the sale of my grandmothers home.
Through the years as I torn away the uglier updates to our home and redid the floors, pulled the crumbled plaster away from the river rock original fireplace Michael had sneered that the house would never be finished, it would be a perpetual money pit. We fought the hardest on the days Michael perused our checkbook and had seen that I’d spent almost nothing on groceries, getting peanut butter, dried beans and apples, eking out what he called ‘poverty meals’ just so I could pay the plumber and the electrician. He didn’t understand how much I loved it, from the rocky soil to the acreage that spanned gullies and hills to the house that was half traditional farmhouse and half log cabin through the train tracks running in front of the house. The place spoke to me.
Eventually I discovered it was just easier to make the monies I needed for the renovation from the farm. First I tried my hand at making herbal infusions, teas and medicines I’d learned from my grandmother back in rural Mississippi but there was only a limited market for such things, so I supplemented the herbs with hiring myself as painter, a private night nurse and other menial jobs until I settled upon making organic goats milk cheese, soaps, shampoos and lotions from the same goats milk and growing exotic vegetables for the gourmet restaurants of DC in my large garden. The problem was I was still working my day job at the hospital.
A few years of expensive day care combined with Michael suddenly finding religion led to me quitting my job as a nurse and becoming a full time wife, mother, home remodeled and part time farmer. We both agreed it would be for the best and Michael kept saying that as the head of the household under Biblical law he should be the breadwinner while I should be in my primary role of mother. I didn’t argue because I was exhausted from several years of trying to do it all.
I had to keep my business activities limited to what I could produce from the farm, the goats milk products, the herbs, the natural candles I made and the boutique fruits and veggies.
Michael’s sudden conversion to radical evangelical Christianity puzzled me and at first I was reluctant to join him, not even wanting to visit the church when he attended the Sunday services. But he kept nagging me to join him and it seemed like a good way to make friends in the new area we lived in. So I joined him, a non-believer in a sea of the righteous.
I still to this day do not know exactly what happened to Michael. Every time I asked him why he suddenly started believing in God and wanting to go to church he clammed up. Whatever had happened to him was powerful and too intimate to talk about. I did notice that a few guys he worked with also attended the church he picked out for us. I suspect they had leaned on him until he’d had a conversion experience.
No matter how I ran the scenario in my mind I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened. It was just too unbelievable.
It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t believe in God. I just hadn’t been raised in the church. My only real acquaintance with religion had been my years with the nuns. I could recite all of the Catholic liturgy from years attending Mass before classes. But I just didn’t get that God was as involved with everyone’s day to day lives as all the Jesus freaks claimed. God was in some distant place lofty and removed, too busy with bother with the lives of mere mortals. He didn’t care if you have toast or doughnuts for breakfast because He was engaged in some enormous struggle between good and evil, not our piss ant little lives.
Strange as it seemed, Michael, handsome Michael, vain Michael, competitive Michael turned into a regular Charlie Church. Every Wednesday night found him at Bible study, every weekend he was either helping out with one of the church’s many ministries or attended conferences and every Sunday the day was filled with church, church, church. He talked, ate and slept Jesus.
I don’t think I really took Michael entirely serious until he started teaching children’s Sunday School and humbly asked for my forgiveness for his former sins against me. He didn’t explain what he meant by that but after tonight I can well imagine that infidelity was one of them. He wanted us to put the past in the past.
Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We had turned into one of those couples that started bickering in a second and fought over the most petty things. Once Michael was baptized and washed in the blood of the lamb his attempts to bait me into a fight trickled down to nothing and he started treating me in a more kindly fashion. It wasn’t the white hot passionate perfection of the early years of our marriage, it was more like a partnership rooted in the rules preached by the church. But I sometimes missed the passion, missed the making up after the fights, the intense sex all over the house.
At first everyone at Plover Creek seemed frighteningly strange. It wasn’t unusual to hear people praying for minutia guidance from God for such silly simple things as what to eat for lunch that day. And it frightened me just how many uneducated women were insisting that you only home school your children because public school was a cesspool of liberal thinking. Eventually I found myself joining in on the worship service and feeling a strange sensation, almost like a heaviness, a presence of someone else with me.
But I wasn’t entirely convinced until one night when I heard an audible voice telling me to come unto Him while I was silently praying one night alone out of the porch. I started to have a two way internal dialogue with the divine.
How do you not believe in the face of that? It’s not possible. I started on a path that led me closer every day into the presence of the heavenly.
The biggest miracle was that Michael stopped drinking entirely And smoking. No amount of pleading from me that he was making Jay’s asthma worse by smoking around him had any affect but somehow our new church did. He gutted it out and stopped smoking. Michael went to AA and I never saw him drink again. I owed the Lord an enormous debt for those two things because it eased things even more between us.
We entered a phase in our marriage that was the happiest of all times. We did all things faith related, from service to the poor, church attendance, Bible study and prayer as one. Michael quit resenting the fact that I stayed home with Jay and I made every effort to make his life as uncomplicated and tranquil as possible. I did everything, not that I left much undone for him before but now I made just that from the moment Michael awoke in the morning till he lay back in our bed with a sigh there was nothing in our home that need stress him. I look back on those days and can hardly believe how close we were for awhile.
Then after five or six years at Plover Creek things began to change. First, there was a church split over the role of women in leadership in the church. Those that believed it was alright for women to take high level leadership roles such as deacon or elder or minister formed their own church. There were tears, friendships ruined and families split apart. I watched with dismay as various sides alleged all sorts of sinful pride based behaviors that the other side engaged in. I tried not to take sides.
Not Michael, he took it hard, his best friend from work and in the church was appointed pastor of the new fellowship. His friend Lane went from being a deacon at Plover Creek to giving sermons each Sunday and writing the Statement of Purpose of the brand new church Amazing Life. The thing that freaked out Michael the most was that Lane refused to have anything to do with him once the church split happened because Michael hadn’t supported his faction in demanding that women have equal leadership status.
At Amazing Life Lane’s wife, Susan, was his co-pastor. They met in a small room over the old Exxon station in a nearby village and the church consisted of perhaps twenty members at first.
It was several years before anyone at Plover Creek or Amazing Life would have anything to do with each other and even then it was only on bowling league nights on Faith League night at the large bowling alley in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Michael and I hadn’t taken sides in the split but we’d been treated like the enemy anyway. That marked the first time that Michael showed any signs that he wasn’t utterly content with our faith life.
Six months later our church split again. This time it was the people who wanted to have a Holy Ghost experience, a revival atmosphere like that found at Brownsville Assemblies of God or even at the local AoG church. The agitators wanted us to be able to sing and dance in the aisles, laugh, howl, pound tambourines or even speak loudly in tongues.
Michael was the most horrified by their assertion that everyone needed to speak in tongues, that it was our own private prayer language. He ranted loudly about it many times in our house to me, yelling that speaking in tongues was only for back in Bible times, anyone doing it today was only fooling themselves and speaking in nonsensical gibberish.
I wasn’t quite so sure. I’d experienced a few odd things at conferences, like seeing angels and being slain in the spirit so I wasn’t as dismissive of it as he was. Thankfully he never found out that a group of ladies from Plover Creek once had an afternoon get together in the guise of a special Bible study to talk about this and figure out exactly how one went about speaking in tongues. I remember standing there in front of Sister Charlene’s crackling fireplace, opening my chapped lips and waiting, waiting to talk in tongues, waiting for what I knew not exactly.
By the end of the afternoon most of us were tongue less still and concluded it was a load of hooey dreamed up by someone listening more to the devil. Still, a few had ended that afternoon singing and crying and praying in strange phonic sounds like a long dead language. They were fervent believers now and told the rest of us to get with the program or we were going to miss out on heaven and all of God’s gifts.
I remember driving home in a rage, crying hard. I’d wanted all that God had for me. Why didn’t I get it, I’d raged at God, why? Did I do something wrong? Am I stupid? I’d asked Him, hearing nothing for all my pleading.
Michael never even realized I was in an internal turmoil in those days, wanting to believe the revival folks, but afraid to. Not seeing much evidence of what they claimed was the real truth. I stayed spiritually stuck all that winter, spring and summer until the split finally occurred.
When more people left Plover Creek many said good riddance, that most of the women involved in the first and second splits were sinful divorcees that were controlling and going to hell for it. Nothing worse than a controlling woman because manipulation was likened unto witchcraft according to the Bible. Divorcees and controllers burn in hell.
The second split caused those in our fellowship to take a tack more towards the extreme right. The eldest deacon’s wife demanded we cover our heads because St Paul said so and that we wear loose clothing to hide anything that might tempt a man into the sin of lust but still it should be feminine. No pants were allowed and many frustrated days I split wood for our wood burning furnace or drove my tractor wearing long johns covered by a thick flannel cotton petticoat topped by a long skirt and cursed the day we’d all been told pants were of the devil. No amount of tights, long underwear and flannel slip made up for not being allowed pants on the coldest of days.
