Category: uncategorized

Knock on the door today. It was Elizabeth wanting to know what’s been going on with me; she’s noticed my car’s home a lot. Standard vague (on my part) talk about the general situation, blah blah, her promising again to tell me what I owe on the electric bill, blah blah, do you need help with anything I’ve got connections, blah blah blah-say blah. Okay. Thanks.

It sounds like at some point she’s going to want to move relatives in here again. She can’t do squat until the lease is up but it feels like I probably had better start planning. The good news is that I know a couple places that won’t charge me an insane amount for deposit, so once I’ve paid rent for November whatever money I make that month can go toward the move, whether or not I get my deposit back from here. I have to start planning now, but it’s doable.

I’m a little tired of people though, even when they seem to mean well. Look. Just because I wound up homeless does not mean I’m a child who needs her every move scrutinized. I am forty-nine years old and a free woman. What I do is no one’s business, not even if they read about it here; I graciously allow you a look into my life but I do not grant you ownership. If I ask for help, fine. If I don’t ask then I’m coping, so leave me be. I paid my rent for September. Be happy you got it. And if you don’t start telling me what I owe for the electric I guess you can content yourself with taking it out of my deposit. I don’t need this. Stop it.

Not that she’s really been following me all that closely but that’s another thing. No consistency. I never know what’s going to happen from day to day. Okay, that’s not quite accurate. I’ve gotten consistency, and the thing she’s been consistent about is the not following up. I give her a pass because she has a terminally ill husband and has to cope with that and about fifteen billion other things, but that is the only reason I give her a pass. People who act like flakes but then assert moral authority in any way are just so goddamned cute.

In spite of it all, I kind of like her. I like it here too but let’s be real: if I like or love something, that means I can’t keep it.

It’s just as well. I want to go somewhere where the rent’s lower, the bills come in like they are supposed to, I can actually get my mail every day, and I can trust that the parking area and the driveway will be shoveled timely if it snows — and that’s another thing. I still wonder about that. It’s kind of terrifying, actually. That driveway is really steep and it’s only one lane. What happens when it snows?

I think I will take up the schedule I initially planned to follow a month ago before I descended into depression: Tuesday to Saturday driving. We’ll see how it goes. If I can pull in $400 a week gross, that’ll be something; I want to do better, but I can’t guarantee that will happen.

I do need to find a job because I’m not sure I would be able to get a place on the strength of my gig earnings alone. I could literally be earning the amount they want and they might still say no. Inner Brat is fighting that with every fiber of her being because I don’t fit in anywhere.

Warehouse jobs: I’m fat and weak and it’s not fair to my co-workers for me to use my job to “get in shape.” And I have always been slow, even before I got fat.

Call center: I am good at putting on an act but I do not give a fuck what your problems are and like as not they’re at least two-thirds your own fault. Take some basic responsibility for yourself and quit bothering me. (I have never actually said this, but you can bet I was thinking it.)

Retail: Quit fucking up my store and quit trying to rip me off. I see you stuffing those jeans down your pants.

Customer service: Thirteenth Amendment. Try asking me for assistance without coming off Condescending Piece of Shit. Thanks.

Everyone: Buys into gender identity. I can’t cope with that shit and I shouldn’t have to. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have 51% of the population subjected to being mocked, sexually harassed, invaded, and pushed out of their rightful spaces just so some man could get a boner in public? Oh. Men. Right.

There’s nothing out there for me! It’s just humiliating yourself in the name of not even being able to make rent. What the fuck are we doing? It’s all so pointless. I have to keep reminding myself I need to fake it for a little while yet so that I can get stable. Because if I think I’m stable now, I’m fooling myself. Again. Am I not tired of this yet? I should be sooooo tired of this by now.

…..

In other news, I got the spark plugs replaced in the car. Let me tell you what mechanics do: They have a specific service they do for a specific system in the car, and then they charge you extra on top of that. So I went in to get the plugs replaced and scheduled, specifically, a spark plug replacement. What’d they do? Charge me separately for the spark plugs. Which should have been part of the service I already scheduled. A month ago, at a completely different auto shop chain, I scheduled an oil change. What’d they do? Charge me for the dirty oil disposal, which should have been part of the oil-change service fee. I cannot begrudge having access to a garage and qualified mechanics, but I can’t even get paid enough to be independent doing half the jobs in this town which are allegedly “important” work that people “need” and here we have these clowns double-charging me for something they were going to do anyway. I may come off a “Karen” here (and I fucking hate that term) but I’m so not like that in person, and I could have been. But the plugs are replaced and the car seems to be running better. I can feel good about that, at least.

