Everyone in Wheeler, New Mexico, thinks Joanna leads the perfect life: the quiet, contented housewife of a dashing deputy sheriff, raising a beautiful young daughter, Laurel. But Joanna’s reality is nothing like her facade. Behind closed doors, she lives in constant fear of her husband. She’s been trapped for so long, escape seems impossible—until a stranger offers her the help she needs to flee....
On the run, Joanna and Laurel stumble upon the small town of Morro, a charming and magical village that seems to exist out of time and place. There a farmer and his wife offer her sanctuary, and soon, between the comfort of her new home and blossoming friendships, Joanna’s soul begins to heal, easing the wounds of a decade of abuse.
But her past—and her husband—aren’t so easy to escape. Unwilling to live in fear any longer, Joanna must summon a strength she never knew she had to fight back and forge a new life for her daughter and herself....
CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED
Everyone in Wheeler, New Mexico, thinks Joanna leads the perfect life: the quiet, contented housewife of a dashing deputy sheriff, raising a beautiful young daughter, Laurel. But Joanna’s reality is nothing like her facade. Behind closed doors, she lives in constant fear of her husband. She’s been trapped for so long, escape seems impossible—until a stranger offers her the help she needs to flee....
On the run, Joanna and Laurel stumble upon the small town of Morro, a charming and magical village that seems to exist out of time and place. There a farmer and his wife offer her sanctuary, and soon, between the comfort of her new home and blossoming friendships, Joanna’s soul begins to heal, easing the wounds of a decade of abuse.
But her past—and her husband—aren’t so easy to escape. Unwilling to live in fear any longer, Joanna must summon a strength she never knew she had to fight back and forge a new life for her daughter and herself....
CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED
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Overview
Everyone in Wheeler, New Mexico, thinks Joanna leads the perfect life: the quiet, contented housewife of a dashing deputy sheriff, raising a beautiful young daughter, Laurel. But Joanna’s reality is nothing like her facade. Behind closed doors, she lives in constant fear of her husband. She’s been trapped for so long, escape seems impossible—until a stranger offers her the help she needs to flee....
On the run, Joanna and Laurel stumble upon the small town of Morro, a charming and magical village that seems to exist out of time and place. There a farmer and his wife offer her sanctuary, and soon, between the comfort of her new home and blossoming friendships, Joanna’s soul begins to heal, easing the wounds of a decade of abuse.
But her past—and her husband—aren’t so easy to escape. Unwilling to live in fear any longer, Joanna must summon a strength she never knew she had to fight back and forge a new life for her daughter and herself....
CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780451473370 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/02/2015 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
To every woman with a story of brokenness.
Acknowledgments
Part I
It’s difficult to discern the blessing in the midst of brokenness.
—Charles F. Stanley
January 1
My husband tells me I look washed up. Ill favored, he says, like old bathwater circling the drain. If my clothes weren’t there to hold me together, he says, I’d flush all away. He tells me these things and worse as often as he can, till there are times I start to believe him and I can feel my mind start to dissolve into empty air.
There’s no challenging him when he gets like this. No logic will do. No defense. I tried in the past, but no more. Back when I was myself—when I was Joanna, and not the creature I’ve become at Jim’s hands—I would have challenged him. Stood up to him. If there were any speck of that Joanna left now, she would at least tell him he had his similes all wrong. That I am not like the water, but the stone it crashes against, worried over and over by the waves till there’s nothing left but to yield, worn down to surrendered surfaces. That every time I cry, more of me washes away.
This is all to Jim’s purpose—the unmaking of me. He’s like a potter at his wheel, pounding the wet clay to a malleable lump, then building it back up to a form he thinks he might like. Except there is no form of me that could please his eye. He’s tried so many, you would think that surely one would have won him by now. Soothed the beast.
In the early years, I was pliant enough. I was young and a pure fool. I thought that was love, and one of the compromises of marriage. I didn’t understand then that for Jim the objective is not creation. It’s not building a thing up from nothing into something pleasing. What pleases him most is the moment when he can pound it back again into something unrecognizable.
I understand what’s happening—I do—but it’s all abstraction at this point. I am not stupid. Or, I wasn’t always. In high school I was smart, and pretty enough. I completed nearly two years of college in Albuquerque before I left to run away with Jim, a deputy sheriff from McGill County who swept me off my feet with his uniform and bad-boy grin.
In the beginning, it was a few insults or busted dinner plates if his temper kicked up after a hard day. He would always make it up to me with a box of candy or flowers from the grocery store. The first time he raised a welt, he drove to the store for a bag of ice chips, packed some in a towel and held it gently against my face. And when he looked at me, I believed I could see tenderness in his eyes. Regret. And things would be wonderful for a while, as if he were setting out to win me all over again. I told myself this was what they meant when they said marriage is hard work. I had no evidence otherwise.
