Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (11 page)

She took off and we headed home. She kept asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t cry and talk at the same time. She got me inside the house and tried to simply comfort me. She was good at that. I was surprised when the basement door flew open and my dad came running into the house.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, out of breath.

She shook her head to say, “I don’t know.”

“Baby? Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

I tried to pull myself together. “Bill’s dad beat the crap out of him. He’s a mess. Black eye. Split lip. And apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened. Apparently his dad beats him on a regular basis. How could he do that? Bill’s a good guy! Why would somebody punch him with their fists and cause him such pain? Why?” I practically screamed.

They tried to comfort me some more before asking me to step into my room for a few minutes while they conferred. When I returned to the living room five minutes later they were both on the telephone, him on his cell phone and her on the house phone. It didn’t sound like they were making official calls of any sort—I had momentarily been worried that they were calling the police or something like that. All I caught from the last call was “Eight o’clock. Tonight. Spread the word. I need everybody. Thanks. See you then.”

When they hung up their calls I asked what was happening. My mom had tears in her eyes as well, which surprised the hell out of me. We all sat down at the dining room table. After looking at one another, my father nodded at her and she started to speak to me. “Mark, baby, there’s something you don’t know. It’s something I decided a long time ago that I wanted to keep from you. Your father didn’t totally agree, but he honored my decision and I thank him for that.”

What the hell was happening, I wondered. I had enough crap to deal with today. I didn’t need some big revelation from my parents on top of everything else.

“My dad was a good man,” she said. “He worked hard. He provided for all eight of us. I loved him.” She took a deep breath and then continued. “But he also was an alcoholic. And when he drank he wasn’t a good dad anymore. When he drank he became mean, nasty, and a completely different man.”

I said nothing but simply sat there looking back and forth from her face to my dad’s face. “He beat us, Mark,” she said simply. “He beat us.” She started to cry, obviously reliving some painful memories.

My dad held her hand and took over the story. “When your mom’s dad had been drinking, he’d come home and take his belt or his hand or his fist—once, even a chair—and beat his wife and his children. They’d be asleep in bed. They hadn’t done anything to him or to anyone else other than love him and be home in bed.

“It was bad, son. It was really bad. He’d pull them out of their beds and throw them out the door to stand in the cold and the snow. Then he would lock the door and not let them back in. When they tried to get back in, he’d get madder and beat them again. It was so bad, son. Your mom didn’t want you to know about this, and I can see why. It’s painful for her to relive, and it makes everyone think less of her father. But he was a good man—except for when he drank. Then he became a monster. He couldn’t control himself when he started to drink.

“It wasn’t just his own family he beat. He’d pick fights with random guys in the bar. I can’t tell you the number of times he was sent to the hospital all broken up and beaten up. He couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car. Your grandmother didn’t drive and didn’t have another car so she’d have to find somebody to drive them all around the city looking for his car. He’d been thrown out of so many bars and told never to return that you could never tell where he’d gone drinking.

“So, sadly, we have firsthand experience with fathers doing vile, disgusting things to their children. When you told us about Bill, you asked ‘Why?’ There are many ‘reasons’ for why men do horrible things. We’ve told you about one.”

“But Bill’s never said anything about this. Nothing at all.”

“People don’t like to talk about things like this,” my dad explained. “It’s awful. It’s embarrassing. It’s frustrating. How do you tell somebody that the man who gave you life beat the crap out of you? People might think you deserved it, that you had done something really horrible and deserved such punishment. People don’t like to talk about such things, and I can’t fault them for that.”

“How did you learn about Mom?” I asked.

“When we were dating, I went to their house one night to pick her up for dinner. I found all of the kids and her mom sitting out on the porch. I could tell with just one look that something was wrong. It took a bit of pushing, but they finally told me that their dad had been drinking and had locked them all out of the house again.

“I couldn’t believe such a thing. It seemed so contrary to everything I thought I had seen. But then I heard the man slamming around inside the house, throwing things. I heard glass breaking, and I heard him yelling something. The blood in my veins turned cold in an instant. I was furious. I was outraged at the man. Before they could stop me, I opened a window on the side of the house and climbed inside.

“I found the man sitting at the kitchen table with absolute and utter destruction all around him. He’d simply been out of control. I opened the doors so his family could come back inside. And I stayed there, glued to his side. There was no way on God’s green earth that I was gonna see him do something like that again. Your mom and I didn’t go out to dinner that night. No. I sat at their kitchen table and poured as much black coffee into her dad as I could possibly get him to drink. I put him in an ice cold shower to shock him back to reality. I did everything I knew to do. It took hours. He wanted to go to sleep, but I wouldn’t let him. No. I insisted that he clean up the mess he’d made throughout the house. He wasn’t gonna do it, but I wouldn’t back down. I grabbed a broom and threw it at him. I grabbed a dustpan and a garbage can and we set to work trying to clean up the stuff he’d thrown around. None of his kids could have done that to him or with him. They were all too close to the situation and had lived it so long that it had become built into them as an automatic fact of life.

“But that day I vowed that I would never see that man do something like that again. I slept there at the house that night. I got friends and relatives lined up and we intervened in his life, because it wasn’t just
his
life. His actions affected dozens of other lives, not just the eight people in his household, but all the coworkers that he let down when he failed to drive people to work as he’d promised, all the employers when he’d show up to work so hungover that he couldn’t even walk a straight line. His behavior had a broad impact.

