Wife enters the kitchen and sees half of the Oreo cake husband left for her…

“He’s such a baby. You’re a baby! You are such a little BABY!” she says, smiling adoringly and thinking of him fondly as she puts the cake off to the side; only to discover the bowl from last night’s dinner sitting on the counter—dried and encrusted with the residue of last night’s leftover chicken alfredo pasta.

Same wife…

“He just can’t do it, can he? He just can’t do it to save his FUCKING life! Just put the bowl in the FUCKING water and soak your MOTHERFUCKIN’ DISHES!”

Someone once asked me why I still wear my engagement ring with the one diamond missing—why not just get it fixed and wait to wear it until it’s fixed. Well, for starters, my youngest daughter, Grace, wanted to wear mommy’s jewelry once, (innocently enough) and didn’t think I would take something like that off, and it was missing a diamond so she didn’t think I would mind. Poor baby. I wish I wouldn’t have panicked and freaked out the way I did. I’m still a work in progress. But aside from all that, I actually choose to wear it with all its… vestige. After all, isn’t it a more accurate resemblance of what marriage truly is? It’s big and bold, it’s brave and beautiful in every single way. It’s unique and shiny and irresistible. But over time, it becomes fragile…some diamonds may fall out…you may find that it has gotten some scuff marks from being a hard-working mom and it lacks the familiar luster you used to ogle over with every flick of your hand after he put it on your finger and asked you to make him the happiest man alive. And you said, “yes.” And then you both wrote personal vows to one another with tears in your eyes in front of a few loved ones and God. You had the honeymoon of a lifetime in paradise. And then as you headed back to your lives as one…things happened…here and there…diamonds fell out…more scuff marks. But when I look at this precious, semi-tattered ring—that serves as an amulet for our matrimony—it is actually more beautiful than when it was first placed with such ginger care on my hand back then. Because I chose it. And I (shall) keep choosing it…

I had a dream in 2022 that I was in this house that wasn’t mine (somehow it never is) and I was standing at the front door inside. Before leaving to wherever I was going, I felt the urge to look back towards the back door which could be seen from across the unimpressive, bare living room (the home wasn’t very big) with the shabby forest green carpet. I didn’t turn into a pillar of salt like I feared, but as I peered across the small stretch of room without furniture, I could see a pestilence trying to make its way through the back door and into the even less impressive kitchen. Swarms of all different types of insects by the bucket full were crawling and flying their way in. I looked down and saw snakes and scorpions and frogs slithering and hopping and creeping along the kitchen floor towards me. The lot was making its way fast. It was the epitome of every hellacious nightmare you’ve ever seen in a horror film, because there was a darkness, a shroud trying to make its way in also.

Though this was where I had awakened at the start of this seemingly nightmare, somehow I knew that my daughters were outside playing. I darted across the room towards the lot of my fear, leaping over them as swiftly as the next Olympian long-jumper and zipped out the backdoor like a pet who’s just discovered they have a doggy door. Charlotte and Grace were outside alright, in the midst of what seemed to be a blanket of flying…well…EVERYTHING. From locusts to gnats, they were EVERYWHERE. You couldn’t even open your mouth to speak let alone scream. And you better not scream, or get a mouthful of unwanted crunchy protein. I wondered if the girls were afraid, but they stood there amongst the buzzing and the zapping noises totally unbothered and completely unscathed. In fact, they stood there so nonchalantly, talking amongst themselves and playing old school hand games, that one might think they were unaware there were any bugs at all. Not one creepy crawly even so much as fluttered in their faces or stung them or ANYTHING.

As usual when I woke up I rushed to look up the spiritual meaning of such a vision, but could only find the common convoluted theories that always come circling back around to either subconscious, specious meanings or diverting to astrology. I later shared the dream with an old dear friend who was very spiritually in tune. She said it so simply and plainly that it made so much sense; I was almost mad that I didn’t think of that myself. She said that it was sin trying to find its way into my life still, but because it was coming through the back door, it was trying to make its way in through my lineage like sin being passed down like cursed heirlooms. She further elaborated that if it had been coming through the front passage, it would mean it was outright sin I was committing knowingly, but still, I needed to pray and bind and rebuke. So I did. What brought me immense peace was that my daughters did not seem to be affected by this generational curse.

I tried to figure out why God would only show me my girls and not Sonny? Was he still subject to the family oppression? Would the family curse continue with my son? If so, would he be the one to break it? Was it something that only pertained to the women in our family? I knew God would reveal it in due time.

The following year Juan and I faced severe financial and marital struggles. Our rent had risen to astronomical heights not worthy of the cost for such a tiny place we had been cramped in the past three years that was now becoming infested with roaches that looked like they belonged in the Amazon.

(pestilence)

One of our cars was repossessed. Sonny couldn’t take the pressure living with us anymore and decided to move back with his dad in Vegas. We were always fighting and the fights were getting progressively worse. We had almost separated once and I had even entertained the possibility of an affair with one of my college professors. Instead of divorce which had come up a few times, I decided to quit school and give Juan a chance to pursue his own dreams for once since he had always supported mine. I was surprised to find out that he had always dreamed of being in the military. I, too, dreamed of being a soldier once upon a time and decided it would be great for us, I could live vicariously through him while continuing to raise the girls and support him in everything.

Around this same time, I began talking to my mother again, a very fragile relationship indeed. I had recently heard that Uncle Joe’s mother had passed away and it got me thinking about how much longer I may have my own in my life. The average life expectancy on our side of the family wasn’t much past 60. In fact, we were lucky to make it to 60 due to our genetic predispositions and the lack of taking good care of oneself with a good diet and exercise. I had already taken my health into my own hands and thought I could be a good inspiration to my mom to get healthy before it was too late. Trying to let go of resentment, I corresponded with her daily as the summer approached and Juan and I prepared to launch his career in the army. But like always, my mother’s pushiness and constant queries into my personal life began to weigh on me, and like always, I began to recoil, keeping my answers short and kurt.