When each of these new stricter rules had been announced Michael had inwardly seethed but kept an outward lid on his disagreement with them. He only took it out on me, barking out orders at me not to pay any mind to what those mindless holiness ninnies kept inventing in their spare time.
But I didn’t. I did what the church said because I didn’t want to lose my God or my friends. I found myself turning to them ever more as my relationship with Michael floundered into quiet disagreement and he spent more nights working late in the city before staying over in our condo.
My friends assured me if I just stayed a faithful, praying and obedient wife then Michael would eventually see the error of his ways and return to treating me well, with respect, with love again. Even my friends could see there was tension between us now.
I ignored it because I still loved Michael, as much if not more than I did that first moment I spied the handsome fallen knight at the fair. I’d aged, getting fine lines and silvering hair but Michael was even more handsome with a little age on him. I just knew if I stayed sweet and subservient with a true servant heart towards him that this would all blow over, Michael would make his peace with God and turn to me with renewed love and appreciation.
Until September eleventh two thousand and one I was convinced it would happened. My world had been destroyed in one short day.
I can’t say I slept much that long night on Marvelette’s sofa but suddenly sunlight was in my eyes and I felt confused. I sat up and looked around, wondering where I was for a few brief merciful seconds before the memories of the day before returned. I could hear Marvelette getting breakfast ready for her large brood, setting the table, smell the frying bacon and hot coffee. As I stretched I could see that Jay was sitting glumly in a chair across from the sofa staring soberly at me. He asked me, “Is Dad dead?”
With his words I wanted to crumble, to cry, never to get up again but some silent inner preservation mechanism kicked in and I smiled brightly and said, “No way, silly! Dad missed his flight to Los Angeles yesterday because he was stuck in traffic. He decided to go to the condo and take a later flight. I saw him yesterday evening. He’s fine! He’s just got a lot of work in the city so he might not be coming home for a few days. But I bet he calls you today!”
I certainly didn’t feel like the chipper pleasant everything is right with the way I was putting myself across as to Jay but I saw it was exactly what he needed to hear, tears filled his eyes and he said, “You promise? He’s not dead?”
Marvelette cut me a strange look with her eyes and frowned as I laughed out, “Promise, pinky swear.” and Jay and I solemnly crossed pinkies and shook.
It was only later when Marvellette and I sat down over coffee while her children and Jay ran shouting in the yard that I allowed my real feelings to show. Marve said nothing for awhile, she sat drinking her coffee dispassionately watching my sudden tears before saying, “Do you really think that was wise? He’s got to know sooner or later that his father isn’t coming home.”
At that moment I made a decision, one that would cause me heartache for a long time and I said, “He’ll come back, he always does. Michael gets bored with our life, or out of sorts and eventually he returns to our home and our marriage. This is just more of the same.”
Her face was kind as she said, “Look at me,” but I noticed she was firm, her eyes filled with the inescapable truth, “He’s not coming back. He asked you for a divorce. That’s what you told me last night.”
I got up from the table, suddenly eager to be away from Marvelette’s probing eyes, those ice blue eyes that missed nothing, “I was over wrung by the emotion of the day. Things seem different by the light of day. Besides, I thought you Mennonites were against divorce, all for keeping the marriage together regardless.”
She snorted, “Yeah, unless someone cheats, all bets are off. You found him practically in bed with someone else.”
I sighed, “Marve, I have to keep that door open to accepting him back. He always comes back. I have suspected in the past that he strays but he always comes back. I love him and I’m prepared to forgive him.”
It was much later before I returned to my own home. Jay ran upstairs to his room and his video games while I did the piles of dishes and rewashed the laundry. By this time I’d convinced myself that Michael hadn’t meant anything he’d said, it was just the shock of finding out that the World Trade Center was gone and how close he’d come to losing his life in the crash at the Pentagon. He was talking crazy talk, the talk of someone that has suffered an enormous shock to their heart and mind.
I’d give him his space and he’d come back in a few days or weeks, tail between his legs, contrite and sorrowful. I’d make sure in the meantime that everything was waiting him perfectly here and if I decided if he was unhappy with Plover Creek that it would be alright with me if we switched to another church, perhaps even Amazing Life.
That September twelfth I’d even cleaned our bedroom thoroughly, putting our best bed linens out and putting a dried rosebud on his pillow. I prepared the closest thing I had to a negligee, a sheer white cotton nightie with a hundred tiny mother of pearl buttons down the front. I was completely convinced he would return perhaps that very night.
I skipped and hummed worship songs through my day, more and more convinced I was right. Even a visit from Pastor Will Morgan didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. When I told Will that I was sure Michael would return home tonight he’d looked like I’d just announced the world was ending in five minutes or I was flying to Mars. He let go of the silver teaspoon in his hand and it dropped with a heavy plunk to the saucer beneath his teacup. I could see he thought I was mad, that I’d lost all sense so I airily explained that this was just another phase in our life, Michael would tire of his freedom and come home to momma.
That night I cooked a special meal, organic steaks with asparagus and salad. Jay and I waited to eat, waited as long as we could so that Michael would join us. But he never came, we lit the candles on the dining room table and sat down to cold steaks and shriveled overdone asparagus.
Finally Michael called, just as Jay was getting ready for bed. Jay got to the phone before I did and I ended up picking up the receiver in the kitchen, listening as Michael told Jay that he was leaving us, leaving home and divorcing me. And it hit me again, the trauma of the day before as I sagged silently to the floor feeling my heart breaking again. I sat on the polished brick floor and wept loudly, not seeing the polished copper pots hanging from the rack over the huge old Aga stove or the strings of dried onions and peppers festooned from the open oaken support beams overhead. I lay down, panting and crying, seeing nothing, feeling everything, every miserable painful word from Michael’s lips the night before.
Jay found me that way, laying on the floor moaning wordlessly my distress and I caught a glimpse of panic on his face as he said, “Mom, Mom! You lied to me, Dad says he’s not coming home.” He shrieked and started slapping at me, pulling my braid before he collapsed on top of me and we hugged together, weeping, faces pressed together.
How long we lay there crying I will never know but eventually I snagged one of my beautiful antique embroidered tea towels from the stove handle and wiped down Jay’s tanned face before patting down my own. We sat there Indian style cross legged on the kitchen floor and Jay began to ask me questions. I had to keep telling him I didn’t know the answers, no I didn’t know why Daddy said he didn’t love me any more. No, I didn’t know if Daddy would ever come home. No, I was never leaving him, regardless of what happened I would find a way to make it work out for us. Yes, Daddy might get tired of living alone and come home some day.
That night neither Jay not I could face being alone and I slept with him on his narrow twin bed, listening to his quiet breathing, smelling the mysterious aroma of green grass and fresh air that boys emit. I held onto Jay like he was my life line and secretly cursed Michael for so cavalierly throwing away our life, abandoning our son like this. I would always hate him for forcing our child to grow up sooner than he should have.
One of the biggest things Jay had been worried about was that we’d have to leave our home. He was afraid we’d end up in the streets. He worried about how people would perceive us now that Dad had left. I silently blamed Plover Creek for putting the idea in his mind that divorce was a shameful sin for the entire family.
The last night Jay said to me that night as he drifted off was the most haunting, “Mom,” he’d asked, “did Dad leave because of me, because he was disappointed that I don’t like to play sports?” I’d hugged him even tighter and reassured him that this was simply not the case. I didn’t know all the whys Michael had left but it wasn’t Jay’s fault and I made sure he knew this.
As Jay started to lightly snore between his Spiderman motif sheets I started to worry about the future. What would I tell people? Was what little I brought in from my herbs and goat cheese going to be enough? Was it folly to even consider staying on the farm?
I spent another long sleepless night and in the morning I didn’t feel near as hopeful as I’d felt the night before. Both Jay and I were slow to get up, in fact we were still in our nightclothes at the breakfast table when Will pulled up in our driveway. He’d come by to bring Jay his assignments and books just in case Jay didn’t return to school for a few days. Jay ran upstairs to get dressed while I made uncomfortable small talk with Will Morgan at the table.
Pastor Morgan looked at me solemnly and said, “I see the reality of what happened has finally sunk in.”
I couldn’t even speak, all I could do was nod, I didn’t trust myself not to start crying again.
After Will left I barely had time to slip into an old set of clothes and start milking my goats. I was lugging feed into the barn when my own pastor, Pastor Chas Waverly, a tall craggy faced man with silvering hair, arrived. I dropped the feed sack and ran to him, dissolving into blubbery tears as he hugged me tightly. I don’t know who told him but Pastor Waverly knew that Michael had left me.
