Conquering Darkness Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife

by Crystal Reshawn Choyce-Lige

  What is it?

  I guess I was somewhat visually disabled when William showed up unannounced. I hadn’t noticed the “new” William. He was well dressed. He was clean-shaven. He had lost his mannish look; his hair was cut down low.

  Was the old William back? Damn, he smelled real good.

  What had he gone and done? Counseling?

  I put my wondering aside for a moment.

  Then, out of nowhere, William let loose with words that I couldn’t hear clearly, at first. HE SAID THAT HE WANTED HIS FAMILY MORE THAN HE WANTED ANYTHING. He said that being apart from me and Crystal was not good for him. He said he missed us. He was emphatic. I couldn’t believe my ears.

  This is amazing.

  “If you want me to change,” he sniffed, “then I’ll change.”

  Hummm, feelings?

  He had kept his feelings out of my reach for so long. I wasn’t sure I would know his true feelings if he put them on a platter and handed them to me. But, the changes I saw in William’s attitude, whether real or contrived, made me try to be serious about listening to what he was saying. I saw my husband’s eyes; they looked so innocent, sincere.

  Isn’t marriage about for better or for worse? Maybe I’m trying to give up too quick.

  After William stopped speaking, I let his words settle in my head for a few minutes.

  “You say you want me and Crystal back?” I spoke quietly too. I didn’t expect William to listen. I thought he would shut down like he usually did.

  He nodded his head slowly. “I didn’t want you to go in the first place.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. He was looking hopeful and wide-eyed.

  Why?

  “Aren’t you happy without me and Crystal around?”

  “Why would you say that?” His head went way back.

  “…because—.” I was cut off.

  “BECAUSE WHAT, ALICE?”

  “Well, because some woman left a note on your car when you had parked in front of my mother’s house last week. Where were you?”

  “What woman? What kind of note?” He looked genuinely shocked.

  “Well, she signed her name “Marilyn” and she scribbled something about you lying to her and that you were a low down muthafu**a.”

  I looked to see if William’s face would change. He was laughing hysterically again. “Girl, anybody could have written that!” He sniffed. “And, I parked in front of your mother’s because there was street sweeping in front of my parents’ house.”

  I wasn’t laughing. “Yeah but-“ I was cut off again.

  “Nobody means as much to me as you and Crystal!”

  Who is this man? He can’t be my husband. He couldn’t possibly shape his mouth to expose such feeling two times in one night. Should I believe him?

  But, I took the words in. They were words I had longed to hear. “Why should I believe you, William?”

  “ALICE! I MEANT WHAT I SAID!”

  I gave myself a moment to reflect on the pain of William and my relationship. I remembered the good. I remembered the bad. I got stuck in a moment of happiness. Then a piece of rich sadness pulled into my head. I remembered the times William betrayed me as no man should ever betray… Damn. Then, I realized that William had never professed his love for me and Crystal before such as he had just done. I gave consideration to the fact that perhaps we were no different than any other couple struggling to make marriage work? My husband seemed to be back in his skin. Was the Hyde from the hood gone?

  I started thinking. It was true that we had been through a lot of drama in our relationship. I was thinking that maybe William was becoming a man of his word; I had never known him to be so open and honest. And so I asked him whether he was still dealing drugs. He denied it and then paused like he couldn’t believe I was asking such a question. He tried to pull me close to him. I pulled back so that I could see his eyes. They were clear and steady.

  “HONEYBOO, I AIN’T EVER GOING TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH DRUGS AGAIN.” He paused. “You want me to put my hand on the Bible?

  A week passed before William and I went about the business of looking for a new home to buy. It would be our second. We called ourselves taking it slow, but it wasn’t long before the pressure that lifted when we were separated, was back on me like a sledgehammer.

  I fought the feeling. I deceived myself. I kept hope on life support.

