This story is an assemblage of creative non-fiction and fiction. While the events are based in fact, names and identifying details have been altered to ensure anonymity of all involved.
When the conception of change is beyond the limits of the possible, there are no words to articulate discontent so it is sometimes held not to exist. This mistaken belief arises because we can only hear silence in the moment in which it is breaking.
– Sheila Rowbotham,
Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World.
They do not meet until the last year of high
school. She is on the tennis team and debate
club, bubbly, chatty, curly blond hair and eyes
blue as forget-me-nots. She smiles constantly
and draws people to her. When they start dating,
he is kind, gracious, charming. She becomes
dizzy with his attention. Her friends joke that
all he is missing is the armor and white stallion.
He is handsome, stunningly so, dark hair, hazel
eyes, a lopsided smile. He plays the saxophone
in the jazz band, and acts in most of the school
plays, usually as the romantic lead. He is smooth
talking, easy to look at – a true charmer – and
she constantly feels she needs to pinch herself.
She blushes profusely when someone mentions
his name. She is sweet and lovely, but she
had always been 2nd-picked, the best friend of
the popular girl, and she doesn’t know how to
handle being the one everyone looks at, looks
to. Everywhere they go, she feels they are being
gossiped about; he literally radiates from the
attention, he shines as if he were on stage.
He always drives her home, from school, the
downtown movie theater, from Denny’s, the
mall. He walks her to her door, holds her hand,
kisses her cheek. His lips are warm and dry.
On their one month anniversary, he gives her
a necklace with a gold heart-shaped pendant.
They talk about what they might do after high
school.
He wants to join the Air Force, she wants to go
into nursing. He tells her that she is lovely, that
everyone looks at her. He says he wants to be
the only one to look at her. She laughs and they
kiss, tentatively, for the first time. His lips taste
like almonds.
Sometimes he’ll become upset if he thinks her
clothing is too revealing. He tells her that she
is showing too much skin, smiling too much at
the other guys. He knows she doesn’t mean
anything by it, but other people might get the
wrong idea. He says he is just looking out for her.
She tells her best friend that he’s a bit jealous
and she replies, of course he is. It means that
he really likes you.
He buys her Abercrombie jeans, Express
sweaters, and sometimes Victoria’s Secret
lingerie that he asks her to model. When she
does, he mentions, casually, that perhaps she
has put on weight. She sees her reflection in the
mirror, purse her lips, pinch her side and roll the
skin and fat between her thumb and forefinger.
Perhaps she has. Nonetheless she is insulted
and he shrugs, he didn’t mean anything by it. It
was just a thoughtless comment.
He flips through her cell phone when she is
changing, even though she has told him to
stop doing that, and asks why she called Eric
or Ricardo or Josh, what they talked about.
She tells him that he shouldn’t be jealous and
he says he’s not, he just wants to know what’s
going on in her life.
Commanders have complete discretion
when determining the appropriate
administrative or judicial action to
take against active duty abusers.
Rule 306(b) of the Manual for Courts-
Martial states that allegations of
offenses should be dealt with quickly
and “at the lowest appropriate level of
disposition.”
– The Family Advocacy Program
Commander’s Guide
They are voted “Best Couple” in the high school
yearbook. He is thrilled, tells her to dress up and
they’ll go out to celebrate. As she comes to the
door, he yells that she looks like a tramp with all
that make-up on. She stares at him, shocked,
then breaks down, and he rushes to hug her,
gets a tissue and wipes off the eyeliner dripping
down her cheeks. Shh, it’s ok, I just don’t see
why you have to get so decked out in this clown
make-up, you’re pretty as you are, there, see? At
dinner, he cracks jokes nonstop, winks because
he knows she likes it when he does, brushes her
hair from her eyes. She forgives him. Of course
she does; it is so easy to forgive him.
She stops wearing short skirts or low-cut tops,
stops wearing eye make-up. She loves it when
he’s in a good mood, and these are such little
things that he doesn’t like. She wants him to
always find her beautiful, always worthy of
loving.
