It was November, 2001. My baby was six months old and I no longer had a job. The car had been repossessed, not because of a late payment but because I couldn’t afford the comprehensive insurance required until it was paid off. Thus, I was primarily stuck at home. I didn’t mind since I had been housewife and mother for many years. But I simply couldn’t get back into the old routines. I’d had my tubes tied to prevent any further pregnancies, to avoid the nightmare of the last one. But Bill’s drinking and abuse continued, every night. The screaming, the griping, the name calling—late into the nights, usually, and the only sleep I could manage were naps during the day. The arguments continued over who would do what—namely, I or my oldest daughter would do it all and he would do nothing but drink.

Money was tight and I still hadn’t found another job yet. But the lack of income didn’t stop the expense of his drinking. More than once, he would take the last twenty dollars before payday, a few days before, and spend it all on alcohol for himself. Nothing changed, no matter the situation. He drank and turned vicious, nightly. Tired of the tirades and rampages, I fought back to the best of my ability but the household chores were neglected. I tried to write but the situation affected any creativity I still possessed. It went on and on with no end in sight. Until my daughter woke me from a early afternoon nap. Someone at the door wanted to talk to me.

I pulled on the first clothes I could grab and went to the door. A Child Protective Services investigator asked several questions about the state of the house, which was really awful. Honestly, I had neglected housework for a while except the bare minimum. I resented Bill’s stance on the issue and inadvertently went on strike. The CPS workers left but returned a short time later with the police. I won’t detail the particulars of the case here, that is not my purpose. They took all three of my children into custody, charging me with ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’, the charge they use to take children from their homes. I couldn’t stop them but I called Bill at work and told him. That night, I also got drunk, but he was far worse. He ranted and raged at the injustice of it all but I, deep down, realized that something was seriously wrong here and housework was only part of it. However, there was little I could do at that point.

We began dealing with CPS, following their outlined program in the hopes of getting our children back. As the next two years went by, I knew it was hopeless. I was basically cited for having a dirty house and went to court. Prosecution offered a plea bargain—guilty to misdemeanor, suspended 6 month sentence, suspended fine, but no probation since we already had to do the same type of procedures with CPS.

As we dealt with lawyers and caseworkers, I started cleaning up my act. I kept the house in order and we even moved into a three-bedroom trailer in the same mobile home park and set up bedrooms for the children when they returned. After a few honest conversations with my lawyer, who told me Bill was a jerk but I denied that at the time, I came to realize that his drinking and bizarre drunken behavior had cost us any chance of getting our children returned. He never stopped drinking, never even cut back on it. He blamed everyone but himself for the issues at hand, especially CPS, whom he referred to as jack-booted thugs. He claimed it was because he was white.

These days that kind of rationalization sounds ridiculous but at the time I paid no attention. He never once admitted any blame in the entire fiasco. For myself, I knew I held partial blame but I couldn’t fix things alone. I needed his help but he adamantly refused to give up the alcohol. I think I knew then the booze was more important to him than the children, and even me—but I refused to face that. Instead, I did the best thing I could for my children. I made sure, through my own machinations and just letting him go on as he was, that my children were not returned to us, that they were taken in but not separated, that they would be safe. I let my sister and brother-in-law have custody of them. It was my best option for keeping them out of the line of fire, away from his abuse.

He also began to blame his own family, who wanted only to help. He got just as nasty with his mother over the years as he was to me. Name calling, insulting, drunk calls just to heap abuse on her. It got even worse after his father died and she finally began seeing another man, someone he knew and apparently didn’t like. His favorites phrases included variations of the f-word. He was even more vicious in his tirades toward me.

During the last year, he was unemployed for a month, and money ran low. I had a job, but the situation affected my attendance and I lost the job. I’d miss days after late night temper tantrums with him, and the infrequent drinking binge. During that month we got behind on rent and were ultimately evicted. We moved into a kitchenette in a nearby motel. The situation worsened. He refused to quite drinking, even to try to get his children back. He often said he thought of them like characters in a book. You can close the book. One night, I got so angry at that sentiment, I just yelled at him—this was after another round of name calling and insults directed at me. He’d also started accusing me of being a whore.

I told him our children were not book characters but that it was obvious he didn’t care for any of his children, even the four from his first marriage. I still kept in contact with my oldest daughter, but when drunk, he lumped her in with everyone he claimed to hate, blaming her for telling lies about him. She told the truth even though he wanted her to lie. I recall a comment after one supervised visit. He took her to the side and told her to watch what she told her therapist or she’d get him in trouble. Notice, as I gradually did, that with him, it was all “I”—as though the world revolved around him. More and more, the self-centered, egotistical part of him surfaced. He told my daughter not long ago, sometime after I left him, that he was the most important person in the world. She had told him she lived her own life now and it didn’t revolve around him. “Yes it does,” he replied. Now, she is twenty years old, in the Navy, and has her whole life ahead of her. Her life doesn’t revolve around him and it shouldn’t. He’s a grown man and should be able to take care of himself but he still gets drunk and calls her, trying to drag her into the middle of things, scaring her with ‘suicide’ which I know from experience, he will never do. It’s a ploy he uses to get attention and have people feel sorry for him. I know, I fell for it many times over the years. He plays the ‘you don’t care. I should just kill myself’ card. The first time, she was so upset she called me several times until I was able to call her back. I told her that if he kept it up, to call the police on him, have him taken away for his own good and that he’d threatened similar things over the years but never once even attempted to carry it out. I’d do the ‘feel sorry for him’ thing, he’d get lots of attention, which meant agreeing with him and doing whatever he wanted, when he wanted it, and he wouldn’t mention it again. Understanding his dramatic streak by now, and his ability to lie effectively, she no longer worries over it and refuses to speak to him when he’s drunk.

