I put every ounce of effort in to salvaging the wrecked marriage I desperately wanted to abandon, but I stayed. If the ship finally did go under, no one, not even I would be able to say that it was my fault.
I woke up with a jolt as my body sprang forward out of the sweat soaked sheets. Of all days, I had to have a nightmare about Bill with another woman on the eve of our wedding. He and that under-aged, greasy haired, bimbo Amy were naked, panting and moaning, hooking their limbs together and thrusting above moon lit sheets until I woke up cold, wet, and sick to my stomach. I eased myself up on the bed, careful not to bring on the morning sickness. It didn’t work, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I didn’t really want to anyway, not after that horrendous image.
The room was still dark, but the dull gray light seeping through the crack in the thick curtains promised the night was over. Oh thank you God! I made my way past the half naked fireman to the bathroom to wash up. The container of penis-shaped pasta salad from the night before was floating in ice water in the sink along with the frosted penis candle from my cake. That was one great bachelorette party.
My friends had put me up at the Holiday Inn Express for the night, paraded me around in sexy lingerie, fed me… (Eh hem) naughty foods, and played pin the fire hose on the fireman poster instead of a stripper. I would not allow any men at the party, much to their displeasure. “I have a real man, thank you very much. Besides, do I look like I have to pay for that sort of thing,” I said pointing at my mini baby bump. They all gasped, hooted and hollered, and doubled over with laughter at my new found audacity. After all, tomorrow I would become my old self again once I was married, shy, sweet, and pure as a virgin. For one night, I was going to live it up.
To make up for the lack of “real” excitement, we stuffed into my car and drove all over town like the wild, free women we were, honking the horn, and yelling crude things out the window. “Yeah that’s right you stuck-up Bloomington Bible thumpers! My best friend is knocked up and gettin’ married tomorrow! Waaaahoooo!” Well, perhaps my friends did most of the shouting as I prayed to God that no one would recognize me as the soon-to-be bride. I thought of Bill too, and hoped that he wouldn’t be too lonely at his mother’s house with his best man Chris, Chris’s fiancé, and the girl from my nightmare.
Two months passed, but the nightmare persisted. I woke up drenched in cold sweat all the time, sometimes crying or screaming. He and Amy, the girl that showed up to our wedding in a tiny, black, v-neck and mini skirt combo, were at it in my subconscious. “No! No, please! Bill! …Bill!” I thrashed and kicked, then, whoosh! My body would snap forward like a taut spring let loose. “Oh God please …no more,” I cried into my pillow as Bill turned away from me and groaned with annoyance into his.
One night I felt incredibly sick after yet another occurrence and asked if he could please get me some dry toast to settle my stomach.
“What am I, your servant now? Get it your fuckin’ self,” was his reply.
“But… I just thought that,” I sputtered. He swore at me! I was dumbfounded. He was never mean. What brought this on? “I thought that since I made you all those egg sandwiches in the middle of the night that you might help me.”
“Yeah, well… you thought wrong.” He rolled over ripping at the covers and tucked them around himself angrily. “Great! Now I’m up. Hey! While you’re down there, make me a sandwich…with bacon this time. And fry it! You know I hate that microwave shit.”
The smell of bacon always made me sick.
I couldn’t understand it. I was the pregnant one. Aren’t I supposed to have the mood swings? He was so distant and detached, and I was terrified that I might know the cause. It has to be the up-coming move, I lied to myself. That was the real problem. Certainly not the dream. We were moving to Maine to be closer to my family when the baby came, and so that we could have a fresh start as a new married couple. We would find our own place, new jobs, new friends, and leave his past behind us. No more drugs, parties, bars, or happening across ex-girlfriends. This plan was really our best option, our only option, and he knew it.
