One afternoon, after running errands, I walked in to Raine’s screams rolling down the hall. I rushed to his room. Aaron held Raine on the floor and each time he struggled upright, Aaron pushed him back down, laughing. “C’mon, little man, you can’t get up? C’mon, try again.”
Raine screamed, red-faced, in angry frustration.
“Aaron! Let him up! Stop holding him down! It’s not funny. He’s just a little boy!”
I scooped Raine from the floor. “It’s ok, baby,” I cooed, wiping the tears from his face.
Hatred for Aaron exploded in my chest. Aaron’s cruelty could not be ignored. When Raine toddled determinedly across the floor, Aaron would trip him and laugh at his fall. He’d reach out randomly thumping Raine on his head. I wanted to kill him when I saw his malicious acts.
It was clear that Aaron had not changed and I regretted moving back in with him. In two months after our return, I was pregnant again. My family was disgusted with my decision to return to a volatile and abusive relationship. I am twenty years old and on baby number two, I thought. The baby was due in October and I would be just twenty-one.
My mind flashed back to the pictures I’d had when I was eight, of the two women (that as it turned out, I knew from high school) and their conversation and I was stung with the truth of what I’d seen. I have to abort this pregnancy, I can’t have another baby. I thought. I made an appointment at a women’s clinic.
I dropped Raine off with my mother and as I made my way out the door my mother said, “This baby is meant to be and if you abort her, she will find a way into your life. It’s a mistake Nita, and you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
And there it was, her knowing. My mother almost never interfered in my life and her statement made a powerful impact.
Crap, I thought as I walked out the door. How does she know it’s a girl? I drove to the clinic and sat in a hard, blue, plastic chair while my stomach churned and the voice warned me. She’s right, it’s a mistake. The child is yours and waits for you.
“Nita,” the nurse called from the inner door. I quietly gathered my things and left. For the next eight months I tried to bury my dread. I carried a child I falsely believed I didn’t want. I felt helpless and trapped. I waited for my daughter’s birth and I did not suspect she would change my life the instant I gazed into her beautiful, pale, blue eyes.
Elizabeth had a light that astonished me and all my anxiety and fear melted away. She was beautiful with smooth skin and pink cheeks, blonde, hair and sky blue eyes. I felt her inner strength radiate from her tiny body and knew that now my family was complete. I had to find a way to leave Aaron, I just wasn’t sure how. I was eternally grateful for my mother’s insight.
Aaron’s behavior was unnerving and his actions had become increasingly erratic. He’d sauntered in one afternoon and casually related what had occurred only moments before. “Some stupid cunt cut me off on the freeway” he said casually and untied his shoe. “So, I sped up and passed the bitch and then got in her lane and slammed on my brakes and backed up. The bitch barely missed me! She probably pissed her pants!” he laughed.
“What is wrong with you, Aaron? People don’t do things like that. You have a serious problem. You’re sick.” I said, horrified and clutching Elizabeth to my chest.
I have to get away from him. I have to make him so mad, so disgusted with me, he will kick me out. Then it will be his decision. Maybe, if he hates me, he will leave me alone, and want nothing more to do with me and I will be free. My thoughts ran wild with manipulation after manipulation. I was afraid of Aaron and unable to stand in my truth and say, “I don’t love you and I want out.” A scheme took shape in my mind to have a one-night stand so he would hate me for cheating, something he accused me of regularly. I convinced myself that was the answer.
I arranged a ski trip to Tahoe with a girlfriend for a week and left my children with Isla. Elizabeth was just five weeks old.
My plan was simple, cheat on Aaron, admit it and let him kick us out.
As soon as we arrived in Tahoe, we went to a bar that night where a band played and I spent the night with the lead guitarist, cementing my manipulation. The thing I remember about it, was that the experience was empty and sad.
On the drive home, uncertainty of my plan grew and choked the resolve that had been there before it. Inner anxiety caused my hands to sweat and my mouth to dry. My eyes dilated with fear. I never imagined what Aaron would do.