But, I digress, hopping ahead of things. By now, not only was he getting drunk, but drinking all day long on weekends as well, even more so after the children finally went to live with my sister. I hoped, foolishly perhaps, that this might be what he needed to straighten up his act, to cut back on the boozing and begin to live again, just the two of us, getting back what we had in the early days. Again, I was wrong.

He had a good job, was now foremen journeyman electrician at a twenty year old company, doing commercial electrical construction. Raises over the years had put him back at seventeen dollar an hour range so even with the weekly motel bill and other living expenses, I no longer had to work. At his urging, I went back to writing, full time, and while I didn’t have the financial success I hoped for, I did have several stories published.

The drunken tirades tapered off some but the heavy drinking continued even after the CPS case was officially closed. These temper tantrums took the form of heaping abuse on my head., as usual, only now he added that I was a worthless piece of shit and if I didn’t’ like the way he wanted things, I could leave. That escalated to ‘get the f*** out’ if I dared argue with him in any attempt to defend myself or retaliate in kind. He grew physically violent more often, throwing things at me, sometimes slapping or even punching. After twenty years of martial arts training, I dared to hit back, often. Of course, it enraged him that I would dare to hit him or throw something back at him. He is so self-centered that I am supposed to just let him do whatever he wants and get away with it. Almost like I deserved whatever he did to me. I avoided falling into that trap but still it was a few more years before I decided enough was enough.

One thing that began to really irk me was his more frequent claims on the mornings after that he didn’t remember anything from the previous night. Now I have two options here, neither of which is pretty. He either had blackouts from drinking too much or he pretended not to remember so he could get away with it. Either way, it was all bad. I soon began to tire of his constant drinking when not working. These forgotten things included sexual advances toward other women, minor but trust shattering. A couple of years earlier, still in the mobile home park, we knew an African American woman. She had her own issues to deal with but Bill saw her outside one night and invited her in for a few beers. He was already drunk and only got more drunk during the short evening. At one point, he lowered his sweat shorts, exposing his penis, still flacid, to both of us, even wiggling it back and forth. He wasn’t aroused and I have no idea what went through his drunken mind, but he did it anyway. I told him to “put that thing away” and he did. The woman left. The next morning, he claimed to have no memory of it.

We stayed in the motel, comfort with the arrangement of the kitchenette until I left him. To my knowledge, he is still living there. A few years after we moved in there, we became friendly with a couple living downstairs, Kevin and Vivien. One night, partying while the man worked on his bicycle, I drove him to the nearest convenience store for a can of fix-a-flat. When I got back, the woman told me Bill had exposed himself and put his penis on her face. As I walked in, leaving Kevin to fix his bike tire, Bill walked out, heading up the stairs. Hearing Vivien’s declaration, I was very upset. Vivien and I stepped outside, talking about. She didn’t want to tell Kevin, he would surely react with some violence. I told her she could tell him anything she felt comfortable admitting. Bill deserved anything he got in retaliation. Perhaps I wanted someone to take him to ask for something he did wrong. You see, he believed he never did anything wrong at all, that he could do anything he pleased and get away with it. It wasn’t wrong if he did it and people are supposed to allow it, and even lie for him if necessary.

There were no acceptable lies this time. Even n apology wouldn’t cut it now. Bill had dared to ‘touch’ another man’s woman and would face the consequences. Vivien did admit to Kevin what Bill had done. Bill came down stairs, apparently realizing Vivien would tell Kevin. He started apologizing, “I’m sorry, man. I f***** up.” Kevin, of course, was angry and punched him in the side. Bill caved. Only one hit and the so-called Navy SEAL caved. He went back upstairs and stayed there.

I stayed with them a little longer, talking mostly, before Bill came down shortly after sunrise, wanting me to go get him some more rum. I told him I couldn’t as it was Sunday and only eight o’clock. In Arizona, you can’t buy alcohol anywhere on Sunday until 10.00am. He asked if I was coming home. I told him I couldn’t talk to him yet. I was still so upset about it, didn’t know what I’d say to him without a nasty fight, and couldn’t face him yet. When I did go back upstairs, I found him on the floor. He had actually cleaned the kitchen, washing dishes and straightening up a little. I made coffee. When he got up, sat on the bed, he started trying to convince me Vivien had ‘come on’ to him, driven him to it. I knew better and flat out told him, “No she didn’t.” He got mad and took off, driving of to who knew where. I went back to Vivien, making sure she was okay. With their door open, she’d seen Bill leave. I couldn’t very well stop him from driving drunk and part of me hoped he’d get stopped with a DUI, that maybe that would curb his drinking. It didn’t happen. Not long after that, Kevin and Vivien left the motel and we never saw them again.

But the pattern continued, in fact got even worse. I’ll explore that further in the next article The Fire Smolders: The Ultimate Betrayal.