On my last day of work at the local Christian bookstore, I came home to his mother’s house for lunch. I usually didn’t come all the way back to eat because it gave me less time, but I wasn’t feeling well anyway. What I really needed was a cheerful face. My emotions were rubbed raw. My co-workers, genuinely sad that I was moving, smothered me with hugs, well wishes, and teary eyed handshakes as I straightened up the customer service station for the last time until I was close to blubbering myself. All the while I couldn’t stop thinking of, and fearing, what was to come. Bill and I were to leave on Monday to see my family for the first time since I became pregnant. With all that heaved on top of being prone to dizzy spells and vomiting, it was a miracle that I didn’t collapse all together.
“What are you doing here?” He was actually glaring at me. “Well?”
“I… I just wanted to see you. And, I didn’t feel good, so I came home to rest a bit.”
“Well, go to bed then!”
“Bill, what’s going on here?”
“Nothing!” He was rubbing his eyes again, hiding them. He was lying.
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing!’ What aren’t you telling me? Why are you always screaming at me now?”
“What are you accusing me of huh!?! I’m giving up my life for you. Isn’t that enough? You know, I feel sick too alright so, don’t go coming in here acting like I should just drop everything for you just because you’re pregnant.”
“I didn’t ask you to. We both agreed to leave and you know it!” This had to end. “And that isn’t what I was talking about. What is going on with you?”
I knew his secret. My dream was upsetting him. The image was particularly vivid that morning. When I woke him and asked him to tell me that I was just a silly girl to think up such things, even in my sleep, he could not say it. “Just go back to bed,” he told me.
Please,” I persisted. “Just tell me that you love me, and this dream means nothing.”
He remained silent.
“Ah, Fuck it.” Bill finally turned off the television and threw the remote on the floor, but he would not look at me. This was a very bad sign. He sat there for a long while saying nothing. Slowly, the angry groves between his eyebrows relaxed. He sighed, a deep, defeated sound, and sank into his mother’s ugly couch even deeper. “Come here,” he whispered with his arms outstretched towards me. Now this was more like it. This was the old Bill, the open, gentle Bill, who let me in. But now he was broken. He held my head to his chest with one hand and wrapped his other arm around my back.
His words came to me in pieces. “Sharon…I cheated on you with Amy…” Oh my God! Oh God, help me! “After my bachelor party.” No, not that image! “We were both really drunk…” You had a hangover at our wedding? What am I saying? Why did you even come to the wedding? “And she has always been attracted to me since I took her virginity last year…” Oh I feel sick! “It wasn’t my fault…” LIAR! “It just happened.” He paused and let out a big sigh of relief as I remained completely stiff in his arms with every emotion from boiling rage to bitter despair pulsating through me all at once. “There. I said it. Oh, I feel so much better now. My stomach feels better. My eyes don’t hurt. I feel so… relieved, but… uh… well, I’ll understand if you want a divorce.”
“I’m going to throw up.”
How could I leave him? I was pregnant and scared. And now I was ashamed. I imagined the stern, disapproving glare of the church body and the whispered words that would go on behind my back. “Whore,” they would say. “Ungrateful wife.”
“Did you know that he cheated on her?”
“Serves her right for getting pregnant before they were even married.”
“No! Was she really?
“Yes! Didn’t you know? That’s why hardly anyone showed up to the wedding, or didn’t you notice.”
That cruel and biting truth held me to my vows like a milestone. I was a Christian woman. A failed Christian, but a God fearing, God loving Christian nonetheless. I could not get divorced. Perhaps this is my punishment. So I remained with the nightmare, my constant companion. Who was that woman? Every woman he spoke to was her. Where was he last night? He was with her. Any her. What is wrong with me? Why doesn’t he want me? Why am I not good enough for him? Suddenly, there was a new voice within me with ready answers. It is because you’re ugly. You’re worthless. You’re nothing. And, you are trapped in this situation until death do you part.
Three days later, I wedged myself into my overstuffed Pontiac, waved goodbye, and headed for Maine by myself. “I need time to heal” I had told him, and I knew the area, had family and friends already in place, and would be able to set everything up easier on my own. He was to follow once I found a job to support us and a suitable apartment for him, his four cats, the baby, and last and least, me.
