Chicago In March Is Wet and Cold. Permit me this reference to the weather, as I tell you a true tale. This is a true story of Domestic Abuse, as told through my pen. This occurred in 1979. She was hospitalized and recovered except for a left lip that is somewhat paralyzed and a slight permanent limp from running through the fence. He was never charged in this matter. He took her son to Mexico for six weeks, which ended with the return of the boy to her. She has been happily married for over 30 years, has grown children, and grandchildren, a husband who met her not long after this event; and a long standing career in an international medical company, that goes back to 1982. Along the way, she also managed to pick up an MBA. The names have been fictionalized.
Two Minutes of Violence
She lay a hundred yards from her car. One eye swollen shut. She managed to see him through a moist blanket of old rotten dead leaves. Her body was camouflaged by that pile. Her legs were covered with scrapes. She had just taken her 120 pound body and tore through a 50 year old fence. She could feel part of the fence still in her knee. She managed to curve her head just enough to look at her knee. It was oozing blood slowly. Her chest was heaving. The last two minutes of violence has left her feeling lilke she was going to die. She was fighting an impulse to run wildly into the night, and an incredible need to grab air; process oxygen and catch some strength. She made a quick assessment of her arms and legs. Pain was sharp in several places. The most severe was his blow to her left eye. Just as she was gathering herself, he started calling out. The yards she had gained on her run through the fence put her out of his direct view and obscured her exact location in the weed covered lot. The nearest street light was just close enough to illuminate the field, but far enough away to make images indistinct.
“Ann”. A billowing plume of steaming air arose from John’s mouth. “Ann, you can’t stay out here. Just stand up. Show me where you are. I am sorry. I did not mean to hit you so hard.” Ann was rubbing the knuckles on her right hand as he gave his virulent complement of her fighting skills. “I will never get over, in my whole life, the fact that you got that spindly little fist into my nose.” Ann’s beaten lips managed the slightest twitch, which she knew, was an attempt to smile.
John was grabbing for his car keys with one hand, and wiping blood from his face with the other. He was shocked because his nose would not stop bleeding. She had gotten away in the cold, wet March night in the environs of West Chicago. The area was on the edge of a suburb, still what you would call “mixed use” rural and suburban plots. Their house was at the end of a dirt road off a numbered Illinois state road. He kept on turning around in his confusion. Booze and blood and rage make difficult compatriots.
Big Beetle In The Grass
As she lay there trying to be as still as possible, an aroused bulbous beetle skittered across her face. Her tumble had stirred up wet sticks, stones and matted grass and leaves. The beetle stopped for a moment on her nose. She blew up some air with her lips. That was just enough to disturb him, and the Beetle pranced down her mouth to her neck and away. She was terrified of moving.
The Moon was shining bright but only through the fast-moving clouds; much like a typical Chicago night in March. That kind of illumination gave it a surreal neon feeling. His voice, crying out through his hoarseness, sounded like a bad actor in a horror movie. She wanted to curse him. She wanted to rise up and attack him. She wanted to disappear. But at this particular moment she could do none of these.
“If I Can’t Have You, No One Can.”
Then his drunk got strength over his fading consciousness. “You, bitch. I told you — If I can’t have you, no one can. I told you.” His breath got shallower, you could hear a raspy quality growing. Silence, then for a moment. It was not like he was contemplating. It was more like the blood from his nose was drying a bit on his lips. He spit three times. “Damn you.” He looked right at where she was lying, but it was too dark for him to know she was there. “That right cross was lucky. Imagine little old bitchy you knockin’ my nose all to hell.”
Ann managed to crank her head toward the only other house in the area besides hers. The family that lived there had the same last name that she was born with. They laughed about that the first time they met each other. They were now just friendly. Once a season barbecues and sharing baby sitting were the only times their lives touched each others. She saw a light. Someone had gotten up for a glass of milk. She knew they were at least not sound asleep.
“Hey, Ann, I just found my keys.” Ann’s one working eye saw the briefest sparkle and heard them clinking from his pinched fingers. “I am going to drive all over this damn field until I come across your bony body. And then I am going to jump out and flip flop your pretty little head up and down til your brains won’t work no more. And then, I am going to spit on you ’til I don’t have no more spit to spit.”
Ann Makes A Dash
Ann knew how drunk he was. He had ways of sounding with each level of vodka he managed to suck into his system. This was how he sounded just before passing out. He laughed to himself a low kind of guttural flatulent sound. “Ha ha. I just got to get to my car.” He was already leaning too far forward, but he stumbled when he moved his right foot. He picked up a wad of mud that served to keep the foot dragging. He lost balance, got his left hand down to break his fall, and then put his forehead right into his car door. “Man. This is not my night.”
Ann was summoning bodily energy from every corner of her beaten body. It was all adrenalin that did the trick. She leaped to her feet. But it was all slow motion to her. Her funny little left leg, dragging a small piece of nail and wood was a kind of unhelpful appendage. The globules of spurting blood made her feel a bit embarrassed. When she got to her neighbor’s door, she would not be very presentable. She talked to her leg. “Come on leg. Stay up with me, and stop spurting so much blood.” In real motion she was running quite quickly. She knew she had a minute before John could gather himself, find his keys and get his car started. Her dash was a dash for her very life. Her long deer-like legs had to be beautiful in the moonlit night, she thought. She had been a runner as a young teenager, even leaving the boys behind. She always smiled at the loping deer near her house. Her lungs filled with cold air and supplied the power for her dash.
Then she thought of her swollen eye. “Oh God. Half my face is going to be purple and the other half red. They won’t let me into their house. They won’t believe I am Ann Holloway!”
Washing the Dog Dung from his Keys with His Remaining Vodka
John could feel the keys in the mud. He was on all fours. The keys were caked with dog dung. He grabbed his bottle of vodka and poured it all over his keys. He cleaned up the keys and shouted out loud. “Get ready! Here I come. psychedelic mushroom chocolate bars legal