  …

  FLASHBACK NOTE: I had a flashback. Right before we moved into our first home, I overheard William speaking on the phone to his friend Rodney. My husband tried as best he could to whisper, so I hid behind the kitchen door. I can’t believe I did that. Anyway, he told his friend that he had met a woman at some club in East Oakland. When the woman asked his occupation, he said he replied, ‘I CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT ME TO BE.’ My head froze. My body stiffened. Betrayal! That could have been my early way out of our relationship. It was 1981. Betrayal was becoming a theme in my relationship. When I confronted William about the conversation, he said it was a joke between him and his friend. I shouldn’t have brought that, but I did.

  HE WAS A BUDDING CHAMELEON.

  24

  Mama’s Boy

  The fact that we moved from one place to another didn’t mean that we hadn’t packed up the drama of our past.

  THE FEUD THAT WILLIAM HAD SILENTLY CARRIED ON WITH HIS MOTHER, commencing with the death of his grandmother, seemed to be quietly revived. William began to slip back into his depressed mood again. This time, he seemed possessed with alienating everyone. This included his mother, his co-workers and progressively, me and Crystal. I hadn’t seen it coming. I thought things were going to be different in our “new digs”.

  It became abundantly clear to me, after much observation, that William nurtured an intensely hateful grudge against his mother. Why? He would only share with me that she made him very angry sometimes. And I had observed, on more than one occasion, that William’s surges of anger would always coincide with the times Mrs. Choyce would call our house. She wanted demanded that he come to her house to complete some menial task. Sometimes, I thought that the only thing she really wanted to do was see whether she could jerk his chain. I didn’t like the way she tried to treat him— like he was a little boy. It also seemed as though she was competing with me for William’s time and attention.

  He hated those times, but he would never tell Mrs. Choyce.

  …

  And then one day, when William’s anger seemed to be the force behind his migraine headaches, I demanded that he talk about what was bothering him. He didn’t say a word. He acted like he hadn’t heard me. But I expected that much. Then he rose up from the sofa and walked slowly over to our bar. He made his favorite drink, a Brandy Separator. He sipped slowly. I waited patiently because I knew that when he had alcohol in his system, he would lose some of his inhibitions. When his buzz kicked in, he started talking.

  William believed that his mother thought she could manipulate her children, especially after she “stole” the property his grandmother had legally left to her AND her children, William included. He said he was convinced that she was trying to bribe them into submission, like “f**king slaves”. When he said those words, his face grew sad and sour. He convinced me that he didn’t care about the property. But he couldn’t deny caring that his own mother could be so evil. He had this “why?” look on his face.

  In spite of everything that William was going through because of his mother’s cunning cruelty, I could tell he still wanted to be close to her. Once, when we were at William’s family home for dinner, he reached to grab his mother and give her a hug. But his mother’s response confirmed the dysfunction I could only imagine existed in the Choyce home. His mother jerked herself away from him as though her arm was on fire.

  It was Mother’s Day— for Christ’s sake. What I saw bewildered me. I thought about how natural it felt to embrace my own mother. If she ever jerked away from me…

  “GET AWAY
FROM ME BOY!” Mrs. Choyce’s words were so clear and sharp.

  William was speechless at first, and then he laughed like someone had said something really funny. No one else in the Choyce family even acknowledged what happened. It was like an invisible wall of silence went up between every person in the room. When we went home that night, William climbed deeper into his shell of silence, but not before asking me if I had seen what happened.

  “Yeah, baby. I did.”

  I guess he wanted a witness. Damn.

  Then the day of William’s rebellion came. This was the one time I was able to witness William standing up to his mother, who was more adept at bullying him than she was at loving him. The showdown came when we were resting at home and minding our own business. Mrs. Choyce showed up at our door. She banged on it like she was going to open up as can of “Whip Ass” once she got in.

  “It’s your mother,” I called to William. I tiptoed back to the couch where my husband was sitting. “Are you going to answer the door?”