I’ve been going back and forth about how to administer my online presence forever. And that just sounds full of myself, doesn’t it? But I know full well I turn up in Google results. It is an inevitable consequence of having an unusual name. (I am the only person on the planet, to my knowledge, with this first-and-last-name combo. The one person who comes closest has -ova at the end of her surname and is located somewhere in Kazakhstan. Of all places.) I might as well not be a passive victim in terms of what shows up. If my own stuff isn’t on page one of the results, am I even trying?

Be that as it may. I probably have ADD* or something. I can never get my act together on how to organize it all.

But in my current situation it’s as if I have all the time in the world. I may as well get some work in on resolving this issue.

So! There’s no point having a blog on my real-name homepage. It’s redundant. I think I will just make that into my own version of a “linktree” — all the cool kids have those on social media now — and then have this be my regular blog which I will link to from there. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to link to from that site and what I want to link to from here, because they may not amount to the same thing. I think I may make my homepage business/work-friendly and then save the personal shit for here. Someone obviously can still get here from there, but they’d have to make the effort and I didn’t think it was possible for people to get 500 times as lazy as they were even ten years ago, but here we are. I’ll take my chances.

I’m going to add my real name here though. I didn’t want to for years, but I never want to get to the point where I’m not telling my own side of the story. Everyone else gets to tell their bit if they want. I want my side always out there, for as long as I’m around to tell it. It’s only fair. If people still write me off after hearing my side of things, well, that just tells me who they are. Weeds out the assholes. No great loss.

I am debating whether I want to continue with Substack, too. It’s not that I don’t consider it a potentially worthwhile endeavor, but I don’t know if I have the attention span to be a really good longform writer, and short form doesn’t get my point across. Though honestly, I could be a brilliant writer and it wouldn’t matter because most people refuse to read. You have no idea what it’s like to have abilities that you can’t express because it’s tossing pearls at swine. And even pigs are smarter than this lot. Tired of it. I swear to fuck I am not a snob, at least not in any malevolent way, but how many times do I have to keep running into this before I finally stop kidding myself about what it is? I watch people misinterpret one another all the time, sometimes on purpose to be dicks, so of course they’re doing it to me too. I cannot figure out why they waste their time like that, but dealing with it is an exercise in perpetual frustration. I need to find something to do with my time that brings out my happy. Got plenty of grief already. Need to balance it out.

Anyway so. I’m working on all that, and the sooner I get it set up the sooner I can pursue things that bring out that happy. Right? Right.

Onward!

—–
*They used to call it ADD or attention deficit disorder; now it seems everyone has ADHD, with the H for “hyperactivity.” Those who have ever known me in person will be amused at the thought of me being hyperactive. Let’s just leave that H off in my case.

Wrote this in the parent group today:

—–

Coming up on the two-year anniversary of when I left my daughter’s house. She was insisting she was either non-binary or a boy and her father decided that was a fantastic time to start a new relationship (we weren’t together, just co-parenting, but he replicated his old pattern of sneaking around behind my back and he always zeroes in on a new situation and ignores everything else) and frankly, I was the odd one out. I knew even then that I would have no allies to back me up in trying to keep her from harming herself. Even her therapist had bought into it. And it’s horrible living in a place where you know you are no longer welcome.

The thing that sticks out to me is how they both went straight into silent treatment. I wasn’t allowed to talk about what was wrong with the situation anymore because they simply would not answer me. She probably wouldn’t have come up with that tactic herself, so I’m pretty sure her father suggested it. We all did communicate about some things for a while after I left but after he signed the car over, even that died away.

I ended up homeless earlier this year. They knew. Neither cared, apparently. I wouldn’t have asked for a rescue, but some expression of concern might have been nice.

