The Knowing: Awake in the Dark (14 page)

When his screaming and tantrums erupted, which could occur over the smallest incident, I took full responsibility. I chided myself for doing something to trigger his temper. He’d frequently say, “It’s just that you make me so mad” or “if you would just stop nagging me, I wouldn’t lose my temper.”

I believed that my actions could control his.
When he feels how much I love him,
he will change.
 I
knew
deep down that his behavior would never change, the voice had told me so.  
He is who he will always be. You can’t change him.
It said.

No
, I thought and I rejected the voice and the
knowing.

He will change,
I continually told myself.
All he needs is someone to love him; he’s had a hard life. He needs me.
I stubbornly told myself.

Early in my third month of pregnancy, my mother called. We hadn’t talked since I’d been kicked out.

“Nita!” Aaron yelled after answering the phone, “It’s your mom.”

Surprised, I hurried to the phone clutching a can of Lemon Pledge. I’d sprayed it across the fake wood of our table, even though it didn’t need it, I loved the smell. It was the first time in more months than I could count that I’d heard from my mother. I wondered if someone was hurt.

“Hello,” I said in an uncertain tone.

“Good morning, Nita,” my mother said. “Are you all moved in?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I responded still skeptical. “How are you?”

“More importantly, how are you? I understand you’re pregnant.”

I was sure Maggie told her. She must have heard it through the grapevine.

“Yes,” I chirped brightly. “I’m due in January.”  My pulse picked up its pace and I knew my mother would not be happy. I tightened my grip on the phone, squeezed my eyes shut, and braced myself for her response.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do, Nita? You’re pretty young to have a child. It’s a lot of responsibility. How will you manage?”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said with conviction. “I will be fine. I’ll probably miss school for most of January but with Christmas break it should be all right. I should still graduate in June.”

“M-m-hm.” my mother responded. “Are you seeing a doctor? You’re covered on my insurance you know. You are still a minor.”

“Yes. I’ve been once. I go again next month, she gave me pre-natal vitamins. They constipate me,” I whispered, cupping my palm around the phone.

“Well, keep me posted,” she said. “We had to move to the other side of town so come and see the new house. I have to get to work now, we’ll talk later.”

With that she hung up the phone. I was so happy my mother called and she didn’t freak out about the baby.
This baby is making miracles already
. I hung up the phone, happy and hopeful.

In my sixth month of pregnancy Aaron and I drove to the grocery store. At a traffic light, a midnight blue Chevy Impala low rider, pulled beside us. Hugging the ground, sporting bright chrome hubcaps polished to a mirror shine, it idled with a loud plap-plap-plap. I instinctively looked up and glanced into the car. Inside were four males. The driver was Hispanic and wore a thick bandana tied low over his forehead, his black hair shined with grease. Our eyes momentarily met. Aaron screamed. “You want to get out of the car and suck his dick you little whore!”

His accusation jolted and embarrassed me. His words stung like a slap. He threw the car into park and turned toward me.

“Just get out and suck his dick!” His voice grew louder, “Get the fuck out of my car,” he screamed.

“No, Aaron, I didn’t mean it. Stop it,” I pleaded.  I was squirming with mortification.
Where is this coming from
? I wondered.

“You get the fuck out of my car right now!”

His lips were wet with saliva and his eyes bulged from their sockets. He leaned across me and opened the car door and growled between gritted teeth. “Don’t make me say it again.”

Disgrace and humiliation were harder to bear than the exhaustive heat. I got out of the car and hurried into the neighborhood where no one could witness the shame of what I endured.  Aaron sped from the light, screeching his tires and leaving a plume of smoke in his wake.  I gave no thought to the filthy and degrading remarks that came from Aaron and defined him.  My ears were deaf to the sheer degradation and hateful tone in the nasty, unloving words that fell over me every day.

What did I do?
I wondered all the way home.

By December, I stopped attending school altogether. I couldn’t get it together in the mornings. I was still plagued with severe morning sickness and nothing eliminated my constant nausea. I was thrilled, though, to have made up with my family. Maggie and I never talked about her kicking me out, but she had strong opinions regarding my decision to drop out of school.

“Don’t drop out of school, you idiot. You’ll be sorry. You’ll have nothing. You have to get your high school diploma.”

“It’ll be okay. Not everyone needs school. I don’t even use the stupid shit they teach you,” I said, certain of myself.

Maggie looked at me sternly, disapproval apparent in her beautiful blue eyes. In my seventh month, my family threw me a surprise baby shower. Maggie showed up at my house unannounced one afternoon,

“C’mon, I’ll show you our new house,” she said. “You’ll like it.”

“Okay,” I eagerly agreed. I was excited to be included again and happy Maggie was back on my side. I’d missed her.

“Oh, my, god. What’s going on?” I exclaimed as we entered the bright living room.

I saw my mother, Karina and Isla smiling among the people crowded into the room. Colorful balloons filled the space and a large sheet cake decorated in “Winnie the Pooh” was proudly displayed on the table. The outpouring of love and support were overwhelming and unexpected. Karina lived a couple of hours away and I was shocked she was there. I received much-needed baby supplies and the day meant more to me than I could say.

I spent my days before the birth of my child frantically cleaning house.  Like Milda, my step- mother, I wanted everything to sparkle and be perfect. Somehow, I’d tied my self-esteem and worth to how tidy I kept things.

