Tales of the Crazy

by Charles L Cole

  Jane said, “Stop. Do not hit me. Back off.”

  Jess swore at Jane and said she could hit her, and then Jane replied, “Don’t touch me. I can take you down with my pinky.”

  Jane had been taking martial arts for a number of years and could have wiped the floor with Jess, but Jane held back.

  Jess said, “You can take your pinky and shove it up your ass.”

  Jane had had enough of Jess and told her, “This is the last time you are coming to my house. You are never coming here again after this trip with Mom.”

  Jess claimed that Jane kicked her out, but this was not true.

  Jess called a cab and stayed the night in a hotel. This was when she called me and said that Jane had caused all the trouble. She claimed that Jane had assaulted and threatened to hurt her. Jess wanted to file charges for assault and sue Jane and was rambling on about other issues, but she was so upset that I could not understand it all. I wasn’t going to try and sort things out over the phone, so I asked Jess if she wanted to come home right away. She said yes. The fastest way was to take the train, so she booked the next one out and got home the next day. I called Jane and talked to her and Mom and got the real story about what had happened. Once again it was all Jess’s fault, but she believed she had done no wrong.

  When I picked Jess up at the train station in Ann Arbor, she was extremely agitated and claimed that everyone down there wanted to hurt her, no one had stood up for her, and no one loved her. Jess wanted me to call Jane and have her send us the money spent for the emergency room trip. Jess then started tearing into me even though I was not even there when all this happened.

  I had had enough of it and told her to stop. It was the same story I had heard over and over. She had caused trouble by her own controlling and manipulative behavior. Her pride got hurt, and then she claimed someone else was at fault. Thinking back on this incident, if I really wanted our marriage to work, I should have shown her more sympathy. But these types of incidents with Jess causing problems with others were too frequent, and I had had enough of listening to her habitual victim routine. I did not love her anymore.

  Jess was very upset and angry with me for not taking her description of the events as the unadulterated truth and not defending her against everyone else there. She was also very upset that Mom had not taken her side. Jess accused me of “never” standing up for her. I had heard this too many times to count. It was extremely tense at the home for the next two months. I was walking on eggshells, and Jess would not let up on wanting to sue Jane. Jess had been having multiple anxiety and panic attacks per week ever since the Kansas trip.

  During these two months, Jess’s obsession with and hatred of Jane did not subside. In fact, her hatred and lust for vengeance grew worse. One incident that occurred at home was when I had our Verizon phone account up on the PC. Jess went into the account and deleted Jane’s number from the friends and family list. I asked her why, and she replied that she wanted no one to have any contact with Jane again and that I was not to contact her. I said this was unreasonable and that she was being vindictive. I also told her that she couldn’t order me to cut off all contact with my sister and that I wouldn’t ask her permission to call Jane.

  Jess blew up. She began yelling that I never took her side, and then she went upstairs. She came down a bit later and said, “You’d better watch yourself and what you say.”

  The hateful look in her eyes was really dark and evil. The normal olive-colored glow of her face was replaced by an ashen shade of gray, and her lips were in an unnatural contorted expression of hate. I asked her what she meant by this, but she did not reply. This entire situation with Jane had consumed her. I had a flashback to the deliverance session with Brad and Abby and thought, Something is seriously wrong with her. This is not the woman I married.

  Jess continued not letting up on wanting to sue Jane for damages from falling off the exercise ball at Jane’s house, and she repeated it was Jane’s fault because the ball was underinflated. She still wanted to sue for emergency room costs, along with payment for her pain and suffering. I asked once if she had checked the ball and why she had still used it if it was low, but that only enraged her more. She accused me again of not taking her side. Asking her that question was a mistake by the logical engineer in me.

  In order to help keep the peace between her and Mom, I didn’t tell Jess what Mom had said. Jess was still very upset at Mom. She thought that Mom should have taken her side and should have apologized for not coming to her defense. Mom and I had multiple talks about this incident. She told me that Jess was trying to manipulate both my nieces, Victoria and Elizabeth, to make Jess look good and make Jane look bad, but Jane would not put up with it. That was another thing that had set off the fight between them. Mom remained steadfast that Jess had caused all the trouble.

  During Jess’s and my many talks about this incident, every third or fourth day since, she could not let go and tried to get me to believe she was the victim. She kept bringing this up, trying to convince me she had done no wrong. I asked her why she got into so many conflicts with people when I did not. She accused me of being too passive, saying I let people walk over me. She said she was the one who had to defend her family. She stated that everything she did was “out of love and to protect us from others who want to harm our marriage.” I had no reply for this; I knew nothing I said would get through to her.

  This was it. The woman was out of her mind with rage and hate. I’d put up with her hateful nonsense for far too long and knew I had to divorce her, not just for my sake but for my family’s as well. I didn’t want to be around her. I didn’t like her, and I had lost all love for her. When I looked at her, I saw only a obsessed, hateful woman, who was completely out of control. I had tried for too long to sustain our marriage, but now there was no option but to get out of this before she destroyed my life. She had already destroyed hers and almost all her friendships.