I have to own up to my end, I’ve been angry and sweary. But I’ve also given them lots of openings to engage with the issues and asked questions and raised concerns and… nothing. It’s been we are both going to act crazy and/or unethically and we are going to completely destroy your life and you don’t get a say in it at all. I refuse to shut up and be polite when that is going on. The only reason I’ve gone pretty much silent from my end is because there isn’t any point. They’ve both made up their minds that her fantasy and his ego are more important than me.

He is on my permanent shit list. I had had this vague notion that when she was grown we’d come out of this as friends or at least cordial but he couldn’t even give me that. Nearly twenty years of “I love you” and “I’m glad you’re in my life” and then as soon as his long-ago ex decided she needed to get out of California he turned it right off like a switch. (She quit her job almost as soon as she got here and they got married at some point so yeah, don’t tell me that’s not what it was. He makes $130k a year at least and has home equity out the yinyang [the house has doubled or tripled in value since he bought it]. He can carry them. She knows it. I hope she dumps him at some point and if he thinks I’ll even entertain a conversation with him after that, well, buckle up Buttercup.)

Daughter, I don’t know. I come from a background of familial abuse and alcoholism and most of the physical abuse was from my brother and so I know what young people are capable of. I am not ready to make up my mind about her. If she’s too much like her father and what’s happened so far is a sign of things to come, though, there won’t be any hope there. First question she had when I told them I was leaving was “Are you taking the cats?” She’s told her therapists I’m a “conservative Catholic.” (Anyone who knows me in person would laugh themselves silly, and I am only Catholic by a technicality, which I already explained to her.) I complained to her when I lost my room in January that serial killers get treated better than I’ve been in this situation — free room and board! — and she remarked that if I was comparing myself to serial killers, that doesn’t look real great for me. I think that was the last time we talked. I’m not sure there will be another.

Meanwhile my best friend since age 8 or 9 has decided that my misery is all because I obsess too much about the trans thing. The fact that an 18yo young woman has been on testosterone for six months and has been using a binder and will probably opt for an elective mastectomy doesn’t faze her at all. The weird thing is she’s a social conservative but then, I’ve been telling people this is not a leftist movement. There’s room within conservatism to accept it for what it claims on the tin even if a lot of conservatives don’t. So I’m not wholly surprised. But it’s getting to the point that I could be talking about a completely different thing and she’ll start in on me with the “quit with the trans stuff” again. I am not sure how much longer she’s going to be in the picture, and I hate to say it, because in a lot of ways she’s been really supportive of my general situation. But she’s a social worker. If she has any sense of responsibility for people’s health and sanity whatsoever then she should be working harder to understand this issue than she is. She is very head-in-the-sand about a lot of things that matter: not only is she uninformed, she delights in being uninformed and considers it the morally superior position. Not even kidding. It’s one of the few areas where we clash. And now it’s gotten personal for me, she’s making it all about my feelings as if my brain is faulty instead of being concerned about my daughter’s welfare. Red flag. She has a 9yo daughter, too. I don’t even know.

Sorry to vent. August has been hard and September isn’t shaping up to be much better.

A note: This has not been dropped from the official greatest hits album. It has been dropped off a version of it that is being played on a children’s music platform. Rightly so. They can listen to this song when it’s actually age-appropriate for them. Holy shit, internet nonces, calm the fuck down.

After going back and forth for almost two years about whether to, I finally decided to write to Matt’s mother.

I put Matt’s home address as the return. If for some reason Kay and Roger (Matt’s stepfather and adoptive father) aren’t living at the house I used to visit, the letter will simply be returned to Matt. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that moment. Just one more little needling.

But, I suspect they’re still in the same place. I expect absolutely nothing from this — and they could signal to me that they got it; they’ve got one of those creepy Stepford joint Facebook accounts and I am a very easy find. They did not, however, attempt that when I first left. They just pretended I don’t exist. So I know what’s going to happen: nothing.

After what happened with Cheryl, my ex-husband’s mother, that’s actually sort of a relief. And I should have learned my lesson long before now: just because someone acts like they like you doesn’t mean they do. I have no real friends in life, and I may as well face it.

I wish I could say that was deserved. It really isn’t though. I see people worse than me with friends, family, and social circles absolutely everywhere. I think most people are just shitty, that’s all. I have my shitty moments too. I am not sure what to do with that information. I am not sure it matters.

