Quiet As It's Kept

by Monique Miller

  Will took in what Tyler had said and related it to his own situation. Morgan had not physically struck him, as Brother Chrispin had said about his wife. And he didn’t think she was trying to poison him. If she was then it had not worked, because he felt fine. But there was no doubt in his mind that his wife was trying to at least hurt him, and he was pretty sure she was trying to kill him. But, he wondered, was he a battered man?

  He listened as Tyler continued to speak. “Quiet as it’s kept, domestic violence not only consists of male-on-female violence. Female-on-male violence does exist. While men often use physical force to subdue their mates, women are cunning, using different devices to elicit the same results.

  “At first I didn’t realize that what I was going through was domestic violence. I mean, whenever I thought about domestic violence, it was always thoughts about an insecure man overpowering a woman.”

  Will nodded in agreement. His father had used his size to overpower his mother.

  Tyler continued, “Because, let’s be honest, what man wants to admit that his wife has gotten the best of him, or worse yet, that his wife or a woman has beaten him? That’s a hard stigma to carry.

  “But the night I went to the hospital, when a police officer came to take the report about what had happened, he handed me a card and told me to call the number on it. He told me the person on the other line might be able to help me.”

  Tyler looked over at Brother Chrispin. “Brother Chrispin was that police officer, and it was his number.” Brother Chrispin nodded and smiled at Will.

  Will thought about each of the testimonies, and how they reminded him of the abuse his mother had endured. Then he thought about how, ironically, many of the testimonies paralleled what he was going through in his own home right now.

  Tyler continued. “We talked and he invited me here. I have been so enlightened since I started coming to this group, and I am no longer ignorant to what domestic violence is. I realize that it was not my fault that my wife was the way she was. I used to blame myself, but no more. I am just glad that I got out of the situation I was in before things got worse for me.”

  When Tyler finished speaking, Brother Nelson looked at his watch and spoke again. “Well, gentlemen, it is almost nine o’clock. We need to go ahead and wrap things up. Brother Tracy, thank you for coming. You are welcome to come back to our next meeting if you are able to. We meet on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at seven o’clock, right here.

  “There are a few members of this support group who come regularly, and others who come when and if they can, but this is the normal size of this group. Whenever we have newcomers, we share our testimonies so that they know they are not alone. But normally we share information, talk about the concerns we may have, and we also offer information about domestic abuse resources.

  “On the table in the back you will find information about various resources. Feel free to take anything and everything you would like. You have not shared what your situation is, and you do not have to if you do not want to, so please don’t ever feel like you are obligated to do so unless you want to. But before you take this information, think about your household situation and if you want your spouse to know that you have it. If not, think of a place you can hide it, like behind a dresser in your bedroom or behind the refrigerator.

  “I will also caution you that if you normally surf the Internet, to erase the history of the Web sites you’ve looked at. Sometimes spouses and significant others will look there to see what sites you’ve been looking at.”

  Will knew that all too well. He hadn’t done it to try to find out what sites Morgan had been looking at, but had he not hit the history feature on his Internet, he might still be blind to the possibility that his wife felt that he was worth more dead than alive.

  “Does anyone have anything they would like to say or add?” Brother Nelson asked.

  When no one replied, he said, “Okay, let’s all stand and adjourn in prayer.” All the men stood in their circle, held hands, and bowed their heads.

  “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you in prayer as humbly as we know how, praising you and thanking you for your awesome blessings and protecting our lives and our families. We thank you for protecting us up until this moment, and we thank you well in advance for continuing to protect us each and every day from all hurt, harm, and danger. Lord, please bless each and every man assembled here, the men volunteering tonight in the daycare, and our other brothers who are abused everywhere. Protect them, Lord, with your blood.

  “And, Lord, please walk with our new brother, Will Tracy, as he endures whatever storm he is going through. We thank you, Lord, and praise you in your son Jesus’ name. Amen,” said Brother Nelson.

  And they all said, “Amen.”

  Chapter 20

  Will was relieved to see that Morgan still had not made it home when he pulled into his garage at half past nine. Once he got his sleeping baby changed and in his crib, Will had time to take a shower and get ready for bed before Morgan pulled into the garage.

  He breathed a sigh of relief that he’d been able to shake the nervousness he’d felt after leaving the meeting, as he drove home doing slightly over the speed limit. He continued to feel nervous, as he wanted to get to the point at which he would have normally been at ten o’clock at night. What he hadn’t wanted was for Morgan to come home while he was still in his clothes, looking like he’d been up to something, as he had been.

  Now that she was home, another kind of nervousness set in: the old familiar nervousness he’d been having whenever he was around his wife lately. As he sat at his computer searching for jobs on the Internet, he tried to act and look as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He braced himself for whatever mood his wife might be in that night.

  Morgan stepped in the door looking refreshed. She smiled at Will and said, “Hey, baby.” She walked over to him and gave him a kiss on his cheek.

  “Hey,” was all he could manage to say.

  “How was your day?” Morgan asked in a singsong voice.

