Burn Down the Ground

by Kambri Crews

  Both nightmares haunted me on a regular basis. It had been thirteen years, ten months, and twenty-six days since Dad had snapped. The repressed trauma was as alive as if my memories had gotten a stiff snort of smelling salts. My subconscious was screaming for help because I seemingly could not.

  I was overwhelmed with anxiety and concern for Helen. I needed to know more than what the article in the paper had told me. What exactly had Dad done to Helen and, more important, was she okay? I hoped that finding out the details would allow me to move on. Nervous, I called the Bedford police station and introduced myself.

  “Hi, I’m calling about a case I read in the Star-Telegram.” My voice shook as I gave the officer Dad’s name and listened to the click, click, clicks of his keyboard as he brought up the case on his computer.

  “Oh, yeah, this one. The officer on scene busted down the door and found him on top of her stabbin’ her.”

  Just like when I interrupted Dad straddling Mom that night.

  “So what can I do you for?”

  “Um, well.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, what about Helen? Is she okay?”

  I rubbed my neck and tried to loosen my shirt, which felt uncomfortably close to my skin.

  “What’s yer relationshee-ip?”

  “Oh, um, well, Theodore …,” I said, awkwardly repeating Dad’s formal name as it was written in the article. “The man who did it … Theodore … he’s my father.”

  “I see,” he paused, weighing the situation presenting itself to him. “Well, last I heard she was in the hospital and might not make it. She pretty much lost all her blood.” He spoke bluntly, clearly someone who had seen more than his fair share of crime scenes and had lost the ability to buffer the brutal truth. “If the officers didn’t get there when they did, we’d be lookin’ at a murder case.”

  Unable to muster enough air behind my voice to make a word, I squeaked, “Oh.” I rubbed my lips together in a poor attempt to press away the trembling tension that was building up.

  “He damn near decapitated her.”

  The disturbing news surged through me, but the angry tone in the sergeant’s voice caught me off guard. Did he think I was calling to defend my father? He made me feel as though by being related to Dad, I had helped plunge the knife into Helen’s neck. The judgment I perceived in the officer’s voice made me want to set him straight. I fought back the swelling emotions. “It wasn’t the first time.”

  “What’s that? Yer gonna have to speak up, ma’am.”

  “He did it before. Back in August 1988 … in North Richland Hills. Look it up.”

  I didn’t want my father to slip through the legal system’s cracks unpunished. If they knew a case existed with a similar modus operandi, they would realize they were dealing with a repeat offender and sentence him accordingly.

  The embedded splinter of anger and betrayal had risen to the surface. Ratting out Dad’s past brutality against women to an officer extracted the anger altogether. A sense of clarity and calm blanketed me, soon followed by guilt. I knew Dad would finally be punished, but at what cost? Helen’s life was in the balance and I, his own daughter, wanted him to pay not only for what he had done to Helen, but for what he had done to our family.

  I wanted justice.

  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

  I entered the office of Greg Mason, the attorney I worked for, just as he yelled into the phone, “Do you see the words ‘Charitable Contribution’ after my name? Fuck no! Call me when you’re ready to negotiate.” He brought down the receiver with a satisfying slam.

  “Hey, I have two things for you,” I said, dropping mail on his desk.

  Greg grinned. “I know you do, darling, and they’re beautiful.”

  Greg was an attorney from Brooklyn who, as a partner at the law office where I worked in Rockefeller Center, dealt mostly with high-profile sports figures. His name was engraved on brass plaques in various restaurants. Maître d’s knew him by name and for his reputation as a tough customer. As a lawyer, he was known for being hard as nails and, among his past assistants, as virtually impossible to work with. In fact, he hadn’t had one stay more than six months before I moved to New York City and got the job.

  With his slicked-back hair, custom-tailored suits, and the designer sunglasses he wore indoors and out, rain or shine, Greg was hard to ignore. He reminded me of the Looney Tunes rooster Foghorn Leghorn. When he walked into a room he demanded attention, strutting with his chest puffed out. I loved his twisted sense of humor and impish insistence to not play by anyone’s rules. Incorrigible as he might have been, he was equally charming. Essentially, he was a sharper, more successful, and non-imprisoned version of Dad.

  I didn’t take offense at Greg’s temper or inappropriate office banter. After years in the staid banking industry, I had had my fill of sexual harassment seminars and dignified protocol. Working with Greg was delightfully unpredictable, an added bonus to the already thrilling location of our offices in Rockefeller Center. Besides, Greg’s demands of me weren’t unreasonable: Show up on time, stay at my desk, and answer his phone on the first ring. As long as that was happening, Greg overlooked my use of his time to run my production company.

  “Listen,” Greg continued. “I need you to find me a hotel in Santa Monica. Yahoo has all kinds of directories and stuff like that.”

  This was the same man I had instructed on the complexities of copying and pasting text … five times.

  I smirked at the irony. “Um, yeah, I’m well versed on the Internet, but thanks anyway.”

  I was still laughing as I reached my desk and saw my phone was ringing. I raced to answer it, singing into the receiver, “Hello, this is Kambri!”

  I heard a deep wheezing breath before someone exhaled in a gurgling rasp, “Kambri?” Another hissing sound came before the voice wheezed, “Hi, it’s Helen.”

  I collapsed into my chair.

  My body was shaking. I tried to pretend we were old friends catching up and asked warmly, “Hi, Helen, how are you feeling?” Did my voice betray me and reveal my horror? I hoped not.