Thankfully Jay was with Marvelette and her children again because I spent the next several hours rehashing that terrible evening at the condo, telling Pastor Chas just how horribly off the rails my life had gone. “We’ll get through this together,” he’d assured me, “no matter if Michael does or doesn’t return allow your church family to surround you with love and support.”
At his words I’d felt an enormous weight lift off my shoulders and I’d sighed, sinking back into the old sofa. I’d need all of their prayers to get through this terrible time.
Before he left Pastor Chas slipped me the business card of a lawyer, said while he knew that the Bible counseled no divorce I certainly had Biblical grounds to divorce Michael and move on with my life. Even if I didn’t want a divorce it wouldn’t hurt to find out where I stood legally, he urged me to protect myself against Michael.
How stupid I’d been that day, I innocently said with the utmost naivety and sincerity that I knew even if Michael divorced me he’d be fair and he’d not abandon Jay and I to starve. We were adults and he knew his responsibilities. Little did I know.
We settled into a routine of normalcy, well, as normal as it can get once your world is blown apart. Jay returned to school and I kept on with my routine of taking care of my goats, making cheese, picking the herbs and making deliveries to my customers. We slogged along sadly, the same but not the same.
That first week I got phone calls from Plover Creek Church sisters and brothers, most were genuinely concerned wanting to know what they could do for Jay and I but a few were simply seeking to gossip and cluck over my misfortune. Some people sent meals over for Jay and I, almost as if someone had died in our family and a few of the men of the church came over to offer their services around the house. Several sisters came to do a thorough fall cleaning of my home, insisting I go up and rest.
But I couldn’t rest, that day I’d paused at the top of the stairs. I didn’t want to go into the bedroom I’d shared with Michael all these years. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than change clothes in there, I had taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom, on the firm barely used mattress, missing the comfortable broken in feeling of my own bed yet unable to sleep where I’d slept with the man who had betrayed me. I still felt mostly numb inside now.
But I didn’t want the members of my church knowing I’d moved out of the marital bedroom. They all murmured words of encouragement, telling me that Michael would come home. I just had to pray harder, beseech God to turn his heart back to his family. He would come home, everyone said so.
When my feelings returned they see sawed wildly from hope and optimism to the blackest despair. I had days when getting out of bed was an impossible task and other days when I bounded out, rejoicing in another day, sure that today would be the day that Michael returned.
Several weeks passed and I heard not one word from Michael. He didn’t call, he didn’t come home. As much as that hurt me I could see it hurt Jay even worse. He flinched every time the telephone rang, running from wherever he was in the house, waiting for me to pick up, listening hard until he could ascertain if it was his father. Once it was obvious it was not Michael he’d sigh, flinch and move along.
The first inkling I had that Michael was still determined to divorce me and that he would not be returning was the day I went to deposit my monies from the places that bought the produce of my farm. The teller at our bank told me that our checking account was closed, that Michael had closed the account and taken all the money several days before. I stood there, shaken to the core, realizing that the five hundred dollars in checks I held in my hand were the only things that stood between myself and poverty.
The bank manager and teller had been so kind to me, the teller led me over to the manager and the bank set up an account for me, only in my name. I was so embarrassed for them to know that Michael had humiliated me like this, abandoned us with nothing.
When I got home I started digging through all of our financial data. Checking the balances of our savings accounts online I discovered the same story. Accounts drained and closed. Even our stock portfolio was closed. I called Michael, first on his cell and then at his office, unable to get through to him. Clearly he was avoiding me. I left a series of messages on his voice mail, getting increasingly frantic and upset as time went by.
I realized that Pastor Chas Waverly was right, I needed to consult a lawyer. But the attorney he put me in touch with wanted a retainer, five thousand dollars up front and I just didn’t have that kind of money. What little I managed to get from the proceeds of my farm I needed for food, gasoline for my truck and electricity at the house. I’d come home and gone over the contents of the house with a eye for value. I had wept as I packed up the large wooden chest of antique silver I’d managed to accumulate over the years and I reluctantly took it to one of the better high end antique stores up on the main highway, coming away with enough money to pay the lawyer.
Before the week was out I’d sold a few more of my more valuable antiques and I was in a rage. Michael had not called, it had been three weeks and Jay had spoken to him. It was as if we didn’t exist to Michael.
That third week brought a series of humiliation to me. I applied for food stamps and aid to dependant children, hard working me, applying for welfare. I wept, thinking my grandmother was probably turning in her grave because of what I’d been reduced to. I went to the electric company and made arrangements to pay late, and made the hardest trip of all, out to Ryland Memorial School to tell Pastor Will Morgan that I had to pull Jay out of private school and enroll him in public school because I could not pay tuition.
Will didn’t say a word as I explained that I had been cut off from any money by Michael, he merely stared at me over the top of his steepled fingers, elbows planted on the top of his stately walnut desk. When he did speak it was to say, “Mrs Smith, there’s no need to worry about the tuition for this month. An anonymous donor here at the school has picked up two months tuition for Jay. Please don’t take him out now, what he needs most is stability, to feel that the important things in his life haven’t changed.”
I frowned, as glad as I was that I didn’t have to cough up tuition for a few months I was not comfortable with the idea of charity and I said, “But the most important thing in his life, our family, has changed. There’s no escaping that. But I cannot afford to keep him here, in this school, beyond the next eight weeks.”
Still Will sat unmoving and he said quietly, “I know that, I just knew that your husband wasn’t going to allow you access to any funding but I feel it’s more important to keep Jay here in school than to burden him with even more changes. Give me a few days and I might be able to come up with a solution that would suit everyone, can you do that?”
“Alright, “ I said, “ a few days, but I can hardly imagine there is much you can do about my situation.”
I went home that day, sad, defeated and tired. I couldn’t summon up the energy necessary to do anything beyond climb the stairs up to the bedrooms and lie down. I’d paused at the door of my bedroom, feeling sudden anger at Michael and went in. Surveying the room I took in it’s odd shape, tucked up over the family room the long hallway area in the room leading to a small square just large enough to hold our antique mahogany four poster bed and marble topped dresser. I stared angrily at the smooth creamy white walls hung with framed prints of hunt scenes, horses and other masculine pursuits of days gone by. I glared at the dark damask drapery and bedspread.
No more, I thought and I ripped down the drapes, pulled off the scratchy bedspread. Quickly I removed the prints, the china dogs on the mantelpiece and other masculine accessories. Why had I decorated this room in a style I didn’t like, just to try and please a petulant male that was wretchedly ungrateful? I was almost shaking with galvanizing cleansing anger. I couldn’t believe how much I hated the furnishings of this room. Quickly I boxed and bundled up all the things I hated about my bedroom and set to work hanging a set of white lace curtains, remaking the bed in pretty vintage linens with a white comforter. I ran around the house gathering well loved adornments to put in my bedroom, erasing any trace of Michael. Before I picked up Jay from school I started boxing up Michael’s clothes, thinking perhaps I should sell the entire lot of them on Ebay. Screw him for not taking care of us, leaving us to starve while he stole the money I’d scrimped so hard to save.
I sat back and surveyed my hard work. I’d moved the bed from the front wall under the windows to the side of the room, directly across from the fireplace. Both sets of windows had white lace curtains, lifting the gloom out of the room by allowing natural sunlight to filter into the room. The room took on a cheerful glow with the extra light and I’d hung floral prints on the walls, simple and pretty. I felt better already, more in control.
But that didn’t last long, as we got back from school I saw a strange truck in our driveway. Strange men in coveralls were lugging things out of the house and packing them into the back of the truck. I was horrified, was I being robbed? I didn’t pull into my own driveway but parked across the street at Marvelettes before dialing up the sheriff’s dept on my cell.
As we waited a familiar figure came out of the front door, carrying an armload of suits. Before I could stop him Jay had thrown open the car door and run across the road, throwing himself at his father. While Jay was hugging his father a sheriffs deputy pulled into the driveway.
I got out and crossed the road to where Michael stood with Jay and the deputies to find that Michael was busy removing anything from the house that he deemed his. He’d stripped out not just his clothing but some of our possessions such as the large screen television from the family room. The movers had packed up most of the electronics from the house, the stereo, the computers and even a few pieces of furniture.
“Michael, what are you doing?” I asked loudly, “Three weeks pass, you don’t call, you don’t contact us at all and now you show up to loot our home like you did our bank accounts.”
As one of the movers tried to cart my vintage Louis Vutton steamer trunk past us I turned and grasped it, “Stop it, stop it, that is mine, not his. Put that back.”
The officers stepped in and stopped the mover, “Son, you can turn around and put that back where you found it till we get to the bottom of this.” The mover backtracked with my trunk.
Michael sighed, rolled his eyes like he was dealing with the mentally deficient and stated baldly, “I told you three weeks ago that I am divorcing you. The paperwork has already been filed. And, officers, as this home is still half mine I am entitled to my own possessions. You cannot stop me.”