Immediately when I stepped through the threshold, accusations of infidelity sharp and bitter flew like daggers from Aaron’s tongue. I denied such behavior and my chance to escape was washed clean away. I put the children in bed for the night and Aaron’s filthy monikers raged on.
“I know you fucked somebody!” he screeched. “You’re a whore and always have been!”
I stood silent; just say it, I thought, tell him he’s right, I did it and let him kick me out.
“I did it,” I blurted. “I’m sorry but I had an affair, I did it.”
My insides felt like putty as I waited for his response. Aaron scowled at me.
“You fucking cunt, I knew it!” He screamed. “Just say, I’m a fucking whore.” His eyes were wild and he grabbed the hair at the back of my head and forced me down the hall to our bedroom. He pushed my face into the mirror,
“I am a fucking whore!” he screamed, “say it! I am a nasty, dirty, stinking, fucking whore!” he went on. “Now say it, cunt, say it!”
I was stunned. “Please god, please, don’t let the children wake up, I prayed. My teeth chattered and my body shook as though I were in a snow storm, and I whispered, “Please, p-p-p-please, Aaron, d-d-don’t w-wake the children. Sh-sh-sh-sh.”
“I said say it!” He bellowed louder than ever.
“O-k-kay, I’m a w-whore,” I choked.
“No, stupid! I’m a dirty, fucking, whore!” and he pushed my face against the cold mirrored glass. Spit and snot smeared my reflection and my mouth was gaping, my lip began to bleed, spreading a pink tint across the mirror and my gums.
“I a-a-m a d-d-dirty, f-f-fucking whore.” I breathed.
And my mind raced as I listened for the slightest noise or cough. My ears attuned for my children’s cries. Thank God there were none.
Aaron’s hateful breath assaulted my face. I felt rage on his breath as I was forced to inhale his toxic and broken soul. He tore at my clothes and chanted vile sentiments like a man possessed. He threw me on the bed and I plunged downward with the water that filled it. He held my face in his hand squeezing the soft pallet of my cheeks together, his fingers nearly touching while he raged. His knee was planted firmly on my chest. He held himself in one hand masturbating furiously, and although he was unable to grow hard- still he expelled his sickness on my face.
“That’s how whores like it,” he groaned.
I felt such shock-such repulsion-a fire drill screeched in my mind- evacuate, evacuate it trilled and I did. Like a guilty marauder I fled the scene from my conscious mind leaving my body to witness and be the keeper of all that came after, alone and abandoned. I retreated to a desolate mental cage cowering and afraid. It was as if I’d never known him, as he pushed inside me, ripping and tearing innocent flesh.
There was no tenderness in his hands, only a disgusting depravity that burrowed like flesh eating weevils into my skin. I held no concept of time as he raped and bruised my body forcing him-self inside of me; the hours flew.
At some point during the night, I found myself naked and huddled against the rough stucco wall outside of the duplex where we lived. I didn’t feel the cold, although I saw my breath. I had no recollection of how I’d gotten there. The porch light blazed and I pleaded through swollen lips,
“Please, Aaron, please let me in. I’m sorry, pleeease,
Aaron.” Eventually, he did.
My frame of reference after I came inside is vague at best but, eventually Aaron was spent and he lay beside me asleep. I inched carefully and quietly from my prison of water to the floor. It felt as though it took a long time. I knew Aaron had a rifle high on a shelf in the closet and some unknown part of me drove me forward until I sat naked and shivering on the closet floor. I held my breath and fantasized of how I would shoot him.
“Can you kill him?” a voice whispered. I wondered then, is the gun loaded and if not where are the bullets and how do I get them in without waking him? What will become of my children if he awakens and kills me?
