Redemption (2 page)

In the Beginning

ost people do not take another person’s life. The act is ugly, off limits, appropriate only in scary movies. But many people do use the words, “I’m going to kill you.” A wife might say it to a husband when he brings home a new Ford truck without asking. A father might say it to a son after he wrecks that new truck. The words are normal when they’re meaningless. Thankfully, the line “I’ll kill you” isn’t usually backed up by much threat.

Usually
.

But what about when those words are said to a woman or girl who is in pain? A girl who is abused? A girl who is told she is a worthless whore almost every day of her life? I was that girl. The threat, “Be quiet, or I’ll kill you,” was real. So I stayed quiet. I made as little noise as possible almost all of the time. At the same time, my shame, isolation, and rage built up over the years while I prayed for an end to my problems. I prayed to be left alone, to be left unviolated for any short length of time. People like me are the caged birds.

My cage was my house.

My cage was my own bed.

Ending a life is the most grisly, uncivilized way of solving a problem. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum when otherwise sane people are involved. Instead, tension builds over time in a domestic pressure cooker. Is my abuser going to push too hard the next time and kill me? Should I kill myself so I don’t have to feel the hurt anymore?

To people with these experiences, killing is real. Anyone can be dead with the snap of the fingers. More often than not, victims consider suicide. But sometimes—guilt-ridden—we fantasize about the deaths of our abusers. We don’t necessarily want to do it ourselves. In our fantasies, he goes quickly in a car crash; it makes sense because he drives drunk all the time. Or maybe he starts a fight with someone who actually can—and does—kick his ass. But what if, hypothetically thinking, the abuser gets into a fight with his victim, and she magically overpowers him and gets away? She runs off to a happier life where she can get a full night’s rest. She goes to a place where shadows don’t scare her half to death. In dreams, that scenario could be true.

In reality, overpowering a strong man usually takes a weapon. So the hypothesizing continues: What if, in some way, she’s able to get that weapon? What if she uses it? What if she kills him herself? That’s how the words “I’ll kill you” become warped reality.

Women aren’t known for homicides—according to the Justice Department, females commit only 10 percent of murders. When they do kill, they take the life of an intimate partner or family member one-third of the time. Criminology researchers have found that women usually didn’t mean to do the crime; they didn’t even think they were capable, and they didn’t plan their attacks for more than a few seconds. Male murderers more commonly act deliberately instead of impulsively. They know exactly what is about to happen long in advance. Men don’t disassociate from their crimes, either. But a woman, especially a victim of abuse, may not remember exactly how she did it. If she remembers clearly, she can’t find breath—only bile rising in her chest. She’ll have a panic attack or a breakdown. She’s in too much pain over what she did—and why she did it—to remember the details, according to researcher Jack Levin at Northeastern University. More often than not, women kill because they’re afraid they’ll be killed.

Most people don’t have these thoughts about death, but I did for most of my life.

———

Killing is best left to animals like the bald eagle. They must hunt to feed themselves and their young, and they do not have to be taught. My hometown of St. Louis is known for the bald eagles in the wintertime. People don’t realize it, but Missouri can be cold. We get snow, ice, and sleet. That’s when the eagles appear.

Snow days away from school were fun for most kids. But as I grew older, they were less exciting for me. Staying home was not a vacation; it was often a punishment. I wanted to be a bald eagle—big and strong with a sharp, pointy beak for protection. I wished for wings to take me to some other place during the different seasons. When it was coldest outside, I’d catch sight of them near the Mississippi River. The birds liked to hang out in the areas surrounding its muddy waters. Apparently, that’s the best place to find food and build nests in sycamore trees. Bald eagles hunt fish, reptiles, mammals, and human picnic food. They don’t care if the food is dead or alive when they swoop down with their lethal talons. They learn how to adapt and survive. These muscular creatures are tough, scrappy scavengers. When I was a kid, they were on the endangered species list. So if I caught sight of one, I was excited.

If I had been a different kid with a different family, I would have seen the eagle as noble in a patriotic way. I would have focused on its plumage and beauty instead of on how the awesome creature managed to stay alive. I saw the bird as a tough victim of our human invasion—clawing and clutching for its survival. That’s exactly how I felt I lived, too, from age nine onward. With so much taken away from me, I wasn’t free to think about kickball and BFFs and bracelets made out of embroidery floss. I took refuge in sports, and in my imagination. I found comfort in our cat, Buttercup; my dog, Prince; the track team; and my schoolwork.

Before age eight, my life was way better. I saw the eagles more innocently. I smiled more often because I wanted to—not just for other people’s benefit. Born on May 28, 1972, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri, I was a happy baby with a stay-at-home mom who loved me and took care of me. I had a dad who came home after work, though he was often studying, tucked away behind his office door.

My mom held everything together for as long as she could.

She was used to life’s difficulties—she’d grown up with enough of them. Her maiden name was Deborah Paulson, and she was born on October 17, 1951, in Granite City, Illinois. She was the oldest of five kids, and she longed to leave the rural countryside where she grew up. The first house she remembers had two bedrooms. The kids shared one, and her parents shared the other. When my mom was seven, she came down with rheumatic fever and was in the hospital for a long stretch. Then she had to stay out of school for more than a year. She had to take it easy and couldn’t even walk to the second floor of the house. She slept on a rollaway bed in the living room. Her mom brought her a bedpan because the house’s one bathroom was upstairs. The doctor said Debbie would never have children, and she might even come down with the dreaded rheumatic fever again later in life. With great worry and care, my grandmother waited on Debbie hand and foot. During that time my grandmother was really good to my mother.