I think I wrote the letter to give my side more than for any other reason. That way I can tick off a box and say it’s done and they can’t say they didn’t know. Or they could, but they’d be lying. Because sure, one of the worst liars I have ever personally known came from kind and honest people. Sure he did.

Anyway. Here you go. For posterity.

—–

22 August 2023

Hi Kay.

Sorry if you were expecting someone else. I didn’t put my own return address on this because, well, I don’t know why I’m bothering, and I fully expect this to go nowhere. But I also wanted to be able to speak for myself, which up til now I have not had the opportunity to do, since neither you nor Roger ever reached out to me after things finally fell apart. Thanks for that, by the way.

First of all, I wanted to clear up a particular point on why Matt and I never married. As you know, he was already married when I got pregnant with Althea. He ended up divorced the following year, however, so why didn’t we tie the knot then? That seems to have been a sticking point with some of you, your aunts in particular.

He did ask me to handfast with him (non-legally-binding ceremony) the year I was pregnant, but when he asked, it was with all the air of one being dragged kicking and screaming to ask for something he didn’t actually want. We never discussed how or when or where it was going to happen, and then he started screwing around with Yvette (it’s one thing to have an open relationship, quite another to sneak around behind someone’s back when you’ve told them you weren’t going to start any new involvements, which he had in my case), so things got really toxic and it would have been silly to discuss it then because no one wants to marry, legally-binding or otherwise, a person who’s making them miserable.

Well, you might say, but that was 2004 and you’ve had almost twenty years since. Yes, that’s true. And he’d shown me that he lies and he can’t be trusted to do anything but spend money, often inappropriately, which frankly does not make one a good husband candidate either. I needed him around to help with Thea. I did not need to be married to him for that. You may rest assured that after 2006 or 2007 we had nothing like an intimate relationship going on, either.

As to why I finally left. What happened in 2004 and 2005 (because he still wouldn’t stop lying and sneaking around) wasn’t bad enough. He had to put me through it again, this time with Crys. His argument is that we weren’t together. That’s completely fair, so my question is why did he carry on like he was having an affair, and right when we were running into serious problems with Thea, too. I’m also perimenopausal so I was going through distressing health changes, my daughter was in a crisis, and I had no one to turn to for help or support because Thea’s particular situation means everyone has made me into the villain because I won’t affirm it. Matt knows why I won’t. He didn’t want to deal with it. He wanted to escape again like the little fucking coward he has always been.

I am tired of people making me into a monster for the most ridiculous of reasons. And that includes my own daughter. I loved her before she was born, I loved her and was heartbroken when I left, I still love her now. But you must understand I am the villain because I still call her “her.” Because I know she’s female and can’t change that. That is probably THE most ridiculous reason to make someone into a monster that I’ve ever heard of. I wasn’t going to stay and keep being the odd-out scapegoat, watching her destroy her health and body for nothing when I can’t even try to stop her, being treated like an intruder in my own damn home because I’m harshing Matt’s special fairy tale.

But I’m out of their lives now and I’m sure they’re much happier. I’m sure you are too. Enjoy.

I have been upsetting Reba in weird ways almost since I got here. Last night I upset her again.

I had been attempting to draw, and then I had to take a dump. Sean was watching TV and zoning out on the couch so I figured he was okay for a bit. When I came back, Reba barrelled out of her bedroom to tell me I’d left out a sketchbook and some other supplies. I’m not sure which pissed her off more, that I’d left them out or that Sean was still up.

After that she sat out in the living room writing a note, then went and showed it to Rick in their bedroom, then told me about it and said she’d give it to me in the morning (today).

To say I am pissed off at Mike for putting me into this situation would be the understatement of the year.

Reba says I’m reverting to Angry Teenager. Looks to me like she’s reverting to Nagging Nitpicker, and who’d be happy about that? Not me.

I’m really tired of her tattling to Rick, too. I may have Sean calling him “grandpa” but he’s no relation of mine.

Anyway, I had been working on a drawing but after this blowup she asked me if I had started drawing anything — stupid question, she could have seen it when the sketchbook was on the coffee table — and since we were all about the stupid questions I resorted to stupid answers, said No, and then ripped it up when I got it back to the bedroom.