A part of me knew better. Knew about the cycle of batterer and battered. And she was right there, sitting on my shoulder, screaming in my ear. Because she knew this wasn’t a cycle at all but a spiral, gyring down to a point of no return.
But I wasn’t listening. Wouldn’t listen. All mounting evidence to the contrary, I believed Jim truly loved me. That I loved him. Sometimes people are that foolish.
I bought books on passive aggression and wondered what I could do to make our life together better because I loved him so. The first time he backhanded me, he wept real tears and swore it would never happen again. I believed that, too, and bought books on anger management.
When I was two months’ pregnant, one of his friends winked at me when we told him the news. After he left, Jim accused me of flirting. He called me a whore and punched me hard in the stomach. It doubled me over and choked the breath out of me till I threw up. Two days later, I started to bleed. By the time Jim finally took me to the clinic—the next county over, where no one knew us—I was hemorrhaging blood and tissue. The doctor glanced at the purple bruise on my abdomen and diagnosed a spontaneous abortion. He scraped what was left of the fetus from my womb and offered to run tests to see whether it had been a boy or a girl, and whether there was some medical reason for the miscarriage.
I told him no. In my heart I knew the baby had been a boy. I’d already picked a name for him. And the reason he had to be purged out of me was standing at my shoulder as I lay on the exam table, silent and watchful and coiled.
That was years ago, before the spiral constricted to a noose. I have a daughter now. Laurel—six years old and beautiful. Eyes like cool green quartz and honey blond hair. Clever and sweet and quick to love. Jim has never laid a hand on her—I’ve prevented that, at least. When his temper starts to kick in, I scoop her up quickly and bundle her off to her room, pop in her earbuds and turn on babbling, happy music. I tell myself as I shut her bedroom door that the panic in her pale face isn’t hers, but my own projection. That it will soon be over. That bruises heal and the scars barely show. That it will be all right. It will be all right. It will be all right.
January 7
Jim has started probation—ninety days for disorderly conduct, unsupervised. Before that, ten days in lockup that were supposed to make an impression. That was the idea, at least. But old habits—they do die hard.
He’s working second shift now, which is not to his liking. Or mine. It throws us together during the day, when Laurel is at school and there’s nothing to distract him. He tells me if the eggs are too runny, the bacon too dry, the coffee too bitter. He watches while I wash the breakfast dishes to make sure they’re properly cleaned and towel dried. Sometimes he criticizes the pace, but if I’m slow it’s because I’m deliberate. Two years ago a wet plate slipped from my hands and broke on the floor. He called me butterfingers and twisted my pinkie till it snapped. It was a clean break, he said, and would heal on its own. It did, but the knuckle is misshapen and won’t bend anymore.
I clean the house exactly the same way every day. I time myself when I vacuum each rug. I clean the dishes in the same order, with glasses and utensils first and heavy pans last. I count every sweep of the sponge mop. I spray polish on the same corners of the kitchen table, in the same order, before I fold a cloth four times and buff the wood to a streakless, lemony shine. It doesn’t mean he won’t find some fault—the rules are fickle—but it lessens the likelihood.
Around two p.m., after he showers and pulls on his freshly laundered uniform, slings his Sam Browne belt around his shoulder and holsters his Glock 22, I brace as he kisses me good-bye on the cheek. When the door shuts behind him and his Expedition backs out of the drive, my muscles finally begin to unknot. Sometimes they twitch as they do. Sometimes I cry.
It wasn’t always like this. In the beginning I was content to be a homemaker, even if I felt like a throwback. And Jim seemed pleased with my efforts, if not always my results. I learned quickly he was a traditionalist—each gender in its place. At the time I thought it was quaint, not fusty. I called him a Neanderthal once, and he laughed. I would never call him that now. Not to his face.
He had his moods, and with experience I could sense them cooking up. First came the distracted look; then he’d pull into himself. His muscles would grow rigid, like rubber bands stretched too tight, his fists clenching and unclenching like claws. I’d rub his shoulders, his neck, his back, and he’d be grateful. He’d pull through to the other side.
But over time the black moods stretched longer and longer, the respites shorter and shorter. Something was rotting him from the inside out, like an infection. The man I’d married seemed to be corroding right in front of me.
I learned not to touch him unless he initiated it. If I so much as brushed against him, even by accident, he’d hiss and pull away as if my flesh burned.
* * *
I met Jim West ten years ago on a grassy field one October morning just as the sun crested the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque and shot a bolt of light onto his dark mahogany hair, rimming it with silver. He was tall and powerfully built, with sweeping dark brows, a Roman nose, cheeks ruddy from the cold and the barest stubble. I thought he was beautiful. It was the first day of the annual Balloon Fiesta, and Jim was tugging hard on a half acre of multicolored nylon, laying it out flat on the frosty ground. He was volunteering on a hot-air balloon crew preparing for the Mass Ascension. All around were a hundred other crews, a hundred other bright balloons in various stages of lift, sucking in air, staggering up and up like some great amorphous herd struggling to its feet.
