To Forgive, Divine

I pride myself on the fact that I am a good Christian girl. I sing in the choir and teach Sunday school to the kindergarteners. What a bright little bunch, so eager to learn. And so awe-inspired and operating in wonder. Those are things I never experienced as a child, and I am fascinated. I had no clue who God was. I definitely knew what hell was and “Jesus Christ” was my dad's favorite cuss word, right up there with “Goddamn”. Salvation and the thought of a heaven had no place in my childhood home.

Nonetheless I grew up to be a good Christian girl, who worked real hard, had a lot of integrity and was extremely loyal to my friends, to my lovers, to the church and to God. Of course I'm a Virgo and we're pretty loyal by default and you can take that straight to the bank.

When I met Harley he damn near swept me right off my feet. I was going through a divorce with my first husband who I married at the age of seventeen. We actually stuck it out for ten years even though neither one of us even knew what love was. Honestly I was the one that just couldn't let go. I hate to give up. I saw it as a character flaw.

And while it's true that my husband was sleeping with my best friend, because she was going to give him the baby that my body couldn't make, I too, had succumbed to temptation. I was sleeping with our gorgeous neighbor, (who was the spitting image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday) who was trying to give me the baby that my body couldn't make. So all things considered I guess you could say in the end it was a pretty sorted ordeal. We were just going through the motions as there was no love there at all. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even know what love was for another twelve years, when I had my first child. That's when I truly learned the meaning of love.

I was going through that divorce and I was just broken hearted as ever because not only was I having to admit that my marriage was loveless and broken, but the man that I was madly in love with was just using me. He was the epitome of a narcissist, but not as mean, and so hot you could not take your eyes off of him, so that made it easy to overlook his little nuances. Except for those nights when my heart would be completely annihilated because of his shenanigans.

Harley came in with a broom and a dustpan and swept up all the little broken pieces and started putting me back together. Except I was so broken I didn't notice that Harley was just as bad, actually much worse, because he was hiding in the shadow of Christianity. So it felt right because we were in church four days a week. But it was wrong because we were in church four days a week, me covered in bruises underneath my clothing. I now have a deeper understanding of why we fall in love with shitty people and stay with them even after they've proven that they're not good for us, and it's a very calculated process, on their part.

So by the time I had been married to Harley for seven years, he went on a rampage one night and attacked me when he saw that I was moving out. I had met my brother for a drink to tell him I was leaving the state and give him my spare car key. I was leaving my car with him. He would confide to me much later that my car was the escape pod that drove him far away from a lifestyle that would have killed him.

Upon my returning home, Harley was sitting by an open phone book I had left on the coffee table. Yes, I'm so old we were using phone books at the time because portable phones were just a tickle in somebody's pants and we did not have that luxury. He asked me If I was planning on going somewhere, and having just enough liquid courage in me, I proudly proclaimed, ”Yes. I am. I'm leaving your old ass.”

I had been cursed with a mouth that didn't have enough sense to know when to shut up.

Let the games begin. Like the Serengeti lions, that give chase even to the fastest gazelles on the planet, knowing that they would catch them eventually and enjoy a hearty meal… this wife beating predator was on the chase. Because of the layout of our home he was able to chase me in circles. And thankfully, there was no chance of being cornered or caught as long as I stayed two arm lengths ahead of him. And it all came down to stamina, my thirty year old fit body being a little faster and could go a little longer than his fifty year old body that was carrying about twenty five pounds of excess weight. Even still his rage would propel him sometimes up to twenty rounds.

In the past, I had stopped in my tracks and yelled demon stop! And he would literally stop in his tracks… with a perplexed look on his face… not quite understanding why he couldn't move forward or back , or from side to side. His feet seem to be glued to the ground. And it was at those times I would feel a little pious, that God must be on my side because he doesn't want a man beating a woman regularly and coming very close to killing her on occasion. He doesn't want that at all.

Yes, I was pretty foolish and I leaned on alcohol at the time, because it did make me brave but also stupid. And sometimes it was such a fine line I didn't know which was which.

Like the morning after he had attacked me pretty badly and left me battered and bruised, choking me to the point that my vocal cords were too strained to produce sound. And I woke up with a death wish that morning. I heard him downstairs, so I snuck down and I saw him just casually getting his church clothes ready, preparing to iron this shirt. There's a can of starch sitting there and I don't know what came over me, but I threw the starch at him, nailing some invisible target right in the middle of his forehead.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most people, upon getting clocked in the head with a large can of starch, typically fall to the ground…or pass out or stumble around, to keep from being felled? Well, not this guy. He answered to a different god than me, and I don't know what you know about evil, but evil doesn't fall down easily. No, hit an evil being in the head, and you have declared war. And just like those scary ass ghost movies from Japan, where one second the ghost is standing over by the pool, and in the next second they're standing beside you? That's how fast he moved from the dryer to where I was standing with the hot iron. We were due to leave for church in about 25 minutes and he held me to the ground and put that iron so close to my face I felt my face fuzz melting on my cheek, I smelt it. I frantically petitioned God to spare me as I've never had anything up to that point. I never had my own home, I didn't have children, I never had a nice car, I never had a secure well paying job. I never had an ounce of self esteem. But I did have a pretty face. And he was about to ruin that real good.

In the same fashion Uma Thurman's character, in Kill Bill 2, tells Bill the baby is his, I say to Harley in a strained whisper, “we are due on stage in twenty minutes. If you do this then be prepared to take it to the end. There will be no way to put this on me and your good guy facade will crumble, exposing to all your fans what you really are. Harley, I need to go get dressed.”

