.

Broken: A Love Story

They try to make it homey and welcoming. They gave Allie and Eli a little box of toys each. They were old grocery boxes, Eli's marked Eco Dishwashing Detergent. I couldn't read the label on Allie's little box. Maybe twice the size of a shoebox.

"That's nice," I whisper. I smile and it hurts to smile.

Kitty  notices this. She frowns in sympathy, keeps her eyes on me a long moment. I feel uncomfortable. Foreign here because she's packaging me up just like the toys she's given to my kids. She's boxing me up just like all the battered women. She doesn't know my story or how I got there. She didn't know my road and it couldn't possibly be the same one these other women had traversed.

We were normal people. Middle class. He was in a country bluegrass band. We traveled around the east coast until I got pregnant. I was in college. Nobody on either my father or mother's side had ever hit their wife. Or kids.

Kitty touches my arm. She's a social worker. She's large and I like her weight. That's the think I like about her. She's overweight and a woman who carries it well. She's pretty too but not weak. I can't imagine Conner hitting a woman like Kitty.

She smiles at me because she's a social worker. Not that she has to, that's not it but because she's seen other victims of domestic violence. I believed her at intake when she showed me a chart. Showed me where I'm at in the process.

I was there between explosion and honeymoon.

"Pretty complicated," I had joked to Kitty while my kids sat on a couch on the other side of the room. Alli asleep against Eli's shoulder. Little Eli looking straight ahead, angry. Afraid. Frozen – maybe frozen in time back at the house. His 10 year old body holding a knife, crying hysterically threatening to kill his father. Conner pushed him down and continued to drag me towards the stairs, got ready to hit me again. Conner rushed towards him and stood there, hatred in his eyes.

I forgot where I was. I looked at Kitty.

"you said it was complicated Emily. What's complicated?" she squinted her eyes in that in control empathetic way social workers do.

I shrugged and looked back down at the Cycle of Violence Wheel. "Is this how it is with everyone?"

She nodded. "Pretty much."

 "Why?"

She didn't answer. When I looked back up at her she said, "I do this because I was in your situation once. I was sitting there looking at a chart like this."

I don't know why but it made me cry.

The process.

Leaving my husband. I'd started calling him my husband instead of Conner. Conner summoned our intimacy. Conner was the name of the man I fell in love with, laughted with over a bottle of wine, under the stars out by some lake in Vermont after one of his shows. Conner was my friend. He was the one with me when I went into labor. At eighteen years old. A mother.  Conner is mine. My husband is a monster.

After intake we walked into the 'family room.' The kids ran over to a dingy sitting area made to look like a living room. Two other women were there, seated on the couch. Housewives of new Jersy was playing on the tv. I couldn't help but shift my gaze from the tv to the women.

It was the kind of situation Conner and I would have noted with a shared glance. All that meaning between us. The irony. The humor. The absurdity. He might say "Life imitates nothing."

The women weren't watching, they were talking in whispers and a toddler and two boys about the ages of my kids (8 and 10) were playing on the floor with Legos. They were playing quietly uncharacteristic of boys. Or at least my boy. When the other two children see Eli and Ali enter the area and sit down on the floor with their welcome boxes , the other boys moved over to my kids to see what was in the gift boxes.  When I looked again I notice a toddler had been crawling around in front of the couch and was now reaching up to one of the seated women. When the mother turned to lift the baby I could see large purple bruises all the way up her arm and on one side of her neck. I touched my own face. It hurt but I knew I wasn't as bad off as that woman.

I look back at Kitty who was watching the children with a smile. She touched my arm again. "Children are resilient. I can see how strong your kids are."

I remember her asking me at intake if my husband hit the kids. I shook my head, part truth. He'd struck Eli the night before, before I got away. He pushed his son not caring that the boy was holding a knife. My husband was hungry for me, blind with rage.

I smiled at her. My throat was so dry that I couldn't get the words out. I wanted to tell her that I thought I should call Conner. Just tell him we're ok, not say where we are. I felt like I was in prison and I had already used my one call. I'd called the wrong person. I'd called someone like Kitty who knew nothing about my life.