They are inseparable. Her parents complain
jokingly, but they adore him. He praises her
mom’s taste in décor and clothing, her amazing
baking, chats up her dad with football and
soccer stats. He is witty, funny, relaxed. Next to
him, sometimes she feels a little wilted.
He picks out her clothes because he knows
which pants make her look slimmer, which tops
make her waist look smaller, he knows which
haircuts elongate her neck. When he is not
there, she isn’t sure that she can make herself
look the way he wants.
Sometimes he blows up at a glance she made,
a conversation she had, the way she walked
in front of another boy. She inevitably cries.
He apologises, holds her tight. Can’t she see
how much it hurts him, why does she keep on
mocking him? She doesn’t mean to. She wishes,
fervently, that he would trust her. She stops
calling Josh, Eric, Ricardo, stops talking with
other guys when he’s watching her across the
room. She still gets breathless when she looks
up from her desk and meets his intense gold
eyes. Even when he’s not there, she can feel his
look, warm like embers, on her skin.
Margaret, Air Force Reserves, medical field: About two months ago, there was a woman who works at the hospital who came in with some very bad bruising on her face, and she went to her supervisor and said, “My boyfriend and I are having some issues and as much as we try to work it out, I just can’t handle him hitting me anymore.” The boyfriend was also active duty, and they try to deal with it in the military at the lowest level possible, but I think when somebody shows up with bruising on their face, that’s not something that needs to stay at the lowest level anymore. That’s something that should go directly to that person’s supervisor. If you get a DUI, that goes directly to the highest person in that person’s chain of command, and I think that’s where domestic violence should go. So the man got in no trouble at all and when it happened the second time, she came in and said, “This needs to be dealt with and I don’t feel comfortable going to civilian police but I will go if I have to, but I want it to be dealt with here.” Then it became, “Well, what have you been doing? Why is he hitting you? What’s going on in your house?” and so she ended up going to the civilian police because nothing was being done and it was being focused on her. I mean, she’s showing up with visible bruising on her face and people are saying, “Well, why the hell would he hit you? What did you do to him?” It was really disappointing to hear that story, really disappointing.
He can cut her to the quick with his sharpness,
his biting anger so out of the blue that it knocks
the wind from her. He calls her a slut, a whore, a
cunt, and he spits the names out so they hit her
like a slap. She screams and cries and paces
back and forth across the room as he stands
watching her, sneering. Even in anger he is
collected and calm. She is sometimes afraid of
what his composure contains, but she will not
admit it.
The next day, he is contrite, apologetic. He would
not have said those things if she hadn’t aggravated
him, if she hadn’t moved so suggestively, if she
hadn’t been so flirtatious. Was she purposefully
trying to make a fool out of him? She says, no, no,
she didn’t mean it. She apologises. Sometimes
she forgets he is so sensitive. Her best friend
says, of course, he’s an actor, he’s one of those
artistic types. He can’t even usually remember
the names he called her in anger, but she always
does. “Bitch” and “whore” cut her from the same
lips that caress her with “beautiful” and “love”
and “mine”. When he’s happy, she is so grateful
just to be in his glow, his overflowing generosity
and joy. He promises her forever, and she believes
him. It is so easy to believe him.
During the prom, he grabs the microphone on
stage and proposes to her. He is on one knee
and his grin is radiant, he is radiant. She can’t
remember if she says yes, she knows she is
shaking and can’t hold her hand still enough
for him to put the ring on. His eyes are a
kaleidoscope of greens. Time stalls, starts up
again, slows down, rushes up in waves. She feels
she might drown in the swells of her emotions, in
those bright, fierce eyes, she feels light-headed
and drunk and dizzy and she thinks, I will never
love anyone else like this.
Her parents suggest that, after all, they are
young and eight months hasn’t been much time.
Perhaps they should wait a little longer. But they
are eighteen and he is excited and eager to get
married, and she is thrilled and flattered. She
thinks, this will surely prove her love, this will
ease his insecurities and doubts.