Yesterday we went out driving and passed by the neighborhood where Reba and Dad had bought 1.25 acres of land several years back. In the divorce, Reba got Dad to sign away his share of it. Now she wants to sell it. Depressing. It’s like a piece of our family history and she’s talking about it like it’s a commodity. But it’s her land, not mine. I’m not entitled to inherit anything from her. Nothing I can do.

Another thing from yesterday that pissed me off was a conversation about Mom. Apparently she was living with a cocaine dealer during the time she was fighting Dad for custody of me and then visitation rights. Reba even thought Mom had been snorting coke herself, since she lost a lot of weight around that time. I suppose it’s possible. But it amazes me that whenever Reba has anything to say about Mom, it’s usually negative in some way. Reba says she avoids negativity in that area, but historically she’s used the tactic of talking about how messed up I was as a toddler and how Reba felt the need to “rescue” me.

It’s not like I need or want Reba to lie to me or cover up any bad stuff Mom might have done. But if you go around for years doing all but calling your stepdaughter’s mom a bad mother, it’s very bad form to deny what you did, years later. And it’s not like she never called my mom a bitch. Yep, that too. Late one night when we lived in Mississippi when she thought I was asleep and she and Dad were having one of their late-night discussions.

I’ll say one thing for Dad: he never said anything mean about Mom to me. He has always been something of a realist and recognizes that he and Mom were just kids who had no business getting married, much less having a kid. Didn’t spell it out in so many words, but. And I know enough about young single moms and the stupid shit they do to basically forgive Mom for anything she did.

Speaking of young relationships. One actually pleasant conversation Reba and I had on the road yesterday: She mentioned, in the past, having gone to the hospital on the Navy base at Millington and having been treated by Dr. Moody. In other words, the father of my first boyfriend. He’d look at her last name and tap his forehead and say, “I should know you, shouldn’t I…? Hm. Oh yeah, our kids dated, didn’t they?” The thought that Daniel’s dad remembered me even though Daniel and I were only together a month and I don’t think I ever actually met Dr. Moody in person cheered me up a good bit.

I wonder if Daniel is married now. I’d ask Marc, but Marc hates him.

Last thing for now. Reba keeps gushing on about Rick and how she’s finally found true love. She then turns to me and says she “knows” I still love Mike.

Mike wasn’t my true love. He was a four-year mistake who happened to be good in bed.

If that doesn’t suit her fairy-tale idealism, nothing I can do about it.

Well, in the last few days I’ve gone over to Marc’s apartment once for a visit. Marc called and invited me over, so I took Sean with me. Wife was at work. I got to meet the little fella (Logan) and spent some time looking through Marc’s wedding photos and catching up, then watching Marc play video games.

It wasn’t as boring as it sounds. Barry also showed up with his brother Charlie. Ah, yes. Charlie of the Tales of Charlie his older brother used to regale us with in art class. Personality-wise they are night and day. Barry is friendly enough but kind of stoic and introverted, while Charlie’s the charmer. He also, according to Barry, spent time in either a mental hospital or in juvie, or possibly both. He also used to hang out with Doug, for whatever that’s worth. I know some characters, apparently.

Marc seems as gloomy as ever. I wonder if it’s a happy marriage. I wonder if I should even be wondering.

When I left, Sean was asleep. Barry carried him out to the car for me.

Speaking of irritation. It’s wearing on me. Reba is traumatized by the assault on 3 January, I’m traumatized by all the shit with Mike, neither of us is at our best when traumatized, and on top of that her pain meds are scrambling her brains. Needless to say, we’re grating on one another’s nerves.

Talked to the Navy judge advocate general (JAG) officer and found out some interesting stuff. Apparently, conviction for a felony crime is grounds for divorce in Tennessee. Unfortunately, JAG doesn’t do family-court stuff, including divorce. So I’ll have to wait until I’ve got a decent job and, of course, until Mike’s convicted.

I’ve been making lists of what I want from the house with Mike and what I don’t want. Basically I want my stuff and Sean’s stuff. They can burn down Mike’s stuff for all I care. Once ours is not there anymore. I’ve also been apartment-hunting. I think I want to go with Flag Manor in Millington. Their move-in costs are not insane.