One day, on a bad day, I became so overwhelmed by everything going on that I was unable to keep up the charade of being patient with R***** W***. The best I could do was ignore her constant texting. It was too much to look at my phone and see what felt like feigned love and admiration for me. When I knew that the last time I had heard my mother’s voice, it was in a voicemail coaxing me to kill myself. All during a very dark time of losing one of my brothers to a fentanyl overdose. Yes, for me, it has always poured when it’s rained. I have never known anything different. What has always given me encouragement to keep pressing is knowing that the climate will be just as strong when it is blessings being poured out instead of trials. And when she wouldn’t take my silence as the kindness it was, and began laying on the guilt trips thick, I snapped. And like I always did, I brought up as many painful memories that I could in one breath as I mouthed the words, my fingers barely able to keep up typing every word painted vividly with disdain.

It was when she said, “It’s okay Jessica. Hurt people hurt people,” I tore into her like a pair of new kitchen shears.

“Oh yeah, mom? Hurt people hurt people, huh? Well then who hurt you? I know it wasn’t my grandmother, she was a saint! So what was it, huh? Who?! WHO?!” I was not prepared for her answer.

“Your grandfather. My dad used to take me out on special little outings when I was younger than four. Had to be because he was gone by the time I turned four. He wouldn’t take my brothers. Just me. He would get naked with me and make me touch him and do things to him. I knew I didn’t want to but I just wanted to make him happy. I was very angry for a very long time. Those things came out when I was parenting you and I feel terrible. There’s nothing I can do to change that now but all I can do is try to do better now.”

This was it! This was the generational curse coming down the lineage and permeating the parentage. This was what my girls would be unharmed and untouched by, thank God, because here, it was about to be broken! You can’t imagine the amount of tears overflowing. It was like I could hear every bad memory, every past abuse, clicking into place and making so much sense in this moment. But I had questions. I was still so skeptical.

“What did grandma do? Is that why they divorced? I know if she had known, she’d have done more than just leave him, she’d have killed him!!”

“I never told her,” my mother said in the text thread of a lifetime. My knees gave right where I stood and I let myself fall on my bed in a rushing wave of tears. I was going to be late to something, so all I could say ever so gently in this very precious moment, through my unstoppable tears…

“My dearest darling,” I said, “I am so very deeply sorry that this happened to you and you had to face this for so long all by yourself. A weight I cannot imagine let alone bear. It is with much regret right now that I have to cut this short, but I am thinking about you and praying for you so hard. We will most definitely be talking later. We will have our time. I love you so very very much, dear heart.”

I had never spoken to my mother in that fashion before. Nor with as much sincerity. My vitriol had been replaced with profound compassion. I knew right then and there that I could never leave my mother alone again. I knew this would have its own challenges along the way, but I was determined to take back what the devil had stolen from us before I was even born!

Chapter 1: The Ambush

Our last date night out was hardly eventful, almost not worth mentioning. July 11, 2017 marked John and my second wedding anniversary and our third overall anniversary. We went to the movies and we went to see The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Tacos, for dinner from a local hole in the wall. I remember I paid for everything, as usual, being that John never worked our entire marriage apart from the month we got married when he worked at the grapevine that Bakersfield is known for. And how can I forget how his mother, Lisa, rushed us to come back and pick up the kids because it was getting late. Define late. Late, to me, is when the darkness creeps into the wee hours of the morning to find the light promised by the dawn. But apparently, to this sweet, but bipolar basket-case who I called my mother-in-law and loved so dearly, late was 10:45. Be that as it may, we picked up Sonny, Charlotte, and Grace and brought them home where they very shortly after, fell asleep. Thus, giving John and me time to be alone for the last time—though we didn’t know it. It was nothing extraordinary. It hadn’t been for a long time since the terrorizing had become a way of life instead of just a frequent occurrence. Still, a far better service of closure than some of our previous traumatic encounters with him slapping me around or being rough when I was in and out of consciousness from being under the influence of alcohol and whatever drug John John was in the mood for when the kids weren’t around. We fell asleep the way we had for the past few years whenever he wasn’t locked up in jail or prison—me, curled up next to him, legs intertwined with his, my hand on his heart and his hand on my hand—per his request, not mine.

The next morning, I got up to the sound of my beloved children beginning to stir. I dared not wake the sleeping husband beside me as I had learned the hard way many times before with getting my face slapped or threats of actual violence for asking too many times what he needed too early in the morning. The air was sweet, even in that stale little apartment on 28th St. Charlotte, always being the first up of the three, with Grace following not so shortly after, shuffled about with me grazing on breakfast snacks and watching cartoons. Sonny, always being the late riser, continued to sleep peacefully despite our girly racket.

I can’t remember the exact chronological order of everything after that. Some of it’s just a blur. I wish I could’ve said goodbye to them properly and wiped their tears. How fleeting these last pleasant moments were. They rarely happened for this little makeshift family we had become, and this blindsided us all in the moments that followed that left our entire world shaken, tossed, and flipped upside down.

There was urgency after John got his first cup of coffee. He needed me to take him to the parole office for him to register in the domestic violence class he was mandated by the court to attend for all the countless times he had beaten me (and others for that matter). I glanced at the clock on the microwave, 11:58. We only had thirty minutes to get across town and John couldn’t be late. Eavesdropping, the girls scurried away to wake Sonny so that we could go. He wanted to stay behind because he needed to shower and wash his bed clothes from another accident.

Him being a month away from being 11 years old, I said, “I’m going to lock the door behind us then and you don’t open it for ANYBODY. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom.”

So, Charlotte, Grace, John John, and I set out into the blistering heat on that abrasively hot summer day that only Bakersfield could provide. I have lived in many other towns throughout my life, known for their high temperatures, but Bakersfield takes the cake. Bakersfield heat makes you feel like you can’t breathe as soon as you step outside of the coveted air conditioning. Open the door—breath, gone! The ostentatious next-door neighbor, Gordon, was outside washing the pavement with a pressured hose. I was surprised that he wasn’t flexing about some new gadget he had acquired for nearly a pittance somehow.