That night I could not sleep. We were in the gymnasium of an old school. The floors were still shiny. The boys and girls club used the court during the after school hours. The shelter had an ingenious way to construct make-shift rooms and then break them back down in the morning.  Wide plywood doors opened from the sides of the gym. Once opened a chord with a curtain was pulled and attached to a hook on the adjacent door. Once we were assigned a little cubicle we retrieved thick mats from compartments built into the front of the gymnasium stage. We then went back into a boiler room where the linens were kept on metal racks. I removed three sets of sheets and took three pillows from a volunteer. I had Eli and Allie with me. Other children played in the center of the sleeping quarters, in the middle of the gymnasium. They half protested when I told them they had to stay with me. With all the evidence of violence around the place I wanted to keep my children as close to me as I could. After all iw as the person putting them in such a terrible situation.

It was like an internment camp. People were nicer than I imagine soldiers or guards were, but really when the lights were turned out at 9:30 and I lay in the drafty room behind a curtain made from floral sheets. When I looked next to me and saw my two children sleeping on gym mats I couldn't help but cry.

I couldn't help but think of Conner wondering where we were.

The image of the Cycle of Abuse Chart moved around in my brain. I tried to stuff it down, push it away. It didn't. It was a weird thought but I couldn't get rid of it. I would have been in the honeymoon phase. He would have made promises, begged for forgiveness, he would have agreed to counseling. And when things turned good after a fight those were the best times.

I tried to get comfortable under the stiff sheets and cheap comforter that I knew must be hard to keep clean. It had fleece on one side and a blue anchor pattern on the other. I turned over again, turned the pillow over. The case had such a strong smell of bleach.

I felt myself cry silently. I imagined that inside every one of these make shift rooms a woman was crying. Kids were pretending to be sleeping. Everyone was waiting.

"Conner" I think. I kept thinking his name over and over. I felt guilty for taking his children. At first he had been furious over the phone with me as I frantically drove. He'd called me not 5 minutes into my frantic drive away from the house. I was so thankful his truck was in the shop. Otherwise, he would have followed and blocked me somehow. I got the car started somehow before he ran out of the house. He'd fallen asleep after the fight. I had tiptoed around him, my heart aching with fear. I only fetched Allie's stuffed bunny angel and the harry potter book Eli was reading. I felt like I couldn't breathe as I walked past the couch. I could see dried blood on my husband's hand. My blood.

I had just gotten the kids into the car and locked the doors. I had just started to pull out when I saw him running behind us waving his hands. Yelling "Emily!"

He must have known at some point I would go. That he would go too far.

It wasn't often. One time two years passed. We had been back to the old Conner and Emily. Camping with the kids. Going to blue grass festivals. Him teasing me. Flirting. Dancing. I loved seeing him sit in with the band. He played the banjo, guitar. He was so cool.

I was driving like crazy away from the house. I didn't know where to go except the police station.

"Emily. Come the hell back. What are you doing?"

But I was afraid. My lip was bleeding. I was afraid for my son. Why would a ten year old get a knife and put himself in the mortal danger. It was because of me. My face ached like I had a migrane. My jaw felt loose. I worried it was broken. The kids were in the back of our old Subaru, both crying.

Then my husband on the other end of the phone. Even in my traumatic state, even driving like crazy hoping I would get pulled over in the dark night just so I could get myself to the police station, even with all the pain I could hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. I knew he was crying. I pictured his face, how much it must be hurting him too. I told myself I could do that, I could feel sympathy for him too.

"Emily. You're really going to take my kids from me. Start all this trouble?"

I was crying so hard I was afraid I couldn't see out the windshield. I had an incrased vigilance for my children's safety. The further I drove the less serious the situation seemed. The more I felt like I had exaggerated it.

"Em—come on. Come back home."

I was going to but my original wish came true. Red and blue lights flooded through the night sky. The road and everything around it took on a red hue. We had been driving on the freeway with nothing but pine trees. I had no idea where I'm going.