I abandoned my fantasy and crawled on hands and knees down the hall, sick with the reality that I could not kill him. I wrapped myself in a bed sheet from the hallway linen closet and tried in vain to wipe away his fury that dripped like acid down my thighs. I waited, my body tucked inward like a child scarcely breathing, for him to awake and my mind took me back to a memory from six months before this nightmare began.
A light-body had materialized before my eyes. Its vibration rattled my insides like I had just stepped off a train. I was not afraid and I recognized that this light-body was different from the one I was familiar with.
Pictures behind my eyes began along with the knowing and I saw a very old Chinese man with skin that looked like leather and hung from his bony arms. My body felt the hunger that filled his empty belly. He walked bent with the weight of loss on his shoulders. Tied to a tether he held, was a mule so skinny that the bones of its flanks stuck up like air fins. In his dark and desolate eyes I saw the whole of his life. Who he had been before growing old was clear and I experienced the wisdom and pain that lived within him. I shared in the essence of who he was. In that moment, I felt our oneness. It was other-worldly for me.
There were no words spoken but I knew the light-body before me had been the old man in a past life and had lived countless other lives too, although I held no knowledge of past-life ideology. I knew the light-body was connected with Raine to guide him or teach him, they were part of each other, we all were but I wasn’t sure how. “It’s time to go now.” He said without speaking. “To stay changes life path and soul intent. It’s time to go.”
I knew that Raine’s life choices and mine were intertwined and unbreakable. The baby inside of me kicked as if to say, do you get it?
I understood the message, but I was afraid to make a change. The light-body, like all I had encountered in the past, emanated loving steady energy. And in only moments it was gone leaving me with more questions than answers.
Crap, I thought, what am I going to do? I knew I had to leave Aaron, but I was afraid of what he might do.
He will never let me go. I thought. I struggled daily to hide my growing anxiety, fear and disgust. That was why I’d formed my plan to escape.
Noise, from the back bedroom meant Aaron was awake and brought me back to the present moment. Aaron got up and left for work like it was a normal day. I pretended to be asleep but feared he would see the hard pulse of my heart, move with the sheet that covered me. He never came near the couch where I lay wrapped like a mummy. Immediately after he left, I woke the children, got dressed and called Isla. “Isla, it’s me. Can you come get me?”
“What’s wrong? Is something wrong?”
“Yes, something is wrong. You have to come get us, right away. I’m leaving Aaron; he’s gone over the edge. It’s for good this time, I swear. Please, Isla hurry. I know he’ll come back and try to stop me.”
“Okay, let me get gas and I’ll bring the van. I should be there in an hour.”
“Thank you, Isla.”
In a frantic dash I shoved all I could into giant green trash bags and pushed the horrors of last night from my mind. When Isla arrived, we quickly carried everything to the van.
Suspecting my departure, Aaron left work and returned home. I had just fastened Elizabeth into her car seat when Aaron pulled in the drive. “Where do you think you’re going? Fucking cunt.” He spat.
“I’m leaving, Aaron, and you can’t stop me.”
I ran back into the house to get my purse and one last bag. Isla had called the police from a neighbor’s phone the minute she saw Aaron.
“You think you can do anything you want?” he hissed.
Aaron spun violently around and I watched his anger form in hostile circles of rage. Spotting the broom tucked between the refrigerator and kitchen counter, he grabbed it turning the wooden handle into a weapon. He swung wildly and shattered my beloved house plants. I stood immobile and watched the dirt and clay rain down like exploding grenades.
“You think you can just leave?” Sweating and red faced he dropped the broom and went to our bedroom to retrieve his rifle, brandishing it like a sword.
“I’d rather shoot you,” he said in a choked and broken voice. His eyes filled with tears.
“The police are coming.” Isla called from outside.
Aaron looked away and regained his composer. He slid the glass door open calling to our neighbor who stood on his back porch, eavesdropping.
“Hey, buddy, can you hold this for me?” He asked as he handed his illegal firearm over the fence.
I couldn’t believe the gall of our neighbor, whom I never laid eyes on. The officers arrived and separated us, taking me outside to hear my part of things.
