Falling with Wings

by Dianna De La Garza

  But Dylan wasn’t in any hurry to arrive. Those hot August weeks dragged on and on without any signs of labor. Two weeks past my due date, the Ford dealership firmly told me it was time to leave. “Go away and have your baby,” they insisted.

  I loved my job so much that I didn’t want to leave, but I took their advice. The next morning, on August 20, 1992, Pat and I headed to the hospital, hoping they would induce me. Labor was so easy that I actually kept falling asleep. After a few quick pushes, the doctor held up my baby and announced, “You’ve got a little girl.”

  Whew! I thought. At least I know what to do with girls. But we hadn’t picked out a girl’s name. Pat’s first question, of course, was a panicky, “What’s her name?”

  “Let me see what she looks like,” I said, stalling for time. “I want something really special.”

  And special she was. As my baby rested in the arms of a nurse, I gazed into her tiny, dark eyes—all that was visible from her tightly wound blanket—and I instantly fell in love with her. She was like a bright star that suddenly had appeared from the darkness of my marriage. It made me teary with gratitude, though I still had no idea what to name her.

  As the medical staff got me ready for visitors, I kept looking at the door to see who might arrive. It seemed so quiet compared to Dallas’s birth that I bit my lip to stem the rush of disappointment welling inside me. “Well, slap me silly and bury my clothes,” Ricky exclaimed as he walked through the door. “I hear we have a baby girl!” The nurse must have decided that his arrival was her cue to exit, because she suddenly stood up and walked toward Ricky. “Want to hold her?” she asked.

  “Right now?” he quivered. Before either Pat or I could protest that we hadn’t yet held her, the nurse laid my baby in Ricky’s arms. “Nice to meet you,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. Considering all that Pat and I had been through in the past few years and how utterly fragile and innocent my baby looked, I couldn’t help but get a bit weepy, too. “Well, maybe I should let your daddy hold you now,” Ricky said, and we all laughed. There was no pageantry, no parade, and no fuss that day, just the three of us with a lot of love in our hearts.

  The last thing I remember before drifting off to sleep was listening to Ricky’s long southern drawl. “Baaaby girl,” he whispered, bending over the bassinette, “You are gonna be somebody reeeeal special in this world. I can feeeel it.”

  * * *

  The next morning, a young nurse popped her head inside the room. “Ready for your baby?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I laughed, watching her slide the bassinet toward my bed. “Well, hello there,” I cooed.

  “You know they’ll be discharging you soon,” the nurse said. “Do you have a name picked out yet?”

  “I’m working on it,” I replied, hoping the entire staff wasn’t ridiculing me for being so unprepared. Pat was still on his way to the hospital, so it was all up to me. “This might help,” the nurse said, handing me a book. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve pulled it out. Look it over while I give this little one a bath.”

  I scanned the A names, then the Bs, then the Cs. Definitely needs a name that begins with D, I decided. The list was long. Daria, Delaney, DeeDee. No, no, no! And then I saw it: DEMETRIA. That’s it! That’s a name that sounds like strength! And I can call you “Demi” for short.

  It wasn’t a moment too soon, as a cranky old nurse appeared. “I need a name for your baby right now, so I can fill out the birth certificate,” she barked.

  “Demetria,” I said. “Her name is Demetria … um, Demetria Devonne,” remembering the name of Pat’s daughter from his first marriage, Amber Devonne, a sweet and beautiful girl I’d seen just a few times in the beginning of our relationship. Although neither Pat nor I still had contact with Amber, I loved the name. It was the perfect two syllables that would flow with Demetria. “You can put that on the birth certificate,” I said, knowing Pat would surely approve.

  “Such a strong name,” the young nurse said when she came back into the room. Another nurse parked the bassinette by my bed and encouraged me to breastfeed before getting her ready for the photographer. But Demi didn’t seem hungry, so instead, I dressed her in a little onesie I’d brought from home. Thank you, Momma, I whispered as I rolled a few locks of Demi’s long, dark hair between my fingers, using a few drops of baby oil to make the cutest little curl on top of her head. It was a trick Momma had taught me with my baby sisters.