Storm Bear, one of my internet friends (no really, just a friend — he’s happily married and monogamous and I’m not even interested), called today but I wasn’t around. I’ll have to call him back.

Big jump of nine days.

After the previous entry, still no joy from the victim-assistance people. I had gotten about $200 more out of the ATM, but after that my card was locked down. I knew I would have to leave the state before I ran out of money, which would have soundly fucked me.

I remember Reba calling me while I was still at the motel to tell me she and Rick had been assaulted by four young men in a robbery attempt and gotten beaten up pretty badly.

I remember going to Kroger to pick up some Immodium (when I get highly stressed like that there’s a really good chance I will get the shits… no good on a long drive) and spied a large blank journal with roses all over the cover. Ah ha, I thought, I can journal this whole mess, so I bought it too.

I remember driving overnight from eastern North Carolina to western Tennessee. Let me tell you how much fun it is to take a piss break in a gas station with nothing to lay your sleeping son on so you have both hands free, and you sure as hell were not going to leave him in the car. It is not fun at all. He didn’t think it was very fun either.

I remember getting to Memphis, specifically to a trailer park in Bartlett, and being set up in Reba’s and her boyfriend Rick’s front bedroom facing the street. There was a bunch of stuff stored in there, some of which I recognized from our last house as a family before she and Dad split, but there was also room enough to get around and the bed had more than enough space for me and the kiddo.

I remember a neighbor coming over with a box of hand-me-down clothes… for me, not Sean, because other than my new underwear I didn’t have squat.

I remember talking to Dad on the phone at some point, telling him the story, and him telling me he would send me money to help out.

Reba threw me a low-key birthday celebration on either the ninth or the tenth (I turned 25 on the tenth). Doug came over after I hadn’t seen him in four years. Not far into the conversation he came out with, “So, you gonna look up Guerrero?”

He was talking about Marc, who was my second to last boyfriend in high school with whom I reconciled for a while when I was in the Army. I hadn’t behaved myself, he hadn’t wanted to move near me (at least, he never brought it up, and I didn’t think to suggest it), and so we had broken up again. After I’d found out Mike and I were expecting Sean, I told my family we were married (we’d been hoping to have a wedding after the elopement but were afraid no one would show if they knew we were already married), and I guess someone had told him, because he called me soon after. That had been 1995 and the last time I’d talked to him. Over these past several months I’ve been thinking about him a lot, though, and had already made up my mind since getting back to Memphis that he was the one person I’d known there who I’d most wanted to find again.

So Doug bringing him up was weird. I said, “Marc? What made you say ‘Marc’?”

Doug kind of smiled. I said, “What happened?”

He said, “Well, last time I saw him, he told me he would have married you if things worked out differently.”

That floored me. So, of course I’ve been thinking about Marc almost nonstop since then. Finally I caved in and looked him up in the phone book today. Apparently he lives in Raleigh, so I called him and left a message on his machine.

He called back, and… he’s married. With a nine-month-old son named Logan.

Yeah. Logan. The name of one of Marc’s favorite comic-book heroes, also known as Wolverine. I still know that about Marc. The baby’s name was his wife’s idea, though.

Marc and I talked for a while and he told me he’s seen Barry from art class and that T.C., Maria, James, Daniel, and Damien are all still around. Just about all of them are married and just about all have kids.

I wasn’t particularly interested in them. I’d been interested in him, and now I was crushed and wishing I’d left well enough alone.

Reba returning home from seeing her lawyer did nothing to raise my spirits. In just a little over a week I’m being reminded of why I hadn’t wanted to stay in the house in Atoka in the first place, seven years ago. It’s a weird place, being irritated by a person you are grateful to, but here I am.

I had become an Avon lady before I became a Kroger deli clerk and was finally picking up some steam with it. Not huge money, but better than I’d been doing. Saturday was ordering day and I had a decent order to drop off.

Plus I had a paycheck from Kroger that I had to deposit.

So I had two very good reasons to leave the house.