“I want to leave.” I said to the officer with me. “He’s threatening me and broke all my plants. He has a gun, but he gave it to the neighbor over the fence. If you leave, he’ll get it and shoot me. I know he will. Please, just stay while I finish getting our stuff.”
“No problem, ma’am. We’ll stay until you leave. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about the gun if it’s no longer in his possession.”
I quickly gathered our last bag and as I left, I carried tremendous guilt and felt somehow responsible for Aaron’s pain.
In the days and weeks that followed - I was in survival mode - my emotions heavily armored in complete lock down - my every thought monitored to prevent a meltdown. I had a secret that felt like a hot ball of shredded glass that cut me to ribbons whenever I thought about it. I told no one of my rape. Shame and the fear that I got what I deserved sealed my lips.
I stayed with Isla and her husband for a few days but the house was cramped. I quickly secured a job bartending and it was there that my manager offered to help me.
“I have a spare room at my house,” Rick said “and you can move in with the children. I know you need a place to stay.”
Rick was a complete gentleman as though he knew intuitively, what had happened.
I moved in and for three months Rick and I shared his house until Rick bought another property and moved. I rented his place and got a housemate. My longtime friend from middle school, Carmen, moved in with her toddler son and we shared the three- bedroom house. I almost felt free. Aaron would not let go, however, which was what I’d feared when I left him. The stalking began almost immediately.
At first, Aaron began to park adjacent to the restaurant’s parking lot where I worked and wait for me to walk to my car at one or two a.m. He was bold, parking where I could see him watching me. When I didn’t go back to him, his tactics changed.
“Oh my God!” I screamed in the middle of the night sucking in air as my body jerked upright. I’d been awakened from a dead sleep with my heart hammering and an eerie feeling. There was a face peering in my bedroom window. I saw the man clearly before he slipped back into the darkness of the night. It was Aaron. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned glancing constantly at the window afraid he’d come back. He’s watching me, I fretted. He’ll never leave me alone. Fear rang in my ears, he’s coming for you.
One night I pulled my car into the driveway, my
dashboard clock read 3:05a.m. My lower back ached and I was tired after a busy night at work. A light mist carried on cold air, wet my face as I stepped from my vehicle. From the corner of my eye, I saw someone move at the side of the garage. Adrenalin pounded through me and I hurried to the front door. With quaking hands I unlocked it and slipped inside, shutting off the porch light as I slid to the floor in tears. Frequently, I felt his presence, although I could not see him. I feared he was waiting for me, hiding in the dark.
Instances like these occurred steadily, but mostly at night. Months later, someone intentionally sabotaged my car.
It was Thanksgiving Day and we were driving to my mother’s for turkey dinner. The weather was dreary and overcast with a light rain. I’d just reached the top of a long steady incline and glanced in my rearview mirror at a sleeping Elizabeth strapped in her car seat. Her head fell to the side as though her neck were made of rubber instead of flesh and bone. Her heart shaped lips were parted while she snored lightly in sleep. Raine sat at the opposite end of the seat engrossed with his transformer action figure.
We’d just begun our descent down the other side of the incline. I pressed frequently on my brake so I didn’t gain too much speed. The roads were wet and slick, heavy with holiday traffic. Each time I braked, the pedal went closer to the floor. Fear pounded adrenalin drummed through my chest. I knew I was in trouble. I gripped the wheel and cut quickly right ignoring the scream of a horn from the truck I’d cut off. I continued over, hitting gravel, pumping furiously on the brake which now fell to the floor without springing back into place. We were heading for a giant tree. I cut the wheel hard to my left to avoid hitting the tree head-on. I grabbed the emergency brake yanking it upward, my foot pressed hard to the floor in vain. I squeezed my eyes shut preparing for impact. The rear of my small car fishtailed in the loose gravel and we stopped abruptly. We’d missed the tree by inches.
The Knowing: Awake in the Dark Page 13