Willow, Air Force, linguist: From what I understand the Air Force takes care of whoever it is that’s being abused. They try to protect them as much as they can, but I think part of that goes back to you being responsible for yourself and who you allow yourself to be associated with. Because, yeah, someone might beat you, and you might tell your first shirt, “My husband’s beating me,” and then he’ll take you away from that home, he’ll take your kids away, put you somewhere safe. But if you go right back to that person, nothing’s ever going to change. I think the Air Force does what they can. They give us as much information and education on it as they can, but you can’t force someone to step up and say, “This is what’s happening to me.”
They get married a week after graduation, two
weeks before he joins the Air Force. They travel
to Honolulu for their honeymoon and spend
five days in the translucent topaz waters. She
watches him stretched out in the sand, his
eyes squinting up against the sun, arm thrown
across his forehead, the veins of his forearms
a jewel blue against the tan of his skin. She
thinks, in a moment, she will go to him and lay
her head in the hollow where his shoulder and
neck meet. In a moment, his sun-warmed skin
will smell like redwoods and grass and incense.
Her fingertips will trace his veins, silky with the
delicate rushings of blood. But for now, she
watches him and can’t stop smiling. She wishes
she could stay paused in this moment, this
breath of time, for always.
He gets stationed in Omaha, Nebraska,
thousands of miles from her family and friends.
She knows no one in Nebraska, or the entire
Midwest for that matter. She gets a job as a
telemarketer during the day, attends nursing
classes at night. She gets pregnant almost
immediately. He complains that he never sees
her anymore, that she is prioritising everything
ahead of their relationship. He suggests that
she quit her job or the classes. She doesn’t like
the idea, but once the baby is born, she finds
she doesn’t have a choice. She doesn’t make
enough for them to afford to pay for daycare
for the baby, so she stops working and taking
classes.
She calls her family weekly, and he will sit in
the room with her, the television on. She can
see him stiffen when she tells her mother she
sometimes feels isolated. After she has hung
up, he confronts her. What kind of impression
must her mother have of him, like he’s keeping
her a prisoner in her own home? She protests,
no, she didn’t mean it that way. She finds her
words frequently get twisted in his mouth, and it
takes more energy than she has to fight against
what he believes.
Women who leave their batterers are
at a 75% greater risk of being killed by
the batterer than those who stay.
– National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence, 1988
She will occasionally pause during her busy
days, the wet laundry dripping off her hands, or
white flour caked between her fingers, and stare
out through the window, unseeing. Her eyes go
past the flat golden stretches of the cornfields,
towards the horizon line blue and empty, to a
silence that rings. She will remain motionless
until the baby cries or the oven timer goes off,
and then time crashes back down on her and,
try as she might, she cannot remember what
her thoughts were in that stillness.
For the next four years, she goes from
breastfeeding to pregnant in a seemingly
nonstop cycle. She gives birth twice more. As the
months flows past her, in spurts and torrents, she
finds her dissatisfaction with being a housewife
ebbs away too; she does not have the time to
be reflective. There is the dinner to be made,
the to-do lists, the vacuuming and mopping and
diaper changes; she feels she is always a few
steps behind. Air Force wives invite her to their
meetings but she knows her husband does not
approve of her talking to people he doesn’t know,
so she stops going after a couple of meetings.
He has been busy and easily irritated lately, and
she doesn’t want to provoke him.
During their arguments, he corners her against
the wall and punches it, inches from her face.
Throws her debate team medals at her from
across the room. The walls are dented with their
history. Afterwards, he says, “I’m sorry, I’m so
sorry. I can’t help myself when I’m that angry.
Sweetie, you know I’m sorry, right?” Of course
she knows, she knows him intimately. She knows
he means it.
Military Family Advocacy Office
counselor: The most common
recommendations for treatment would
be anger management, couples’
communication, some individual work
if necessary. I’ve made some referrals
to Batterers Intervention programs; in
a year’s time, I’d say we might refer
3 or 4. I think we catch things at a
lot lower level in the military and so
that kind of program isn’t something
that we would need to refer to as
frequently.