“You strip me of any money, our savings and investments and now you’re going to steal the antiques I haggled and bargained over,” as I spoke these words the true import of what was happening hit me like a sledge hammer and my voice grew in volume, ‘things I saved to buy, lovingly picked out that you never gave a tinkers damn about? You don’t deserve anything out of that house.” With that I kicked the dirt in front of me in frustration.
The officers exchanged uncomfortable glances, I knew both of these young men, The stocky blonde was the son of Kelly and Gene Jenkins of Amazing Life Church. The other man was slightly older, perhaps as old as thirty, dark and swarthy. I knew he was the son of migrant workers that had stayed behind many years ago after picking the fall apple crop. The Garcia family ended up being a valuable addition to this community.
Finally Garcia spoke and he said in an apologetic tone, “Ma’am, I’m truly sorry but your husband does have the right to remove whatever possessions he deems fit, at least until you get a court order prohibiting from doing so. There’s nothing we can do.” I knew that most cops hate family situations like this because they can so quickly spiral out of control and end in tragedy plus both men knew us. I’m sure there was just about anywhere else they’d rather be at that moment.
I replied as calmly as I could, “Is that my next step? Get a lawyer so that I can keep my ex away from my things?”
“Yes, ma’am, you need a court order.” Garcia replied seriously.
Michael frowned and muttered, “What on earth did you do to our bedroom. It looks atrocious, like something out of a Amish Living magazine. Where are my prints of hunting scenes and the Italian woven silk draperies? I want them?”
I nodded my head indicating I would listen to no more and pointed towards the road saying simply, “Go.” I was struggling not to go crazy on Michael, the man I’d once loved more than life. Whatever love I felt for him had now been overwhelmed by shock and disgust. How could he keep doing this to us.
But when I saw my much beloved roll top desk in the hands of the movers it was too much, beyond my fragile state and limited self control. I went nuts, reaching out to attack Michael, slapping him, clawing at him and shouting. I didn’t care that the cops were there or not.
Before I could inflict any real damage I was physically whirled away from my husband and roughly body slammed against the cruiser hood. I tasted blood in my mouth from a split lip and experienced sudden knifing pain as both of my arms were twisted behind my body and hand cuffs tightened down. Please God, I prayed silently, don’t let the police do anything further in front of my boy.
Before I knew what was happening I was shoved firmly into the back of the police cruiser. As they pushed me into the car I caught a glimpse of my face, eyes wild, hair coming loose from my careful French braid. I looked like a mad woman.
The deputies left me in the back of the cruiser for over twenty minutes as they spoke with Michael and tried to talk to Jay. I couldn’t hear what was being said but I could see that the police were indicating to the movers to pack it up and go and that Michael was passionately arguing with them about something. As Michael and the movers drove away the back door of the car opened again and a crying Jay joined me in the back seat as Officer Garcia read out my Miranda rights.
“You’re arresting me?” I huffed out in surprise.
“Yes ma’am. Your husband, Mr. Michael Smith is pressing charges of spousal abuse, assault and battery. You’re being charged on all counts.” Officer Jenkins said in a weary voice, “Cooperate with us and you should be able to bond out in the morning. Don’t make this any worst than it already is.”
“Morning?” I roared, “What about Jay? He’s not being sent to jail is he?”
I could see the strange look that passed between the officers as Jay cried even harder. Garcia finally spoke, “Ma’am, your son is going into emergency foster care tonight. Your estranged husband refused to take possession of the boy. We have to take him in, it’s the law.”
As the sun set I experienced one of the most humiliating nights of my life. First, I was taken down to the county sheriff’s office, photographed and finger printed after Jay was removed to another section of the building to await a social worker. Then I was put into a small room containing only a chipped beige enameled table and uncomfortable chairs clustered around it and left alone for a long time. It felt like hours. They didn’t remove the cuffs and I became increasingly aware that I hadn’t eaten today as my stomach rumbled.
By the time the officers returned to take my statement my need to pee surmounted all my other needs and I was having the beginnings of a stress headache from not eating. I gave the officers a brief account of my outburst and subsequent pummeling of Michael. When I told the officers how Michael had been caught by me cheating and afterwards made sure that Jay and I were stripped of any money. While the officers were sympathetic to my problems with Michael, the law was the law and I had broken it.
Being that this was such a small town there was no room in the jail so I was put into the female drunk holding tank with a few other ladies, women I knew of but had no interaction with in the past. One was a disheveled looking red head missing most of her teeth. I knew she had a reputation as the town crack whore, blow jobs for five bucks and whatever you wanted to do of a sexual nature for ten. She was cackling and laughing madly with the other drugged out looking woman when I arrived to her cell. She laughed out, “Oh, how the high and mighty have fallen. You think you’re too good for the likes of us and guess what, here you is, blood on your face and your stupid lookin’ blouse torn. I loves it!”
I ignored her, going to the piece of polished steel mounted on the wall above the exposed toilet and realized she was right. My light weight white cotton button up blouse has a rip where the right sleeve joined the bodice, probably sustained when the cops slammed me to the car and snapped the cuffs on. I also have dried blood from my split lower lip to my chin and dotted on the blouse front. Irrationally the only thing I could think was that it would take a lot of work to get the blood out, like I didn’t have bigger problems.
Both of the other women heckled me for a while longer but I ignored their words. There was nothing they could say or do that could possibly measure up to the hurt I felt from the series of betrayals Michael had inflicted on me.
I was served a sandwich consisting of two slices of dried up white bread with limp tasteless baloney and wilted leaf of lettuce. The meal was rounded out by a spongy orange in a sickly pale shade and some unidentifiable drink I think was supposed to be iced tea. But I was so hungry that I ate it all and was grateful for the meal, bad as it was. A full belly is worth a great deal.
Once the lights were turned out and I gingerly lay down on a moldy smelling thin mattress on a steel bunk there was no way I was going to be able to sleep and I knew it. Another night tossing and turning, rehashing the recent twists and turns of my life. I tried comforting myself by praying silently as I wondered what type of foster home my only son was residing in tonight. I prayed that the foster parents were kind and loving and that there were no evil predators lurking in their home, that he wouldn’t be too frightened for me.
I couldn’t get over the fact that Michael had turned his back on our son. His son. Surely he wasn’t so selfish as to totally reject the child he’d help raise for the last eleven years. The cops had told me that Michael had told Jay that he would not take him in, that Jay was not his son because no son of his would be so bad at sports. Michael was rejecting Jay because Jay wasn’t a reflection of his own glory, a player and supporting prop in his inner sports fantasies. I lay in the dark and trembled with hatred for what Michael was putting Jay through tonight.
The biggest change for me was losing the musical cadences of the various southern drawls of Mississippi and losing the melody of the passing trains. That unique southern music left my live. I felt as if I had invaded yankee land, going up north past the Mason Dixon line.
Plus it was cold, colder than anything I’d ever experienced in Mississippi. The coat I brought was perfectly serviceable in Mississippi but here in the Allegany mountains the fall wind cut right through it like I was wearing mere newspaper. That first winter I suffered from chill blains most cruelly even if I was thrilled to see snow for the first time.
All four years I studied at the Catholic college in Maryland slid by in a haze of work and school. I took the train home every holiday to see my grandmother and took occasional weekend side trips to Baltimore and Washington.
By the time I’d met Michael I was one year out of college and working in Silver Spring, Maryland as an OR nurse. I’d settled into a nice life in suburban Maryland, buying a new car and furnishing my first apartment with furniture from Ikea.
We had a very quick romance, going from dating to engaged to married in just under a year. In fact, we married on opening weekend at the Renaissance fair dressed in period clothing. After sending my grandmother copies of the wedding photos I got a lengthy letter telling me that this was just simply not done. You do not marry at a fair! I laughed reading her shocked words as she clucked over the fact that I’d trampled on her precious etiquette during my wedding.
I lay on Marvelette’s sofa and tried to figure out what had gone so terrible wrong between Michael and I. Those first years together we got along so well, so much in love. Michael and I bought a condo in Crystal City and planned a life together that looked bright.
The only dark cloud on the horizon was that Michael completely cut his family from his life. He complained that since he’d left law school they’d been dunning him for every dime that they could. I tried to never mention Michael’s family to him because it only put him in a terrible mood. It was five years before I had a chance to meet his parents.
And then I got pregnant after we’d been married for five years. We had never discussed having kids, it was just one of those things that seemed to loom way off in the future, a some day occurrence but not now. I’d been on the pill but ended up pregnant anyway. I remember the night I told Michael we were going to be parents.
The whole subject made me nervous because we’d never really talked about having a family so I had prepared to tell him the news carefully. I made sure the condo was immaculate and that I’d prepared all of Michael’s favorite foods right down to triple chocolate cake. I took care with my hair and makeup and I wore the dress Michael loved the most, form fitting, slinky and black.