Jim planted himself in the throat of the balloon envelope, spread eagle, arms wide like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, holding it open so a massive fan could blow air inside. The balloon streaming behind him was bucking as it inhaled, and Jim trembled and frowned with the cold and the effort. His dark eyes swept the crowd—many of us students from the university—and when they lit on me, they stopped. His frown lifted. He shot me the lopsided grin I hadn’t yet learned to hate, and shouted something I couldn’t make out over the noise of the fans and the gas burners springing to life, belching jets of fire all around us.
I shook my head. “What?”
Jim shouted something else unintelligible. I shook my head once more and pointed to my ears. I shrugged in an exaggerated Oh, well, and Jim nodded. Then he mouthed slowly and distinctly, Don’t . . . go . . . away.
I turned to my friend Terri, who leaned into me with a giggle. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “He’s gorgeous.”
“Oh, my God,” I groaned back.
A thrill shot from my curling toes to my blushing face, and suddenly I knew how the balloons felt—galvanized by oxygen and fire, bucking skyward despite themselves. It was a mystery to me why such a man would single me out—pretty enough, I guess, but hardly the type to stop a guy in his tracks. Of the two of us, it was Terri, the saucy, leggy blonde with the air of confidence, the guys would go for.
For a half hour or so, Jim toiled away, helping tie down the parachute vent, spotting the man at the propane burner as it spat flames inside the envelope, heating the air till ever so slowly the balloon swelled and ascended, pulling hard at the wicker basket still roped to the earth.
When the basket was unloosed and it lifted off at last, all eyes followed it as it climbed the atmosphere. Or so I thought. I glanced over at Jim and his eyes were fastened on me, strangely solemn. He strode over. “Let’s go,” he said, and held out his hand.
Gorgeous or not, he was a stranger. In an instant, the voice of my mother—jaded by divorce and decades of bad choices—flooded my head. Warnings about the wickedness of men . . . how they love you and leave you bitter and broken. But daughters seldom use their own mothers as object lessons, do they? This man who took my breath away was holding out his hand to me. Without a word, I took it.
I believed in love at first sight then.
I believed in fate.
February 15
Yesterday, Laurel asked about Tinkerbell again. Jim was there, and looked over at me curiously. I turned toward the stove to hide my face. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. I pulled in a ragged breath and said as lightly as I could:
“Tinkerbell ran away, sweetie. You know that.”
Tinkerbell was a little mixed-breed dog that showed up at our door last Valentine’s Day—rheumy eyed, scrawny, riddled with fleas. Laurel went ahead and gave her a name before I had a chance to warn her we could never keep a sick stray. Jim would sooner shoot it, put it out of its misery, but I didn’t tell her that, either. I had picked up the phone to call county animal control when I watched Laurel pull the dog onto her lap and stroke its head. “Don’t worry, Tinkerbell,” she said softly. “We’ll love you now.”
If the dog didn’t understand the words, it understood the kindness behind them. It sank its head into the crook of Laurel’s arm and didn’t just sigh—it moaned.
I put the phone down.
We hid Tinkerbell in the woodshed and fed her till she looked less raggedy. Filled out, rested, bathed and brushed, she was a beautiful dog, with a caramel coat and a white ruff, a tail like a fox, her soft almond eyes lined with dark, trailing streaks like Cleopatra. When she was healthy enough, we presented her to Jim. I suggested she’d make a fine gift for Laurel’s upcoming birthday, less than a month away.
Jim was in a good mood that day. He paused and studied Tinkerbell, who stood quietly, almost expectantly, as if she knew what was at stake. Laurel stood at my side, just as still, just as expectant, pressing her face hard against my hand.
The risk here, it occurred to me, was in appearing to want something too much. This gives denial irresistible power.
So I shrugged. “We can always give her away, if you want.”
Jim’s lips twitched, his eyes narrowed, and my heart sank. Manipulation didn’t work with him.
“You want her, Laurel?” he asked at last, breaking out that awful grin. “Well, okay, then. Happy birthday, baby.”
Laurel wriggled with pleasure and beamed up at me. She went to Jim and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.”
I was confused, but only for a moment.
Then I understood.
Jim had one more thing now—one more thing that mattered—to snatch away from me anytime he chose, quick as a heartbeat.
Two weeks before Christmas, just before Jim was jailed to serve ten days for disorderly conduct, he did.
Laurel sits on the porch sometimes, waiting for Tinkerbell to come home again. Sometimes she calls her name over and over.
“Do you think she misses us?” she asked yesterday.
Jim ruffled her hair playfully. “I bet she’d rather be here with you, baby, than where she is right now.”
Every Valentine’s Day, Jim gives me a heart-shaped box of fine chocolates that, if I ate them, would turn to ash on my tongue. When he touches me, my blood runs so cold I marvel it doesn’t freeze to ice in my veins.
