RUNNING SCARED


I hadn’t expected to feel so jumpy. I scurried down the sidewalk in Pioneer Square clutching the hijab hoping it wouldn’t come undone from my head and shoulders before I got to Katherine’s office. I was beginning to regret my choice of disguise; I simply had not spent enough time getting used to wearing it; an amateur’s mistake. My face ached from the October cold. The sodden leaves underfoot made walking treacherous. The sky was shades of gray and full of moisture, but it wasn’t raining yet.

A hand clutched my elbow and I almost slipped. “Please lady, just a dollar, please,” a raspy voice entreated. I stopped and glanced at the emaciated woman at my side. I’d been away from Seattle for almost eighteen months now, but still couldn’t afford to get recognized. She seemed genuine enough. I fumbled a dollar out of my bag for her, and hurried away -- my heartbeat thundering in my ears. I thought I’d gotten over running scared. So much for denial.

I ducked into the red brick building and up the stairs. I paused a moment in the hall to collect myself. Half whispering I gave Katherine’s secretary Myra my new name and turned away quickly to get out of her line of sight. “She’ll be just a minute,” Myra said. I nodded. I felt like it was a test to be able to get by Myra without getting found out. I turned around and pretended to study the nautical watercolors hanging on the old brick walls.

Perhaps it had been foolish of me to come, but I was in town for my Grand Jury
testimony and Katherine had saved my life. I owed her. A few minutes later Myra said, “Miss,” to get my attention and waved me towards Katherine who had opened her office door. Once inside Katherine hugged me. “I’ve missed you,” she said and looked me over carefully. “You look better than the last time I saw you;” she reached up and touched my face gently. “And, thinner,” she added. “I really appreciate your coming. I have a client who needs your help.”

I unwound the hijab, stepped out of the long skirt, and folded them into my bag. Running my fingers through my short curly hair I adjusted my jeans and asked Katherine to tell me about her client. “I have to head uptown in an hour,” I said.

“I’ll drive you there. No argument,” Katherine said. “Sharon is in the next room; she can tell you her story. I think it will be quite clear why I asked you to talk with her.” Katherine opened the door to the conference room where I glimpsed a tall blonde looking out the window. “Sharon, this is my friend. I’ll let her introduce herself.” Katherine closed the door quietly.

“You can call me Morgan,” I began as Sharon turned to face me. I could feel myself flinch. Her hair was draped over the left side of her face, her hand half-concealing her mouth, but it was obvious she had been badly beaten, her jaw wired shut. It was like looking in a mirror from all those months ago; her carefully applied makeup could not conceal the bruises around her eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” she ducked her head half turning away. “I’m too ugly this way.” Her injuries caused her voice to slur and stumble.

Getting a grip on my emotions I sat down at the conference table and said, “The bruises will fade, your jaw will heal. We need to talk about what you need to do next. Tell me what happened.”

She slipped into a chair across from me. “He didn’t mean to hurt me this badly,” she said, and I wondered how badly he did mean to hurt her. “But I can’t go back until I look okay again. Bruce gets angry when he sees my bruises; it makes him feel bad. And if I stay away too long he’ll be mad about that too. I don’t know what to do.”

“Husband? Boyfriend?” I asked. She told me she’d been married eight years and had one son who lived with his father, her former husband. Her current husband Bruce was a security guard who had wanted to be a policeman. He’d hit her before, but this was the first time she had had to go to the hospital. He’d been arrested. Katherine had checked Sharon out of the hospital before he was released. Sharon had just talked to Bruce by phone. He wanted her to return home immediately. She was afraid.

“He’s just flipped out because he has to take anger management classes again,” she said.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“I want everything to go back to the way it used to be,” she wailed. “Maybe if I could learn to be better – to not make him so angry.” She looked down and studied her carefully manicured hands.

I remembered back when I had felt exactly the same way about Vern. I felt sorry for her, but knew that anything less than tough love wouldn’t help her. “Not going to happen. Not possible,” I said. “His anger is not about you.” She began weeping. I waited her out, and looked around for the box of Kleenex. I rapped the box down sharply on the table in front of her. She startled, then grabbed a handful of tissues and began mopping herself up.