  When Demi started fussing, I gently lifted her to my breast. “Shhh,” I soothed. “You’re about to get your picture taken.”

  Then I froze. The name tag said MARTINEZ. I summoned every ounce of breath I had and screamed, “WHERE’S MY BABY?” My God, I thought, some other mother is probably breastfeeding my baby girl! “Someone help me!” I screamed even louder. As time ground to a halt, I could hear myself yelling, could see nurses scrambling, but my baby was nowhere in sight.

  A nurse grabbed the wailing Martinez bundle from my arms, assuring me that my own baby was fine. “Just a mix-up,” she said over and over. But watching all the other nurses sprint to the nursery scared me even more. “I found her!” one nurse shouted from the end of the hallway. “She was in the Martinez bed.”

  “Oh, Demi, I’m so sorry,” I said, taking her from the nurse. “I will never lose you again. Ever! I promise I’ll always protect you.”

  “Let’s leave them alone for now,” the younger nurse said. “The pictures can wait.”

  As I cradled Demi’s little body in my arms, I cried my eyes out. When I finally composed myself, I fed her and changed her into another outfit, as that little onesie never was returned. “Thank God we found you,” I whispered in Demi’s ear. Moments later, I flung open the door and announced, “We’re ready for our close-ups!” But no one even looked in my direction.

  “Oh, okay,” I said, sarcastically waving a hand in the air. “We can wait.”

  The longer I sat there, the more impatient I became. “Someday,” I sighed, staring into my daughter’s eyes, “they’ll all be begging to take your picture!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Every day I lived in fear until I finally left him.”

  “I’m moving back to Texas, with or without you,” I told Pat one morning when Demi was eight months old. He looked at me like I was crazy. I didn’t care. His cycle of drinking, drugs, and verbal abuse had returned, and it was endless. I still loved him and he most likely still loved me, but it was time to go before something more violent happened. I also knew that my daughters might be in danger, too. If I loved them as much as I said I did, I needed to protect them. Moving back to Texas seemed like a good first step.

  There was another reason I wanted to leave, too. Ever since Demi’s birth, depression had swallowed me whole, as though a dense fog had rolled in and refused to leave. I wondered if it was because I felt so lonely and far away from my family. My marriage didn’t help my mood, either. From all of the fear, anxiety, and stress in my life, I only weighed about eighty-five pounds, soaking wet. Whenever I left the house, I’d look at other people on the street and wish we could trade places. It didn’t matter if I saw businesswomen in heels or moms in sweatpants—I was sure their lives were happier than mine.

  I never made the connection that Demi’s birth might have something to do with it. No one ever talked about postpartum depression at the time, but I struggled with it just the same. Sometimes, it got so bad that fierce bouts of sweating and shaking rendered me incapable of moving. At other times, scary thoughts hijacked my mind. More than once I saw myself tumbling over the edge of a cliff or falling down a stairwell. And I often had the fear that Demi would suddenly fall out of my arms and crash to the floor. I didn’t want to hurt myself or anyone else, but those random thoughts had a life of their own. Maybe if I can just return to my family and friends, I reasoned, these troubling thoughts will vanish.

  As I packed and loaded the Cadillac, I assumed I’d be leaving on my own. But at the last minute, Pat came tro
tting out of the house and threw a bag into the trunk before I pulled away. “Your grandparents are hiring me to remodel their house,” he happily explained. “Besides,” he added, “you know you can’t live without me. And who’s going to hire you when you don’t have a college degree?”

  Pat’s put-down pierced a few more holes in my shaky confidence. Ridiculing me had become his new sport, and my self-esteem plunged a little lower with every remark. As the four of us drove back to Texas, we said as little as possible. The moment I walked through the door to our tiny new apartment, I knew it would always feel more like a prison than a home.