February 29
Snow fell last night, dusting the junipers in the yard, the pickets on the fence, the thorny bougainvillea bushes under the front windows, the woodshed’s red tin roof. Jim was working his shift, so I bundled Laurel in her parka and mud boots and we danced in the field next to the house, twirling till we were tipsy, catching snowflakes on our tongues, our hair, our cheeks. The sky was black as a peppercorn.
This morning, Jim noticed I took longer at the dishes than I should have, from staring out the kitchen window at the red sandstone mesas still layered with unbroken snow, like icing on red velvet cake.
By noon the sun came out and melted it all away.
March 2
This evening after I put Laurel to bed, I opened the small storage space under the stairs and removed the boxes of Christmas decorations and summer clothing, the beautiful linen shade from the antique lamp that Jim had smashed against a wall, files of legal paperwork for our mortgage and vehicle loan, tax documents. Where the boxes had been stacked, I took a screwdriver and pried up a loose floor plank. In the cubby space beneath is an old tea tin where I keep my Life Before Jim.
Jim doesn’t like to be reminded that I had a Life Before. Or, rather, he doesn’t like me to remember a time when I had behaviors and ideas uncensored by him. A time when I wrote poetry, and even published a few poems in small regional literary magazines. When I had friends, family. A part-time job writing at the university’s public information office. Ambitions. Expectations. Thoughts.
He thinks he’s hacked it all away—good wood lopped off a living tree—and he has.
All but one.
My German grandmother, my Oma, who lost her father to the Nazi purge of intellectuals, used to recite a line from an old protest song:
Die Gedanken sind frei.
Thoughts are free.
No man can know them, the song goes. No hunter can shoot them. The darkest dungeon is futile, for my thoughts tear all gates and walls asunder.
In my tea tin I keep my first-place certificate from a high school poetry contest, the clinic receipt from the baby I lost nine years ago, a letter my mother wrote before she passed from cancer, and a note scrawled on a slip of paper: Run, girl, run.
It’s not much of an insurrection, I know. But it’s my only evidence of a Life Before, and I cling to it.
By the time Jim moved me to Wheeler, I had already banished Terri from my life. Just after I met Jim, as he began insinuating himself into every waking hour—the classes I took, the books I read, the people I hung with—Terri’s enthusiasm for him waned.
“Girl, are you sure about him?” she’d ask.
I was troubled that she doubted his intentions. Or my judgment.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.
“Jo, he’s calling you all day. He wants to know where you are, who you’re with. He’s tracking you.”
But I’d never had a serious boyfriend before Jim. My role models for romance were Byron, the Brownings, Yeats and a manic-depressive mother who cycled through the wrong men all her life. What I saw in Jim was passion and commitment. He took me on picnics in the Sandias. We rode the tram to the peak, and he proposed on the observation deck. We spent our first weekend together in a bed-and-breakfast in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe, watching the sunrise from our bedroom window. I felt caught up in a whirlwind, breathless, but happy to let it have its way with me.
Still, when he urged me to drop a study group for semester finals so we could spend even more time together, I balked. It was our first argument. There wouldn’t be many more. He told me he cared for me, wanted to be with me, thought I felt the same. Disappointment infused every syllable.
I felt cornered. I blurted, “Terri thinks we spend too much time together already.”
Jim’s face went blank. For several seconds he didn’t speak. Then, “She said that?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well,” Jim said quietly, “I didn’t want to tell you this, but there’s more to Terri than you realize. Remember when we met? Terri called me a few days later. She said she thought we should get together sometime. I told her I was interested in you, and that was the end of it.”
He was studying me as he spoke.
“I chalked it up to a misunderstanding on her part. She’s never called since. I didn’t want you to think less of her.”
My heart began to thud against my rib cage. Blood pulsed in my ears. Terri, the sleek golden girl who excelled at everything she ever tried her hand at, who could have any man she wanted—did she want mine? Was she looking out for me, or just sowing seeds of doubt to clear a path for herself?
“I thought you trusted me. Trusted us.” Jim shook his head sadly. “I don’t want to break up with you over this.”
There must be a moment when every animal caught in a leg trap runs through the minutes, the seconds, before the coil springs. Before the swing and snap of hard metal on bone. The reversible moment—the one it would take back if only it could.
Winter break was coming up, and Terri was heading home to Boston. We had been best friends since the first day of college, but suddenly she seemed like a stranger to me. By the time she returned, Jim and I were engaged and I had dropped out of school. I wouldn’t take her calls anymore or return her messages. After a while, the calls stopped.
Just before the wedding, I returned home to my apartment to find a message on a slip of paper wedged in the doorjamb:
Run, girl, run.
But the reversible moment was gone.