  “Good,” Will said. He wondered what his wife was so happy about at ten o’clock at night. “And how was your day?” he managed to say.

  She stepped into the kitchen and picked up the stack of mail. She rifled through it and said, “Oh, it was wonderful. I got a lot done this evening after everyone else left. I felt productive.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Will said.

  “Where’s Isaiah? Mr. Night Owl is asleep already?”

  “Yeah, I laid him down about thirty minutes ago. He was tired.”

  “Oh?” Morgan said, with a questioning look on her face. “Why was he so tired?”

  Will knew it was because the baby had been playing with kids for almost two hours, but he wasn’t going to tell Morgan that.

  “He didn’t sleep well today, so I guess not having his normal nap wore him out,” Will lied.

  “Poor baby. I guess he was just trying to keep up with you.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Well, I’m beat. I’m going to go ahead and take my shower and get ready for bed. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t wait up for you,” Morgan said.

  “No, I understand. Hard day at work. You need your rest,” Will said, glad she was going to stop with the small talk.

  “Okay, honey.” She gave him a kiss on his cheek and left him alone in the den.

  For the second time that night, Will breathed a sigh of relief. He surfed the Internet until he heard the shower being turned off and he was sure that enough time had passed for Morgan to be in bed fast asleep. He then grabbed a blanket from the downstairs closet, set the alarm clock on his watch, and curled up on the couch, ready to get some sleep.

  Morgan was normally a pretty sound sleeper, and he set the alarm so that he could slip into bed around four o’clock in the morning. His body was starting to let him know it didn’t appreciate the sleep deprivation he’d been putting it through. And if he didn’t get at least a few hours of qualit
y sleep, he did not know how he was going to function the next day. There was no way he’d be able to get any quality sleep lying next to Morgan all night.

  Will was jarred awake by an insistent buzzing sound that would not go away. He swatted his arm trying to get rid of the sound, until he realized it was the alarm on his watch. He turned it off and sat up with reluctance. He’d slept like a log dreamlessly. Now that he was awake, his whole nightmare of a life was flooding back to him.

  Will folded the blanket he had slept under, and he sluggishly took steps to the closet to put it back. Then he headed for his bedroom, cautiously walking up the stairs not only because he needed to continually look out for foreign objects, but because he was tired and feared falling down the stairs because he was half asleep.

  At just a little after five he turned his body toward Morgan’s body so that he was facing her. He lay and watched the back of his wife’s head as she slept soundly.

  Will opened his eyes, wondering when he’d fallen asleep. The last thing he remembered was watching Morgan as she slept. He was still lying in the same position, but she was nowhere to be seen. The light from the window indicated that it was dawn outside. He lay still, listening for sounds. The baby’s monitor didn’t reveal any signs.

  He thought he heard a creak in the floor behind him, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was just his imagination. As he continued to listen he was sure he hadn’t been imagining. His heart began to race. It sounded as if Morgan was doing something behind him as he lay in bed. He stirred a little, indicating that he might be waking up, just in case she was behind him. Then he faked a sneeze and sat up in bed.

  As he looked in the direction of the sound, he saw Morgan staring at him. She had her hands behind her back. Was she hiding something to hit him with, stab him with, or, worse yet, shoot him with? He didn’t know, but he braced himself.

  “Hey, honey.” He tried to sound as casual as possible.

  “Oh, hey, baby. I thought you were asleep,” she said.

  “What’s up? What do you have behind your back?” he asked. It was better to go ahead and face whatever it was she was going to come at him with.

  “Behind my back? Nothing.” She moved her hands from behind her back and stepped up to him.

  Will jumped back.

  “Will, what is wrong with you?” She turned around and put her hands behind her back again. “Can you help me zip this zipper? I thought you were asleep, so I didn’t want to ask you, but since you are up, you might as well help me.”

  He did as she asked. He zipped her zipper even though his hand shook the whole time. He hoped she had not noticed.

  Morgan turned and stared at him quizzically. “Why are you so jumpy this morning?”

  “Me? Jumpy?” Will’s eyes darted back and forth from Morgan’s face to his hands and around the room.

  “Yeah, you. There isn’t anyone else in the room right now. Maybe you need to get some more rest.”

  Will stepped back a little and crossed his arms. “You are probably right. I just need a little more rest.”

  “I just checked on Isaiah and he is still sound asleep. That boy is pretty tired,” Morgan said. “Why don’t you get some more sleep before he wakes up.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Morgan kissed him on his forehead. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  Will looked at the clock on the nightstand. “You’re leaving early today.”

  Morgan was leaving thirty minutes earlier than she normally did. “Yeah, I want to get started a little earlier today. You know we need that overtime. And as long as they are offering it, I am going to take it.”

  “Okay, well, have a good day,” Will said.

  “You too, baby,” Morgan said as she left.

  As soon as Will heard the car pull out of the garage, he rolled back over and fell back to sleep.

