On the second night out, Joan and Ernest started drinking heavily and arguing. Our sons wisely decided to go to bed early. As Joan and Ernest became more obnoxious, I, too, decided to go to bed. Sometime later I awoke to muffled noises. It sounded as if someone was hitting something. The noise was coming from the master bedroom. I was certain I heard Joan cry out in pain. I couldn’t imagine what was happening. Quietly, I crept down the hall and listened outside their bedroom door.
Timidly, I knocked. “Joan, Joan, are you all right?”
I heard another loud thump and a small cry from Joan. I opened the door and looked in. Ernest held Joan by one arm, his other hand raised to strike her again.
“Stop it Ernest! Stop it!” I screamed. Ernest looked shocked and embarrassed by my intrusion. He released Joan instantly. She emerged from their room bruised and battered. We sat up for hours talking. Ernest simply went to bed. That was the beginning of my involvement in Bester’s battles.
Later it became common to be included in their fights. Ernest, my gliding instructor and my mentor, trusted my abilities to fly his planes and drive his cars; and that trust seemed to overflow into his private family life as well.
Once, he came to my home at two in the morning. His old pickup roared up our driveway. Ernest leapt out and ran to the door, pounding urgently. Fearing a tragedy I opened the door.
“You better come quickly before I kill that stupid woman,” Ernest said. Having delivered his message, he spun on his heel and jumped in the truck. Gravel sprayed the driveway as he stomped the accelerator in his hurry to get back home to his fight with Joan.
Throwing on my clothes, I hurriedly ran for my vehicle and spun my own tires as I raced up the street in my old Hillman Vogue. I ran into the house, dreading what I might find.
Joan sat in a chair, eyes focused on middle distance; mute, and unapproachable.
“Answer me, woman, when I speak to you!” Ernest stormed around the room, stomping and raving, wind milling his long arms as he paced back and forth in front of her chair.
Joan could have been a statue hewn of stone. She gave no indication of hearing Ernest or knowing that I had entered the room. Her long practiced ability to tune Ernest out had never been more evident.
Frustration was etched in every line of Ernest’s long taunt thin body. His eyes darted behind his thick glasses. His large nose and ears were reddened by the force of his exertion. “Answer me!” Ernest screamed; his face a mere inch from Joan’s immobile head.
I tried to distract him with conversation, but the ploy was short lived. Soon he was standing in front of Joan again, trying to force some reaction from her. I tried to will her to answer him.
She somehow got my message and came out of her stupor. “Why, Ernest? What difference will it make?” she asked.
Ernest raised his hand and struck her a tremendous blow across the face. “How many times have I told you not to talk back to me?” he raved.
I jumped between them, screaming at Ernest to stop. I told him that he would have to hit me, too, if he wanted to hit Joan again. For a moment, he looked as if that were a distinct possibility.
The enormity of the situation overcame him. He could not hit a woman other than his wife. Disarmed, he went to bed.
Now it was happening again. Jumping off of the bed, I raced across the courtyard, pulling my robe and slippers on as I ran. Sand and grit forgotten, I jabbed the key in the lock and jerked the door handle to the kitchen at the same time. I finally coordinated my movements enough to gain entry. Dashing across the kitchen, I fumbled at the lock on the opposite doorway that led to the staircase. Standing in the upstairs hallway just outside Joan’s bedroom door, I could hear the familiar thumps and cries.
“Open the door! Joan! Joan! Are you alright?” My cries were greeted with a dead silence. The light went out from under the door, and it was very quiet. The only sound I could still hear was the sand pelting the side of the building.
“I don’t want to wake up our boarders and get them involved,” I called, “but I won’t go away until I see Joan and know she’s okay.”
The door finally opened and Joan stepped out. “Come on downstairs with me,” she said, “I need a cup of tea.” We had taken only a few steps when the door swung open again.
Ernest stood in the doorway wearing only a pair of blue and white boxer shorts and light blue knee high socks. His glasses slid down on the end of his nose, so he peered over them down the sights of the 30.06 rifle that he brandished in his big hands. His long, lean frame was well developed with muscles, his chest a mat of curly black hair.
“If you take one more step, so help me Joan, I’ll kill you,” Ernest said in a low, menacing voice.
“Oh just go ahead and do it Ernest,” Joan sighed, “You’ve been threatening to kill me for a long time now. Do me the favor and get this whole business over with.”
With that, Joan turned her back, linked arms with me, and started walking down the hallway. I heard the bolt click back and fall into place as a shell slipped into the chamber. We took two more wobbly steps. Next, the click of the safety being released reverberated within my eardrums. My heightened senses were fully aware of every sound, including the extraordinary pulsing within my chest. The fine hairs on the back of my neck became electrified and stood on end. Small beads of sweat instantly formed around my temples. Joan held my arm and continued walking. I no longer knew who was supporting whom.