But not matter how carefully I prepared he still flew into a rage when I told him we were to be parents and accused me of planning this to tie him down to responsibility. But after a few days he came around and said it would be good to start a family, in fact, we should look for a new larger home, something in the Virginia countryside, invest the money from the sale of my grandmother’s home. Which led to another fight.
Michael had been after me to do something with the money for months now. Once my grandmother had passed on her possessions had all been left to me. There wasn’t much to be had, some of her ancient furniture and the house. I packed up some of her things to take home but the majority had been auctioned off. The house sold quickly and I deposited the money in my name only at our bank. Michael was upset with me for not putting his name on it too. It should have been a tipoff, a warning sign but I was too much in love to see anything.
My pregnancy triggered an eighteen month search for just the right home for us. I was adamant I wanted a small farm or a rural homestead while Michael was insisting on a plastic sided house on a cul de sac in one of the thousands of identical neighborhoods encircling Washington DC like the outer rings of Saturn. We fought over what type of home and fought over prices.
Every weekend for months was filled with excursions to all the far flung outlaying regions of the Greater DC area, from southern Rhode Island all the way down to West Virginia and almost to Richmond. I fell in love with the Piedmont region of Virginia, the gracious rolling green hills fenced with white board held some of the finest horse flesh in all of the US with the looming Blue Ridge mountains in the not too far distance. Hard to believe such scenic bucolic landscapes existed within a ninety minute drive of Washington.
But when I first laid eyes on the falling apart farmhouse cobbled together out of an old log cabin I knew I’d found exactly what I wanted. The trouble was convincing Michael. He didn’t mind the drive, but he seemed most to mind that it was a farm. The fact was that Michael didn’t do farming or rural very well. I begged, I pleaded, I threatened but the purchase of what he called sarcastically ‘Tilted Acres’ came down to two things. That it would be much better for our child to be raised in a rural setting as opposed to the gritty inner city childhood he’d experienced and that I would be paying for the entire place with the money from the sale of my grandmothers home.
Through the years as I torn away the uglier updates to our home and redid the floors, pulled the crumbled plaster away from the river rock original fireplace Michael had sneered that the house would never be finished, it would be a perpetual money pit. We fought the hardest on the days Michael perused our checkbook and had seen that I’d spent almost nothing on groceries, getting peanut butter, dried beans and apples, eking out what he called ‘poverty meals’ just so I could pay the plumber and the electrician. He didn’t understand how much I loved it, from the rocky soil to the acreage that spanned gullies and hills to the house that was half traditional farmhouse and half log cabin through the train tracks running in front of the house. The place spoke to me.
Eventually I discovered it was just easier to make the monies I needed for the renovation from the farm. First I tried my hand at making herbal infusions, teas and medicines I’d learned from my grandmother back in rural Mississippi but there was only a limited market for such things, so I supplemented the herbs with hiring myself as painter, a private night nurse and other menial jobs until I settled upon making organic goats milk cheese, soaps, shampoos and lotions from the same goats milk and growing exotic vegetables for the gourmet restaurants of DC in my large garden. The problem was I was still working my day job at the hospital.
A few years of expensive day care combined with Michael suddenly finding religion led to me quitting my job as a nurse and becoming a full time wife, mother, home remodeled and part time farmer. We both agreed it would be for the best and Michael kept saying that as the head of the household under Biblical law he should be the breadwinner while I should be in my primary role of mother. I didn’t argue because I was exhausted from several years of trying to do it all.
I had to keep my business activities limited to what I could produce from the farm, the goats milk products, the herbs, the natural candles I made and the boutique fruits and veggies.
Michael’s sudden conversion to radical evangelical Christianity puzzled me and at first I was reluctant to join him, not even wanting to visit the church when he attended the Sunday services. But he kept nagging me to join him and it seemed like a good way to make friends in the new area we lived in. So I joined him, a non-believer in a sea of the righteous.
I still to this day do not know exactly what happened to Michael. Every time I asked him why he suddenly started believing in God and wanting to go to church he clammed up. Whatever had happened to him was powerful and too intimate to talk about. I did notice that a few guys he worked with also attended the church he picked out for us. I suspect they had leaned on him until he’d had a conversion experience.
No matter how I ran the scenario in my mind I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened. It was just too unbelievable.
It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t believe in God. I just hadn’t been raised in the church. My only real acquaintance with religion had been my years with the nuns. I could recite all of the Catholic liturgy from years attending Mass before classes. But I just didn’t get that God was as involved with everyone’s day to day lives as all the Jesus freaks claimed. God was in some distant place lofty and removed, too busy with bother with the lives of mere mortals. He didn’t care if you have toast or doughnuts for breakfast because He was engaged in some enormous struggle between good and evil, not our piss ant little lives.
Strange as it seemed, Michael, handsome Michael, vain Michael, competitive Michael turned into a regular Charlie Church. Every Wednesday night found him at Bible study, every weekend he was either helping out with one of the church’s many ministries or attended conferences and every Sunday the day was filled with church, church, church. He talked, ate and slept Jesus.
I don’t think I really took Michael entirely serious until he started teaching children’s Sunday School and humbly asked for my forgiveness for his former sins against me. He didn’t explain what he meant by that but after tonight I can well imagine that infidelity was one of them. He wanted us to put the past in the past.
Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We had turned into one of those couples that started bickering in a second and fought over the most petty things. Once Michael was baptized and washed in the blood of the lamb his attempts to bait me into a fight trickled down to nothing and he started treating me in a more kindly fashion. It wasn’t the white hot passionate perfection of the early years of our marriage, it was more like a partnership rooted in the rules preached by the church. But I sometimes missed the passion, missed the making up after the fights, the intense sex all over the house.
At first everyone at Plover Creek seemed frighteningly strange. It wasn’t unusual to hear people praying for minutia guidance from God for such silly simple things as what to eat for lunch that day. And it frightened me just how many uneducated women were insisting that you only home school your children because public school was a cesspool of liberal thinking. Eventually I found myself joining in on the worship service and feeling a strange sensation, almost like a heaviness, a presence of someone else with me.
But I wasn’t entirely convinced until one night when I heard an audible voice telling me to come unto Him while I was silently praying one night alone out of the porch. I started to have a two way internal dialogue with the divine.
How do you not believe in the face of that? It’s not possible. I started on a path that led me closer every day into the presence of the heavenly.
The biggest miracle was that Michael stopped drinking entirely And smoking. No amount of pleading from me that he was making Jay’s asthma worse by smoking around him had any affect but somehow our new church did. He gutted it out and stopped smoking. Michael went to AA and I never saw him drink again. I owed the Lord an enormous debt for those two things because it eased things even more between us.
We entered a phase in our marriage that was the happiest of all times. We did all things faith related, from service to the poor, church attendance, Bible study and prayer as one. Michael quit resenting the fact that I stayed home with Jay and I made every effort to make his life as uncomplicated and tranquil as possible. I did everything, not that I left much undone for him before but now I made just that from the moment Michael awoke in the morning till he lay back in our bed with a sigh there was nothing in our home that need stress him. I look back on those days and can hardly believe how close we were for awhile.
Then after five or six years at Plover Creek things began to change. First, there was a church split over the role of women in leadership in the church. Those that believed it was alright for women to take high level leadership roles such as deacon or elder or minister formed their own church. There were tears, friendships ruined and families split apart. I watched with dismay as various sides alleged all sorts of sinful pride based behaviors that the other side engaged in. I tried not to take sides.
Not Michael, he took it hard, his best friend from work and in the church was appointed pastor of the new fellowship. His friend Lane went from being a deacon at Plover Creek to giving sermons each Sunday and writing the Statement of Purpose of the brand new church Amazing Life. The thing that freaked out Michael the most was that Lane refused to have anything to do with him once the church split happened because Michael hadn’t supported his faction in demanding that women have equal leadership status.
At Amazing Life Lane’s wife, Susan, was his co-pastor. They met in a small room over the old Exxon station in a nearby village and the church consisted of perhaps twenty members at first.
It was several years before anyone at Plover Creek or Amazing Life would have anything to do with each other and even then it was only on bowling league nights on Faith League night at the large bowling alley in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Michael and I hadn’t taken sides in the split but we’d been treated like the enemy anyway. That marked the first time that Michael showed any signs that he wasn’t utterly content with our faith life.
Six months later our church split again. This time it was the people who wanted to have a Holy Ghost experience, a revival atmosphere like that found at Brownsville Assemblies of God or even at the local AoG church. The agitators wanted us to be able to sing and dance in the aisles, laugh, howl, pound tambourines or even speak loudly in tongues.