March 6
We live just outside Wheeler, a city of twenty thousand bordering the Navajo reservation. The town is roughly equal parts Caucasian, Hispanic and Indian—not just Navajo, but Zuni and Hopi, too. It’s been described as a down-and-dirty sort of place. Billboards crowd the two interstates that run into town and out again. Signs are always advertising half-off sales on Indian jewelry—mostly questionable grades of turquoise and silver crafted into belts, earrings and squash blossom necklaces, but also smatterings of other things, like tiger’s eye cabochons set in thick rings and looping strands of red branch coral. The town is notorious for its saturation of bars, liquor stores and plasma donation centers. Unless you live there, or need gas or a night’s sleep, or you’re in the market for souvenirs of Indian Country, it’s more of a drive-through than a destination.
The McGill County sheriff’s office is headquartered in Wheeler, but its jurisdiction actually lies outside the city limits—about five thousand square miles of high desert. The rugged sandstone mesas that make up the northern horizon begin about twenty miles east, and they are something to behold, rising up out of the earth in a sloping, unbroken line, bloodred and striated.
In any given year, the county might see two murders and a half dozen rapes. I know, because Jim likes to tell me, studying my face as he recounts the details, which are far more lurid than what makes it into a deputy’s report. A dozen arsons, two dozen stolen cars. Four hundred people will drive drunk. Thirty will go missing, and some will never be seen again. Three hundred will be assaulted—at least, those are the ones that make their way into a report. These usually consist of brawls between men who’ve had a few too many, or jealous fights over a girl, or squabbles between neighbors. Less often, young men will jump a stranger for his wallet or whatever contents of his car they can easily pawn. And some are what are commonly known as domestic disputes.
If you wonder why I never became a statistic with the sheriff’s office, it wasn’t for lack of trying, and not just on Jim’s part. If you’ve never been in my shoes, you likely could never understand. Ten years ago, I couldn’t have. The closest metaphor I know is the one about the boiling frog: Put a frog in a pot of boiling water, and he will jump out at once. But put him in a pot of cold water and turn up the heat by degrees, and he’ll cook to death before he realizes it.
After the slap comes the fist. After the black eye, the split lip. The punch that caused me to miscarry was a bad one. After that, came the fear: That I did not know this man. That I didn’t know myself. That he could seriously hurt me. That he might even kill me. That there was no one to turn to, so thoroughly had he separated me from familiar people and places. He had moved me into his world where he was an authority, an officer of the law, and I was the outsider, an unknown quantity.
Then there was the shame. That somehow I had caused this. That somehow I deserved this. That this was, as he so often told me, my fault. If only I were smarter or prettier, took better care of the house, were more cheerful. If only I had salted the beans right, or hadn’t left the toothpaste tube facedown instead of faceup.
In point of fact, when I finally felt the water start to boil, I did try to get help. But Jim was ready. It happened the first time he cracked one of my ribs, and I dialed 911. He didn’t stop me. This was an object lesson, only I didn’t know it. The deputy who knocked on the door was a longtime fishing buddy who still had one of Jim’s favorite trout spinners in his own tackle box at home. By the time the deputy left the house, he and Jim had plans that Sunday for Clearwater Lake.
Jim waved the man out of the driveway, came inside and closed the door. I was leaning against the china cabinet, holding my side. Laurel was a toddler then, and wailing in her crib. It hurt so bad to bend that I couldn’t pick her up. Jim came at me so fast I thought he intended to ram right through me. I shuffled back against the wall. He braced one broad hand against the doorjamb, and with the other shoved hard against the china cabinet. It toppled over and crashed to the floor, shattering our wedding set to bits, scattering eggshell porcelain shards from one end of the room to the other.
Jim was red with rage, snorting like a bull. “You stupid bitch,” he said, panting hard. “Clean this up.”
He stepped toward me again, this time more slowly. His hand came up and I winced in anticipation, but he only cupped my cheek in his palm, stroking my skin. When he spoke again, the pitch of his voice was changed utterly—low and gentle, like a caress.
“And if you ever call them again, I swear to Christ I will cut your fucking fingers off before they even get here.”
* * *
After that, you feel the heat, but not the burn. After that, you get on your knees and pick up the pieces, grateful you can still do that much. And after that, you lean over your daughter’s crib no matter how much it hurts and pick her up and hold her so tight you think you’ll smother both of you.
March 10
Laurel turned seven yesterday, and it was a good day. Jim was off and had picked up presents—a dress with ruffles and matching shoes, a DVD of Sleeping Beauty and a stuffed rabbit with a pink bow around its neck holding a heart-shaped pillow that read, Daddy’s Girl. He’d suggested a coconut cake, even though Laurel’s favorite is chocolate. I made chocolate, but covered it with coconut icing.
Laurel doesn’t like ruffles, either, or matching sets of clothing. Left to herself, she’ll pair pink stripes with purple polka dots and top it with a yellow sunhat freckled with red daisies. It will look like she’s pulled on whatever has risen to the top of the laundry basket, but in fact she will spend a half hour in careful consideration of this piece with that before making her final decision. Jim jokes that she must be color-blind. He calls it “clownwear,” and if he’s home to see it, he makes her change. But I let her mix and match as she pleases, because she says she is a rainbow and doesn’t want any color to feel left out.