“Beautiful day!” he proclaimed. I was only surprised he wasn’t bumping some loud funky tune into the tiny courtyard or trying to stop us to flex about some new gadget he had bought or installed. It was both adorable and annoying.Then again, he usually didn’t when said company was present. But dear old Gordon was right, it really was a beautiful day, despite the sweltering heat. The girls and I practically skipped to the car, chattering the whole way. I think we were just excited to see John wanting to improve and do something good. I think it gave us hope. We were his cheerleaders per se. We all piled in the car which felt like an oven. The heat outside, paling in comparison to the one inside the little electric blue Nissan that we called Honey Boo Blue.

“It’s so HOT, mommy!” Gracie complained.

“Ouch!” shrieked Charlotte as she reached for her seatbelt that was hot like a branding iron. She put her fingertips in her mouth, always having a flare for the dramatic.

“I know, I know,” I said, “I’m turning on the air now.” But before I could turn the key in the ignition, John put his hand on mine, stopping me, and said, “What’s that undercover car doing across the street?” I looked and immediately spotted the white county car with the CA Exempt license plates.

“What undercover car?”

“You don’t see that white car directly across the street from us?”

“That’s not an undercover car, babe,” I assured him.

“Man, I been locked up by these people all my life and I know an undercover car when I see it.” He looked behind him, scouting for more suspicious cars like the one across the street that felt like we were being watched by. As usual, I denied any danger and shrugged off his hyper paranoia.

“Mommy, I’m sweating!” Grace cried.

“Okay, okay,” I said and turned the key. I put the car in drive and didn’t even move forward three feet when the white car and several other cars behind us, camouflaged to look like other normal cars, came out of the woodwork with sirens, stopping us dead in our tracks. I came to an abrupt halt, put it in park, and put my hands in the air as the cops rushed the car, guns drawn, and literally coming from every direction.

“GET OUT OF THE CAR!” they shouted at us as the girls began shrieking in the backseat. I tried my best to calm them down and assess the situation. I thought maybe this had something to do with John’s parole, so I said the first stupid thing that came to mind.

“We’re on our way to the parole office right now!” I screamed through the closed window at one of them who was pointing a .9mm at my face on the other side of said closed window.

“No, you’re not!”

“He’s got to register for his class by 12:30!” I pleaded. At the time it felt like the devil didn’t want to see our family get better. That’s how I felt…then.

“Not anymore, he doesn’t!”

“Look man, you saw us get in the car with two little girls, PLEASE put your guns down! You’re SCARING them!” I begged loudly over Charlotte and Grace’s sobs.

“Then tell your husband to get out of the car, ma’am! He’s the one we want!”

“FOR GOD’S SAKE, PLEASE JUST GET OUT OF THE DAMN CAR, JOHN!”

“Alright…alright,” he said with his hand up as he reached for the door handle, slowly and cautiously getting out. “Just tell ’em everything’s okay, babe,” he called out to me with his hands behind his hand as they shouted at him to shut up, throwing him to the curb and handcuffing him.

Chapter 2: Where’d Everybody Go?

The face of the detective woman who came to investigate us is hard to forget. And not because she was beautiful or anything like that. On the contrary, she looked like an old school marm with a perfectly wrapped little bun she wore on the back of her head and a pencil skirt suit that, ironically given the situation, screamed corporal punishment in schools. She had not a stick of makeup (although desperately needed) to be found on her punch-face. In case you were wondering what a punch-face is—punch-face is the face of someone who is SO ugly, that for absolutely no reason at all, you just want to punch them in it. She looked like even at her ripe age of 45-50, she had never raised any children of her own. In fact, she looked like she had never been laid in her life and therefore redirected all her attention to her work which, now, was destroying families. You would think you would remember the name of a person who, without batting an eyelash, made my life a living hell that fateful day, but I can’t.

“So, Ms. Daley—”

“Johnson,” I corrected the school marm. “My last name is Johnson. John and I are legally married.”

“Alright, Mrs. Johnson,” she paused, “what happened last Saturday on July—” she looked down at her clipboard, “8th—it looks like it was quite early in the morning? Tell me what happened that night.” In this moment she spoke so gently, showing me the only shred of compassion, I would ever see come from her for me. She showed deep concern, even.

“Well,” I said, blowing out a gust of air, palms getting sweaty, “yes, it was the middle of the night when it happened, but before that, earlier in the day, I went grocery shopping with the kids after I took them to the park…

(where John had one of his scary episodes. After much screaming, dodging him, and scaring all the families at the park, I was able to trick him by screaming at the three of my children to RUN! And HURRY UP AND GET IN THE CAR! One by one I got them to safety. I had trained them at this and by now, we were all professionals in escape. It was there that we ditched him and fled to the parole office before they closed where I demanded help but didn’t get it. I told them that I had made a mistake by letting him reside with me so soon after prison and I wanted him removed and placed in a rehabilitation home for men. They told me there was nothing I could do, being that it was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and most organizations and government offices in good old Bakersfield would be closing in thirty minutes. They told me that they could send a couple of emails and see what they could do first thing on Monday, but as far as right at that moment, there was just nothing they could do.) SIGH

…and after putting everything away, I began cooking and cleaning all over the house while the children played and watched TV. For hours I did this and that whole time I never went into my room. I didn’t have a reason to go in there all that time until later—but when I tried the doorknob, I was mortified to find that it was locked. He had been home the whole time!”

(how creepy)

“I unlocked the doorknob with my fingernail—”

“I’m sorry,” she raised her hand looking perplexed,” you said you unlocked the door with your fingernails?”

“FingerNAIL—just one. My thumb.” I wiggled it at her. She gave me a daunting look—still, I continued. “Anyway, I peered in at him quietly so as not to wake him up.”

“So, he was asleep?”

“Yes.”

