of Psychological Health
United States Marine Corps
This is the story of Donald Watkins, the man my mother married when she was seventy years old. He was a Marine, a murderer, and a former mental patient. At first I wondered, How could she marry this man? Today I understand why, because long after his death, I love Donald too.
But it wasn’t love at first sight. Two years after Donald’s death I was given a box of his papers, and my search for the truth of this tragic man began. I journeyed long and far. I met amazing people in unusual places. I had to learn their stories so I could finally understand Donald.
Donald was not the only one with problems. Our family had many challenges, and over the generations we took trauma and compounded it. But to my great surprise, as I undertook this pilgrimage to understand him, I was changed.
We were not a military family, so I had to confront the misconceptions and stereotypes I had about those who make a commitment to military life. I had to search archives and libraries and I had to find experts to translate the facts of Donald’s life, encountering revelations every step along the way.
I found documents, reports, records, and ephemera: menus, baseball programs, bits of old film, and parts of American history I never learned in school. Also, I found teachers. My most important teachers were a group of courageous men who were old, sometimes deaf or blind, but who had an abundance of fortitude, resilience, humor, and honor. These were United States China Marines.
I learned two important lessons from my teachers—both the experts on trauma and the men who lived it: First, trauma is not the terrible thing that happens to you, but what is left inside you because it happened. And second, if something terrible happens to you, that is not the story. How you survive and how you love and are loved again is the story.
As you read this book you will see that the story is told out of order, because I learned Donald’s story out of order, but also because trauma—whether from war or crime or abuse—always and tragically leaves us out of order. You will also see I have included scenes that, to the best of my understanding, represent insights into what Donald experienced. I built these scenes from conversations with Donald, with my mother, with other China Marines, with survivors of mental institutions, and with those who directly participated in Donald’s liberation.
He came into the basement through the cellar door and headed directly to the gun case over his woodworking bench. He was still wearing his gray jacket and the blue tie with maroon swirls that his wife had given him last year for his new job as the English teacher at Washington Valley High School.
He removed the gun from the case and weighed it for a moment with both hands before he began to load it. He hadn’t fired a gun since hunting last fall and, before that, since he was a Marine in China.
He closed the case quietly and walked up the stairs. He could hear his mother-in-law in the kitchen; she was starting dinner. She removed dishes from the cupboard, the oven door banged, and a utensil clattered to the floor.
He had left school early that day and gone to walk in the woods again. Recently, he’d been doing this more and more. Sometimes he told the principal he was sick. But lately, he’d leave the classroom and walk straight out of the school. Something would come over him when he looked at the boys and girls in his class, and he’d get a sour taste in his mouth. And then the foggy feeling would come.
When he walked in the woods, it helped. He’d think about China or try not to think about it. But when that foggy feeling came, the pictures would just slip into his vision. He’d see the bodies, and sometimes only severed arms and legs. The worst were the babies, limp and dead. Some were cut in half. It took so much energy to push these pictures out of his head. They seemed always to be on the edge of his vision. If he closed his eyes, they just stayed. He was exhausted from trying not to see the images that tortured him.
In the past week or so, a new thought had come to him with the pictures. It was confusing. He had this idea—it was like a fact, very certain—that his wife was in danger, right here in Pennsylvania, not China. What made it more confusing was that he knew his mother-in-law was the danger. That was very clear.
His mother-in-law would always yell at him when he came home early from school.
“You’ll get fired,” she’d scream at him.
And she told his wife that he was crazy.
“You know he thinks you’re unfaithful. Only a crazy person would believe that,” she’d say, raising her voice.
When she yelled, he got mad, and that made the pictures in his head more confusing: China, the kids in his class, his wife, the dead bodies, and his mother-in-law yelling. They all rolled together.
He could no longer think about all these pressures. He had the gun in his hands; he was at the top of the stairs now. It was past three o’clock in the afternoon. His wife would be home in half an hour. Best to do this fast, make this pain stop. He stepped into the kitchen; his mother-in-law looked up. She was wearing a yellow apron, holding a mixing bowl. She looked surprised. The stove was on; the oven was warming up. She started to look at the clock as he raised the gun and aimed directly at her face. Blood splattered everywhere.
The sound of the gun surprised him, but when he looked at her lying on the floor—her apron not so yellow anymore—he felt an odd comfort. This scene was familiar. He saw his mother-in-law, but he also saw the women’s bodies on the streets in Shanghai, layered images moving in and out of here and there.
He always saw more women’s bodies than men’s. The Japanese stacked the men in groups so their bodies were tangled in enormous piles, but the women’s bodies could be seen in doorways, fields, and alleys—everywhere. The worst was finding arms or legs but no body. Sometimes there would be a woman on the side of the road who had been dissected or had a stick or bottle shoved inside one of her orifices.
He glanced at the clock. His wife would be home soon. He loved her so much. All he wanted was to be with her, be happy, and feel better. He knew that today was trouble. He understood what he had just done, but what else could he do? He knew he’d have to go to jail. That was another problem: He loved his wife; he couldn’t be separated from her. And she needed him; she depended on him. A wave of fear and sadness went through him. She was young and pretty. Other men would want her. She might even want another man. Anger flowed on top of the fear. He bent over and picked up the dish towel that had fallen near his mother-in-law’s body. Then he wiped the gun.
He took the extra cartridges from his pocket and finished reloading just as he heard his wife come through the front door. She always came in that way, after stopping to get the mail from out front. She was now in the living room. He met her halfway; he didn’t want her to see her mother on the floor and be frightened. He dropped his head and started to cry.
There was no alternative; he knew that. She looked at him, and her mouth started to open, no words. He could barely meet her eyes as he raised the gun. He fired at her chest, and she crossed her arms, almost a gesture of modesty, as she fell backward. He shot again, aiming down at her heart. He was crying openly now as he fired more shots at her chest and neck. He could never