  William studied my face. “You don’t have to open the door if you don’t want to.” He paused. ”WHAT DOES SHE WANT ANYWAY?”

  “I don’t know.” I whispered in case Mrs. Choyce had put her ear to the door. I waited for a minute and then I opened the door.

  THERE SHE WAS! She was looking like a madwoman.

  Then the tornado came.

  “I’VE BEEN CALLING YOU GUYS ALL EVENING,” Mrs. Choyce started. “WHY DIDN’T YALL ANSWER THE PHONE?”

  I looked at her just as strange as she was looking at me. I thought my mother-in-law had lost her damned mind. Who does she think she’s talking to? She looked like she was waiting for her exorcist to come and hit her up with the blessed cross and some holy water.

  “We didn’t answer the phone because WE DIDN’T WANT TO ANSWER THE PHONE!” William flashed an angry face towards his mother.

  I guess there really is a first time for everything. I looked at my husband to make sure it was him. He was standing by my side. Damn, boy.

  Silence moved in for a moment. Then—

  “I bet Alice would answer the phone if she thought HER mother was calling.”

  If there would have been a 4th party in the room with me, my husband and his mother, they would have surely thought that there was going to be an explosion of violence. Things were that tense. I took a deep breath to pace my response. I wanted to be as respectful as I could to a woman who cared nothing about extending the same courtesy to me. I said, “That’s my business if I DO!”

  We were in our den when all this commotion was happening. Crystal was asleep. The tension in the air painted the room. I felt like I was going to suffocate.

  “YOU GON’ LET HER TALK TO ME LIKE THAT?!” Mrs. Choyce’s voice reigned. She was looking straight at William and her finger was pointing at ME.

  In an instant I knew my so-called mother-in-law wanted nothing else (at that moment) except to see her son dumb-punch me right in the face. POOMP POOMP! That fact was so clear to me. We hadn’t been getting along because I finally got to the point where I could let her know that she wasn’t running nothing in MY house. I was sick of her ass trying to act like she could just run all over me.

  Then—

  “THIS- IS- HER- GODDAMN HOUSE!” William shouted.

  Oh shit!

  There wasn’t enough shock on the whole planet to equal what I experienced in the moment I thought would never come. My husband finally stood up to his emasculating, ball smashing, fake holyghost sanctified & loveless mother. I can only speculate about how William felt, but after I heard (during his trial) how his mother beat and demeaned him as a child, he must have had flashbacks galore. He had reached his mental load and couldn’t suppress the anger that must have simmered for years.

  When William’s mother finally absorbed the power of his monstrous defiance, all she could do was turn around and walk back out the door she came in.

  No wonder his father was so damned quiet.

  25

  Darkness Everywhere

  WE HADN’T BEEN IN OUR NEW HOME ON LINDEN STREET a year when I realized that whatever darkness had pursued me before we moved, was still in the midst of our lives. And the confusion I felt so many times before had multiplied exponentially. Soon my behavior began to be affected. I couldn’t sleep, and I felt hopeless as I struggled to save my family.

  And no matter what I did, I couldn’t understand why my husband was getting so angry with our daughter. Was this displaced emotion that belonged with his mother? I tried to put my finger on a reason. If Crystal made a mistake during piano practice, it was enough to make William go ballistic. When I told him to back off, he looked at me like he could ring my neck. Looking back, I think my husband was reliving his own painful childhood. He needed to do to our daughter the very thing that had been done to him. But why?

  William had made promises to me and Crystal that he couldn’t keep. I had made a decision I would regret. I should never have gone back to him.

  HE STOPPED BATHING, YET AGAIN.

  He started drinking too, even though he would throw up violently when he drank too much.

  Everything Started Falling Apart.