(more like passed out)

“And did you wake him up?”

“NO!” I replied overzealously. I realized this and wanted to kick myself because of her body language when she flinched a little from me. I swallowed hard. “No,” I said more calmly this time. “I just backed out of the room quietly shut the door and went back to tending to the kids. After I put them to bed, I snuck back in my bedroom to grab a pillow and blanket so I could sleep out here on the couch. He had moved and that’s when I saw my phone lying next to him.”

“He had taken your phone from you?”

(yes, the dirty bastard)

“Well, we share mine because his is broken.” She nodded, eye-balling me suspiciously. “I tiptoed out of the room again and closed the door and came out here to rest. Sonny woke up from a bad dream and I came in to comfort him and help him get back to sleep. I put on his favorite cartoons to soothe him. When I came back over here, I noticed that my bedroom door was open, but it was all dark inside.

(Out of caution, I turned my phone on silent and stuffed it way down in between the sofa cushions)

I got up to smoke a cigarette outside and when I came back to lay down and I got all cozy, one of my loud, obnoxious smoker’s coughs was what got him up and that was when he came out of the room and asked me…

(“Why the fuck were you at the parole office today?” he said rushing towards me—his eyes wide and crazy. I sat up quickly because I knew what that look meant. It meant that I was going to get it—one way or another. Before I could open my mouth to answer him, he had his hand around my throat—squeezing.

“They called and left a message on my phone today and they said that you had been over there,” he squeezed my neck harder, “now tell me what the FUCK you were doing over there?! You tryna get me locked up or what, bitch? Huh? HUH?!” Just then, behind him, I could see shadows fluttering about in the kids’ room. Sonny hadn’t gone back to sleep! I began to pat at John's burly arms, barely able to get it out through clenched vocal chords, “Please, stop! Sonny will see you!”

“Get away from my mom!” Sonny shouted valiantly from the tiny hallway. John let me go and started toward Sonny and began gently shoving him back into the bedroom that he and his two little sisters shared, commanding him to stay in there and not to leave. Sonny started swinging at him. John told him to stop. I went in after them.

“You better not touch my son or so help me, I’ll kill ya,” I said. I jumped back as he started back towards me where he just kept repeating himself over and over again, like always when he was drunk. He kept ruminating about the fact that I had gone back to the parole office and demanded from me the details of such a visit but never listened to me when I tried to answer. It wasn’t long before Sonny had his attention again trying to be my little soldier, my little bodyguard, standing at 4’8” and weighing all of 60 lbs. soaking wet with all his clothes on. This tug ’o’ war for us to calm John down and for him to remand us went on for about three minutes. Whenever Sonny had his attention, I began to inch closer and closer to the door so I could quietly unlock the door and provide an escape route for the both of us. I knew that John wouldn’t hurt Charlotte and Grace, nor would he dare to wake them. He never physically hurt my kids—but in other ways he definitely did by scaring them and hurting me.

John caught me a couple of times trying to open the door and he would rush toward me, but I think Sonny caught on quickly to what I was doing, because his need to distract John became more ferocious like the little lion that he is. I had no idea where we were going to run once we got out the door. All I knew was I hoped that someone would hear my screams and help us somehow. I finally got it unlocked and pushed open. I looked back and saw there was enough space for itty bitty Sonny to get by ginormous John {it was like David to Goliath} and once that happened, there would be no catching him.

“Sonny! RUN!!” I practically shrieked. He bolted past John and when he got up to me waiting at the door, I started running too. I got to the small parking lot of our apartment complex where I looked back to see why Sonny hadn’t passed me up yet or at least caught up to me, as fast as I knew he was. He had stopped at the door and this time it was John bolting past HIM and coming straight for me. Sonny ran back into the apartment—for what, I didn’t know, maybe Gracie had woken up—or even Charlotte. He’s always been such a good brother. The best I’ve ever seen. I picked up speed and made it across the street, barefoot, screaming my head off the whole way. But this was 28th St.—in the middle of the hood. Wasn’t nobody gonna be stickin’ they neck out at one o’clock in the morning for a couple of screams.

John scooped me up by my neck {and I was no petite gal at the time} and carried me back across the street. While he was setting me down, Sonny emerged from the apartment brandishing his Kitana sword I gave him years ago.

“Oh shit!” I said under my breath.

“You better get the hell away from my mom or I’ll fucking kill you,” he warned his stepdad.

“Sonny! Put that away, please, before someone gets hurt!” I yelled. Just then, thankfully, the white neighbors from across the way came out of their woodwork. Aaron and Kaila. The whitest of the white.

“Everything cool?” Aaron asked, with only a towel wrapped around his waist, fresh out of the shower apparently. He made sure to keep Kaila safely behind him.

“Mind your fucking business,” barked John. “You don’t know what it’s like living with her.”

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong—because when you ain’t here, there ain’t nothin’ like this goin’ on. She don’t ever yell like that when you ain’t here,” Aaron said—and all the while, red-headed, freckled- faced Kaila was egging him on saying things like, “Yup” and “das right” and “she sure don’t!” I had to commend Aaron for his bravery. He only stood at a lanky 5’9” and probably weighed 135-140 lbs. after a good and hearty Christmas dinner. John outweighed him by at least 100 lbs. and stood over him about a half a foot.

“You better get the fuck in this house!” John yelled more at me than Sonny.

“I’m not going in there wit’ you,” I said, feeling empowered because there were witnesses. I gathered Sonny next to me. “Can I use your phone?” I asked them.

“Of course!” they chimed together. They hated John. And for a split second as we walked by apartment B10 next to mine, I wished Mickey, Gordon’s son, the disabled, Afghani war vet was here to hear/see all this commotion. What if he had been there? What would he have done?

Aaron and Kaila let us inside where I kept a close eye on my place from their screen door. Aaron geared up the Xbox for Sonny and they played games while I stood there and made my decision to call the cops. Kaila saw what I was about to do and said, “Are you really going to call the cops? You were just trying to scare him, right?” I thought for a moment and even though I really didn’t want to, I knew I needed to do the right thing.