I stood in the doorway that would be the baby’s and surveyed the room. A crib, we picked up at a garage sale, newly-painted white, was filled with stuffed animals and a beautiful mobile hung over it. A changing table stocked with Johnson’s baby shampoo, powder and a stack of cloth diapers with pins and plastic pants filled the corner. Even though plastic diapers were all the rage, I wanted to do things the old-fashioned way. There was a tiny, plastic bathtub and baby towels waiting for baby’s first bath. I couldn’t wait.

I read romance novels and watched soap operas to help pass the time and escape the reality of living with Aaron. I avoided the truth of my life and created my own reality.

The night I went into labor, the initial pain ebbed and came back just when I thought it was done. I shook Aaron awake.

“It’s time to go. I think I’m in labor, for real this time.” I mumbled.

There had been a false alarm with Braxton Hicks a few nights before and Aaron resented having to lose sleep over a false alarm.

“Not now,” he moaned. “I’m sleeping.”

“Aaron, please, it hurts.” My voice was strained and my tone unrecognizably high.

He didn’t move or attempt to help me. Minutes passed and I tried again.

“Aaron, seriously, I need to go to the hospital.”

“Jesus, fucking, Christ!” He screamed. “I am tired and I need my sleep!

Tears stung my eyes and I felt my throat constrict with rejection. He rolled away, turning his back to me.

“I’m having another contraction,” I yelled. And then, I screamed, “OK, fuck you! Just fuck you, then!”

I rolled out of bed after the next contraction and staggered to the kitchen and called Maggie.

“Please, come and get me,” I begged. “I’m in labor.”

“Where’s, Aaron?” Maggie inquired, groggy with sleep.

“He won’t get up, Maggie, and I need to go”

“Okay, I’m coming.”

When Maggie picked me up, she exclaimed, “What an asshole Aaron is. He’s a total fuck up.”

We arrived to the hospital after midnight and by two the next afternoon, I had not given birth nor had I dilated sufficiently. I was terrified and unable to relax. I was unprepared for the level of pain I felt. My mother and Maggie stayed vigilant at my side.

It was 2p.m. the next afternoon, an hour before I would finally deliver, when I whispered, “Where’s Aaron? Is he here?”

“No.” My mother said. She was like an icy glacier when I said his name.

“Don’t worry, Nita,” my mother went on, “I’ll come into the delivery room with you. You don’t need him.”

“Ok,” I croaked. “You come in then.”

Minutes before delivery, Aaron sauntered in and announced that he was the father and went into the delivery room, my mother waited in the hall. It was pure luck he arrived on time for the birth of his son. I swallowed the truth that Aaron abandoned us. I gulped down the knowledge that he was angry, abusive and controlling. I dwelled in the fantasy of who I wanted him to be.  I told myself that our son’s presence would change him, because if you loved someone enough, and gave them precious gifts, they would change. That was my false belief.

I would forever regret not having my mother present for her first grandchild’s birth.

In the moments after I gave birth to my son, I caught a glimpse, a flash in my mind’s eye, of who I could be. A
picture
behind my eyes, showed a woman with a long braid and quiet determination. I felt her strength and
knowing
. It took several years to fully understand that my future self was born with my son.

At age seventeen, I held my beautiful son, who I named, Raine. I felt like I had walked through a secret door and had a new insight into life after giving birth. Awe filled me and absolute love radiated from within. I breathed in the sweet scent of my boy and I whispered messages of love into his tiny ears. He gazed at me with beautiful green eyes. He had what was called a “port wine” birthmark that looked like a tiny spill of red wine at the side of his face. From the beginning, I felt it made him unique.

Raine was a good baby. He was a happy and agreeable child, never colicky or fussy.  Nothing I had ever known was comparable to kissing his wet lips and open mouth while he smiled and watched me - nothing at all.

Aaron’s behavior did not change. It worsened with the stress and demands of a new baby. His anger hovered like a poisonous fog around his body.  I could no longer ignore his violent outbursts and filthy language in front of my precious Raine.  Suddenly, my ears awakened and multiple realities dawned on me. I made a decision to leave Aaron.

“Mom, can Raine and I come live with you?” I said, to my mother on the phone. “I’m leaving Aaron. I can’t take it anymore.”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation, “come home.”

Although our relationship was strained, my mother was always there for me when it counted.

My mother doted over Raine and showered him with words of love and affection, something I never got from her. I saw a gentler side of her that I hadn’t known existed.

“You’re such a sweet, sweet, boy.” She’d say. “You don’t know how lucky you are Nita, to have such a sweet and easy child. None of you girls were as sweet as this baby.”

Raine was six months old when I left. Aaron didn’t try to stop me, but he told me if I left, I was on my own.

“Don’t expect shit from me,” Aaron snarled. “You think you can do better, go ahead, you stupid cunt.”

After a couple of months passed, he made his first attempt to contact me and harm me physically. Aaron knocked on the door of my mother’s house late in the evening. It was then I agreed to take a ride with Aaron who made his first attempt to kill me, crashing his car into a ditch purposely.

When Maggie picked me up from the 24-hour store where I’d fled that night, my mother stared at me, her expression matter-of-fact. “Nita, you have to pull your head out of your ass. Aaron is a fuck-stick. He is angry and dangerous. He’ll kill you if you give him a chance. Don’t think he won’t.”

Why does everyone hate him? He hardly tried to kill me. He was trying to scare me. He is harmless.
I thought. I dismissed my mother’s concern. I wanted to believe in the Aaron I’d created in my desperate need to be loved. I was accustomed to violence, anger and hateful behavior as a normal expression of love. I blamed myself. I believed I brought out the worst in people.