Michael was the most horrified by their assertion that everyone needed to speak in tongues, that it was our own private prayer language. He ranted loudly about it many times in our house to me, yelling that speaking in tongues was only for back in Bible times, anyone doing it today was only fooling themselves and speaking in nonsensical gibberish.
I wasn’t quite so sure. I’d experienced a few odd things at conferences, like seeing angels and being slain in the spirit so I wasn’t as dismissive of it as he was. Thankfully he never found out that a group of ladies from Plover Creek once had an afternoon get together in the guise of a special Bible study to talk about this and figure out exactly how one went about speaking in tongues. I remember standing there in front of Sister Charlene’s crackling fireplace, opening my chapped lips and waiting, waiting to talk in tongues, waiting for what I knew not exactly.
By the end of the afternoon most of us were tongue less still and concluded it was a load of hooey dreamed up by someone listening more to the devil. Still, a few had ended that afternoon singing and crying and praying in strange phonic sounds like a long dead language. They were fervent believers now and told the rest of us to get with the program or we were going to miss out on heaven and all of God’s gifts.
I remember driving home in a rage, crying hard. I’d wanted all that God had for me. Why didn’t I get it, I’d raged at God, why? Did I do something wrong? Am I stupid? I’d asked Him, hearing nothing for all my pleading.
Michael never even realized I was in an internal turmoil in those days, wanting to believe the revival folks, but afraid to. Not seeing much evidence of what they claimed was the real truth. I stayed spiritually stuck all that winter, spring and summer until the split finally occurred.
When more people left Plover Creek many said good riddance, that most of the women involved in the first and second splits were sinful divorcees that were controlling and going to hell for it. Nothing worse than a controlling woman because manipulation was likened unto witchcraft according to the Bible. Divorcees and controllers burn in hell.
The second split caused those in our fellowship to take a tack more towards the extreme right. The eldest deacon’s wife demanded we cover our heads because St Paul said so and that we wear loose clothing to hide anything that might tempt a man into the sin of lust but still it should be feminine. No pants were allowed and many frustrated days I split wood for our wood burning furnace or drove my tractor wearing long johns covered by a thick flannel cotton petticoat topped by a long skirt and cursed the day we’d all been told pants were of the devil. No amount of tights, long underwear and flannel slip made up for not being allowed pants on the coldest of days.
When each of these new stricter rules had been announced Michael had inwardly seethed but kept an outward lid on his disagreement with them. He only took it out on me, barking out orders at me not to pay any mind to what those mindless holiness ninnies kept inventing in their spare time.
But I didn’t. I did what the church said because I didn’t want to lose my God or my friends. I found myself turning to them ever more as my relationship with Michael floundered into quiet disagreement and he spent more nights working late in the city before staying over in our condo.
My friends assured me if I just stayed a faithful, praying and obedient wife then Michael would eventually see the error of his ways and return to treating me well, with respect, with love again. Even my friends could see there was tension between us now.
I ignored it because I still loved Michael, as much if not more than I did that first moment I spied the handsome fallen knight at the fair. I’d aged, getting fine lines and silvering hair but Michael was even more handsome with a little age on him. I just knew if I stayed sweet and subservient with a true servant heart towards him that this would all blow over, Michael would make his peace with God and turn to me with renewed love and appreciation.
Until September eleventh two thousand and one I was convinced it would happened. My world had been destroyed in one short day.
I can’t say I slept much that long night on Marvelette’s sofa but suddenly sunlight was in my eyes and I felt confused. I sat up and looked around, wondering where I was for a few brief merciful seconds before the memories of the day before returned. I could hear Marvelette getting breakfast ready for her large brood, setting the table, smell the frying bacon and hot coffee. As I stretched I could see that Jay was sitting glumly in a chair across from the sofa staring soberly at me. He asked me, “Is Dad dead?”
With his words I wanted to crumble, to cry, never to get up again but some silent inner preservation mechanism kicked in and I smiled brightly and said, “No way, silly! Dad missed his flight to Los Angeles yesterday because he was stuck in traffic. He decided to go to the condo and take a later flight. I saw him yesterday evening. He’s fine! He’s just got a lot of work in the city so he might not be coming home for a few days. But I bet he calls you today!”
I certainly didn’t feel like the chipper pleasant everything is right with the way I was putting myself across as to Jay but I saw it was exactly what he needed to hear, tears filled his eyes and he said, “You promise? He’s not dead?”
Marvelette cut me a strange look with her eyes and frowned as I laughed out, “Promise, pinky swear.” and Jay and I solemnly crossed pinkies and shook.
It was only later when Marvellette and I sat down over coffee while her children and Jay ran shouting in the yard that I allowed my real feelings to show. Marve said nothing for awhile, she sat drinking her coffee dispassionately watching my sudden tears before saying, “Do you really think that was wise? He’s got to know sooner or later that his father isn’t coming home.”
At that moment I made a decision, one that would cause me heartache for a long time and I said, “He’ll come back, he always does. Michael gets bored with our life, or out of sorts and eventually he returns to our home and our marriage. This is just more of the same.”
Her face was kind as she said, “Look at me,” but I noticed she was firm, her eyes filled with the inescapable truth, “He’s not coming back. He asked you for a divorce. That’s what you told me last night.”
I got up from the table, suddenly eager to be away from Marvelette’s probing eyes, those ice blue eyes that missed nothing, “I was over wrung by the emotion of the day. Things seem different by the light of day. Besides, I thought you Mennonites were against divorce, all for keeping the marriage together regardless.”
She snorted, “Yeah, unless someone cheats, all bets are off. You found him practically in bed with someone else.”
I sighed, “Marve, I have to keep that door open to accepting him back. He always comes back. I have suspected in the past that he strays but he always comes back. I love him and I’m prepared to forgive him.”
It was much later before I returned to my own home. Jay ran upstairs to his room and his video games while I did the piles of dishes and rewashed the laundry. By this time I’d convinced myself that Michael hadn’t meant anything he’d said, it was just the shock of finding out that the World Trade Center was gone and how close he’d come to losing his life in the crash at the Pentagon. He was talking crazy talk, the talk of someone that has suffered an enormous shock to their heart and mind.
I’d give him his space and he’d come back in a few days or weeks, tail between his legs, contrite and sorrowful. I’d make sure in the meantime that everything was waiting him perfectly here and if I decided if he was unhappy with Plover Creek that it would be alright with me if we switched to another church, perhaps even Amazing Life.
That September twelfth I’d even cleaned our bedroom thoroughly, putting our best bed linens out and putting a dried rosebud on his pillow. I prepared the closest thing I had to a negligee, a sheer white cotton nightie with a hundred tiny mother of pearl buttons down the front. I was completely convinced he would return perhaps that very night.
I skipped and hummed worship songs through my day, more and more convinced I was right. Even a visit from Pastor Will Morgan didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. When I told Will that I was sure Michael would return home tonight he’d looked like I’d just announced the world was ending in five minutes or I was flying to Mars. He let go of the silver teaspoon in his hand and it dropped with a heavy plunk to the saucer beneath his teacup. I could see he thought I was mad, that I’d lost all sense so I airily explained that this was just another phase in our life, Michael would tire of his freedom and come home to momma.
That night I cooked a special meal, organic steaks with asparagus and salad. Jay and I waited to eat, waited as long as we could so that Michael would join us. But he never came, we lit the candles on the dining room table and sat down to cold steaks and shriveled overdone asparagus.
Finally Michael called, just as Jay was getting ready for bed. Jay got to the phone before I did and I ended up picking up the receiver in the kitchen, listening as Michael told Jay that he was leaving us, leaving home and divorcing me. And it hit me again, the trauma of the day before as I sagged silently to the floor feeling my heart breaking again. I sat on the polished brick floor and wept loudly, not seeing the polished copper pots hanging from the rack over the huge old Aga stove or the strings of dried onions and peppers festooned from the open oaken support beams overhead. I lay down, panting and crying, seeing nothing, feeling everything, every miserable painful word from Michael’s lips the night before.
Jay found me that way, laying on the floor moaning wordlessly my distress and I caught a glimpse of panic on his face as he said, “Mom, Mom! You lied to me, Dad says he’s not coming home.” He shrieked and started slapping at me, pulling my braid before he collapsed on top of me and we hugged together, weeping, faces pressed together.
How long we lay there crying I will never know but eventually I snagged one of my beautiful antique embroidered tea towels from the stove handle and wiped down Jay’s tanned face before patting down my own. We sat there Indian style cross legged on the kitchen floor and Jay began to ask me questions. I had to keep telling him I didn’t know the answers, no I didn’t know why Daddy said he didn’t love me any more. No, I didn’t know if Daddy would ever come home. No, I was never leaving him, regardless of what happened I would find a way to make it work out for us. Yes, Daddy might get tired of living alone and come home some day.