  A few days later, on July 29, we went to bed around nine at night, and then she started in again on how Jane had assaulted her and how we needed to sue her for assault. Jess repeated her prior demands about suing for the cost of the ER visit, her pain and suffering, and other damages for falling off the exercise ball. It was pure psychotic and uncontrolled hate. She would not stop this obsession and hatred of Jane. It had been over two months of hell putting up with her insane behavior. Her ranting had been almost nonstop.

  I tried again to calm her, saying to her that there was no case since there were only different accounts of what people said that would make it impossible to put a case together. Nothing good could ever come of it, and it would not even make it to court with no hard evidence. Jess was relentless. She again accused me of not believing her and not standing up for her, and she said that everyone was lying except for her. I asked her to stop, but she would not and instead upped the verbal attack on me, saying I never did anything for her.

  I yelled, “Stop it!” and threw the TV remote on the floor and left the bedroom to get away from her. I slept on the couch downstairs. The next morning I got ready for work and left without speaking to her.

  After work, I stopped and bought groceries. I picked up some Rainier cherries for her; I knew they were her favorite, and I hoped she would appreciate the effort. When I got home, I set the groceries on the kitchen counter, and Jess immediately went into attack mode. She yelled at me and said I had crushed her plant on the counter. It was only a damn mint stem. The counters were a mess and full of junk. The sink was full of dishes, and there was only a small area for me to set groceries on. I left without saying anything to her and turned down the loud music that was on.

  She went off on me again, yelling that I had to ask her first before turning down her music. I said, “Is this what I have to do now? Ask you permission before doing things in our own home?” She replied that it was her music and I had to ask first.

  I really had to put in effort to remain calm and defuse this. I started putting groceries away and held
out the cherries to her, saying I had bought them for her.

  Jess yelled, “What?”

  I yelled right back at her, saying I had tried to do something nice for her and all she could do was yell at me. I slammed the cherries back down on the counter and then threw them in the trash. Screw her and her damn cherries. I went upstairs to the bedroom and slammed the door shut to get away from her. Diva was on the bed, shaking because of the anger and tension in the house, and I was petting her, trying to calm her. Jess came upstairs, slammed open the bedroom door to confront me again, and began another verbal attack. I asked her to be calm because Diva was scared and shaking.

  She yelled at me, “It’s all your fault!”

  She left the room. I slammed the door shut and then yelled, “Keep away from me! I’ve had enough of you.”

  Her cell phone was in the bedroom, and it started blaring when one of her alarms went off. I tossed the phone in a container in the hallway. She yelled at me for that. I stayed in the bedroom, and she left the house. Good, I thought. She was being insanely vicious, and with her gone, I could get some peace. I was firm in my resolve to call a divorce attorney tomorrow.

  An hour and a half later, there was knocking at the front door. I left the bedroom and opened the door, and two cops were there. They tried to push into the house, saying they had to come in. I said, “We can talk outside,” so I came out and shut the door behind me.

  That ticked them off, and then they threatened me, saying, “We can do this the easy way, or it will go very bad for you.”

  I was thinking, What the hell is going on?

  The cops took out handcuffs and said they had to cuff me. I put my hands in front. They grabbed my arm, pulled it back, and yelled for me to put my hands behind my back. They said I was being arrested for domestic violence. No Miranda rights were given. I was dumbfounded at this point and could not believe this was happening. They asked me what had happened, and I told them what had happened that day. I even told them of Jess’s psychological problems, the multiple narcotics and antidepressants she was on, and her previous involuntary commitment. They asked if there were any firearms in the home. I said yes, and then they pushed into the home without permission and demanded I show them where the firearms were. I complied, and they took them.

  They said Jess had claimed I was throwing things across the room and had thrown cherries at her. I denied this, told them nothing was thrown, and then told them the only thing that had happened was that I had slammed the cherries back on the counter and thrown them in the trash. I even showed them that the cherries were still intact in the Ziploc bag in the garbage to prove I hadn’t thrown them. They took me to the police car and put me in the back seat. They left me there and went back into the house, where they rummaged around some more. I was sitting in the back of the cruiser alone for what seemed like a half hour.

  I was able to get my cell phone out of my pocket with my hands cuffed behind my back in order to call my dad and tell him what had happened. He was extremely upset, and I told him I had had enough of Jess. I was filing for divorce when this mess was over, but for now, I had to be nice to her. I thought for sure that the charges would be dropped when the court found out nothing had happened, but that was very naïve of me.

  Travis, a neighbor who is a Washtenaw County deputy, was driving back when we were about to leave, and they talked with him for about fifteen minutes. I couldn’t hear what they talked about, but I assumed it was about this situation.

  The police drove me to the Washtenaw County jail, where they booked me in and kept me in the jail’s common area overnight. It was just a large room with chairs for everyone. Some people were kept in individual cells. During the night, some were put in the cells for causing problems.