The first time he hits her, she stands there
stunned. They had been arguing about dinner
being late. Or him being late to dinner. All their
arguments have been blurring together in her
mind. She puts her hand tentatively up to her
face; her skin feels hot and prickly. He has
already gone to get the ice, is applying it to her
cheek gently, hovers protectively over her. She
wants to run from the room, away from him,
but he grips her hands and won’t let go. They
are both crying. He asks, why do you have to
constantly snap back at me? Why can’t you just
let things go? She doesn’t know why. She knows
she should have more patience with him; she
thinks, next time she won’t argue back, next time
it’ll be different. Next time she’ll know better.
The evening afterwards, he brings home tulips,
purple and pink silky promises. He orders Thai
food and lays out a blanket in the living room and
they watch The Princess Bride while eating out of
the take-out boxes with disposable chopsticks.
During the movie, he wraps his arms around her
so that she leans back against him, her head
on his shoulder. His touch is gentle as Nebraska
accents. He whispers into her hair so quietly she
cannot hear his words, but it doesn’t matter. She
knows what he’s trying to say. She closes her
eyes and lets herself fall into the lull of his voice
like soft heartbeats.
The first time she goes to the base hospital, the
doctor asks her about a faded bruise. He is kind
and gentle, says there is help if she needs it. She
finds herself talking more than she intended;
she is relieved to be able to talk to anyone at all.
When she leaves the office, the doctor places
a call to her husband’s commander, who pulls
her husband into his office and reprimands him.
He doesn’t want to get into her private business,
but it doesn’t look good that she is saying
those things in public. He says there is couples’
counseling if they need to work out some issues
between them, but he doesn’t want to have to
hear about it again, is that understood?
Intimate partner violence is about
power and control, and is not caused
by anger management problems
or communication problems in the
relationship. Anger Management
classes do not replace Batterers
Intervention, and you cannot
substitute one for the other.
– Florida Department of Children and
Families, 2000
By the time she gets home, her husband is in the
kitchen, his body taut, waiting for her. She learns
her first lesson in the importance of keeping
family matters within the family. She learns to
withdraw more into herself, to distrust official
military personnel, to not make eye contact.
She learns to smile at the base police who show
up for reports of a domestic disturbance. She
uses the word “fine” more times than she could
count. Every lesson is marked like battle scars
on her body.
She cannot remember how she has gotten to
this point in time. She cannot remember when
he first began checking the odometer on the
car after her errands, comparing the grocery
bills to the allowance he gives her. She cannot
remember when he took away her cell phone,
or when she stopped talking to her parents or
friends altogether. She tries to think back, but it
feels like perhaps it has always been this way.
Some days she places her keys on the kitchen
table and then cannot find them. She tears
the house apart. Later, she will find them on
the kitchen table. She does not know that her
husband purposefully moves them, so that when
she begins to feel like she is going crazy, when
she begins to distrust her senses, his constant
presence will cut through her confusion and
fear. She knows with certainty that his eyes will
shift from green to gold in the sunlight, that he
will always feel warmest before waking, that his
mouth tightens before he explodes in anger.
These are the certainties in her life that she
clings to.
The months rush past her, and she watches
bruises slowly bloom across her body. They are
never readily visible, on her back, her sides, her
upper thighs; he is always careful. Afterwards,
he sees the bruises on her body and is horrified.
Each time, he says, “I love you so much, you
know that. You’re the only one who understands
me. Don’t ever leave me, promise me you’ll never
leave me.” He clutches her hands desperately,
his fingers hot against her cool skin. “I’m so
sorry. I swear, it won’t happen again. You believe
me, don’t you? God, I swear,” and she holds his
head in her hands and comforts him, shhh, it’s
ok, I’ll never leave you, I promise, I promise. She
knows she is the only one who can save him.
Nicholas, Air Force Special Investigator: If you’re a victim of domestic violence, and a guy’s beating you up, and you report it but you keep taking him back or you let him get away with it, he’s going to beat you worse and worse and worse, and then one day, he may kill you. And then there’s always the fallout from that, the neighbors who say, “Oh well, we heard them, but we figured everything would be okay.” There’s so much fallout that comes with not reporting, as opposed to reporting; there’s no fallout when you report something. There’s never any fallout from that.