“I am,” I said, looking down at the phone. She got close to my face.

“You SURE?” I looked at her for a long time. Just then John came to their door and started ranting and threatening.

“I am,” I said and dialed 911. When he realized that I was on the phone with the police, he took off back to the apartment, most likely to steal whatever he could of value and then take off. The cops came and I told them everything that transpired. They took pictures of the marks on my neck. We were able to coax Gracie to the door to unlock it when she woke up and shuffled out into the living room, looking around in incoherent disbelief. They carried Charlee out and literally turned the place upside down and inside out looking for John. I couldn’t believe that even after keeping such a close watch over the place, despite Kaila’s warnings to come away from the door, he had still managed to escape from my bedroom window. It must have been before he left, but I DID see him finagle the front window open, probably to keep it unlocked for later)

…why I had gone to the parole office trying to get him in trouble. We argued back and forth about it for a while, and he left when it got too heated and I called the police. That was why I called you guys because I knew it would make him leave,” I lied. “So really, you need to take him out of the handcuffs and put them on me for making a false police report.”

The old school marm detective lady was taking some notes—but when I said this last part, she shot me a glance so fierce that I knew right then and there I had fucked up. ROYALLY. She cocked her head to one side and said, “That’s an interesting response. Why would you say something like that?”

“Because, it’s the truth,” I said without even blinking.

“That’s not the account you gave to the police last Saturday…”

(But you don’t understand, lady! If I tell you what really happened, you’re gonna take my kids! And even if you don’t take my kids, when he finds out what I said to the police while sitting and biding his time in county for 30-180 days, stewing with anger for me—restraining order or no restraining-stupid-piece-o-paper, he’s gonna find us and he’s gonna kill us—or at least come close. And then what? Plus, you don’t understand, this is the first time that he wants to do something good and actually do it without having to be pushed. This is a good sign! I think he’s trying to change!)

“…I know,” I said, “I lied to the police. And it was wrong. And I should go to jail.” I didn’t budge. I didn’t even believe me.

Just then I heard John squeal agonizingly, “Oh mah God! PLEASE DON’T CHARGE ME WIT’ DAT! PLEASE!!” I was increasingly becoming more and more frightened by the second. “He didn’t choke you?” the detective inquired.

(Barbarically)

“No,” I fibbed. She looked at me like she had my number down. And she did.

“Well,” she said, rising to her feet, “I’m gonna have a little talk with your kids.” Her barely noticeable (or mentionable) assistant followed her lead. “Let’s just see what they have to say about everything.” They went into their room and closed the door behind them.

My goose was cooked.

I asked the cop overseeing me if I could have a cigarette. He gave me a wary look. “You could even watch me, and I’ll even go on that side of the courtyard, so I don’t talk to my husband.”

Come on—what do you take me for? that look of his said now.

“But not too far, of course. Pleeease?”

“No talking to your husband or back inside you go—in handcuffs.”

“I promise.” A lot of what happened during and after that cigarette is kind of hazy now. All I can remember while I was smoking that Newport menthol was the detective lady coming outside looking mighty provoked. I heard her say, “Don’t let her in there with the kids. Keep the door shut—I’ll be right back.”

(That can’t be good)

When I went back inside, one of the cops there to supervise my every move was standing, looking out through the lace curtained window of my front room. He kept his gaze and didn’t look at me, but he said, “That piece of bullshit lie you just fed her—I don’t know what you said—but she’s pissed.” He turned around to face me. He was very handsome and militant. “Whatever it was, you better sing a different tune when she gets back. Because I’ve seen how this plays out about a hundred times and let me tell ya—with that lady, shit like this never ends well. And I don’t know why you feel the need to protect that piece of shit out there, but it needs to end here. Right now. I read his laundry list of a record, ok? And I know guys like this—they don’t get better—it ONLY gets worse.”

He was not the first, nor would he be the last to tell me this vital piece of information that I would regretfully ignore. I would come to this understanding eventually, but today was just not that day. Only for a moment on this day would I catch a glimpse of conviction—but shortly thereafter, it would disappear again for a season.

“We weren’t even supposed to be here today,” he went on. “We were supposed to be at another couple’s house, similar names. But you guys popped up. And let me tell ya, we changed plans quick after we read y'all's history. You guys changed the course of the whole day with your shenanigans! Man, I’m not supposed to be telling you ANY of this and I’m not gonna say anything after this—all’s I know, is you better tell that lady the opposite of whatever you said before. I don’t even know if it’s too late already, but…if you can, if she’s willing to listen to you at this point, tell her the truth. Because, I REALLY don’t wanna take your kids today. I hate taking peoples’ kids. And you better pray to God that she has mercy on you.” And with that, he turned back to face the window as if he never said anything at all. I knew in that moment that he was absolutely right. That conviction that I spoke about a moment ago came and snuck up on me and I knew that I had to act fast.

Waiting for her to return was excruciating. What was taking her so long? Was she even going to give me the chance to redeem myself? With each passing minute that felt like another hour, the truth only became that much more compelling and necessary. When she returned, she had the apprehension team impede me in the kitchen. She told me to sit down, which I knew from experience is never a good sign. I sat down in one of my kitchen chairs where a swarm of police surrounded me, ready to pounce on me if I got emotional, ignorant, or just plain stupid. I pleaded with her to please allow me to recant my statement—briefly making eye contact with the officer who had forewarned me.

“Please,” I begged, “please hear me out. I didn’t tell you the whole truth earlier. I was so scared, and I was just trying to protect my family, but I made a mistake. The report that I gave last Saturday is true. Every word. Please don’t take me to jail. Please don’t take my kids. PLEASE. I just started a new job and if I lose it, I won’t be able to take care of them or keep this place. Please don’t do this ma’am. I’m begg—"

“Who said anything about taking you to jail, Mrs. Johnson?” I blinked a few times rapidly, jarred by her response.

