want any. She resented her brother, a long-haul truck driver, leaving James with her, but took him in because it was her godly duty to do so.
She went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night and took him with her every single time. And for every sound he made that interrupted her spiritual oneness she would burn him with the tip of her cigarette when they got home. Not enough to blister, or leave scars. Just enough to remind him of the dangers of hell’s fires.
The little boy did everything he could to please his aunt and when she took sick while he was in his teens, he kept her home, caring for her with patience and kindness until the day she died. Some thought he’d done so for the money he’d inherit when she was gone. But he’d known they were paupers. He’d cared for her himself because he’d known what kind of state facility she’d have ended up in if he hadn’t kept her home.
She’d opened her home to him. It was his duty to keep her there. God—and his aunt—had taught him well.
Shortly after his aunt died, he met a girl who’d lost her family tragically young. They hit it off from the very beginning because they had in common that sense of not really belonging, of having been denied the core foundation of a stable home life. And they married as soon as she was out of high school.
He was good and patient and kind to his wife, understanding her tender heart. He just did not tolerate any actions from her of which he did not approve. He was boss of the house now. And with that responsibility came the right to make those in his home follow his rules. By whatever means.
He provided. So he got to rule. And sometimes ruling meant that you had to teach those in your care about the dangers of hell’s fires.
He didn’t burn anyone. Remembering the burn-related nightmares of his youth he would never do that. He just used his words, and later his hands, to save his wife from falling down the devil’s hole.
He did so with God’s blessing. Using scripture to manipulate and control. To instill fear. Using hard work and dedication to family as proof of his own good heart.
And...
“Are you okay, dear?” Jenna jumped in her seat at the sound of a voice just over her shoulder.
“Yes!” she said, quickly minimizing the screen. “I’m fine, why?” Still lost in the story she’d been reading, she wasn’t sure if the sixtyish woman was the same one who’d been behind the desk when she came in, if she even worked there at all, or was a resident like herself.
“You were trembling so hard I could feel you,” she said, pointing to an adjoining cubicle perpendicular to the one at which she sat.
The woman had presumably been on a computer as well, and since the computers were reserved for residents, that would make her one.
“I’m sorry,” Jenna said now. “I guess I’m a little cold. They’ve got the air conditioner blowing pretty hard in here.”
It was. But she hadn’t noticed that either, not until then.
“I’m Renee,” the woman said, nodding.
“I’m Jenna.”
“I know. I saw you at dinner last night. You hardly touched a thing.”
“I wasn’t very hungry.”
“You also don’t act like this is your first dance. You aren’t looking lost, or trying to figure out the way things work.”
She shrugged.
“It’s not mine, either.”
If the woman needed to talk, she’d listen. There were others milling around. A woman a few tables over, with an opened encyclopedia and a pad of paper and pen in front of her. Another sitting in an armchair reading a magazine. And someone else reading from a tablet. There were a couple of women huddled together across the room, too.
Women seeking solace through conversation with other women was part of the healing process.
“You’ve been here before?” she asked Renee, as the other woman pulled her chair around and sat down.
“A few years ago. I’d just put my husband of forty years, Gary, in the hospital with a shove that ended up paralyzing him.”
Renee couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds. “You hurt him?”
“The police said it was self-defense. So actually did Gary when he realized that he could lose me if he lied about it. He’d been about to throw me down the stairs. I shoved against him, purely a terrified reaction on my part, and it caught him off guard at just the right moment and he went down instead.”
It wasn’t a story she’d heard before. She could only imagine the guilt mixed with fear and confusion that one would carry in such a situation. She’d gone through years where she’d believed Steve’s anger was her fault. If she didn’t nag as much, ask so many questions, if she didn’t need so badly to be loved, if she hadn’t pissed him off at just the wrong moment, if she’d been more understanding of the very real pressures of his dangerous job....
Renee shifted and it dawned on her that she wasn’t meeting the woman on the “outside.” Renee was back in a shelter for abused women.
“You said your husband was paralyzed. Was it only temporary, then?”
“No.”
“But he hurt you again?” They were sisters, in a place where secrets were safe.
“No, he didn’t. He went through counseling, and once he saw what he’d been, he was truly sorry. He met with his group every week, long after he’d completed the program, just to make sure he never slipped back. He said that since he hadn’t seen the abusiveness in himself to begin with—you know the lies they tell you, they sometimes believe them, too—he wasn’t going to take a chance on having that happen again. He really did love me....”
Renee’s eyes filled with tears. And Jenna was at a loss. Hearing about an abuser who was also one’s true love wasn’t...something she’d ever been privy to before. Or even considered.
“But...you’re here....”
“Gary died last year, just after Christmas. Our son, Brian, who’d gone through a divorce shortly before his father was hurt, had moved home to help me take care of Gary these last few years. He... It was hard for him, to see his father so helpless....”
Uh-oh. Jenna’s heart lurched.
“...the counseling, he was all for it at first. I mean, he’d known the back of his father’s hand a few dozen times himself. But later...he said the weekly meetings, they turned his dad into a wuss....”
Wanting to stop what was coming so Renee wouldn’t have to relive something she shouldn’t have had to endure the first time, Jenna held herself back with effort.
Renee wouldn’t be talking to her if she didn’t need to do so. And sometimes, worse than having to tell your story when you didn’t want to, was having someone tell you to stop when you did. “Brian’s ex-wife, at the time of the divorce, had claimed that he was too much like his father. Brian said she was crazy, that she was
