For Love - Part III: Wake Up Call

RING!!! RING!!! 

I fell out of my bed onto the floor in my rush to end the unwelcome noise violating my slumber.  That was stupid, I silently scolded myself for leaving the phone on.  I pushed the talk button and hurried out of the room so I would not wake my baby girl, Faith.  “What do you want Bill,” I whispered.  I did not need to check the caller ID to know it was him.  The blurry red numbers on the digital alarm clock read 2:00 am, Bill’s new favorite time to call me in a panic and beg me to come back home. 

I hurried downstairs hoping that my idiocy had not disturbed the rest of the house.  My longtime friends, the Andersons, who had been good enough to put me up, never complained about the many nuisances they endured because of my troubled marriage.  I wanted to keep it that way. Over a period of five months, I fought with Bill to get counseling and get the drugs out of the house so that Faith and I could live with him again.  Hope would bring me back to him for a month, a week here and there, then only a day or two at most.  I stayed with the Andersons in between. 

I never ceased to be amazed at how an entire month worth of fighting could be condensed into a single day or how embarrassing luggage could be.  I became so good at packing the baby’s and my personal belongings that I could have all of our most necessary and dearest possessions precisely tucked into my tiny two-door car in under an hour.  Then the inevitable pleading phone call would come from Bill when he found the nursery and my half of the closet empty, or when he finally decided that the kitchen and toilets seriously needed my attention, and I would rush back with high hopes that he would keep his promises this time.  However, the tedious job of unpacking my car in the afternoon with a baby on my hip and my husband glaring at every new item to re-enter the house went slowly while the neighbors tsk tsked, shaking their heads at me from their cement porches. 

This particular fight began very much like many of the others, with his rage and my discontent rekindling the moment I walked back through his door; however, our marriage ended for me that night in January when I managed to escape from his firm grasp to leave with my terrified baby girl screaming in my arms.

“Please don’t hang up,” Bill began.  “I need you.”  His pot was in the dumpster this time, along with all of his paraphernalia, and he needed me to come home right then at two in the morning to help him get through his panic.  Again with the “Please, Please come home... You said if I got it out of the house you would be there for me” routine.  I began to protest. 

“I don’t want to wake the baby up just to come over to your house to go back to sleep, Bill.  Can’t this wait until morning?” 

“No!  I need you here right now, not tomorrow.  You promised me!  I got rid of it like you asked.  You said you would be there to help me.  That is what I am asking you to do.”

“And I will, Bill, first thing in the morning.  It’s 2:00 am.  Just go to sleep.  Please, be reasonable.”  There is no reasoning with a drug addict.  If he set his apartment on fire that night trying to get rid of his drugs once and for all, he still would have called to announce that the baby and I had to sleep amongst the burning embers because of my promise to help.     

“I don’t believe this!  Now that I’m trying to save our marriage, you won’t come?  You are the one being unreasonable!”   

I packed a change of clothes for myself and Faith in the diaper bag and slung it over my shoulder along with my purse.  I felt a little odd carrying just the two bags, but this trip was only a visit, a sign of my good faith that he could change.  After shuffling my things back and forth between two houses too many times to count, he was going to have to prove that he was serious about quitting by remaining sober for a reasonable amount of time before I moved back in.  Maybe six months.  Maybe a year or two.  I would have to think about it.  He had never thrown his drugs in the dumpster before though.  That was a big step in the right direction.

Faith was still laying on the bed breathing softly with her little pink lips open.  She looked so peaceful with her pudgy red cheek pressed on the floral print pillow, and her feathery blonde hair sweeping across her forehead.  I didn’t want to disturb her, but I couldn’t leave her there with the Andersons.  The Andersons were very generous and understanding, but waking them at two in the morning to ask them to baby-sit would have been pushing it.  Very gently, I snuck my arms underneath her and her fuzzy pink blankets and carried her out to the car and away from our safe haven.

When I arrived at his door, he already had a scowl on his face.  Faith was still miraculously asleep in the baby carrier.  I put my finger to my lips to signal Bill to keep quiet while I went to lay her down in the nursery.  His glare deepened as if to say, if you hadn’t left me in the first place, she would have been asleep in her crib anyway.  Her room looked exactly how I left it.  The closet and the baskets under the bed were still empty.  In fact, the baskets were still sticking out from under the crib just as I had left them.  Bill had not entered the room since. 

I kissed her forehead and laid her back down for the night.  There.  At least she will have some peace.  I left her door open just a crack.  If Bill were going to yell in my face as usual, I would have a hard time hearing her otherwise.  I winced at the vertical black gap in the door separating me from my daughter, summoned all the patience in my being, and went back to Bill.

“Can you believe she is still asleep” I said with a small smile.  I was trying to keep the conversation light.  He did not answer.  Apparently, he was not in the mood for light.  Fine.  I’ll get right down to it then.  “Is there anything I can do for you now that I’m here?”

“Now that you’re here,” he sneered.  “You don’t even want to be here with me, you fucking cunt.  I don’t know why I even bothered to call.”