  For more than five long years, I had been putting up with Pat’s verbal and physical abuse, but as long as we were together, I wanted to keep up the facade that we were happy. How could I possibly split up our family and not feel guilty? Besides, I felt it was important for my girls to know their father, even though I couldn’t trust him to do normal fatherly things like watching them when I sang. His only responsibility when I worked was to drop the girls at my grandparents.

  The turmoil between us waxed and waned like the moon. Just when I thought I couldn’t live under the same roof as Pat for another day, I had an idea. “Let’s see if I can get on Charlie Daniels’ Talent Roundup on CMT,” I announced. The show, hosted by the music legend and taped in Nashville during late fall in 1993, was already generating excitement, even though it wouldn’t air until months later. The format consisted of daily singing competitions, Monday through Thursday. Each of the daily winners then squared off on Friday. By season’s end, all the weekly winners vied for the chance to be the overall champion who’d walk away with a record deal. Pat, who had always wanted to manage me, thought the idea was brilliant. I made a few phone calls and before long, we dropped off the kids at my grandparents’ house and headed toward Nashville.

  It was a long drive, and as I sat and mulled the possibilities before me, I silently made a bargain with myself. This is it, I decided. If I don’t get the record deal, I am done. No more chasing dreams or putting up with Pat.

  Taping for an entire week of the show was actually done in one day, so in order to make it to the final competition, I had to win two times. If that didn’t happen, my dream of stardom was officially over.

  The first competition went well. I handily beat the other contestants by singing an original song that I had written. Friday’s taping quickly followed, for which I sang another original song that someone else had written. As they started announcing names in the order that we had finished, everyone became still. One name followed another until just two of us remained on stage. But I wasn’t the winner.

  The drive home seemed even longer than our trip to Nashville. Neither of us said much, although Pat piped up a few times talking about future possibilities. His words were like static on the radio. I knew in my heart that my dream was dead. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an awful feeling, because I had the best consolation prize—my girls! Instead of feeling, disappointed, I felt relieved. Now I could focus on being a mom. But, I also had to figure out a plan for the future that didn’t include Pat.

  Back at home, Pat doubled down on his criticisms of me. Sometimes his temper flared so violently that I thought he might explode. Fear trailed me like a shadow. So did guilt and shame. I wanted to make a new life for my girls and me, but I didn’t know where to start. Still, I couldn’t find the courage to tell anyone in my family about my situation, not even my grandparents. A Texan’s honor is nothing to mess with, and I was afraid if I fessed up to the real cause of my damaged fingers, a brawl as fierce as the Alamo might ensue, especially since my Paw Paw’s stash of guns would likely be involved. No more violence, I promised myself.

  Then a strange ritual evolved. As soon as Pat left the house in the morning, I’d open the phone book and stare at the number for the Women’s Shelter of Irving. For weeks, that’s as far as it went. Then, one day, I dialed the numbers without even looking. “Hello,” a woman answered. “Can I help you?” Too ashamed to speak, I hung up before saying a word.

  Dial. Listen. Hang up. That became my pattern. As 1994 arrived, I finally mustered enough courage to stay on the line and ask a few questions. “What would happen to my children?” “Am I doing the right thing?” “Who would protect me?” The woman answered every question politely and encouraged me to find the strength to do what was best. “Not just for yourself,” she said, “but think about what’s best for your children.” I hung up and started crying. Day after day, I repeated the sequence, often asking the same questions to see if the answers would change. The shelter’s advice was consistent: “Don’t tell anyone ahead of time; leave when Pat is out of the house; and take enough supplies to last two weeks.” Then they warned me that my husband would probably go into a rage when he discovered I was gone. I started praying for a sign to know what to do.