“Isn’t that why you guys have me surrounded in the kitchen? To arrest me?”

“No, Mrs. Johnson, I’m not taking you to jail today,” she sighed. “But I am taking your husband to jail.” And then she lowered the boom, “And I am taking your kids.”

“No, no, NO! PLEASE!” I stood up.

“SIT DOWN!” chorused the entire apprehension team. I sat back down, afraid that they might taser me. The ugly detective lady, who was now even uglier, handed me a pamphlet with information regarding domestic violence.

“Here are some resources I suggest you utilize so you can get your life back in order.” And then she gave me a look that I won’t ever forget. She looked at me as though I was the most reprehensible human being she had ever met—then she said this last thing…

“I don’t know what it’s like to be you. I don’t have kids so I’ll never know—I can only imagine. But, I do know this, I sure hope you get your priorities straight –and soon.” Then she said to the team, “Alright, clear out!” and they all piled out of the desolate apartment so quickly that it was as though they had never actually been there at all. Angel, our Siamese kitten, began jumping and clawing at me—probably from hunger seeing as I hadn’t fed her yet with everything going on and we were now well into the afternoon. I patted her away. “Stop!” I cried. My nerves, a wreck as I braced myself for them to come back and take the kids. I sat there a long time, waiting in shock. I could hear Squidward telling Spongebob how much he hated him on the gigantic old school box television in the kids’ room. I realized I better say goodbye properly and let them know that everything was going to be okay. I made my way to their room, not sure what to say. Angel followed at my heels. When I got there, I found the room empty. I began searching frantically from room to room, shouting their names, my despair growing by the millisecond. I bolted out the front door where I found Gordon back at his outdoor chores—he had mysteriously disappeared when the cops showed up, but here it was like he never left.

“They’re gone, sweetie—just as quick as they came, they made themselves scarce,” he said, watering the pavement with the water hose.

“And the kids?”

He looked baffled. “What about them?” he asked.

“They said they were gonna take my kids. I didn’t see them take ’em, but I can’t find ’em,” I said. I felt like I was in a twilight zone. He looked at me, dumbfounded for a moment longer, then said, “I didn’t see them take any kids.” I ran out to the curb and looked down the street. Nothing. No sign that ANYONE had ever been there.

“Where did they go? Where’d everybody go?” I cried, rushing back to the house—Angel following me closely every step of the way, ignoring my kitchen chair they left in the courtyard where John had been handcuffed not so long before—just to check one more time. Nothing. No sign that I had even ever had children except for the obnoxiously loud cartoons on their television set in their empty room full of toys. I picked up an old, tattered teddy bear off the floor and held it close enough to my face to smell it. It had all the sweet MUSTiness that only a child could MUSTer. I ran back outside to tell Gordon.

“It’s ’cause they took ’em already. They’ve already gone, Gordon.” He turned off the hose and he said ruefully, “I’m sorry…but now, this is your chance to make things right and do the right thing.”

“Yeah,” I said. And we both headed back to our humble abodes. I sat back down in the kitchen chair where so many had just surrounded me, but had left no trace of their visit, what-so-ever, besides that flimsy brochure about domestic violence. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye! I didn’t even get to say GOODBYE!! I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO SAY GOODBYE!!!” I clutched that stuffed bear so close to me and sobbed my life away. My voice, my cries, I’m sure could be heard from every corner of the apartment complex and down the street all the way to both heaven and hell. Angel rubbed against my leg in circles, crying with me.

Chapter 3: Mommy Dearest

I can’t remember my mother ever hugging me when I was a kid. I know that she did, I just can’t remember it. I don’t remember her spending much time with me when I was at her house— “home” from grandma’s. There was occasionally a movie watched together and a board game played between us every now and then. But those movies were usually scary or highly inappropriate for a child to watch (like The Exorcist or Mommy Dearest)— which she usually fell asleep in the middle of—leaving me to my own discretion. Or if any snide comments were made by me—being a sore loser during a game of Monopoly—it typically resulted in her choking out 7 or 8-year-old me like Homer and Bart Simpson—only a lot more real life and a thousand times more terrifying. One time she choked me to almost the point of unconsciousness at the age of 9. She choked me so hard that the blood vessels in my eyes burst and my eyes bled. She told me to go and look at what I had done to MYSELF in the mirror. How had I done this, I wondered? Sometimes when my grandma was alive, she would just show up unannounced at my mom’s and ask me if I wanted to come back home—to which I replied with shouts of joy, running to whichever uncle was idling in the parking lot. Grandma must’ve known that something wasn’t right with my mom. Perhaps due to my bad behavior or maybe it was my still wetting the bed.

I remember looking to the hallway for my grandmother while my mom was straddled over me, popping my blood vessels from asphyxiation, using one hand to grip my throat and the other hand to cover my nose and mouth so there could be no possible way for me to breathe. I can still feel my little fingers desperately trying to peel hers away from my face so I could breathe and gasping for a quick breath before she swiftly switched hands to clamp off my airways and suffocate me more. There is nothing more frightening on this earth than not being able to breathe—BAR NONE. Even scarier than this, having this natural capability stolen from you at the hands of someone else. I remember thinking, “Can grandma feel that something’s wrong? Is she on her way? She always comes when it’s boring, but never when it’s scary.”

She never did show up that day. Undoubtedly, what stopped my mom is when I gave up and stopped struggling against her. I just got tired of fighting for my life and I remember thinking in my nine-year-old brain that “Mommy’s going to kill me today—I’m going to die right now. I know I’m a bad girl and I probably shouldn’t have mouthed the word ‘bitch’ in plain sight, but did she have to drag me in here by my pigtails to kill me? I should’ve just let her grab one of the leather belts dangling from the back of the bedroom door!” When my arms finally fell to my sides, she jumped up so quickly and released me from her hold. I can still remember coughing and gasping for air and then crying in a ball on the floor. I speculated in that moment when she let me go, she must have thought, “Oh my God, I almost just killed my daughter. They would’ve taken me to jail and charged me with murder of a child where I’d most certainly get the death penalty.”

