Husband by Choice

She read statistics and psychological data. On victims. And abusers—who’d often been victims themselves. She read victims’ stories. There was Emma, who’d left an unfaithful husband for a wonderful man, Robert, she’d met online, a man who was a friend to her for a couple of years before she finally divorced her cheating husband and moved in with him, only to end up bruised and broken a couple of years later.

There was Lottie, a teenager abused by her boyfriend. Belinda, who’d suffered abuse since childhood at the hands of her father. The list, the stories, went on and on.

She felt as if she knew each and every one of the women she read about, wanted to give each of them a hug and a promise of emotional support from now through eternity.

Jenna acknowledged the feeling, understood it as a consequence of identifying with them so completely. And she moved on.

She wasn’t here to read about her sisters. She had to know everything she could find out about abusers. Not how to identify them. She knew those lists all too well—could remember the first sickening time she’d been on a website, reading a list, and finding Steve in every single characteristic she read.

But what made a man do what he did? She had to know how to get him where he hurt. To find the humanity in him and appeal to it somehow. Not verbally of course. That would just feed his sense of control—hearing her beg. Experience had taught her that during her first year of marriage.

She read for hours. Unaware of fatigue. Or hunger.

And then she found James.

His mother had died when he was two and he’d been raised by a paternal aunt who had no children of her own. And didn’t 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 just trying to make his life miserable, to make him pay, because he couldn’t put up with her lying anymore. He’d caught her with another man. We believed him at the time. I knew my son. He’s the assistant pastor of our church....”

Renee stopped and her chin trembled. So did her lips. But her eyes didn’t waver as she looked at Jenna and continued, as softly as before, “The first time he raised a hand to me, I died a bit inside.”

A mother shouldn’t ever have to face such an atrocity. No woman should ever have to face abuse period, most particularly from a trusted loved one, but from your own child? From the human that you grew and bore and raised with unconditional love? Your own flesh and blood?

In the moment, Jenna felt incredibly lucky.

“You’re here because Brian’s been abusing you?”

“That’s right. It’s been... I’ve been here for six weeks, and really, I should be ready to go, but....”

“Are they pressuring you to move on?” Most places had to. With money constraints and regulations that didn’t allow them to house residents long-term; shelters could only do so much.

“No! They don’t do that here. Not unless you aren’t trying to help yourself. But even then, they help find alternate housing. The Stand isn’t funded principally with government money. There’s some, but it’s primarily funded by investments and private donations and a lot of the work is done by volunteers, so they aren’t as tied to generic regulations as most places.”

“So you can stay until you’re ready to go....”

She nodded. “I just... He’s still a pastor at the church where he grew up. At the church where his father and I grew up. I’m just... I...” She glanced at Jenna’s computer screen.

“I was standing behind you for a bit before I called attention to myself. I... You were shaking and seemed upset, but you were engrossed and I... The article you were reading... I...”

Understanding dawned. She’d been reading about the abuser who used religion to keep his victim under his control. “You want to help your son.”

With tears in her eyes, Renee nodded.

“You realize you can’t help him if he’s not willing to help himself.”

“Are you telling yourself the same thing?”

“I’m... My situation is different.” She couldn’t let the other woman assume...she couldn’t be responsible for setting an erroneous example. She was willing to die in this quest. She couldn’t be responsible for another woman doing so. “I’m not trying to help anyone else.” The words finally came to her. “I’m trying to help myself by gaining an understanding of...the other side.”

Renee studied her for a long minute. And then, standing, she nodded.

“Please.” Jenna reached out to her and was surprised when Renee took hold of her hand. “I’ll... We can study together, if you like. We can learn together. I just...promise me one thing....”

“What’s that?”

“That you won’t put yourself in a position that will allow your son to hurt you again.”

“I can promise you that I won’t have false hopes where he, or my ability to help him, is concerned. But he’s my only child, Jenna. I can’t promise never to be alone with him again.”

It wasn’t what she’d asked. But she understood that it was all the other woman could give.

And that made it enough.

For now.

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