“Your face has taken enough of a beating without your making it worse with crying.” The only things I could give her that would be useful were truth and a sense of choices. “It’s time you learned to take better care of yourself. You have several options.
According to you, going back to Bruce now, or later, exposes you to more anger. You may not be able to walk away next time.”

She looked up, shocked. “Oh, no. He loves me; he tells me he loves me all the time.” She busily shredded the tissues in her hand.

“Do you feel loved?” I asked.

She began crying again. “But I can’t leave him,” she protested. “He said if I left him or mentioned the word divorce he would hunt me down and kill me.”

“Doesn’t sound like love to me,” I said. “If you can’t go back to him, and can’t leave him without fearing for your life, what’s left?” I paused. “I assume Katherine has mentioned the battered women’s shelter here in Seattle.”

“It’d be too easy for him to find me,” she said. More likely it would be too easy for her to call him again.

“You need to have a place where your injuries can heal,” I said. “You need to learn to live without him, without the drama, without the pain. There are other battered women’s shelters nearby and even in other states. That should be your first step. Katherine can arrange things. There’s a kind of underground railway for battered women that can furnish transportation.”

“I thought you were supposed to help me,” she said. She reeked of needing to be taken care of.

“I am helping you as much as I can right now,” I said. “You need to learn to help yourself. Think of me as a mentor – someone who has been where you need to go. Someone who may not have the right answers, but someone who can help you ask the right questions.”

“I do have a question,” Sharon said. “I can’t stand it when people look at me – the way my face is.” Her hands touched her injured face carefully.

“You can say you were in an automobile accident. Beyond that, learn to say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ with no further explanation. Never explain too much. If you say more than a sentence or two you’ve taken a defensive position anyway.”

“It’s really okay to say I don’t want to talk about it?”

“It’s your life, your story. You’ll find people who will hear your story and will take care of you and treat you like a baby. Some of that kind of attention is necessary, but often comes at a high price. Too much sympathy can make it more difficult to do the hard stuff.”

“What hard stuff?”

“Learning to be comfortable with being alone – to do without a man, learning to be self-sufficient, learning to be poor for a while.”

“I’ve been alone before. I’ve been poor in my life. I don’t want to be alone or poor again.” She started to tremble.

“Right now, today, your reality is that you are alone, and you have no money of your own. You have to start from there.”

“I can’t just walk away from all my clothes, my jewelry, my stuff at home; it’s gotta be worth something. I could sell some of it.”

“As long as Bruce is threatening to kill you, it’s not your home anymore. And your stuff is not worth risking your life for. If the stuff is that important to you, get a lawyer, file for divorce. A lawyer can help you get your stuff.”

“I can’t do that,” she wailed.

I could see her slipping away, beyond the reach of reason; drowning in self-pity. I could feel her panic, her desperation. Although I was feeling frustrated, I reached out and took her trembling hand. “You have everything you need to get through today,” I tried to reassure her. “You’re safe for today.”

**********************

A half hour later in Katherine’s car I said, “Sharon’s not yet ready for anything I might be able to help her with. She’s not able to be angry enough at him; every other sentence she makes excuses for him. Just like I used to do with Vern.”

“It was worth a shot anyway. Thanks for trying,” Katherine said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you.”

“I spent the first summer in a tent in the redwoods, just enjoying the peace and quiet,” I said. “Since then I’ve lived in several small towns in Northern California. I’ve washed dishes for food. Too bad I couldn’t work as a paralegal again, but that’s my reality for now.”

“I worried about you after you turned down witness protection,” Katherine said.

“I just couldn’t bear the thought of being so controlled by anyone else again. Perhaps it was foolish of me but I’m doing okay. I’m hoping Vern will get indicted and convicted, but maybe I’d still be afraid of what he might be able to do me even then.”

You can still get help here if you need it,” Katherine reminded me. “You don’t have to act so tough all the time. At least not for those who know you.”

“I need to act tough for me,” I said. “I need to be tough or I’m not going to make it,” I admitted as she dropped me off where the Grand Jury was meeting.