After she had me go look in the mirror at what she said, “Go look at what you did to yourself—what you MADE me do,” she abrasively helped me change my clothes, shaking me and telling me to shut up my cries. What she did next, I will never forget as long as I live. From a face that was more beautiful than any queen I could ever imagine she said, “Ya know, it should’na been uncle Chris’s baby that died, it shoulda been you,” and then she hawked back a loogie and spat in my face, leaving me there to cry and wipe her mucousy spit from my own nose and out of my eyes, feeling ashamed and disgusting, and wondering why she didn’t love me. It wasn’t the first time (nor would it be the last) she tried to suffocate me—but it would be a while—until I became an adult and we could squab like two feisty cats in an alley. I don’t think she wanted to be accountable anymore, having to stand in the doorway of my classroom so she could make sure that I lied to the teacher. Or keep me from my grandma’s house and hire babysitters while she continued to maintain a plethora of lies.

There was no limit to her abuse and the things she did to me as a kid. No wonder why I was relieved when she left me to myself in my room to watch MTV, (back when it really was just music television) or to sneak Playboy TV, or peek at her collection of Playboy magazines while she was sleeping. I would make my barbies have sex and I would masturbate like they did on the TV and the dirty books. I thought love was sex and couldn’t wait to be a grownup to be loved.

One night I fell asleep to the sound of my mom having sex with one of her boyfriends—watching their shadows on the wall of the living room from under the covers in my bed. Some time after that I woke up screaming from a horrible nightmare. I had no idea how long I had been asleep; but the candles in the living room had long since been blown out or had gone out on their own because everything was pitch dark. I heard my mother quickly coming, stomping like a herd of elephants, (a stomping I would come to fear forever more) to what I thought was my rescue, but when I held my arms out for the hug I thought she was coming to give me, she quickly knocked me to the floor where my stuffed animals (my friends) were neatly lined up against the wall. They looked on sadly, some of them crying for me, but couldn’t help me as she hit me repeatedly. “DON’T-YOU-EV-ER-SCREAM-LIKE-THAT-AGAIN-WHEN-I-HAVE-COM-PA-NY!” Striking me with every syllable of her words. The next morning, I would tiptoe over the old naked white guy that wanted nothing to do with me, while he slept with only a thin, white sheet covering his private parts.

I can’t believe I’m about to make this unbelievably minimizing statement, but sometimes the defamations were mild. Like one time, I got in trouble at school for something I actually didn’t do (which was a surprise for me because I frequently was in trouble for things I actually did do) and my mom had me strip naked and lay face down with my head at the foot of the bed so she could periodically come in and rap me all over my body with one of the those old school rulers. I don’t know if you get what I mean when I say “old school ruler” but the older ones had a very thin, sharp edge to them. I can’t forget this because my mom pointed this out to me when she was warning me not to be bad. She used to say, “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.” If I peeked to see if she was coming and got caught, I received three extra swats. The fact that the edge of the ruler was razor sharp was also ingrained in my memory from the time she hit me on the hand with it (for what, I can’t remember) and that sharp edge grazed me, taking out a small chunk of my right index finger. As if this wasn’t enough punishment, she dragged me over to the bathroom sink so she could pour rubbing alcohol over my open, bleeding wound.

I could hear my aunt Rebecca (a retired social worker for the Department of Children and Family Services) asking her over the phone, “What’s wrong with her? Why is she screaming like that?”

“Oh, she’s just throwing one of her tantrums,” my mother replied with a nonchalant tone, then making scary faces and mouthing the words “Shut the fuck up” in a menacing way as she continued to douse my little finger in the burning liquid. You see, in a family full of social workers, she knew how to mind her p’s and q’s.

This was the final straw for my uncle Joe when he saw my finger one day picking me up after school. He took me straight home to my grandma’s house and whipped out his nice leather briefcase (that looked like he had been saving for just such an occasion) with notepad paper in it and told me to write down every detail I could recall of what happened. He told me to also put down the date and he assured me that from now on we were going to document everything and that it would all come in handy one day soon. He knew that it was only a matter of time that my mom was going to be in a world of hurt if she didn’t stop hurting me all the time. But the time that she waited until I got in the shower to spring a surprise attack ass whipping with one of the dangling leather belts on me, for God knows why, was the time that uncle Joe said to hell with the documentation and decided to take matters into his own hands. My grandmother had to pry from the front doorway where he stood waiting for my mom to pick me up with a bucket of ice water and the longest, thickest belt he could find. “No, I want the bitch to see how it feels,” he’d said, “see how she like it.” It wouldn’t be long after this, right after my 10th birthday, that I would finally be removed from her custody.

On August 1, 1996, I saw an opportunity and I stole it like home base. I did it when she tried to hit me in the face with an umbrella for pouting because she wouldn’t let me watch an R rated movie. The same R rated that she would have let me watch had my three-year-old cousin not been there visiting that day. When she came charging towards me with it, I leaped onto my snoring mountain of an uncle, (my mom’s brother Darren, who also happened to be an active social worker) and jousted him awake, shrieking for help. When the police came and I heard that they wanted to remove me from my mother’s care, I thought that all my prayers had been answered and that they were going to place me with my grandma and uncles on Sunset Ave. in Venice, Ca. and that we would live happily ever after, THE END…WRONG!

I quickly learned that because of how sick my poor grandmother was, regardless that I had two uncles there, the authorities planned to immediately place me in foster care. Anxiety boiled over inside me like a pot of hot soup when I learned this. I was terrified from all the horror stories I’d heard from my uncle Darren. He saw my trepidation and volunteered to be my legal guardian until all of this could be sorted out. He felt morally responsible not only because he was a social worker, but also because I was his sister’s daughter. Once again, I thought that all my prayers had been answered. That I would get to stay at my rich uncle’s great, big house (that was my favorite place to visit) where there was a pool, a dog, and three cousins, and I would get to visit my grandma’s house whenever I wanted, and everybody would live happily ever after. THE END. WRONG AGAIN!

