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This is a story that my son wrote in his new Journal. The facts are not correct, but I think you can see what HE wishes had happened that day. It also showed me that he feels responsible, in that child way, for not stopping it all. He wanted to "save" me. This is often the emotion a child will struggle with later. He felt guilty that he could not protect me from his father, a job that was not his to do. I failed in my responsibilities to my children by not taking appropriate action that could have possibly absolved my son of these emotions. Unfortunately at the time this happened I felt responsible for my husbands violence against me. I still struggled with trying to change enough to make him happy enough he would never hit me again. (Mom copied exactly as he wrote it without corrections)
Journal
Feb. 11, 1999
The Dark Secret
It all started in Texas on Jan 1, 1994; my Mom was trying to get my Dad up because tomorrow was my birthday. My sister was one year old, so she was crying and my Mom got her and put her on the bed. My Mom didn't want to wake me because they were going to wrap my presents. Then it happened.
My Dad got up and hit my Mom, then hit her again. By then, my brother and me were awake. My brother knew what was happening because it happened before. The worse thing was my sister was on the bed watching what was happening.
My brother blocked my Dad, and was hit repeatedly. I ran for the phone and when my Dad saw me, he stopped hitting my brother and went for me. Then my brother blocked him while I called 911.
In about ten - fifteen minutes the cops were knocking on the door. At first my Dad convinced them I called just to get him in trouble, but I led them beck to my mom and showed them the marks on Mom, and told them that my sister was on the bed when it happened.
I got their attention and my Dad was charged with battery and showing a young child wrong conduct. He was in Jail for two years because my Mom wouldn't bail him out.
Thank you for listening to my deep dark secret. Good Bye!
Mom's telling of the same event:
It was actually three months after his birthday that we were getting ready to go out to our favorite Chinese restaurant for the dinner buffet. Going out as a family to dinner in a restaurant was something we had only done a few times and everyone was dressing excitedly. I had finished dressing the baby and she was sitting in the middle of our kings size waterbed playing with some toys as her Dad and I got dressed. There had been a leak in one of the closets in our room and the boxes stored in the bottom were stacked around our bedroom making it an unstable maze. The tension between my husband and myself was still high from a beating he had given me several weeks earlier and I was still limping from the deep tissue damage he had done to my left leg and thigh kicking me. My face was still slightly puffy, but nothing that my makeup couldn't cover.
I didn't want to go out at all. I was afraid to spend the money out when I could cook a cheaper meal right there at home. He had just got back to work a few weeks earlier and we still had bills out standing. I should have known better than to open my mouth and try to talk him out of going. Yet there I was harping at him about needing to save every dime we could for the next time he decided to take a week or two off from working and lay around the house. I should have known better. He was sitting on the edge of the bed putting his socks on when I tried to slide between him and the boxes to get a dress from the closet. I knew better than to touch him when he was acting like this so I was almost tip toe as I stepped past him and lost my balance. Instinctively I reached out and grabbed his shoulder to keep from falling into him completely and when I saw the look on his face my heart frozen in my chest.
I tried to regain my balance and turn to run from him, but the stacks of boxes along the end of the bed impeded my way. I careened into the wall where he caught me by my hair and began to pummel me with his fist, raining blows down on my bad shoulder and ear. Both of my sons heard my screams and came into the room just as my daughter began to cry on the bed. My eldest son, 15 at the time, but a healthy six footer began to yell at him that he was no man to hit on a woman, pushing him away from me.
My youngest boy turned and ran from the room as his father launched himself at his brother slamming him against the far wall from me. I knew my husband hated my son and the rage in my first born at this man, not even his flesh and blood father, but the one he had prayed for all his life, erupted as he screamed at him.
"You’re a wuss! Nothing but a woman beating wuss! Hit me! Come one, I'm just a kid, go ahead and beat on me." Right into his face he screamed, the veins standing out in his neck as his face went scarlet. I was terrified. I knew my husband and knew he would beat the boy to a pulp and then turn on me. He would and could kill the boy with his bare hands. I had no choice but to jump into the middle of them and start pushing my son away, towards the door of the bedroom. My husband hitting me, trying to shove me out of the way in his rage at my son.
It was then that my little trooper came around the corner with the phone in one hand and the receiver in the other, the cord trailing behind him. Tears streaming down his face as he yelled at all of us that he had called the police, to stop. The word police broke through to my husband as he looked past me and saw his son standing there, and he shoved himself away from us and headed into the bathroom. Not before he shook his finger at my eldest and told him that this was not over between them.
My little hero had not called the police, but instead had called his grandma who lived only 20 minutes away. Telling her she needed to come over and stop Daddy from hitting on Mom and his brother before he had broke down crying. Grandma told me later that it was his idea to walk down the hall with the phone and tell his dad to stop. When I had first taken the phone from my son to talk to her, I had wanted to hang up and call the police. I told her that I had enough, I was tired of it, crying hysterical. Calmly Grandma had talked me out of calling the police by reminding me that I had a baby and two other children to provide for if I did send him to jail. She knew they would lock him up if they saw the still black bruises she had seen down the left side of my body. She reminded me that I was still recovering from the cancer and surgeries and they wouldn't be able to help me financially.
Her final bit of advice was to do like she had and move out of the bedroom and stay away from him when he was in a mood. It had been what she had done all her life with my husband's father