  An hour later, Will heard the sound of one of the baby’s musical toys playing in his crib. Isaiah was now awake and so was Will. The hours of sleep he’d stolen the night before downstairs on the couch and the few hours of sleep he’d gotten by default had been priceless. He was refreshed, and ready to face the day and to review the events of the night before.

  Will spent the morning reflecting on the morning before when he’d prayed to the Lord for guidance, and God had given him an answer to his prayers in his calling Tyler. Now Will needed to decipher what he needed to do with all he had learned the night before in the meeting, as well as all the information he’d picked up at the meeting.

  After dressing Isaiah, he and the baby ate breakfast. Will then opened the back of his SUV and pulled from the compartment that held his car jack the papers he had gathered from the meeting. He didn’t think Morgan would look behind the refrigerator or the dresser for anything, but he was positive she wouldn’t be looking for anything dealing with the car and car repair.

  As he sat down on the floor in his den to read the papers and intermittently play with Isaiah as he crawled around on the floor, Will’s cell phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, man. How’s everything going?” Phillip asked.

  “It’s going okay. I’ve been reeling a little from the way God works things out.”

  “How so?”

  “It isn’t something I can talk about right now, but just know that God has got things under control,” Will said.

  “Oh, I know that part, my brother,” Phillip said. Will could tell his friend was smiling on the other end.

  “But all in all I am holding it together. We can talk more later, if you don’t mind. I have a few things I need to do right now.”

  “I just wanted to check on you. You hadn’t called and I just wanted to make sure things were okay.”

  “Definitely not okay, but I’m not dead.” Will chuckled a little at his statement, even though nothing was funny.

  “Not that I can hear, and I want to make sure it stays that way, at least until you are old, gray, and decrepit.”

  “Thanks for your support and prayers for longevity,” Will said.

  “No problem.”

  “Talk with you later.”

  “Sounds good,” Phillip said.

  Will clicked the phone off and looked at the first piece of information he’d picked up from the table. Brother Nelson had offered for him to take anything he wanted from the table, and he’d ended up taking one of everything, even the nondescript business-card-sized black-and-white card that had Brother Nelson’s, Brother Tyler’s, and Brother Chrispin’s phone numbers on it.

  The first sheet of information was a handout that talked about domestic violence and had questions on it to help people determine if they might be a victim of domestic violence. A few of the questions made red flags go off in Will’s head. One question asked if he was in a relationship with a partner who tried to stop him from seeing his friends or family. Another question asked if the partner told him he was a bad parent. Then there were two other questions that asked if the partner tried to stop the other partner from working, and the last question asked if the partner had threatened to kill him.

  If it was up to Morgan, he wouldn’t have any contact at all with Phillip and Shelby. And she did make it a point to remind him of how he’d almost burned his baby in the bathtub. He still cringed every time she did that. And even though Morgan acted as if she wanted Will to get a job, she’d belittled him when he told her about the job at the mall, and then she sabotaged his last interview when she tried to kill him in the car accident.

  And, lastly, Morgan had never threatened to kill him, but she was in the process of trying to kill him, or so he thought. She had some pretty good explanations for everything he’d confronted her with, and he wasn’t 100 percent sure that the toy could not have rolled out of the baby’s bag and under the brake of his car.

  The handout ended by saying that if he could answer yes to any of the questions, then he was probably in an abusive relationship. But Will still didn’t know what to think.
Morgan had been acting better, and she’d sworn she was going to seek counseling with him. She hadn’t done it yet, but maybe he just hadn’t given her enough time.

  Will shook his head and moved on to the next handout he’d picked up. This handout described different forms of abuse. The four forms of abuse listed were sexual abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. From the descriptions given, he was not a victim of sexual abuse, but from what he was reading, there were aspects of their relationship that would fit into the other three abuses.

  Emotionally, Morgan often belittled him, especially when it came to the fact that he was out of work. She used snide remarks whenever she got the chance, and then laughed them off as if she was joking. Will knew she wasn’t joking, but trying to cover up her statements.

  Psychologically, she’d been playing mind games, especially when he thought about the incident with the oil on the floor, and the story she told about looking for dental insurance on the Internet. She hadn’t been straightforward with him and this made him leery of anything she was saying.

  And lastly: physically. Will’s traditional thoughts of domestic violence only consisting of a man hitting a woman were completely out the window. There was so much more to domestic violence when it came to physical abuse. Striking, hitting, punching, scratching, and kicking were ways someone could harm a person physically, but any physical act that would cause a person bodily harm was also considered an act of physical abuse.

  The oil on the floor and the blocks on the stairs were intended to cause him bodily harm. And the car accident had caused him near-fatal bodily harm. He’d had a near-death experience just as Brother Nelson had, and he was also thankful every day that God had spared his life.

  As Will continued to read about domestic violence, he learned about behaviors that signaled that a partner might be an abuser. Mood swings were one of the traits listed. The literature said that this could especially be true if the person had sudden mood swings. As he read on, he discovered other actions that could be a strong indication of someone being an abuser. Others were if the other person threatened violence, broke objects when upset, or if they used any force during an argument.