That night neither Jay not I could face being alone and I slept with him on his narrow twin bed, listening to his quiet breathing, smelling the mysterious aroma of green grass and fresh air that boys emit. I held onto Jay like he was my life line and secretly cursed Michael for so cavalierly throwing away our life, abandoning our son like this. I would always hate him for forcing our child to grow up sooner than he should have.
One of the biggest things Jay had been worried about was that we’d have to leave our home. He was afraid we’d end up in the streets. He worried about how people would perceive us now that Dad had left. I silently blamed Plover Creek for putting the idea in his mind that divorce was a shameful sin for the entire family.
The last night Jay said to me that night as he drifted off was the most haunting, “Mom,” he’d asked, “did Dad leave because of me, because he was disappointed that I don’t like to play sports?” I’d hugged him even tighter and reassured him that this was simply not the case. I didn’t know all the whys Michael had left but it wasn’t Jay’s fault and I made sure he knew this.
As Jay started to lightly snore between his Spiderman motif sheets I started to worry about the future. What would I tell people? Was what little I brought in from my herbs and goat cheese going to be enough? Was it folly to even consider staying on the farm?
I spent another long sleepless night and in the morning I didn’t feel near as hopeful as I’d felt the night before. Both Jay and I were slow to get up, in fact we were still in our nightclothes at the breakfast table when Will pulled up in our driveway. He’d come by to bring Jay his assignments and books just in case Jay didn’t return to school for a few days. Jay ran upstairs to get dressed while I made uncomfortable small talk with Will Morgan at the table.
Pastor Morgan looked at me solemnly and said, “I see the reality of what happened has finally sunk in.”
I couldn’t even speak, all I could do was nod, I didn’t trust myself not to start crying again.
After Will left I barely had time to slip into an old set of clothes and start milking my goats. I was lugging feed into the barn when my own pastor, Pastor Chas Waverly, a tall craggy faced man with silvering hair, arrived. I dropped the feed sack and ran to him, dissolving into blubbery tears as he hugged me tightly. I don’t know who told him but Pastor Waverly knew that Michael had left me.
Thankfully Jay was with Marvelette and her children again because I spent the next several hours rehashing that terrible evening at the condo, telling Pastor Chas just how horribly off the rails my life had gone. “We’ll get through this together,” he’d assured me, “no matter if Michael does or doesn’t return allow your church family to surround you with love and support.”
At his words I’d felt an enormous weight lift off my shoulders and I’d sighed, sinking back into the old sofa. I’d need all of their prayers to get through this terrible time.
Before he left Pastor Chas slipped me the business card of a lawyer, said while he knew that the Bible counseled no divorce I certainly had Biblical grounds to divorce Michael and move on with my life. Even if I didn’t want a divorce it wouldn’t hurt to find out where I stood legally, he urged me to protect myself against Michael.
How stupid I’d been that day, I innocently said with the utmost naivety and sincerity that I knew even if Michael divorced me he’d be fair and he’d not abandon Jay and I to starve. We were adults and he knew his responsibilities. Little did I know.
We settled into a routine of normalcy, well, as normal as it can get once your world is blown apart. Jay returned to school and I kept on with my routine of taking care of my goats, making cheese, picking the herbs and making deliveries to my customers. We slogged along sadly, the same but not the same.
That first week I got phone calls from Plover Creek Church sisters and brothers, most were genuinely concerned wanting to know what they could do for Jay and I but a few were simply seeking to gossip and cluck over my misfortune. Some people sent meals over for Jay and I, almost as if someone had died in our family and a few of the men of the church came over to offer their services around the house. Several sisters came to do a thorough fall cleaning of my home, insisting I go up and rest.
But I couldn’t rest, that day I’d paused at the top of the stairs. I didn’t want to go into the bedroom I’d shared with Michael all these years. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than change clothes in there, I had taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom, on the firm barely used mattress, missing the comfortable broken in feeling of my own bed yet unable to sleep where I’d slept with the man who had betrayed me. I still felt mostly numb inside now.
But I didn’t want the members of my church knowing I’d moved out of the marital bedroom. They all murmured words of encouragement, telling me that Michael would come home. I just had to pray harder, beseech God to turn his heart back to his family. He would come home, everyone said so.
When my feelings returned they see sawed wildly from hope and optimism to the blackest despair. I had days when getting out of bed was an impossible task and other days when I bounded out, rejoicing in another day, sure that today would be the day that Michael returned.
Several weeks passed and I heard not one word from Michael. He didn’t call, he didn’t come home. As much as that hurt me I could see it hurt Jay even worse. He flinched every time the telephone rang, running from wherever he was in the house, waiting for me to pick up, listening hard until he could ascertain if it was his father. Once it was obvious it was not Michael he’d sigh, flinch and move along.
The first inkling I had that Michael was still determined to divorce me and that he would not be returning was the day I went to deposit my monies from the places that bought the produce of my farm. The teller at our bank told me that our checking account was closed, that Michael had closed the account and taken all the money several days before. I stood there, shaken to the core, realizing that the five hundred dollars in checks I held in my hand were the only things that stood between myself and poverty.
The bank manager and teller had been so kind to me, the teller led me over to the manager and the bank set up an account for me, only in my name. I was so embarrassed for them to know that Michael had humiliated me like this, abandoned us with nothing.
When I got home I started digging through all of our financial data. Checking the balances of our savings accounts online I discovered the same story. Accounts drained and closed. Even our stock portfolio was closed. I called Michael, first on his cell and then at his office, unable to get through to him. Clearly he was avoiding me. I left a series of messages on his voice mail, getting increasingly frantic and upset as time went by.
I realized that Pastor Chas Waverly was right, I needed to consult a lawyer. But the attorney he put me in touch with wanted a retainer, five thousand dollars up front and I just didn’t have that kind of money. What little I managed to get from the proceeds of my farm I needed for food, gasoline for my truck and electricity at the house. I’d come home and gone over the contents of the house with a eye for value. I had wept as I packed up the large wooden chest of antique silver I’d managed to accumulate over the years and I reluctantly took it to one of the better high end antique stores up on the main highway, coming away with enough money to pay the lawyer.
Before the week was out I’d sold a few more of my more valuable antiques and I was in a rage. Michael had not called, it had been three weeks and Jay had spoken to him. It was as if we didn’t exist to Michael.
That third week brought a series of humiliation to me. I applied for food stamps and aid to dependant children, hard working me, applying for welfare. I wept, thinking my grandmother was probably turning in her grave because of what I’d been reduced to. I went to the electric company and made arrangements to pay late, and made the hardest trip of all, out to Ryland Memorial School to tell Pastor Will Morgan that I had to pull Jay out of private school and enroll him in public school because I could not pay tuition.
Will didn’t say a word as I explained that I had been cut off from any money by Michael, he merely stared at me over the top of his steepled fingers, elbows planted on the top of his stately walnut desk. When he did speak it was to say, “Mrs Smith, there’s no need to worry about the tuition for this month. An anonymous donor here at the school has picked up two months tuition for Jay. Please don’t take him out now, what he needs most is stability, to feel that the important things in his life haven’t changed.”
I frowned, as glad as I was that I didn’t have to cough up tuition for a few months I was not comfortable with the idea of charity and I said, “But the most important thing in his life, our family, has changed. There’s no escaping that. But I cannot afford to keep him here, in this school, beyond the next eight weeks.”
Still Will sat unmoving and he said quietly, “I know that, I just knew that your husband wasn’t going to allow you access to any funding but I feel it’s more important to keep Jay here in school than to burden him with even more changes. Give me a few days and I might be able to come up with a solution that would suit everyone, can you do that?”
“Alright, “ I said, “ a few days, but I can hardly imagine there is much you can do about my situation.”
I went home that day, sad, defeated and tired. I couldn’t summon up the energy necessary to do anything beyond climb the stairs up to the bedrooms and lie down. I’d paused at the door of my bedroom, feeling sudden anger at Michael and went in. Surveying the room I took in it’s odd shape, tucked up over the family room the long hallway area in the room leading to a small square just large enough to hold our antique mahogany four poster bed and marble topped dresser. I stared angrily at the smooth creamy white walls hung with framed prints of hunt scenes, horses and other masculine pursuits of days gone by. I glared at the dark damask drapery and bedspread.
No more, I thought and I ripped down the drapes, pulled off the scratchy bedspread. Quickly I removed the prints, the china dogs on the mantelpiece and other masculine accessories. Why had I decorated this room in a style I didn’t like, just to try and please a petulant male that was wretchedly ungrateful? I was almost shaking with galvanizing cleansing anger. I couldn’t believe how much I hated the furnishings of this room. Quickly I boxed and bundled up all the things I hated about my bedroom and set to work hanging a set of white lace curtains, remaking the bed in pretty vintage linens with a white comforter. I ran around the house gathering well loved adornments to put in my bedroom, erasing any trace of Michael. Before I picked up Jay from school I started boxing up Michael’s clothes, thinking perhaps I should sell the entire lot of them on Ebay. Screw him for not taking care of us, leaving us to starve while he stole the money I’d scrimped so hard to save.