March 13
Jim’s probation has ended. Three months of good behavior, ten days served, an official reprimand and a misdemeanor conviction that a career man can overcome with enough time and a little effort. That was the sheriff’s encouraging speech when he met with Jim and me this morning to, as he says, close the book on an unfortunate incident.
As far as he knew, we had merely argued. And I, being foolish, had taken the stairs too fast and slipped. And if it was anything more serious than this, well, he was a big believer in the healing power of time.
“I’ve known you two for—how long? I never met a nicer couple,” he said. “You’re young; you can get beyond this. You’ve got a daughter—Laura? Think of her. Go home. Get your family back. Forget it ever happened.” He wagged his finger at Jim and laughed. “But don’t ever let it happen again, Corporal.”
Jim grinned. “No, sir. It won’t.”
As jail time goes, Jim had it easy. He was kept in a separate cell to protect him from other prisoners, some of whom he might have arrested. His buddies brought him men’s magazines to pass the time, and burgers and burritos instead of jailhouse food. They shot the breeze with him and played cards to ease the boredom, the cell door open for their visits. It might as well have been an extended sleepover. Jim joked with them, lost good-naturedly at poker, winked when they delivered the magazines.
When he was finally released . . .
No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. I can’t tell it yet.
What I can say is that it wasn’t my fault Jim went to jail—it was the doctor in the clinic across the Arizona state line that Jim took me to in case it was something serious. Wheeler is only a few miles from the border.
I can’t remember what set him off this time—some trouble at work, most likely, that carried over. And it was mid-November, and Jim never does well during the holidays. But this time I was vomiting blood, and feverish. I was afraid I was bleeding inside, and convinced him to take me to a doctor. I swore I wouldn’t say anything.
To all appearances, Jim was the concerned and loving husband, holding me up as he walked me through the doors of the clinic. He was near tears as he explained he’d come home to find me half conscious at the base of the stairs, our little daughter frantic, trying to rouse her mother. The nurses seemed as concerned for his welfare as for mine.
But the clinic doctor was young, fresh off a hospital residency in Phoenix and clearly not stupid. He could tell a bad beating from a fall. He called the local police department, which referred it back to McGill County for investigation as suspected domestic assault.
The doctor had me admitted to the small regional hospital, where I stayed for two days. During that time, he visited me to check on my progress, and to press for details.
I could tell he meant well. He asked what happened to my bent pinkie. How I came by the scar that bisects my left eyebrow. The scalding burn on my back. He said he would send someone from the local domestic violence center to speak with me, if I wished.
I didn’t wish anything of the sort. He was young and earnest. To men like him, illness and injury are the enemy, and they are soldiers in some noble cause. I felt like he was flaying me alive.
“You’re safe here,” the doctor said.
I stared at him. He was a fool.
“Where’s my daughter?” It was not a question.
Jim didn’t visit me—he wasn’t allowed to visit while the report was under investigation. He was put on paid leave from the sheriff’s office, so he stayed in our house outside Wheeler, putting Laurel on the school bus every morning, waiting for her when she got home again every afternoon.
When I was released from the hospital, I returned home and Jim moved in with a buddy and his family. They commiserated over what was clearly a misunderstanding. A bad patch in a good marriage.
An assistant county attorney met with me once. She came to the door in heels and a tailored skirt suit that showed lots of shapely leg. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She wore dark-rimmed glasses, but only for effect. They made her look like a college student. I’d never met her, but knew of her—police officers and officers of the court are members of the same team. And cops gossip like schoolgirls.
Her name was Alicia and she was full of swagger, lugging an expensive briefcase, a cell phone clipped to her belt. She couldn’t have looked more out of place in Wheeler than if she’d parachuted in from the moon. If I’d had the smallest sliver of hope for rescue, which I didn’t, Alicia dashed it just by showing up.
We sat at the kitchen table, the better for her to take notes. I poured her a cup of coffee that she didn’t drink and set out a plate of oatmeal cookies that she didn’t touch. I fed her the story Jim had made up, and she saw right through it. Just like the doctor in Arizona, Alicia pressed for “the truth,” as if it were something tangible you could serve up on demand, like those cookies.
“According to the medical report, your injuries are consistent with a beating,” Alicia snapped, impatient, glaring at me over her dark rims. “We can’t do anything unless you help us. He’ll get away with it. Is that what you want?”
I was calmer than I thought I’d be. I shook my head. “He already has.”
Alicia’s penetrating stare bordered on disgust. She slapped her folder closed and stood up. I was surprised—she had a reputation as a terrier, and I thought she’d put up more of a fight.
“Women like you—” she muttered under her breath, shoving her folder in her briefcase.