  When the cops brought me in, they immediately took everything I had in my pockets and removed my belt and shoelaces. The next stop was to see the nurse. I told the nurse that I was diabetic and needed my Metformin to control my blood sugar. I also told her that I needed low-carb food and had not had anything to eat or taken my Metformin since lunch. She took my blood sugar, and it had shot up to 270. They made no effort to get anything to keep my blood sugar under control. All this stress had affected my sugar levels—they normally did not go that high.

  After the booking was done, I got my one free call. I called my dad and told him where I was and that I would call him back when I knew when the arraignment would be. The problem with calling him back was that the police had a moneymaking scam going on with their phone system. A person could call anyone from the phone in the jail, but the people answering on the other end had to register and pay for a prepaid service with a pin number to answer. It was extremely overpriced, about five dollars a minute. There was no other option, though, and you were forced to pay for it. There was no privacy with these calls either, as they occurred out in the open next to the cop’s desk.

  After I found out the court appearance would be at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, July 31, at the 14b court in Ypsilanti, I called Dad and told him where to be to pick me up. I also gave him the password to my Gmail account so that he and Mom could get my boss’s phone number to tell him what had happened and that I would not be in to work tomorrow.

  Jail was a very bad experience. Here I was, a white, clean-cut engineer in my casual clothes stuck in with a bunch of really rough and crude people. There were about thirty people in the common area, and 90 percent were black. Knowing that I was very out of place, some of them came up to me and asked what I was in for. I told them a false DV charge. They asked if I had ever been arrested before, and I told them no; I’d never even been questioned about a crime. This was the wrong thing to say, and they immediately took a hostile attitude to me, thinking I had white privilege because I had not been hassled by the police before. A couple of guys told me what the process was and said I would probably get released with a PR the next morning since I had never been arrested before.

  “PR” is short for personal recognizance. It’s when the court releases someone during the arraignment as long as the person promises to show up for the next court date. I wouldn’t have to pay any bail. There was one guy who was very experienced from being arrested multiple times; he knew all the ins and outs of the process. I asked him if the judge would throw it out and not go through the long court process if he or she knew I was innocent.

  He laughed and said, “This is Washtenaw County. You are fucked.”

  A few more guys came over and told me about all the different places they had been arrested. They said this place was the worst. They said the judges and prosecutors only wanted successful prosecutions on their record and didn’t give a damn about people’s rights. I didn’t give the other inmates much credibility, but all their statements gave me a really bad feeling about what would happen next.

  A couple of people came up to me and asked right away how much money I made. This was very odd behavior. Most men I interact with would ask another guy what he did for a living, but they wouldn’t ask what someone was paid—it’s not proper social conduct. These guys in jail were very different. I overheard many conversations about how much money they pulled in one night or over the weekend, and that was their sole focus. It didn’t matter how they got the money; only the amount was important. Many had no sense of ethical behavior and were devoid of feeling good about themselves from their own accomplishments. They got a perverse pleasure about how much they could take and bragged about it.

  One guy asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I was an engineer at Ford. He immediately said, “You must be rich.” The other guys also started saying I was rich.

  I thought, Just freaking wonderful. This will only be worse now with them thinking I’m rich and with white privilege. I’m a middle-class working guy, definitely not rich, but that’s not what they think or want to believe.

  I kept pretty much to myself the rest of the night. I didn’t sleep at all. During the night, a group of three men constantly raised their voices, bullsh
itting with one another. The cops repeatedly told them to keep their voices down. The three did tone it down, but the one guy who was the ringleader would consistently start back up again and not shut up. The other two were sucked into his conversation, and it was repeated over and over again with the cops telling them to be quiet. Others would eventually join in, too, and it soon became very loud with everyone trying to out bullshit and talk over the next guy.

  One cop lost his temper over these three idiots’ behavior. He ordered everyone to go from the common area and into in the separate cells, which held five people each. It was very clear to me these three were the troublemakers; if they were put in a cell and isolated from others, the noise problem would be taken care of. The cop was an idiot and didn’t realize that isolating these three would stop the problem. The cops released us all from the cells about two hours later, and we returned to the common area.

  The next morning I was transported in a fifteen-passenger van, restrained in handcuffs, leg shackles, and chains to the 14b court, with a bunch of other people. They chained us up together in groups of three. Being in chains was way over the top, and I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. The whole concept of being innocent before you’re proven guilty is pure bullshit in today’s system. They treated me like a violent convicted criminal.

  During the ride to the court, the guy I was chained up next to told the story of how he and his buddy had decided during a drug and alcohol fueled rage to set something on fire. They torched a couple of construction vehicles, including a crane, because it was fun to watch. He was laughing about it while describing what they had done. The other guys laughed also. I was shocked at his attitude; he could not understand how screwed-up this behavior was or how it affected others who had to work to support their families.