Debbie recovered fully and took on responsibilities of her own. She was often in charge of her siblings, especially the littlest one, Deanna, who was thirteen years younger. By then, the family had moved into a three-bedroom house closer to the small downtown. They needed to be near my grandfather’s work. Debbie was just happy she had fewer siblings to bunk with in a slightly larger house. Privacy was another matter—she still hoped for more of that. But her family was what it was. They had rules, like they stuck together no matter what. Debbie’s parents were strict, and it wasn’t easy for Debbie to be herself, to have friends, and to get out.

My maternal grandfather was Richard Paulson. My mother told me his story. He grew up picking cotton in Pearl, Mississippi, alongside his mother. He had to quit school to earn money when he was in the eighth grade. The oldest of eight children, he became the man of the house when his own father, a drunk, walked out on the family. Richard led a tough life with one goal: survival. When he grew up he headed to Illinois, looking for better work. He landed in Granite City, the small town just outside St. Louis that my grandmother, Marilyn, called home. Marilyn was the baby in a family that included seven children. By the time she was six, her father had hit the road, so she barely knew him. Richard and Marilyn had a lot in common. They both craved a bond they didn’t get growing up, and they both knew that surviving in this world was hard, and took hard work. Neither had gotten a proper education. Marilyn dropped out of high school for Richard, skipping her senior year. She married him when she was seventeen on October 27, 1950. They shared the notion that a marriage should stay together no matter what. A man should always be in the family. A couple should never, under any circumstances, abandon their children.

Richard had strong opinions about things, too, and he was tough on his children, especially Debbie. One of Richard’s younger sisters had gotten pregnant as a teenager, which had been a great source of shame and embarrassment for him. As a result, even at age eighteen, Debbie was not allowed to go out on the weekends without special permission. And she was rarely allowed to go out on both Friday and Saturday nights—she had to pick one activity and stay home the next night with her parents. That was only proper. After all, she was the oldest, and it was up to her to set a good example for the others. But some of the rules made absolutely no sense. For example, Debbie was allowed to close the bathroom door, but she couldn’t lock it when she showered. She surely wasn’t allowed to say no to her father for any reason. He gave her countless bloody noses with the back of his hand. One time, the last slice of pie in the house had disappeared. Richard lined up the children—Daniel, Daphne, Derek, and Debbie—and demanded to know who had eaten it. No one owned up, so he beat each of them with a belt until one of them claimed guilt. Then that child got dragged down to the basement and was beaten worse.

He might use and abuse his daughters, but no one else would—Richard was fiercely protective of his family. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him sitting on the front porch with a gun if any of his children were ever threatened.

Despite his sternness, Richard was not a larger-than-life personality. He was tall and thin, even though he liked to eat. He was actually a shy, soft-spoken man who didn’t have much of a life outside of his two occupations: cotton picker and local truck driver. He didn’t have a lot of social skills, and he was self-conscious about his eighth-grade education. The only time he could really talk was when he drank beer—then he could be funnier, more opinionated, and feel more important. So he started going to the tavern, where he could become a whole new person, more and more often. He’d also drink simply to relax after a hard day of work. To Marilyn’s dismay, he’d come home drunk. The drinking repulsed my mother as well. To this day, she can’t stand alcohol. She especially cannot stand the smell of beer; it makes her sick.

Richard started sexually abusing Debbie when she was thirteen. Mom didn’t tell me about specific incidents, but I overheard the conversations she had with my dad. Over the years, I picked up on what happened to her. She eventually went public with the abuse in an affidavit to support my legal case.

She stated in an affidavit that Grandpa Paulson had fondled her. He might have abused his other daughters, too; I’m not sure what he did to each one. I do know my mother suffered at his hands from the time she was thirteen until she started dating my father. My mother was so ashamed she didn’t even tell her closest sister. Years later, they confessed to each other and found out their father had abused them simultaneously.

When Mom was sixteen, all of the children were sleeping on pallets in the living room because their bedrooms were too hot—there was no air conditioning. Richard crept over to her and started fondling her.

“Stop it, Dad!” she yelled. “Stop!”

Marilyn woke up and asked her husband what was going on.

“Nothing,” he said.

Marilyn asked Debbie for an explanation.

“Dad won’t leave me alone. He keeps touching me,” she said, crying.

At those words, Richard jerked my mother up from the prone position and hit her as hard as he could in the face. He flew into a violent rage, and Marilyn ran next door to the neighbor’s house, where the police were called. Debbie suffered a black eye, dislocated shoulder, and swollen jaw. The police did not question Debbie, and Richard convinced the cops that he had been so violent only because someone had slipped a mickey in his drink at the lodge. Marilyn believed her husband.

But Mom and her siblings knew better. Richard was mean. Marilyn could see the physical violence, but what about the sexual abuse? I know my mother told her about everything when she was an adult and could finally speak the words. Marilyn said, “I wish you would have told me sooner.” Marilyn, who was short and pretty, put up with a lot from her husband. The drinking was bad. But the sexual abuse going on under her roof was never acknowledged. She knew about some of the fondling because the girls complained to her, even as kids. But because allegations weren’t made—the words “I am being molested” were never spoken—the situation could be quietly ignored. Marilyn always excused Richard’s advances, saying, “Dad is just like that.”

Marilyn didn’t have the time to fuss and fret. By this time, she had five kids to take care of, and when money got tight, she got a job in a department store in Granite City to help out. She was a busy person. My mom says Marilyn would iron clothes in the kitchen while she served her kids breakfast. She washed clothes with a wringer washer long after many mothers had machines. Debbie remembers hearing about how Marilyn climbed to the roof of their two-bedroom house to drive nails into some loose shingles when she was eight months pregnant. She did what she thought needed to be done.