Something snapped inside. I stood up, too, heat rushing to my face.
“And women like you, Alicia,” I said through clenched teeth.
She froze for a second, studying me. “What are you talking about?”
“You really should be more careful. When your boyfriend, Bobby, knocks you around, don’t call Escobar at the station house to cry on his shoulder. The man can’t keep a secret. And, my God, you should know it’s a recorded line.”
Her pretty face turned scarlet. Later, I would regret being so blunt, so mean. But caught up in the moment, I couldn’t stop myself. Laying into her felt electrifying, like busting loose from a straitjacket, and for the barest second I wondered if this was how Jim felt when he lit into me.
She slammed the front door behind her and we never spoke again. I did see her in court at the hearing for the plea agreement. Without the cooperation of the victim—that would be me—the case was weak. Jim’s defense attorney and Alicia worked out a deal: if he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, the felony assault charge would be dropped and he’d serve minimal time. A felony conviction was too great a risk for Jim—it would mean the end of his police career, not to mention a lengthy jail sentence.
The judge agreed. It took all of two minutes.
To this day, if anyone should ask—and no one ever does—I would tell them the same thing I told everyone else: I got upset that day, slipped and tumbled down the stairs. I would swear it on any Bible put in front of me.
I would swear it because Jim wants it that way.
What they don’t know is what happened the same afternoon that Alicia stalked out of our house.
After she left, I opened the back door to call Tinkerbell in from the yard. It was chilly, and after a run she liked to curl up on her blanket by the kitchen stove. Usually she was ready and waiting, but not that day. I called again and again, listening for her yippy bark, expecting to see her fox tail fly around the corner. But there was only uneasy silence.
I stepped outside, and that was when I saw Jim’s Expedition parked to the side of the road a short way from the house. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t make out if there was anyone sitting inside. I scanned the yard again, panic rising.
That was when I saw Jim.
He was standing next to the shed, watching me. It was a bloodless stare, and it stopped me cold. I stood there transfixed, unable to speak or move. Or turn and run.
He took a slow step toward me, then another. All the while his eyes fixed on me, pinning me like an insect to a mounting board. Then he stopped. I noticed then he was carrying something in his arms. His hand moved over it, like a caress. It whimpered. It was Tinkerbell.
I opened my dry mouth, but it took several tries before I could manage words.
“Jim, you’re not supposed to be here.”
He smiled—but that, too, was bloodless.
“Now, that’s not very nice, is it, girl?” he baby-talked playfully in the dog’s ear. “Not a ‘Hello,’ not a ‘How are you?’” He looked at me and sighed. “Just trying to get rid of me as fast as she can.”
“How . . . how are you, Jim?” I stuttered, struggling to sound wifely and concerned. “Are you eating well?”
He laughed softly.
“Come here.”
“We’re not supposed to talk.”
“Come here.”
“Laurel will be home from school soon.”
“We’ll be done by then. Come here.”
His voice was pitched so pleasant, so light, he might have been talking about the weather. I started to shake.
I moved toward him. When I was close enough, he told me to stop. He turned to the shed, opened the door and gently dropped the dog inside. Then he closed the door again.
I could have bolted then, but to what purpose? Jim was faster, stronger, cleverer. And at that moment, I didn’t trust my legs to hold me up, much less handle a footrace.
Before he returned, he grabbed something that was leaning against the shed. I hadn’t noticed it until then. It was a shovel—the one with the spear-headed steel blade he’d bought last summer when he needed to cut through the roots of a dead cottonwood tree. It still had the brand sticker on it: When a regular shovel won’t do the job.
When he came back, he offered it to me. I shrank from him and shook my head.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Go on. Take it.”
The shovel was heavier than I’d expected, or maybe I wasn’t as strong. It weighted my arm and I had to grasp it with both hands.
“Follow me,” he said.
He led me behind the shed, just short of the six-foot wooden fence that lined the rear and sides of the property. He searched the ground for a moment, considering, as if he were picking out a likely spot to plant rosebushes. Then he pointed.
“There,” he said.
“Jim . . . I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand, idiot? You got a shovel. Use it.”
His voice was mild, his mouth quirked in what might have passed for a smile. But his stare was like a knife. Like a spear-headed steel blade that would have gladly cut me in two if only it could.
I didn’t dare disobey. I took a deep breath and stabbed the shovel in the dirt. I set my foot on the shoulder of the blade and kicked. I began to dig.
The tool was built for plowing through rough ground with the least resistance. Spear it in, kick the blade deep, carve out wedge after wedge of red earth. It was easier work than I would have thought, except for one thing: I wasn’t sure what I was digging.
But I had an idea.
A ragged hole was getting carved out, the pile of fresh dirt along the edge growing bigger, when Jim dragged his foot along the ground, drawing invisible lines.
“Here to here,” he said.
I straightened and wiped the sweat from my face with my forearm. I leaned on the shovel handle, panting, and considered the perimeter he’d just marked off.