I had no idea that for the next year of my life while my mom worked on getting me back, that my grandmother (my favorite person in the whole wide world) would die slowly, and that I would be tortured slowly, tormented on a regular basis by his two evil stepchildren and his wicked queen of a wife, who promptly let me know that this was not to be a pity party for me. Her words, verbatim. The horrors of living with them are truly a story for another day, but to sum it up in a nutshell, from enduring being pushed into an ice cold swimming pool during the winter, tricking and scaring me all the time, accusing me of molesting my baby cousin Danyelle, constantly making fun of me, physically abusing me, and burning off all my hair with a relaxer perm. I was finally granted a 60 day visit with my mom a little more than a year later to reestablish our relationship. The timing could not have been worse being that my grandmother had just died, and just before grieving her mother’s death, my mother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She wasn’t taking her medication, grieving a massive loss, and dealing with a painful breakup, and then they placed me in her care.

Fine timing.

She dragged me around everywhere in the beautiful city of Santa Barbara. She bought me whatever I wanted to keep me quietly entertained while we slept on her friend’s couches or stayed in hotels where she would leave me sometimes so she could stalk her ex-boyfriend who had dumped her.

Sometimes she would take me along with her at night and leave me alone in the car for an hour or more to do God knows what. I later heard rumor that she had a replicated .45 and handcuffs under my seat in the car. So, when two detectives dressed in trench coats came looking for her one early morning while I was at the vending machine of the Orange Tree Inn, I innocently led them right to our hotel door, thinking that they were apart of Ed McMahon’s team, here to give us a million dollars and change our lives forever. They were there to change our lives alright. They were there to cart my mom off in handcuffs and call my social worker to come and get me. It hadn’t even been 60 days. Hell, I don’t think it had even been 30 yet and my mom was already ruining our chances of being together and being normal. The never-ending nightmare continued when my social worker divulged to me that the very thing I had always dreaded and what she promised she would never do, she was going to have to do because she didn’t have a choice. She was going to put me in foster care. The place where they might sodomize me, or put cigarettes out on my arm, never feed me, and collect a paycheck for me that I’d never see the fruits of (all these stories, compliments of my uncle Darren).

“What about my uncle Darren?! Can’t you just take me back to uncle Darren?”

“Sweetie, I wish I could, but he’s in the middle of a nasty divorce and I just can’t comfortably put you in that hostile environment.”

“I got aunts in Palm Springs! What about them? I got family all over!”

“Yes, I know sweetheart, and in time I’m sure one of them will come to get you, but in the meantime, this is what we have to do. I’m so so sorry,” she said with tears in her eyes for me.

All her sorries couldn’t keep me from leaving scratch marks in her passenger door panel when she had to pry me from the car. It felt like she left me alone way too soon with the Jamaican grandma of the family while most of the other foster kids were at school and the two foster parents were at work. We all sat at the dining room table while they discussed important grownup things while my eyes wandered all over the house, desperately trying to pick up on the vibe in the home. It seemed like a happy home. A clean home. No evidence of any torture chambers for new foster kids, but you could never be too sure, so my eyes continued to wander. I remember sitting motionless—paralyzed, more like it; paralyzed by fear—having a minor staredown with this new person who had been given the power to be my temporary legal guardian after my social worker Debbie left. All I knew was this woman was beautiful in every sense of the word. She had crystal blue eyes, and skin as dark and as smooth as the richest dark chocolate I had ever seen. She had gray dreds that went past her behind and swayed back and forth when she walked. Even her voice was sweet when she asked me in her thick Caribbean tone, “Ya hungry, chile?” She scared the shit out of me. I said nothing. Only nodded. And as I waited, looking at all the happy family photos, the neat Jamaican knick-knacks, and warm, colorful tones that made up this wonderful home, she prepared and set before me my absolute favorite childhood snack of peanut butter toast with sliced bananas and a glass of chocolate milk—without me ever saying a word. I shot her a glance where she was waiting to see my reaction. And I swear, only using our eyes, I said to her with mine, “How did you know that?” To which she replied with hers, “Because I know.” She went about her chores smiling and humming.

In the weeks that followed, I learned how to play solitaire without ever losing, I learned how to play Mancala (an African game with jewels or stones), and I made a best friend with my roommate Amber, who I played jacks and ball with, listened to Spice Girls, and fought viciously like sisters with. They all gave me a warm and secure place to breathe and be happy. I could be carefree. I could be a kid. I never saw them again after my dad came to get me two weeks later. And I don’t remember their names. To the Jamaican family in Santa Barbara, thank you and God bless you, wherever you are.

Title: Fall Down 7 Times, Stand Up 8 (A Book of Testimonial Essays)

Genre: DV Survival, Uplifting, Encouraging, Christian, DV Awareness

Age Range: Adult/Young Adult

Word Count: 8574 (published here) 28,629 (saved so far) and so much more to come! :)

My name is Jessica Urias and I am a survivor of domestic violence and childhood abuse. I believe my project is a good fact simply based on the fact that domestic violence awareness is such a global issue, and my book provides assurance they are not alone, resources for help, tools for peace, all while offering hope during a bleak situation. General statistics relay that an average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States. There are more than 16 million people in the U.S. suffering at the hands of an abusive partner each year; I say more than 16 million because the 16 million are among the reported cases. That being said, I feel it is obvious who the target audience would be. I have over 10 years of education in multiple subject majors (including writing) but have not obtained a degree. I have been focused on healing and recovery for my children and me. As a hobby and during my education, I have entered into multiple writing contests and once won grand prize in the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship in 2020. I am from Venice, California and I enjoy writing, singing, cooking and playing guitar and piano. I am 38 years old and would like to help people through my experiences heal and recover from whatever domestic violence situation they happen to be in or coming out of.