  Every day I thought about leaving. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t relax. I wondered how the tension was affecting my children, yet I couldn’t find the energy to leave. Then one night Pat made it clear that I needed to go. It was early January, and I was in the kitchen with the girls painting some ceramics while Pat worked on our tax documents. My grandmother had owned a ceramics business for most of my life, so I knew how to use plaster of paris molds, as well as how to paint and glaze the fired clay. I even had a small kiln in my dining room. It was a great way to take my mind off my anxious thoughts.

  “I need you to sign this paper saying we didn’t earn any income last year,” Pat demanded. “That’s lying,” I shot back. When I refused to sign the papers, Pat became as angry as a charging bull and reached for one of my plaster molds. Then he hurled it at me like it was a baseball headed for home plate. I ducked and stretched my arms out wide, trying to protect my girls, who were standing behind me, as it sailed over our heads.

  No one uttered a word, but the tension in the room was electric. I quickly herded the girls into the bedroom and dropped to my knees. Dear God, give me the courage to do what I need to do! Time was running out. Sooner or later, Pat was bound to injure someone, and I couldn’t bear the thought that it might be one or both of our kids.

  I never talked about Pat’s rages with my girls, so I had no idea how much the violence was affecting them. Years later, when Dallas and I were watching the movie The Burning Bed with Farrah Fawcett, she looked at me during one traumatic scene and said, “You know, I remember Daddy once grabbed a huge can of corn and reared back like he was going to hurl it at you. I jumped up and stood in front of you, screaming, ‘No! Don’t hurt her!’ He stopped, but later that night Daddy got even angrier and smashed your jewelry box into pieces.

  “You ran into your bedroom crying,” she continued, “so I gathered all of my jewelry and gave it to you. I remember saying that you were too beautiful to be treated like that.”

  I had forgotten all about the incident until Dallas brought it up, making me wonder how many other things I had pushed out of my mind over the years. It broke my heart to realize that my girls had seen and heard so many things that must have terrified them, yet we never openly discussed any of it. I suppose growing up in a home where no one talked about troubling emotions or erratic behavior had subtly programmed me to be the same way. Even now when I try to talk about difficult subjects, finding the courage to do so is a bit like scaling Pikes Peak. Back in those early years of parenting, it wasn’t even a thought.

  As I made one excuse after another about not leaving, Demi suddenly got sick. I figured it was just a cold but worried that she couldn’t breathe, so I made a doctor’s appointment. Sitting in the waiting room, I was a bundle of nerves. Once I was ushered into the examination room, the doctor who had known our family for years took one look at me and said, “Give the baby to the nurse. I want to talk to you.” The moment she walked out, his eyes got wide, his jaw tense. “I want to know what drugs you’re doing, and I want to know now,” he demanded.

  “I’m n-n-ot on drugs,” I stammered, realizing that my emaciated appe
arance made him suspicious. By then I couldn’t even swallow food. I told the doctor I was planning to leave Pat and divorce him, though I didn’t say when.

  Living a lie was no longer possible. When I finally leveled with my grandparents about Pat’s drinking and explosive temper, my Paw Paw was quick to speak. “You have to work this out for those girls,” he urged, not wanting to believe that the man he loved like a son had treated me so badly. “They need their daddy,” he insisted.

  But my grandmother seemed to sense that I was telling the truth. “I trust you,” she said, “and if you need to go to our lake house to hide, you can.” Before I left, they both promised to keep my secret so Pat wouldn’t find us.

  A few days later on a brilliant February morning, shortly after Pat had left for work, I placed a note on the table, gathered the suitcases I had packed, and walked out the door. This time I meant it. I had no intentions of letting Pat find me, but if he did, I knew I wouldn’t welcome him back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Every time I heard a sad country song, I’d cry my eyes out, knowing I had split my family apart.”

  I thought leaving Pat was enough to make my life peaceful again, but I was wrong. A couple of weeks into our stay at the lake house, the phone started ringing. And ringing. It was Pat. After calling various friends, my grandparents, and my cousins, he had finally figured out where we were hiding. “Why did you take my kids away?” he screamed at me, only to be in tears seconds later and begging, “Please come back! Please let me see my kids.”