(image source: google.com/images)
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Once the dispatcher answered the call, Susan was transferred to speak to another person.
After explaining what she wanted, to be able to go to the shelter, the officer on the line said they would dispatch a squad car to her mother’s house to make a report and then transport her to the Woman’s Shelter.
While Susan waited for the next nerve wracking 20 minutes, since it was not an emergency they seemed to be taking forever to get there, her father entered the kitchen with a look of mild surprise and a little more than doubt in his eyes.
Susan wasn’t positive but thought she saw traces of disappointment mixed with relief in them.
“Hi dad,” she said as she stood up to hug her father, “are you surprised to see me?”
“Yeah, alive anyway. Welcome home girl!” Susan’s dad was a man of few words unless they were pulled from him in the course of a question and answer conversation. Still, though he said nothing more than that, she was sure that she had hurt him just as much as she had her mom.
Now that was a whole other story there concerning her mother. She had no qualms about saying just how she felt, sometimes with words that were carelessly chosen that left Susan with deep wounds. It was not that she thought her mom meant to do it intentionally, maybe it was just how she was raised. Her mother came from a very large family, 14 children to be exact, and grew up during the end of the depression years.
They raised chickens for eggs and meat, gardened and canned all their own canned goods, bartered and traded, etc. And with all those children, Susan felt sure, living in close quarters, there were probably times that her grandmother was short on patience and time to worry about hurt feelings as well.
After she sat back down at the table, her dad got his cup of coffee fixed and took his seat as well. “So what are doing? You have a game plan? Where are your kids?” He had only seen her two oldest children and, other than a few pictures, not the baby.
Susan proceed to tell him what had happened thus far and what her intentions were. “Sounds like you’ve thought this out. Are you gone for good this time? Sure you won’t go back? “
“No, dad, I won’t go back ever again!,” she answered, “If I did that, I feel certain that you two would see me in a coffin the next time. Jason’s been threatening to kill me for about the last three or four months straight and I believe that he will do it too! He said that he’s just trying to figure out how to do it without getting caught so that he can get ‘all my money’.”
“That bastard!” he replied.
“Robert!” her mother said from the sink where she was standing.
“Well he is!”, he shot back at her with a scowl on his face, “He should have been dead a long time ago.”
At that moment there was a knock on the door. Being more like a rap than a knock, Susan knew instantly that the police had arrived. Her mother went to answer it. She was grateful that the conversation had taken up her waiting time and she had not had to think of what she was about to do.
It was going to take every ounce of inner-strength that she could muster to “betray” Jason. It was something that he had drilled into her head for 15 years, loyalty – “nothing that goes on in the home is ever told outside of it” was like the mantra of her life with him.
An officer walked into the kitchen with her mother and began by saying, “What can I do for you? Dispatch said that you wanted to make a report of domestic violence and go to the shelter?”
She could barely get the words out, “Yes…”
Teresa Marie 1/23/12 ©
- Where Did I Go? – Part Three (terri0729.wordpress.com)
- Where Did I Go? – Part Two (terri0729.wordpress.com)
- Where Did I Go? – Part One (terri0729.wordpress.com)
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