She sees him switch on and off like Jekyll and
Hyde. His unpredictability leaves her like a tightly
wound string, all her senses sharpened. She
can hear the inhalation before the baby cries,
see her husband’s body become still before
the storm. Each moment is a breath held in
suspension. Sometimes the building of tension
becomes so great that she will purposefully
provoke him just to release it. She knows him
intimately; she knows a couple of bruises today
will prevent a sprained wrist, a broken finger
later. She doesn’t have to talk to anyone to know
that no one will understand this.
When her husband is first officially arrested
by the base police for domestic violence, he
is ordered to couples’ counseling and anger
management. As they go to couples’ counseling
together, she learns that their relationship needs
more compromise. She learns that she needs
to adjust her behaviours for the relationship
to work. During sessions, she speaks rarely,
unsure of what might upset her husband
should she reveal it. She frequently misses the
appointments that the Family Advocacy Office on
base has scheduled with her. When she does
attend, he demands to hear everything that
she has said. At the appointments, she says,
“Things have gotten better. Everything’s going
great. Yes, he’s definitely learned his lesson.
Yes, counseling has really helped us.” She keeps
her gaze on the counselor’s chin. She knows
that everything they have, their base housing,
their grocery money, their health insurance,
the children’s schooling, is dependent on her
husband’s career. Everything is dependent
on her ability to nod and agree that things are
perfect and great, just fine.
Find healthy ways to express your
anger. Don’t keep angry feelings
locked inside you.
Remember to calm down. Think
carefully before you speak.
Name the problem. Calmly and clearly
explain why you’re angry or what the
problem is.
Use “I” statements. These statements
focus on you and your needs, wants,
and feelings.
Identify solutions. Say what you would
like to change or see happen in the
future.
– Self-Care Handbook,
Managing Anger, used in Family
Advocacy anger management classes
She feels like a scar, tight and raw. One night
he reaches out and their oldest child cringes
instinctively. She will remember this for weeks.
And so, on a Wednesday afternoon, she leaves.
She had practiced it over and over in her mind,
what she would pack, what they might need,
but when he leaves for work in the morning, she
walks quickly out the door with only the children
and the clothes she is wearing. She does not
look back.
They spend two nights in a homeless shelter. He
finds her the second night, stands in the parking
lot of the shelter and screams her name in sobs.
He threatens to kill himself if she doesn’t come
home. She walks outside, and he is kneeling
on the ground, lost, panicked, terrified, and
he says, “I can’t lose you. I’ll kill myself if you
leave, I swear I will.” Knowing him, she believes
it. She kneels next to him and he clings to her,
tight and fierce, his body shaking. He’s a man
drowning, and she lets him hold onto her as
the streetlights swirl around them. In a few
moments, she knows she will take the children
in one hand, her husband in the other, and she
will lead them all back home. But for now, she
watches him break apart in her arms and, in his
despair and chaos, his desire stronger than life,
she lets herself fall back into him.
When domestic violence is seen as a
two-way street, it frees us to transfer
from a “men must give up their power”
model for treatment to a “walk a mile
in each other’s moccasins” model
for treatment. It frees us to focus
not on a scapegoat oppressor, but a
mutual responsibility dance; not on
punishment, but prevention. It frees us
not to treat a slap as terminal cancer,
but as a signal we need to make our
love healthier.
– Equal Justice Foundation,
organisation recommended to me by
a Family Advocacy counselor
When she is introduced to the community civilian
domestic violence advocate at one of her last
Family Advocacy appointments, she repeats,
“Yes, everything’s going great. He’s doing
everything he’s supposed to.”
At the end of the meeting, the advocate pulls
her into a separate room, and she asks, “Can
I talk to you without anybody knowing?” When
the advocate says “Yes,” she nearly cries. She
can’t remember the last time that she spoke to
someone without her husband finding out, and
the weight, like a waterfall rushes from her.