I found such a place in Augusta near the two jobs where I was hired. The rent was cheap, but the décor was hideous. The appliances were green or goldenrod. There were no doors for the bedrooms. The wallpaper was every shade of disgusting with various styles of bold, floral print, and the carpet was stiff and brown. On the upside, the landlord accepted cats, the rooms were large, and the entire wall of the shower was painted to look like a neighborhood in Venice. After spending all day in front of a register at Barnes and Noble and all night in the frame shop at Michael’s Arts and Crafts, I would soak in the tub and imagine how very easy it would be for someone to drown themselves in a city already half submerged in water. When the water got cold, I’d dry off, put on my only nightgown, and cry myself to sleep on the floor of one of the empty rooms.
When Bill arrived, a new routine ensued. I cooked his dinner between shifts, washed the dirty dishes, cleaned up his messes when I got home for the night, and lay down painfully and obediently on the air mattress he brought for us so he could satisfy himself with me before falling asleep. His days were spent playing video games and petting those ornery rats that puked on the carpet, shed on everything, and kicked kitty litter all over the laundry room floor. His only duties were to clean out the litter boxes, which he did every few weeks, fill their food and water dishes, and find work.
He did not absolutely refuse to work. He just didn’t care enough to find a job. There was always an excuse. He didn’t know where to look. I bought him a newspaper. He didn’t get to it that day, or the next, or the week after. I bought another paper. This time I went through and circled jobs I thought he might be qualified for. He didn’t have the time to pick up any of the applications he said. No, he lost the paper. No, he just forgot, and I should ease up already. That is how I ended up spending my days off picking up applications for him, filling them out, dropping them off, and scheduling his interviews. He finally got a job working at McDonalds. By that time, the pain I was experiencing in my back had spread down through my legs and feet, and I could no longer stand for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
When I told him I was going to have to stop working about two weeks before the due date, he looked at me as if that were the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. If his mother could work until the fetus dropped out of her, then go back to work on the same day, then I shouldn’t complain. After all, I was going to be a lazy, stay-at-home mom anyway. And by the way, I was to start ironing his uniforms, and make his lunch for him at 4:30 in the morning, every morning. And don’t forget his soda at the store when I get off work at midnight too tired to think or move. He would leave the door unlocked for me before he went to sleep. I could carry all the bags up the two flights of stairs by myself, right? And one more thing. He was going to have some friends over from work, and I shouldn’t complain even though they were drug addicts. In fact, little wife should shut up all together and do what she was told.
It was a new start alright. A restart of the life we just left back at his mother’s house, only there would soon be a new baby to take up some of mommy’s attention.
“Would you shut that thing up already!?! Some of us have to work in the morning you know.” According to him, what I was doing was nothing more than what was to be expected of any wife and mother. He would not hold, feed, clothe, or bathe our baby, and he would surely get sick if he ever had to change her, so that was out.
He was not to be disturbed. Ever. Unfortunately, there was no way around it. Everyday there was something I did wrong, something I missed, or something I should have known to do. His shirts were not hung up correctly. He wanted his boxers rolled up, not folded, and placed exactly “here,” not there. I was a fucking idiot. The toilet paper was not facing the way he liked. What kind of stupid bitch would put it the wrong way and leave it like that? I forgot to bring a pot holder or a serving spoon to the table before I sat down. I was a useless cunt. He would not eat with me. Every day I woke with the fear of displeasing him and an overwhelming urge to make everything perfect, because if it was not, I became the most detestable creature ever to crawl before him. “I” slowly disappeared.
Just after our one year anniversary, Bill decided that he no longer wanted to live in Maine. His intention to quit drugs, or at least keep them out of the house, had long since failed, and there was no point living in Maine to be near people who loved me. He left for Illinois to secure a construction job his father had arranged for him, which left me and the baby alone for the first time. Oh sweet heaven on earth. I was free! I stayed out past four pm. I breastfed the baby in public without sweltering to death under a baby blanket. Best of all, I got to visit with my mother again.