A rectangle. Just big enough to hold a grown woman, maybe, if her arms and legs were tucked tight.
A grave.
One wedge of earth at a time.
Jim had pulled a bare stem from the bougainvillea bush near the fence and was twirling it aimlessly in his fingers.
“You aren’t done yet,” he said.
I could hear scratching coming from inside the shed. Tinkerbell was pawing at the door, anxious to escape. I turned in desperation toward the wood fence that was boxing me in. With Jim. With no way out. I knew how the dog felt.
“That goddamn hole won’t dig itself,” Jim said mildly. “Ticktock. You want Laurel to see?”
Instinctively, I glanced at my wrist, but I wasn’t wearing my watch. My mind reeled. I could try to stall until the school bus came. A busload of children, a driver—I could dash out and scream for help. Jim wouldn’t dare do anything then, would he? Not in front of witnesses?
No, of course he wouldn’t.
But what he would do was take no chances. The second we heard the rumble of the bus engine, he’d do exactly what he’d come here to do, before I had a chance to run away or make a peep. Before the bus ever got close.
And after the bus had dropped Laurel off, after it had rumbled away again, Jim would still be here, with blood on his hands. And what would happen to her then?
I picked up the shovel and stabbed it back in the dirt. I had a hole to dig, and now there was a deadline.
By the time I’d finished to Jim’s specifications, I was queasy from the effort. I stepped back, leaning against the fence to catch my breath, still grasping the shovel. Jim walked to the edge of the hole and peered in, cocking his head and pursing his lips. It wasn’t awfully deep, but apparently deep enough.
He walked over and wrested the shovel from my grip. I cringed.
“Stay put,” he said.
Then he turned and headed to the front of the shed.
I heard the shed door unlatch, heard it open, heard him mutter to Tinkerbell to stay put, just as he’d ordered me. I heard the door close.
It wasn’t but a few seconds until I heard the whine again . . .
Then nothing.
I pushed myself off the fence and stood frozen in place, still trying to catch my breath. Straining hard to listen.
I heard the shed door again, this time opening. Then Jim rounded the corner, the shovel in one hand, Tinkerbell in the other, toted by the scruff of her neck.
The dog was limp, her head lolling. As I stared at her broken body, an incongruent thought raced through my mind: When a regular shovel won’t do the job.
It wasn’t my grave I’d been digging, but hers.
Jim halted in front of me, the corners of his mouth working like a tic, his eyes bright. “Take it,” he said, holding the body out.
Numbly I gathered the dog in my arms; she was still warm, still soft. I could feel her firm ribs, so familiar. But there was no trace of the familiar thrum of a beating heart.
I looked at Jim, awaiting orders.
“Go on, stupid,” he said. “Dump it in.”
At once I turned and knelt at the hole. I leaned forward and slid her body into it. I arranged the legs, the head, to approximate something natural. I smoothed her white ruff, my hand lingering, but only for a moment. Then I stood up again.
Jim leaned the shovel back against the shed and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Don’t forget to clean this. Use the hose. And oil the blade so it won’t rust.”
He nodded at the dog.
“Now cover that up.”
There was no malice in his voice. No exultation. He sounded like any sane man might.
My legs buckled. I was on my hands and knees when he drove off.
May 18
On Jim’s last day off, he took Laurel and me grocery shopping. He drove us into Wheeler to the Food Land market, and as a family we walked the aisles, Jim holding Laurel by the hand and I pushing the cart. He has lived in this town for thirteen years, since moving here from some town or other in Utah—the exact location keeps changing when he talks about it—and one way or another he knows everybody. They greet him warmly in the produce section or at the meat counter or by the bakery, and he shakes their hands and asks after the family, the kids, chatting about work, the weather, what’s biting right now.
I can tell by their easy banter that they like him. They like us. They don’t like me necessarily, because I am so reserved with them, and so very quiet, so deficient in small talk that I give them nothing of substance to form any real opinion. If pressed, they would probably say there’s nothing about me to actively dislike. But they do like us as a unit.
As often as not, Jim will take us shopping like this. If he knows he’ll be working, and a grocery trip is required, he will make out a list ahead of time and go over the particulars with me so I understand to buy the multigrain bread he likes, for instance, and not the whole wheat. Or the rump roast rather than the round. He will estimate the total cost, including tax, and give me enough cash to cover it. Afterward, he will check the receipt against the change, which he pockets.
Besides the Expedition, we also have a car, an old Toyota compact, which I may use with permission, for approved trips. Before and after his shifts, he writes down the mileage in a small notebook. He alone gases it up, and I know from the fuel gauge that he never puts in more than a quarter tank. He changes the oil himself. Rotates the tires. If it needs servicing, which it rarely does, he has a mechanic friend who does the work on his time off for spare cash.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Hummingbird's Cage"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Tamara Dietrich.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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