The Criminal and Me By O.B. Hollow
I
n early 1972, when I was almost 19 and my parents were divorcing, I chose to live with my father. He was a man who loved everyone unconditionally, but was passive beyond all reason. He had never managed, and hardly tried, to subdue his paranoid, unpredictable Italian wife. Our attractive West Texas home was a prison and she was warden. Rage and violence were the tools of her demons; so, no one was safe, not him, not me or my sisters, and not anyone who might unwittingly come to call. Perhaps because in the 50’s and 60’s a father was very unlikely to get custody of three little girls, my father endured – always present, but never intervening.
As we had each turned 18, we were allowed only “coke dates” with anyone willing to brave the warden’s blatant cruelty about how they dressed or spoke. We were too embarrassed to have visitors; school and little parttime jobs were our places of refuge – there we were valued and respected. As a young woman, I was naïve, but knew a few things for sure. I would find a way out and never again witness her abuse; I was willing to harm her to protect myself, or someone I loved; and, because I knew what a bad wife looked like, I would someday be a good wife. What a bad man might look like was unknown to me. My eldest sister, the closest thing I
had to what a mother should be, had died tragically three years earlier. Without her good counsel, I was adrift at sea. Even living with Dad, I just wanted to be free and as far from my mother’s domination as possible. The same town was not far enough. Other things happened in, or had happened prior to, the year 1972 that would matter to me very soon: Research showed that untreated, abused children tend to find partners who will continue the abuse they have come to expect, and might believe they deserve; Serious discussion of the concept of “informed consent” before a medical procedure was just beginning; Medical doctors allowed husbands to give consent for a fully conscious and competent wife’s procedures; Police officers could do little or nothing about threats of, or actual, domestic violence; In October, a young female Texas attorney argued Roe v. Wade before the US Supreme Court, with a 7-2 opinion legalizing abortion handed down in January 1973; and, A high school friend of my eldest sister needed a female singer for his country band. So, in the summer of 1972, with only the chance to leave West Texas and make my way alone, and no one to stop me, I fled to New Mexico, to sing and make what I thought was real money. When December came, I announced plans to marry Marco. “You sound like such a nice girl. Please don’t marry my son.” His mother’s voice over the pay phone was so kind through the heavy Italian accent. I would surprise her, I thought. I would be a good wife and everything would be as it should. I ignored her warning and when I met her in person, I was her son’s wife. My parents and I believed everything: He had owned a building contractor business in Louisville, where his mother lived; he had attended M.I.T. (a university we knew nothing about); and, he would build us a home to start our new life together. As it turned out, we spent the first few months of our marriage at his mother’s home. I loved her but was thrilled when she politely told us to leave. Clearly, she believed he would not earn his own living unless forced to. He told me he could find work in Tucson and there we headed. What I learned from his mother was that Marco had spent many days as a child tied to a tree. Nadia had come to New Mexico as a very young woman with a new husband and a child on the way, only to find that her husband had another wife and family. She had no child support, no ability to speak Eng-
lish, one child after the next because of his random visits, and no option of abortion. Her sole support was working two jobs as a small town waitress. She felt she had no choice, and with the agreement of the local sheriff, Marco, her oldest child, was physically restrained in order to prevent the serious mischief he caused otherwise. Within weeks of our time in Tucson, I realized I had married my mother. Nothing I did was right – the way I dressed, the way I walked, the way I talked. Verbal abuse became physical abuse. Even in my sleep I was punched in the face. “I dreamed I was fighting,” he would say. His days away from the concretefloored, sad house became longer and longer, until he was arriving in the night, drunk and crying, begging forgiveness for losing money at billiards. I was determined to be so good for him that everything would change. Every morning I was up early to cook his breakfast, draw his bath, iron his clothes, and send him off like June Cleaver, then walk as far as I could walk, in hopes of finding my own job. “You should beat her if you need to,” pronounced my mother when she surprised us with a visit on a hot day in summer. “You’re her husband now, Marco.” I recall them laughing together, conversing as if I weren’t there. I finally turned to my father. In a letter, I described how miserable I was, how I detested sex. I hoped he would call, thinking over the phone it would be easier to say how fearful I was, how rough Marco was. But my father was not a man to discuss sex with anyone. He sent flowers, and broke my heart. What I needed, Marco and a male doctor decided together, was a female circumcision. I did not understand then that this was a form of genital mutilation. Needless to say, it made no difference; sex was painful and unwelcome. The violence continued to escalate. One lovely day as Marco was driving, he suddenly slammed on the brakes and his right hand flew across my face, dislocating my jaw. “I saw that! I saw you looking at that man!” “What man?” “That black man on the sidewalk! I know you want to be with him!” He reached across me, opened the passenger door, and tried to push me. The car was still moving at a good speed but I was able to struggle against falling out. With my first attempt at leaving, Marco caught up with me and I was lifted off the ground by the seat of my jeans as I came out of the bank. I had withdrawn exactly half of our balance. I managed to loosen myself from
Continued on page 10
8
El Ojo del Lago / August 2022