“Here, let me take over. You look like you need a break,” my mother said reaching for her granddaughter.
“A what? I’m not allowed to have any of those.” I was trying to joke with her, but there was no humor in the delivery. It just came out as the truth. Oops.
“What do you mean? Doesn’t Bill ever help you?”
“Why should he have to do that? He works.” Excusing Bill had become an automatic reaction.
“So do you. Too hard from the looks of it. What’s going on with you these days anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Nothing I guess.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that.” She always saw through me. There was no hiding anything from her. “You know, I haven’t seen my Sharon in months. If something is happening to her, I hope she knows that I’m here to listen and to help if she needs anything.”
“I don’t know if I can tell you.”
“Is he hurting you?”
“No. He’s never hit me mom.”
“There’s more than one kind of abuse.”
“I know. I just… I mean I shouldn’t…” I was going to start crying if I kept this up. Oh God, please don’t let me say something wrong!
“Oh honey, what’s he done to you?”
“I… I can’t.”
“What you can’t do is go on living like this anymore. You’ve got to let it out to work through it. Just let it go.”
That opened the floodgate. Everything came pouring out of me, all the tears and pent up frustration, anxiety, and despair. I told her about the name calling, the constant yelling about nothing, how he kept telling me that he hated me, and how he never really loved me from the beginning. He was obligated to marry me, which was probably why he cheated on me just hours before our wedding. And yet, I was still expected to sleep with him whenever he called for me. It didn’t matter if I didn’t want it, or that I was too tired and sore. I had to be obedient and do my duties. But he didn’t really want me. There was no more love. I had long since let myself go numb.
The only bright spot in my life was my daughter Faith. My only joy. But, I was always worried about her. If I put her down, she’d scream for me. She seemed terrified of Bill, especially when he yelled at me while I breastfed her. I didn’t know what I could do, what I should do. I didn’t know how I would take care of her by myself if our marriage ended.
I saved the worst for last. He was a drug addict, and he was getting high in the house. When he was home, I could not leave the nursery because of the smoke. I was like a prisoner aboard his sinking ship. He refused to change course, and there was no escape.
As my mother listened, waves of concern, sympathy, and finally anger fell over her face. “What an idiot! I’m sorry honey, but he is. Look at you! You are a beautiful, and smart, and caring woman, and he treats you like that? He doesn’t know what a woman like you is worth. And you are a worthy woman, the wife of Proverbs 31, and he’s a… a… (sigh) well, I’ll just stick with idiot.”
“I’m the idiot!” I sobbed. “I got myself into this mess… and Faith.”
“No. This is his doing, not yours. But you have to know honey that if you raise a child in a house with drugs in it, she could be taken away from you.”
“But, where am I supposed to go? He won’t let me go.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere. You can stay right here with me for as long as you want.”
I saw a life without Bill, and I wanted it. He was already gone. I could just stay there, go back to school, and finish my degree. Faith and I could get our own little house somewhere in Portland near my mom once I found a job. We could plant a rose garden, just Faith and me. We could have tea parties, paint her room pink, and have visits from Grandma, and all her aunts and uncles. I could start writing again. It would be perfect.
But it could never be real.
I swore in front of God to be loyal to Bill forever, through the good times and the bad. And so I would. Only, I wasn’t afraid anymore now that I knew I had options if he refused to change. If Bill did not provide Faith and me with a proper home, I would no longer live under his roof until he could. I could not be little wife anymore. I would not. I was a worthy woman, and I had to stand my ground. I had to. Faith was all I had left.
This time, I would be ready for the fight. I would bail out this sinking ship bucket by bucket if I had to until we were above water again or he cast me off for good. Of course, I would not consciously route for that last option. But surely, I would not be damned if a small, almost non-existent voice deep within me began to chant “DOWN WITH THE SHIP! DOWN WITH THE SHIP! DOWN WITH THE SHIP!”
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