“I left this apartment, not you.  And I wouldn’t be here tonight if I didn’t want to save this marriage.  You said you needed me, so here I am as promised.  There is no reason for you to be so mean about it.”  I was calm but firm.   

“No?  All of this is your fault,” he said opening his arms wide to emphasize the enormity of the blame, “not mine.  If I hadn’t married you, I would have my pot here in the house right now!  I would be perfectly happy, and you could kiss my ass with all your fucking rules!” 

            “I’m here to help you, remember?  Don’t do this again.”

            “Do what?  Tell you the truth?  You never should have married me if you couldn’t handle being around drugs.”  He was absolutely right.  I should have run away screaming, but I didn’t.  Oh why didn’t I run?

            “Come on.  Not tonight,” I said trying to mellow his mood.  I was supposed to say that I never planned the pregnancy that rushed us into marriage, that having a family changed my opinions about what behaviors I was willing to accept from him, but I wasn’t going to follow the script.  “Let’s just go to bed, huh?”

“Oh sure.  I’m so sorry I’m disturbing your night.”  I let it go, but I was getting irritated with his attitude.  I expected him to be edgy, but his manner was more manic and aggressive than I had ever seen from him before.  He was pacing up and down the hallway clenching his fists and growling curses under his breath. 

I headed for the back bedroom.  His room.  “Are you coming,” I asked sliding under the covers.  He stopped and turned to glare at me.  The hallway and bedroom were dark, but I could still make out half of his face with the light coming from the living room.  He looked down at me with dark, menacing eyes.  Slowly, he stalked towards me, his face contorted with rage, his unsteady hands ready to tear something to pieces.  He leaned over the bed.  His body was tense as he loomed over me.

“I hate you.”  His voice was low, quiet, and dangerously close.  I felt him clawing at the blanket and sheet to get into bed, but I remained perfectly quiet and still.  I closed my eyes and settled in for the night.  Ah, the worst is over.  That wasn’t so bad.  In the morning, I would make pancakes and bacon.  He would apologize for yelling at me like he always did, and maybe, just maybe, we would sit down and talk our problems out.

“What the fuck are you doing here tonight Sharon!?!  Why did you even bother to come?”  Oh, great.  Here he goes again.  “Why did I throw my pot away?  What the fuck was I thinking?  This isn’t…no... YOU aren’t worth it!”  He got up and put a pair of pants on that had been lying on the floor.

“What are you doing?”  No answer.  “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the dumpster.”

“Bill, wait!” I yelled hurling myself off the bed to run after him.  “Don’t do this!  You know I can’t stay here if you bring that stuff back in the house.  I just got here!”  He stopped dead.  “Is that what you really want?  I want to help you.  I want us to be a family again, but I can’t do that if you bring it back!  You know that!”  I steadied my breath and tried to sound soothing instead of aggravated.  “You’ve already made your choice to get rid of it.”  He still stood there facing the door, but at least he was still with me in the house.  I stood silently behind him in the living room for a moment, not sure how to continue.  “Please… stay with me.” 

Finally, he turned to look at me. 

“I’ve made my choice?  Stay with you?  You are the one that filed for divorce!  You are the one with the problem!  This is who I am.  Why can’t you love me for who I am!?!”

“Shhhh!  The baby.”  We both paused for a moment to listen for any sounds of distress, but we heard nothing.  “Bill, I do love you,” I said quietly.  “Would I be here if I didn’t?  That is why I cancelled our divorce once already to give you more time to decide to quit.  I don’t want a divorce, but you leave me with no other choice.  Besides, it was you that said, ‘If you’re not going to live here, get out. Give me a divorce,’ remember?”

“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have left.”  If you really loved me, I never would have had to leave.

“You know why Faith and I had to go.”

Two weeks after Faith and I had moved from Maine to Illinois to join Bill at our new apartment in the Fox Hills complex, (where he now lived alone while I stayed at the Anderson’s place), I found myself staring at the outside of our front door in terror.  There were crowbar marks in the wall, and the door was hanging off the hinges against the frame.  Faith was with me in her carrier, but Bill was still on his way home in his truck.  We were all alone, and that broken door was the only thing separating us from mortal danger.  I backed away slowly and reached for my phone to dial 911.  Wait.  I can’t do that.  I knew that if the police came, they would find Bill’s drugs.  He would kill me himself.

“Bill, someone is in our apartment,” I whispered into my cell phone as I made my way back down the hallway and out of the building.

“What!  Don’t call the police!”

“I didn’t.  I called you.”

“Good.  I’ll be right there.  Don’t do anything until I move my stash.”

            I could have been killed because of him, but his drugs were more important.  When he got there, everything in the apartment was in order.  Only his drugs were missing.

            I shuddered at the memory, but Bill continued with the script.

            “Faith is fine here.  I don’t know why you don’t believe me.  I’m the only one that would get in trouble if the police found drugs here, and I give them no reason to come.”  How convenient.  Those drug addict friends of his and the sketchy neighbors that might hurt or kill us just to get to Bill’s weed didn’t count. 