Getting the nerve up was a nightmare. I got a phone call from Kroger as I was percolating around to making my move and they wanted to know if I could come in. Mike was standing right there, I don’t even remember why, and I said sure, I can do that. I felt terrible because I knew I wouldn’t be going in. He knew where I worked and if I’d tried keeping Sean at the weekend daycare while I worked those hours, he knew where that was too and all kinds of unpleasantness might have happened. So the same man who had angrily insisted I get a job, any fucking job at all, had now lost me one that had taken me months to find. Thanks?

Back in the front room, I looked around at all the stolen equipment and Mike looked at me and said to Scott, “Look at her. She’s excited about it.” I smiled, knowing that if I didn’t I was likely to put myself into immediate danger. Meanwhile I was thinking things like, Almost four fucking years of marriage and he still doesn’t know me.

As I was about to leave for the bank I asked Sean if he wanted to come along. Sean ran to the front door and started chanting, “Outside! Outside!” I got him dressed and we left.

I dropped off my Avon order and then kiddo and I went to the bank. Even on January 2, it was closed. Fine. I didn’t want to deposit my paycheck anyway. I took $200 out of the bank and we went to Fort Bragg. I called Reba from one of the pay phones. As soon as she answered I burst into tears.

I had been thinking up to this point that maybe there was some third way in between going to the cops and doing nothing that would get the stolen equipment returned but not send Mike to jail. No, Reba said, you have to go to the police. She tried to call Mike at home and the line was busy; could have been Mike calling his mother, could have been one of them on the internet. Reba called me back and we talked about how to do things. I did not have to go back home, she pointed out. She’s an old hand at hotel and motel admin because she worked for a lot of years as a night auditor. We’ll get you checked into a room under an assumed name, she said. That made me feel a lot better and I promised to keep her posted. We got off the phone and I headed for the military police (MP) station.

As I walked in, it was this hallway with a checkin window on the right side just past the front doors. There were a couple guys milling around in the office beyond the window. I said to them, “You know the rigger shop on Gruber Road? There’s been a burglary.”

“We just found out about that this morning,” one of them said. “How did you know about it?”

“I know who did it,” I replied.

His face went very solemn (though not angry) and he immediately hopped to and invited me to come in.

I gave them the particulars and they said well, with the stolen property being stored off-post, the MPs would not have jurisdiction to make an arrest — but Criminal Investigation Division (CID) did have jurisdiction, so they would have to call a guy in. It wouldn’t take long. They invited me and Sean to sit in a little side office and wait for him.

He came through the door in civvies and the first question out of his mouth was, “Why are you doing this?”

I told him I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be an accessory after the fact and that would make an already bad situation even worse. I thought afterwards that another good reason for me to report it was that if Mike and Scott had never been caught, someone at the rigger shop or at their parent company might have taken the fall for it — every Army unit has a unit fuckup. So either way, Mike had to go down.

We talked a good while and after he got the particulars of the crime, he started giving me all this information and material about victim assistance because, as the witness to two felony crimes (breaking-and-entering and grand larceny), I was entitled to it. While we were having this conversation Sean, who was still in diapers, not only went Number Two but leaked up his back. So we got done as quickly as we could because the CID guy needed to arrange the arrest before Mike got suspicious and tried to hide the stolen property anyway.

I went back to the post exchange and as I was walking into the department store itself (kind of like Walmart or Kmart or Target), this guy walking out felt the need to tell me my son had had an accident. Thanks, dude, I thought I was about to have a seizure or something. I don’t know why I had walked out of our house without Sean’s diaper bag. Panicked, I think. It would have been reasonable to take it with me but I hadn’t been reasonable anymore except for my basic drive to deal with the problem Mike had caused. Must have used up all my reasonable points. I was afraid he’d suspect something, I think. But I got Sean some diapers and wipes and clothes and I think I got myself some underwear and we were good to go.

After that, Reba helped me check into a local motel under an assumed name.

Everything’s kind of a blur. I know she and I talked about Mike being royally pissed off and calling her to scream at her, “Where is my wife???” and I must have hidden the car from view away from the main road, because apparently he’d driven around searching. I know I talked with the CID guy again and he told me they’d made the arrest and recovered everything, and also that the victim-assistance people were all stranded in a blizzard in Oklahoma. (Great.) I know I called Kroger at some point, told them what was going on, and apologized because I was going to have to resign as it was no longer safe for me to go to work.

But Sean and I were safe from his father so I was taking things a day at a time.