I sat back and surveyed my hard work. I’d moved the bed from the front wall under the windows to the side of the room, directly across from the fireplace. Both sets of windows had white lace curtains, lifting the gloom out of the room by allowing natural sunlight to filter into the room. The room took on a cheerful glow with the extra light and I’d hung floral prints on the walls, simple and pretty. I felt better already, more in control.
But that didn’t last long, as we got back from school I saw a strange truck in our driveway. Strange men in coveralls were lugging things out of the house and packing them into the back of the truck. I was horrified, was I being robbed? I didn’t pull into my own driveway but parked across the street at Marvelettes before dialing up the sheriff’s dept on my cell.
As we waited a familiar figure came out of the front door, carrying an armload of suits. Before I could stop him Jay had thrown open the car door and run across the road, throwing himself at his father. While Jay was hugging his father a sheriffs deputy pulled into the driveway.
I got out and crossed the road to where Michael stood with Jay and the deputies to find that Michael was busy removing anything from the house that he deemed his. He’d stripped out not just his clothing but some of our possessions such as the large screen television from the family room. The movers had packed up most of the electronics from the house, the stereo, the computers and even a few pieces of furniture.
“Michael, what are you doing?” I asked loudly, “Three weeks pass, you don’t call, you don’t contact us at all and now you show up to loot our home like you did our bank accounts.”
As one of the movers tried to cart my vintage Louis Vutton steamer trunk past us I turned and grasped it, “Stop it, stop it, that is mine, not his. Put that back.”
The officers stepped in and stopped the mover, “Son, you can turn around and put that back where you found it till we get to the bottom of this.” The mover backtracked with my trunk.
Michael sighed, rolled his eyes like he was dealing with the mentally deficient and stated baldly, “I told you three weeks ago that I am divorcing you. The paperwork has already been filed. And, officers, as this home is still half mine I am entitled to my own possessions. You cannot stop me.”
“You strip me of any money, our savings and investments and now you’re going to steal the antiques I haggled and bargained over,” as I spoke these words the true import of what was happening hit me like a sledge hammer and my voice grew in volume, ‘things I saved to buy, lovingly picked out that you never gave a tinkers damn about? You don’t deserve anything out of that house.” With that I kicked the dirt in front of me in frustration.
The officers exchanged uncomfortable glances, I knew both of these young men, The stocky blonde was the son of Kelly and Gene Jenkins of Amazing Life Church. The other man was slightly older, perhaps as old as thirty, dark and swarthy. I knew he was the son of migrant workers that had stayed behind many years ago after picking the fall apple crop. The Garcia family ended up being a valuable addition to this community.
Finally Garcia spoke and he said in an apologetic tone, “Ma’am, I’m truly sorry but your husband does have the right to remove whatever possessions he deems fit, at least until you get a court order prohibiting from doing so. There’s nothing we can do.” I knew that most cops hate family situations like this because they can so quickly spiral out of control and end in tragedy plus both men knew us. I’m sure there was just about anywhere else they’d rather be at that moment.
I replied as calmly as I could, “Is that my next step? Get a lawyer so that I can keep my ex away from my things?”
“Yes, ma’am, you need a court order.” Garcia replied seriously.
Michael frowned and muttered, “What on earth did you do to our bedroom. It looks atrocious, like something out of a Amish Living magazine. Where are my prints of hunting scenes and the Italian woven silk draperies? I want them?”
I nodded my head indicating I would listen to no more and pointed towards the road saying simply, “Go.” I was struggling not to go crazy on Michael, the man I’d once loved more than life. Whatever love I felt for him had now been overwhelmed by shock and disgust. How could he keep doing this to us.
But when I saw my much beloved roll top desk in the hands of the movers it was too much, beyond my fragile state and limited self control. I went nuts, reaching out to attack Michael, slapping him, clawing at him and shouting. I didn’t care that the cops were there or not.
Before I could inflict any real damage I was physically whirled away from my husband and roughly body slammed against the cruiser hood. I tasted blood in my mouth from a split lip and experienced sudden knifing pain as both of my arms were twisted behind my body and hand cuffs tightened down. Please God, I prayed silently, don’t let the police do anything further in front of my boy.
Before I knew what was happening I was shoved firmly into the back of the police cruiser. As they pushed me into the car I caught a glimpse of my face, eyes wild, hair coming loose from my careful French braid. I looked like a mad woman.
The deputies left me in the back of the cruiser for over twenty minutes as they spoke with Michael and tried to talk to Jay. I couldn’t hear what was being said but I could see that the police were indicating to the movers to pack it up and go and that Michael was passionately arguing with them about something. As Michael and the movers drove away the back door of the car opened again and a crying Jay joined me in the back seat as Officer Garcia read out my Miranda rights.
“You’re arresting me?” I huffed out in surprise.
“Yes ma’am. Your husband, Mr. Michael Smith is pressing charges of spousal abuse, assault and battery. You’re being charged on all counts.” Officer Jenkins said in a weary voice, “Cooperate with us and you should be able to bond out in the morning. Don’t make this any worst than it already is.”
“Morning?” I roared, “What about Jay? He’s not being sent to jail is he?”
I could see the strange look that passed between the officers as Jay cried even harder. Garcia finally spoke, “Ma’am, your son is going into emergency foster care tonight. Your estranged husband refused to take possession of the boy. We have to take him in, it’s the law.”
As the sun set I experienced one of the most humiliating nights of my life. First, I was taken down to the county sheriff’s office, photographed and finger printed after Jay was removed to another section of the building to await a social worker. Then I was put into a small room containing only a chipped beige enameled table and uncomfortable chairs clustered around it and left alone for a long time. It felt like hours. They didn’t remove the cuffs and I became increasingly aware that I hadn’t eaten today as my stomach rumbled.
By the time the officers returned to take my statement my need to pee surmounted all my other needs and I was having the beginnings of a stress headache from not eating. I gave the officers a brief account of my outburst and subsequent pummeling of Michael. When I told the officers how Michael had been caught by me cheating and afterwards made sure that Jay and I were stripped of any money. While the officers were sympathetic to my problems with Michael, the law was the law and I had broken it.
Being that this was such a small town there was no room in the jail so I was put into the female drunk holding tank with a few other ladies, women I knew of but had no interaction with in the past. One was a disheveled looking red head missing most of her teeth. I knew she had a reputation as the town crack whore, blow jobs for five bucks and whatever you wanted to do of a sexual nature for ten. She was cackling and laughing madly with the other drugged out looking woman when I arrived to her cell. She laughed out, “Oh, how the high and mighty have fallen. You think you’re too good for the likes of us and guess what, here you is, blood on your face and your stupid lookin’ blouse torn. I loves it!”
I ignored her, going to the piece of polished steel mounted on the wall above the exposed toilet and realized she was right. My light weight white cotton button up blouse has a rip where the right sleeve joined the bodice, probably sustained when the cops slammed me to the car and snapped the cuffs on. I also have dried blood from my split lower lip to my chin and dotted on the blouse front. Irrationally the only thing I could think was that it would take a lot of work to get the blood out, like I didn’t have bigger problems.
Both of the other women heckled me for a while longer but I ignored their words. There was nothing they could say or do that could possibly measure up to the hurt I felt from the series of betrayals Michael had inflicted on me.
I was served a sandwich consisting of two slices of dried up white bread with limp tasteless baloney and wilted leaf of lettuce. The meal was rounded out by a spongy orange in a sickly pale shade and some unidentifiable drink I think was supposed to be iced tea. But I was so hungry that I ate it all and was grateful for the meal, bad as it was. A full belly is worth a great deal.
Once the lights were turned out and I gingerly lay down on a moldy smelling thin mattress on a steel bunk there was no way I was going to be able to sleep and I knew it. Another night tossing and turning, rehashing the recent twists and turns of my life. I tried comforting myself by praying silently as I wondered what type of foster home my only son was residing in tonight. I prayed that the foster parents were kind and loving and that there were no evil predators lurking in their home, that he wouldn’t be too frightened for me.
I couldn’t get over the fact that Michael had turned his back on our son. His son. Surely he wasn’t so selfish as to totally reject the child he’d help raise for the last eleven years. The cops had told me that Michael had told Jay that he would not take him in, that Jay was not his son because no son of his would be so bad at sports. Michael was rejecting Jay because Jay wasn’t a reflection of his own glory, a player and supporting prop in his inner sports fantasies. I lay in the dark and trembled with hatred for what Michael was putting Jay through tonight.
posted by Blues In The Night | 8:03 PM
|
0 comments