  Soon, I realized that William’s strange behavior had repeated itself throughout our life together. Yes. One day, OKAY/ the next day WEIRD; the normal days were scattered somewhere in between. As the normal days diminished, he became more and more unpredictable. And if I had to chronicle William’s decent into darkness or into madness, I would say it advanced when he stood up to his mother. Clearly, to get to the point of losing his ability to contain the ill and angry feelings he harbored against his mother for such a long time, something inside his head had to break. When he stopped caring about his hygiene and physical appearance, I knew something was drastically wrong. This was perhaps the first sign that William was trying to reckon with his “other self”, or the injured part of his mind that was all dirtied up. How could I have known?

  When William became obsessed with renting and watching pornographic movies on video, I also knew this was a bad sign. Of what? I did not know. But I tried not to tend to that observation too much because I wasn’t sleeping with him. I wasn’t having sexual relations with him. I made myself believe that the videos were just a substitute for his sexual needs that weren’t being met. I was wrong.

  At one point, I really did entertain that my husband was losing his mind, but I had to let that thought go. I didn’t want it in my head; it was too complicated.

  I was in denial.

  26

  Voices and Madness and the Long Period of Upheaval?

  MORE MONTHS WENT BY AND WILLIAM’S DEPRESSION CONTINUED and became increasingly intense. During his trial, my daughter and I made a point to try and trace the moments we may have overlooked where it was clear that something was very wrong with her father. We wanted to know at what point he had no choice except to step onto the path of DARKNESS.

  How could we know that we would step right with him?

  Were we a real part of his life.

  Were there signs?

  What were they?

  Needless to note, being insulated victims, as we were, but victims nonetheless, we were suppressed from knowing too much about what William was doing outside our home. We were like the three monkeys who neither heard, nor spoke, nor saw no evil. One might infer that we enjoyed the safety of our innocence and our ignorance. And for me, perhaps more than anything? the thing working against and for me at the same time— was my denial. But the truth that was delivered up when Crystal and I started digging into our lives with William was that she knew a lot more than she had ever talked about— with me or anybody.

  Crystal recalled a time when she heard her dad speaking in two different voices. She said she knew for a fact that no one else was in the room; so it had to be her dad, alone. My daughter was astonished that she remembered that detail. I was amused because she hadn’t thought to tell me. She said it happened enough that she accepted it as being normal.
She also admitted noticing her dad doing the “talk to himself thing” even when he was in his truck sitting right next to her. She said he sometimes acted like he forgot she was there with him.

  That sounds familiar…that acting like he was alone.

  As Crystal and I got more comfortable with talking about our past with her father, we began comparing mental notes that we never shared with anyone else. We made quiet, safe time to talk and we were careful not to strain our minds. There were some very painful times that we had to own. The period right before William and I separated was the strangest.

  William started going out every night after eight o’clock. Nothing could stop him. He would wear his black overcoat even if it was hot outdoors. He tucked our .38 caliber pistol into his pocket. Yes, we purchased one. He would not say where he was going. Sometimes if I got up late at night after he returned from “wherever”, I would catch him just sitting quietly in the dark.

  Then one morning, Crystal came running down the stairs of our home. She was screaming so loud it frightened me right away. All I could think was that she was hurt or injured in some manner. She was out of breath, and by the time I was able to hold her and feel around her body for injuries, so was I.

  “Crystal?!” I cried and felt her some more. “Are you hurt?”

  My child was panting. “No mommy,” she cried as she pulled my arm. She was trying to lead me back up the stairs.

  It was a Saturday morning. William was in our bedroom watching television. We hadn’t slept together for a good while. He smelled and was adamant that he wasn’t going to take a bath even when I said I would prepare it for him. In the past, that had been something he couldn’t resist. No more.

  Anyway—

  When Crystal and I got to the top of the stairs, she stopped cold and pointed to her bedroom.

  “What, baby…what’s wrong?” There was a crispy kind of fear smearing my child’s face. My fear went into overdrive. I let Crystal’s arm go and stepped in front of her. I looked back at her to see if her expression would change as I walked into her bedroom. It didn’t.