Every second, I expected to hear an ear shattering blast, the last sound I would ever hear. Thoughts raced through my mind. Would you actually hear the report of the bullet that killed you? Would Ernest shoot only Joan or both of us? Who would finish raising Lessil? How would he get back to the States? Would he be sentenced to living in Africa with his father the rest of his life?
If he was going to shoot, he would certainly do it now, because, in two more steps we would be around the corner and out of his line of sight – unless he followed us.
Arm in arm we walked down the stairs to the kitchen door. Neither of us looked back. I carefully opened the door and locked it securely behind us.
I put the tea kettle on the burner, and grabbed two big mugs and the teapot and joined Joan at the oversized kitchen table. She sat at her usual spot at the end of the long table, leaning forward and cradling her head in her arms. I was shaking violently from head to foot.
“Do you think he might have really done it?” I asked.
Joan looked up through bloodshot eyes. She indicated a very small space between thumb and forefinger. “It was just that close. We were within a hair’s breadth of being dead.”
We sat in silence for a few moments and my shaking began to subside. I poured the hot water on the tea bags and brought the pot to the table. We sat quietly sipping the steamy hot liquid. This was just another somewhat typical night at J.J.’s.
“Did he hurt you much?” I asked.
In answer she stood and turned her back to me. She raised her nightgown and robe. From her knees to her waist she was covered with livid red splotches with darker bruising already beginning to form.
“There’s so much!” I gasped.
“He said he was spanking me, but it was just an excuse to beat me where it wouldn’t show. I’m so sorry we woke you up and got you involved again,” Joan apologized. She gingerly repositioned herself on the chair.
“Why don’t you just divorce him? You can’t go on like this. You’re not getting any younger, and someday, no one will be there to stop him, and he will actually kill you. You’ve got to put a stop to this.”
“I can’t. We’ve been over this all before. He’d take Andrew away from me and demand back the money he put into J.J.’s. I’m forty-six years old. My health is nearly gone and I have no education. Without J.J’s and my son, how could I start over? What could I do?”
“There has to be a way. No one should have to go through this.” I was adamant.
“When you make your bed, you have to learn to lie in it.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, Joan! Sometimes we make the wrong bed and we can change it, like Tom and me,” I pleaded.
“Not me,” Joan said flatly. “I did that once. When my first marriage broke up I had three little children and no way to support them. When Ernest came along and offered to marry me, I accepted, even though he was much younger than me and I knew I didn’t love him. He promised to take care of my kids and educate them. I promised to have one of his. He kept his promise and my three older kids are all educated because I made a pact with the devil, so to speak. Now I have to live with it. He’s angry because I never loved him like he needed and deserved. I have it coming.”
“He’ll never get your love by violence, and no one has beatings coming.”
“He’s just trying to get some reaction out of me. I really don’t blame him. I don’t want him around, and he knows it,” Joan explained.
“I can’t accept that. If we set reasonable goals there has to be a way out.”
“Life doesn’t always have happy endings,” Joan was getting annoyed. “Fate has a way of making decisions for us.”
“Joan, that’s defeatist. The worst thing of all is that tomorrow you’ll both act as if nothing ever happened.”
“I’m not a defeatist or a cynic, but I’m a realist, Jacquie. If you come up with some wonderful solution, let me know. As for now, we better go to bed. It’s nearly three in the morning and our day starts at six.”
I asked Joan to spend the rest of the night in my room, but she refused. She knew Ernest wouldn’t fight any more tonight. “Tomorrow he’ll be terribly sorry. It will be ‘Honey Buns’ this and ‘Honey Buns’ that. For several months he won’t know which tail to wag. He makes sure the marks don’t show. Now, don’t you go telling anyone! I don’t want it getting back to Andrew that his father hit me. Promise?”
I finally promised to keep her secret. We locked the doors and went our separate ways. I stood in the courtyard. The east wind had quit blowing. A slight westerly wind carried the smell of the sea. Dampness was in the air, and the terrible heat was almost instantly replaced by a chilled fog bank.
I watched Joan’s bedroom window. I could see the light from the hall when she opened the door. She raised her window, so she must have noticed that the east wind was over. It remained quiet, so I went back to my own room. I opened all the windows and the door to the courtyard.
Wonderfully cool air filled my room with the fresh smell of salt spray. I lay on my king-sized bed, thinking about Joan and Ernest and their seemingly impossible situation. Is it really like Joan said? Can you get in a rut so deep you can’t climb out? Is this what had happened to me? I drifted off to sleep, dreaming that I was at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, and could see no way out.
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B.B.U.S.A. (Buying Back the United States of America) Page 29