Thinking that relocating to Tucson would help, that things might settle into a more acceptable wrong, I looked forward to the change. Bill had a job as an electrician, work he loves and is quite good at. Though we spent three months in a mini-apartment at a motel, I was comfortable, even while job hunting. Turned out, the cost of living in Tucson was much higher, especially with rent, than in Willcox. Still, I had high hopes. I thought we’d be happy. I was wrong, so wrong, and the cost of that nearly destroyed me.

Bill continued to drink but the violence all but stopped. We moved into a nearby mobile home park, a more rundown place than we wanted, but it was affordable. It was a small, cramped trailer, hardly enough room for two children, a boy and a girl, and two adults but I knew we’d make it work. The first job I had was down the street at a nearby motel. I was the front desk clerk from 3:30pm until 11:30pm. We often had a few drinks at the bar right next door to the mobile home park. Soon, it became a pattern for Bill, already drunk at home, to call me at work and want me to meet him there. A couple of times he wanted me to leave work early and meet him there, claiming some reaction to combat or a memory, or a bad night due to combat—combat he was never in, I later realized.

Ultimately I lost that job. I was accused of stealing towels and money. I am not a thief and I did not steal anything, let alone a cart of towels. Soon after, though, I applied for and was offered two different jobs. The first, part time, was to do housekeeping/clean empty apartments at an apartment complex. The second, full time and paying more, was at a call center. I discussed the options with Bill. The apartment job was Monday through Friday, half a day, for 5.00 an hour. The call center offered forty hours, at 8.25 an hour—he agreed I should take the call center job even though it would not be a regular schedule, and would likely involve nights and weekends as the hours of operation were 24/7. He even agreed that with both of us working full time, he would have to help with household chores, etc. I should have known better. I took the job, and thus began the real fighting, the abuse that continued until the day I left him.

My work hours were all over the clock. Starting a shift at different times, ending it at different times. Sometimes I didn’t arrive home until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Then, I’d really get an earful. Even worse, if our daughter might still be up and awake because he was yelling at her about not cleaning house. She was only twelve years old, but rather than pitch in as he’d agreed to do, he raged about things not being done. He wanted laundry washed, the house cleaned, yet all he did was come home, start drinking, and start yelling, throwing temper tantrums. He often stated, several times in a night, every night, that he was not going to work full time, an eight hour day and come home to do housework. In my defense, I told him I, too, worked full time. Why should I do all the housework while he sat around getting drunk? That really angered him. Our daughter, if she was lucky, could sneak off to bed while I handled her father. The screaming matches were incredible! Vicious, nasty name calling. Now, I have been called a b**** in my time but it always hurt to have my own husband refer to me that way.