“So from that day forward we tried to get rid of that habit of his, that curse, that addiction that had such tight hold of him. We worked hard. It wasn’t always perfect. Not by a long shot. He’d slip and fall back into his old ways. But I’d be right back in his face and not give him an inch.

“Things got a little better after we got married, because he got sick. You can’t drink so much, fight so much, and not do a little damage along the way. After you were born he held you so proudly. You were his first grandson, and he was so proud of you. Whenever we’d go to visit him, he would insist on holding you for the entire visit. When you were old enough to walk, he’d take you outside to walk to the little store that was next to his house—he wanted to show you off to all of his buddies.”

“I don’t remember him,” I said, the first thing I’d contributed to this conversation in quite a while.

“We’ll show you pictures and tell you stories,” Dad said. “But before we do that, we have something else we have to do.”

“What?”

“We’re going to go into the lion’s den and confront the lion.”

“What?” I asked, baffled.

My mom picked up the conversation. “You and I are going to Bill’s house to check on what’s been happening there. I went to school with his mother. I know her, or at least I
knew
her. If she’s in trouble, then it’s my duty to do something to help her. We know that Bill’s in trouble and needs our help. I just have to find out how widespread the problem is.”

“And I’ll be outside with a few relatives and friends—a rather large group, actually—and we’ll be ready to move in once you and your mom get Bill and his mom out of the house. We’ll be listening to everything and will know that we have to move in earlier if necessary. I won’t let anything happen to you two. Can you do this with us?”

Vigorously nodding my head I said, “Yes! Absolutely! Let’s go!”

“Not just yet. We need to give him time to get home. We need to give Bill time to get home. And we need a little while to spread the word and get all of the guys together for our intervention. Let’s eat something, and then we’ll leave here a little after seven. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat anything,” I said quite honestly.

“I know,” my dad agreed. “We’ll eat something, but I don’t want much either until we get this over with and get them out of there.”

We nibbled on something—I don’t have a clue what it was or if it tasted good since it was purely background. I kept watching the clock, checking the time. I wanted to go rescue Bill. I was terrified that the longer we waited the greater the risk that his dad would beat him again.

W
HEN
we left the house, I drove my mom’s SUV and my dad drove his SUV separately. I didn’t see him on the road behind us so I knew he’d probably had to make a stop somewhere along the way to pick up something or someone. I was so scared I could barely focus on driving the car. My mom was unusually quiet. Usually her mouth ran constantly with a nonstop monologue, a commentary on anything and everything. She’d always been that way. The fact that she was quiet tonight was remarkable. She was probably as scared as I was.

The quiet was getting to me. “Are you scared?” I asked.

“Yes. I am every time I go on one of these outings.”

Wait, wait! What? This wasn’t her first rodeo?

“What do you mean? What other times have you dealt with something like this?”

She was quiet for a moment, seeming to compose her thoughts in her head before she started speaking. “The meetings I go to every Tuesday night?” she said as a question.

I nodded.

“Those aren’t always meetings. Whenever we learn about women and families in trouble from abuse, we go out on… rescue missions. We try to get women and children out of abusive environments, away from abusive men, and into a safe place. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the abusive mentality is so wired into their minds by the time we get there that they can’t conceive of anything other than the relationship they’re in. For some reason they love the person who beats them and become convinced that it’s because of something they’re doing wrong—
that’s
why the man is forced to beat them.”

“That’s sick!” I said.

“But not that unusual, believe it or not. There have been some cases we’ve dealt with over the years that were clear-cut. And it breaks my heart when we’re unable to break the cycle of violence. A couple of times the woman was disabled, not just psychologically, but also physically, by subsequent beatings. One even died.”

My mother was quiet again. I focused on navigating the roads that I didn’t know all that well.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“For more than ten years now. There’s a group of us that work out of the church. We all have our stories, our own experiences that make us want to help others. We know what it’s like in some way, and we want to do what we can to get others out of the same mess. We applied for some private foundation funding about five years ago, and we got the money. Since then we’ve been able to do a lot more. With money not only can we get women and children out of abusive environments, but we can get them into a safe house in another town where they can live without fear while professionals work with them to sort everything out. You wouldn’t believe the psychological damage that abuse can do to a person.”

I was numb with disbelief. This day had been a shocker on seventeen different levels. Each time I thought that nothing could top the last thing, something new was revealed that did indeed top the last thing.

“Dad knows about this?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Of course. We don’t have any secrets from each other. He’s gone out with us when we’ve had to intervene in bad cases. He’s been unbelievably supportive and helpful. Some of these situations can get really messy, really nasty.” She stopped and looked at me—no, she stared at me. “Are you prepared for the unexpected tonight? This is not going to be any fun. This could get really violent. This could get bad. You have to promise me right here and now that you will listen to what I tell you. I’ve done this before. I know what I’m doing. I’m pretty good at reading the signs, the body language, the situation. I can tell when I’m getting through, and I can also tell when things are going to just fall apart and get physical. Promise me right here and now that you’ll do
exactly
what I tell you. If you can’t or won’t, then I’m going to have to leave you here and go on by myself.”