"Conner," I said, "I'm being pulled over."

"Don't tell them anything."

 I pulled the car over.

Ali cried, "Mommy what's happening? Are they taking us to jail?"

"Don't tell them Em."

A police officer was standing outside my window. He was gesturing for me to roll down my window.

"I'll try." I promised Conner before I hung up. At first I felt that Conner and I were in this together.

I opened the window and the officer, shined a flashlight into the back seat. Allie was crying and Eli was holding her hand telling her to be quiet. He knew we were about to be rescued. I think Eli knew it before I had.

The police officer turned the flashlight off and looked back at me. He was in his thirties. He had on a bulky black vest, a gun in the holster at his hip. He had a large build, seemed to tower over the car. The flashing lights and shadows made him look taller, made me feel smaller. He had a buzz cut, dark hair. Square jaw. His eyes inspected me. He let out a sharp breath. It seemed automatic. Even to this man who saw violence every day, I could see he was shocked over what my hippie, pacifist husband had done to me.

He spoke slowly. "would you like me to call a female officer, ma'm"

"No why?" It was as if I was drunk and trying to act sober.

"Would you mind stepping out of the vehic—can you step out of the car. You're not in any kind of trouble. He looked back, "Kids. Everything's all right. Don't be afraid. I'm going to help your mom. I'm going to talk to your mom. Is that all right?"

Allie hid her head behind Eli's shoulder. "What's your name son?" the officer asked.

"Eli Marshall."

"Ok. Eli. You take care of your sister while I talk with your mom."

I turned back to Eli. "Is that all right sweetheart?"

Eli flinched when he looked at my face.

"Why don't you come on out, ma'am."

The officer backed away and opened the door. As I walked out of the car I heard my cell phone ring.

The officer's eyes met mine. "Is that the perpetrator?"

I was frozen numb. My husband. The perpetrator. I nodded, half alive.

"your husband?"

I nodded again.

"All right. Do you need to go to the hospital?"

 I shook my head.

"I think you need medical care. Your face is bruised. You might have a concussion-- from the looks of your injuries. I'm going to call for an ambulance. It's the law."

Conner and I had always mistrusted the police. Part of our political action days, protests against establishment. This would have been the kind of situation where Conner would have spoken up. The son of a lawyer that he was. He would have challenged this violation of civil rights. "What's the law, sir?"

I said, "all right. Will my children come with me?"

He shook his head. "not in the ambulance."

 "Can you drive me so I can stay with them? They're afraid."

 "Why don't I call for a female officer and an advocate from the women's shelter. They'll come out and take you back to the hospital. That way kids can stay with you. They'll help you find a place to stay tonight."

"ok." I started to cry. It was cold outside and I crossed my arms. All I could whisper was "My children are cold."

"I've got a blanket in the back. Let me get it."

A car whizzed by and for a moment I thought it was Conner. Somehow he got access to a vehicle and was going to come for me. I lost track of time. It seemed the officer had returned, given the blanket to Eli. I didn't remember anything again until I got to the hospital.

I think giving him Conner's name and address was just too much for me. The knowledge that shortly an officer would be at the door of my home. Handcuffing my husband and reading him his rights.

That was it. The start of something different. I knew I would lose everything that had been. It had all become a toxic sludge where nothing good could survive. I knew it couldn't go on but what I lost more than anything the legitimacy to my feelings for Conner, for our family. Not that our love was so different than anybody else's. I knew I'd never be able to explain our life. Ours. That it was this thing, a culmination of time and experiences that had meaning and was as legitimate as any other couples. Only it no longer was. Now a comparison of my marriage to anyone elses would be fiercely met with contempt. What an insult to say I too had once fallen in love, conceived children, lived a normal life just other people. I knew I was part of the badness of this mess at that moment sitting in the hospital with a female officer photographing my face, seeing my own reflection in the mirror looking far worse under the fluorescent lights.td

I would never again have the privilege of feeling I had a legitimate love, marriage, family like everyone else. 

I had a broken love story.