And as if under a spell he put the iron down and stepped aside to let me go put on a dress.

How many times did we stand in front of that congregation and bless them musically with our passion for God? Praising the Lord. Fooling them by non disclosure, my bruised and battered body carefully hidden with makeup and seasonally inappropriate clothing. His fans unaware of his desire to control my every breath, and expose his jealousy of my youth and beauty. He was not an attractive man but he was very charming, And charm can get you further in life than beauty can.

At church Harley was on stage, magically producing the biggest, most soggy crocodile tears that made him look so humble, like he literally operated every moment of his life with humility. Was there ever a touch of remorse or guilt in those giant size showstoppers? Maybe they were tears of frustration at God because he sent somebody as uncontrollable as me into his world. But the show must go on, you cannot disappoint your fans.

The pedestal that the congregation had put Harley and myself on was quite scary if you were afraid of heights, which I was but apparently he wasn't. And there was always that powerful energy that carried you off the stage into the congregation below. And it took great effort to ignore your ego. And I was approached one day by a lovely lady who told me she was very jealous of me, that she had grown to despise my smile and my beauty.

To know me is to know how much that bothered me as I am profoundly aware that I am no better than anybody else, and I am constantly haunted by the secret I carry, particularly when at church. I share with her how much it hurts me to hear that and could she please explain why she would approach me and say those things to me and why she would feel that way. I didn't mention this but in church my filter works, but my desire to speak my mind, I have no control over.

She filled me in on a conversation she had with her husband just the day before about how Mrs. Harley was just the perfect woman and he was disgusted with her that she could never measure up to me. And how he would love to have a woman as pretty and talented and sweet as Mrs. Harley.

This left me feeling dirty, hypocritical, like the biggest fake in the world. I realized I was subconsciously rubbing my neck where a different set of bruises existed, and fought off the urge to rip my collar down and say you want to be this?

Instead with much poise, I looked into her eyes and said, “you are a beautiful and amazing woman, and you should leave that piece of shit!” and walked away.

At that point it was getting towards the end of my relationship and I had already been planning on moving. So back to the night when he came home and saw the phone books opened. As he was chasing me around and around he was violently throwing the beautiful decorations of our home to the ground breaking multiple items. And that night something different happened. He caught up with me. And like a madman he grabbed my thigh with two fingers and held me down and violated me so badly that I actually had prayed he would just take me out. He got in his car and left. Ten minutes later he reappears with four uniformed policemen, arriving in two different patrol cars. One of them asked me if I was Mrs. Harley, and was I destroying this man's lovely home?

I stepped into the light of the porch exposing the black eye that I had received as a 30th birthday present 11 weeks ago. They also saw the condition of my hair and my clothing and more than likely the huge bruise on the inside of my thigh and immediately turned around and put him in handcuffs.

I was escorted into the house and one of the officers walked up to the officer escorting me and said the house is clear and there's old blood all over the wall in the spare bedroom. After confirming that it was my blood another officer came into the room and announced he had just found phone books in the living room that indicated I was in the process of leaving this man.

Officer Rodriguez was the officer that was talking to me and he said to me, we're going to tell him that you both got arrested. This is going to give you three days to get everything that is yours out of this house. I don't care where you go…to another state, to another country or to the moon. I just want you gone because this is my patrol area and I am not going to be the one to carry your body out of here in a body bag. Make no mistake there was no concern in that statement, it was mostly disgust.

It would have been in mine, and Harley's best interests to move on with my life, to forgive and forget, and close the chapter.

But that's not what I did. Instead, I had a huge party and gave away everything he owned to all my friends. Then I went downstairs and I waited for him to come home from the jail. Yesterday, I was served with divorce papers, basically sealing his fate.

I knew he had come into the house because I could smell his tobacco infused sweat.

Out of the blue I just began moaning this loud sensual moan as if the best looking man in the world was kissing me on my spine and my neck, and on the backs of my knees. I got louder and louder and I heard his weight go from the front door to the top of the basement stairs. And now there is no room for escape. It was either kill or be killed at that point. I had no desire to forgive him but I had made plans to someday forgive myself. He moved forward to descend the stairs and as his foot touched the third stair I yanked with everything I had at the rope I had left there. Pay attention to what you learn in Girl Scouts. Like a snake strike, it enveloped his ankle, and with a mighty pull his leg went right out from under him. And his 300 pound, 6 foot 2 frame bounced down those cement stairs harder than I ever could have imagined. The man really needed to get into shape.

But that was a moot point now, because now he lay at the bottom of the stairs in a very broken fashion, I'm guessing his neck was broken because there was blood coming out of his nose, mouth and ears. He wasn't moaning, and didn't even appear to be breathing but he was staring right at me…. Somewhere from Harley world threats to kill and maim me spewed out of his mouth with spittle and venom. He would repay me. But here at this moment his anger was silent. And the man that I had once loved so passionately but now viewed as a monster that was ultimately going to kill me, lay before me as a sad broken man. All the charm in the world was not going to save him now. I heard myself echo words he had said to me many times…look what you made me do. Then I spit on him.

I walked away from his condemning glare, and pulled the crumpled piece of paper with the phone number written on it out of my pocket. I felt my heart in my stomach and for one brief second I felt a tinge of guilt and then Officer Rodriguez answered, and I said Officer Rodriguez, this is Mrs. Harley, and we're going to need that body bag after all.