            “Look.  I didn’t come back here to argue with you about why I had to leave.  I’m here to help you keep the pot out tonight because you said you couldn’t do this alone.”

            “What do you mean, ‘tonight’?  Just tonight?”

            Oh, No.  Why did he have to go there?  “Yes.  Look, it’s really late.  Why don’t we talk about this in the morning?  I’ll make breakfast, okay?”

            He did not take the bait.  He looked back and forth between me and the front door and between me and the nursery as if he were calculating how long it would take for me to leave him.  I believe he must have realized that his usual hook, his claim to quit, would no longer be enough to secure me.    

            “You’re not even going to stay after I did what you said I had to do?  That’s bullshit!”    

“No.  That is sensible.  We’ve done this too many times.  I’m not coming back until I know for sure that you aren’t going back to it ever again.” Oh, God.  He is going to snap.

            “I just threw it in the dumpster!  What more do you want?”

            “Please, let’s just talk about this in the morning.”

            “NO!  We’ll talk now bitch!”

            “Don’t talk to me like that, or I’ll leave.”

            “You never even planned to stay in the first place!  You’re nothing but a God damn whore running from house to house!”  That does it!  “Hey!  Don’t you walk away from me!”  I headed towards the nursery with him screaming obscenities at the back of my head, a persistent tide that crashed again and again against the unmovable cliff defying the sea.  Promise or no, I was not going to let him bully and harass me one more second.

            The baby had finally awakened from all the noise and was whimpering softly in her crib.  Just before I reached her, Bill darted in front of me to block my way.  She began to cry in earnest.  “You’re not leaving,” he yelled.  I paid no attention to his proclamation.  His words were not law anymore.  I reached out to Faith and tried to step around him.

            He lunged at me.

            His hands dug into my arms and he shoved me backwards until I was nearly on the floor.  He was an animal.  His dark eyes were wild with outrage and panic.  His teeth were bared.  I could feel each one of his fingers gripping my skin, burrowing into me like claws. 

            “Let go!  You’re hurting me!”  I stopped trying to pass.  He gave me one final shove away from the crib.  What just happened?  Did he really just do that?  The reality of what occurred came to me slowly.  Bill was not going to let me leave.  He was ready to hurt me if I tried.  I should have been scared.  Why am I not scared?  I should have known that it was only a matter of time before he resorted to brute force to get his way.  Bill always got what Bill wanted.  But, he doesn’t want me.  He wanted a nobody, a servant who would do what she was told, a prisoner under his guard.  I was not that person anymore.  I was the one standing between him and his drugs.  He was standing between me and my daughter.  She was standing in her crib screaming for me. 

            “Mama!  Ma-a-ma peeeez!  U-u-py!  Peez ma-ma,” she sobbed.  Her face was wet and turning red from crying.  She held her little arms out to me just over the rail of the crib, her little fingers stretched as far as they could go as she screamed.  Her body was pressed against the bars.  Her hair stuck to her face with sweat.  She was beginning to choke and gulp in air between her sobs.

            I tried to pass, but he came at me again.  This time I lunged back at him.  We stood there locked in combat in front of her crib, the veins bulged out of our arms, our ragged breath interrupted by grunts and snarls, our eyes engaged on our intended targets.  He glared at me as he wrestled me down and away from the crib.  I looked at Faith.  My arms and shoulders were getting sore from his grip and from trying to muscle my way past him, but he would not let me pass.  I had to let go.  As I did, he released me and stood in front of the crib again.

            I was not afraid.  I was livid.  He had taken all the love out of our marriage, forcing my heart to become ice, but now the heat coursing through me, the all consuming fire of hate and rage released me from my bonds.  If ice could turn to vapor through sublimination, then I would fly away.  I did not have to boil for him. 

            I picked myself up, walked straight for him with my arms at my sides, and stared him down.  I did not try to pass.  My face was hot and red with anger.  My nostrils flared with every breath.  I stood there shaking with rage at the coward standing before me.  How dare he!  He looked down at the floor exhausted and bewildered.  I inched my way forward and screamed directly into his face boot-camp style.  “YOU WILL NEVER TOUCH ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!!!”  I rushed forward shouldering him out of the way to free Faith from her crib.

            He obediently stepped out of my path.  Now he looked confused.

            The last words I remember him yelling before the baby and I just barely missed being slammed in the front door were, “Fine.  Leave then, you fucking cunt!”  If I had been half a centimeter slower, the back of my head would have been smashed in. 

No more than thirty seconds later, while fastening Faith’s car seat back into my car, I heard my phone ring.  When I was half way back to the Anderson’s house, I finally answered.

            “What!”

            “Oh, God!  Sharon, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed.  “What have I done?”

            “You’ve lost your family for good.  That is what you’ve done.”  I turned my phone off and threw it in my purse. 

I looked in the rear view mirror.  Faith had fallen back asleep.  We were both safe, but I would get no sleep that night.  I received a brutal wake up call that turned my blood to liquid fire.  By God, I felt good answering it.