Ania, domestic violence advocate: She then proceeded to show me her injuries and her bruises, and it was just awful, after sitting in one room and saying, “Oh things are great, don’t worry.” I’ll never forget it because it was so drastic and so scary. He was kicking her all over her body, in her head, down her back. She had bruises all the way down her back, she had an injury to her finger that was swollen. Her arms were black, I mean it was all black and blue, it was just awful.
She calls the advocate every now and then,
when she can get to a pay phone for a few
minutes. She says, I’m still alive, and I’m still
scared, and I still don’t know what to do. She
clutches at the telephone wire and wraps it
around her fingers so tightly that it cuts into her
skin. When she hangs up, she finds she doesn’t
want to let go.
And she was scared for her life, but she was also scared to say anything to anybody anymore because she had spoken up and it had gotten her those bruises, because of the chain of command involvement. She was scared to even think about thinking about getting away, because he had told her he would kill her, and as many times as he had hurt her, and nobody had believed it, she was sure that he was going to kill her and that he was going to kill the kids.
She doesn’t call for a long time.
Then one day she called me and she was whispering, saying “I’m in the bathroom. He’s going to kill me, I don’t know what to do. He just came home, he wasn’t supposed to be home.” It was in the middle of the day, and he would make unannounced visits to see what she was doing, and he hadn’t found her yet. She was in the bathroom and had locked herself in, and I said, “If you can get out of there, come here and we’ll deal with everything from here.”
She is in the bathtub, fully clothed, pressing the
baby to her chest and shivering uncontrollably.
She takes a sharp intake of breath and realises
that she hadn’t been breathing. “I’ll call you
right back,” she whispers and, without a sound,
places the phone down on the bathmat.
I was terrified, I didn’t even have an address for her, so I didn’t know where to send them if I needed to send law enforcement – he hadn’t done anything yet.
Outside the bathroom door, her husband is
loading and unloading his gun, each snap! of
steel jolting through her spine.
She called me back ten minutes later and that was the longest ten minutes, I tell you what, I was just pacing. She was hysterical, but he had left again and she was packing up the kids and coming down, and that’s what happened.
The house has been quiet for she isn’t sure
how long. She tries to count but time shifts and
slides underneath her fingers. Five minutes?
Twenty-five minutes? She imagines him outside
the door, waiting. She cannot hear anything but
the erratic rush of her heartbeat in her ears. She
thinks frantically about where the children are, if
they remembered to stay where she hid them.
She came down here, we called law enforcement, they took a report on the kids and also on her, and all the injuries and you know they knew how bad it was just by looking at her. She was just a wreck, terrified. They had the military Office of Special Investigations come out here and meet law enforcement and they listened in on the report and, because it was so bad, she needed to go to the emergency room and have herself and the kids checked because he had hurt them.
She is surrounded by footsteps, doors opening
and closing, cold fingers, badges everywhere.
She thinks she must look like a train crash. As
soon as she speaks, she can’t remember what
she has said. Everything that touches her is cold
or metal. There is so much chaos around her,
flowing constantly in and out of the doors, she
feels like she has become a sliver of stillness.
The OSI agent went with her because they hadn’t arrested her husband yet. He went into the emergency room and checked it all out to make sure her husband hadn’t heard from somebody and was already sitting there. He stayed with us through the whole procedures of having X-rays taken and reports filed and everything, which took hours, and then in the meantime, he got a call saying they found the husband. They had arrested him and taken him to Sarpy County jail, and he was just livid.
She keeps her eye on the advocate because she
is the only familiar face in the room, this woman
she has seen only once before but whose voice
she recognises instantly. The advocate is petite,
black hair and steel-coloured eyes. She smiles
often, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, so that she
always looks a little sad.
This story is an assemblage of creative non-fiction and fiction. While the events are based in fact, names and identifying details have been altered to ensure anonymity of all involved.
Nhu Tien Lu is most recently a graduate from the University of California Santa Cruz program in social documentation, and has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She also worked for two years as an advocate for domestic violence victims in Alaska and Nebraska.