  “I’m all right, I guess,” she croaked, her Texas drawl unaltered by Dad’s knife. “I got to go to therapy all the time, and I still have a lot of surgeries ahead of me.” Her speech was labored. She explained the extent of her injuries and after every third word I heard a whistling hiss as she sucked in air.

  “Are you going to be okay? Are you still in the hospital?” I asked, wondering how she had gotten my work number.

  “I’m so sorry, Kambri.”

  “Sorry”? Had I heard her right?

  “What are you sorry for, Helen?”

  Why would she feel the urge to apologize to me, the daughter of the man who had brutally attacked her? “My God, Helen, you don’t need to apologize. You just take care of yourself.”

  “But I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “Hate you? How could I hate you?”

  “I don’t want you to blame me.”

  “My God, Helen! I wouldn’t blame you. Why would I?”

  “He’s saying it’s my fault.” Helen started to cry. “I still love him.” She choked on her words, the tears making it that much harder for her to speak.

  “I do too, but don’t worry about him. You should just take care of yourself right now.” I sensed that Joan, a secretary who sat within earshot of my desk, was eavesdropping. “Helen,” I whispered, fighting back the welling tears, “you focus on getting better.”

  “My throat hurts, so I can’t talk for very long. I’d better go now, but can I call you again?”

  “Of course, Helen. Anytime you need to talk, I’m here.”

  As the receiver returned to its cradle, I let out an uncontrollable, guttural groan. My hands trembled as I sat in a daze.

  “Is everything okay?” Joan asked. “Was there an accident?”

  “Worse,” I said in a barely articulate gasp, before breathing in heavy gulps of air.

  Like my recurring nightmares, Helen�
�s voice continued to echo in my head. “I don’t want you to blame me.” Knowing what Dad had done to Mom there was no way I could fault Helen, but I knew her fear was real. When I was a teenager and newlywed, Dad’s family never reached out to me or offered to help me sort through the trauma of seeing him assault my mother.

  They had assisted David through his detox and continued to embrace him. Why hadn’t they helped me? If I had been a drug-addled lunatic and created problems for everyone, would that have made a difference? Medical diagnoses like post-traumatic stress disorder didn’t apply to everyday citizens; it was the stuff of war veterans, not teenage girls. I guessed that because I was a good girl, I was written off as perfectly fine. For a while, I kept in touch via a regular update that I formatted like a newspaper and dubbed “Crews News.” I mailed it to relatives on both sides of my family. Dad’s kin never wrote back or even acknowledged receipt, so I stopped sending it. Why waste the postage?

  Since then, I had rarely been in touch with them. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying. I felt Mom and I had been abandoned in our greatest time of need. Their ignoring me wouldn’t have stung as much had they not been so active in church. It seemed to me the height of hypocrisy for them to preach the gospel and help random strangers around the world, yet not lift a finger, pick up a phone, or write a letter to their own teenage relative who was in desperate need of family support.

  Two months after Dad was jailed, David married a woman he had been dating for some time. They had a small wedding near their home in Indiana. Mom and I attended, but Dad was in custody and couldn’t go. Despite our father’s recent incarceration, the event was like any ordinary family’s celebration. At the reception, David and I shared a dance, laughing as he twirled and dipped me. He had worked so hard to conquer the mistakes of his youth and always seemed so somber. It was nice to see him let loose. The subject of Dad was never mentioned.

  Soon after, David shared his momentous news that he and his wife were expecting their first baby. I knew how overwhelmed he was with working full-time and pursuing his master’s degree. His new bride was sweet and came from a close family. Her parents were still married and lived down the street from them in a very small, tight-knit community. Now they were experiencing one of life’s greatest joys; I didn’t want to burden them with Dad’s ugly situation.

  So, soon after I returned from the Cuervo Nation, I decided to ask Dad’s brother and sisters for their assistance in selling his truck and putting his personal belongings into storage. I emailed my uncle and a few aunts and implored, “When my father did this before, you didn’t help. Well, I’m asking you to help me now.”

  I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had never been taught to ask for help. Part of me thought they would ignore me again. Instead they rallied and responded immediately with heartfelt sentiment. They were hurting, too, after all. They still loved their brother Teddy. I even received a remorseful email from one of Dad’s siblings. “You are right, I didn’t help. I blamed your mother and for that, I’m ashamed. Forgive me.”

  And there it was written. Acknowledgment was all I needed. I no longer wondered if my dad’s family spurning Mom and me had been real. She had married and enabled him, and had to live with the consequences. Placing blame on Mom absolved them from admitting their own flesh and blood was capable of such great sin and protected their good name from being soiled. Now, over fourteen years of Dad’s troubled life later, it was clear that rebuking the victim had been the easy way.

  His family’s new responsiveness may have been aided because society’s views on domestic violence had substantially changed, too, most notably when Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. As Catherine Pierce, acting director of the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women, said on September 15, 2009, “VAWA recognized the devastating consequences that violence has on women, families, and society as a whole. VAWA also acknowledged that violence against women requires specialized responses to address unique barriers that prevent victims from seeking assistance from the justice system.”

  Since Dad’s attack on Mom, laws had been enacted placing stricter punishment on abusers and increasing the amount of support given to victims. High-profile cases like O. J. Simpson’s alleged murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and his record of abusing her helped bring the issue to the forefront. Seeing rich, beautiful people associated with domestic violence on the nightly news changed the perception of a stereotypical victim or abuser and people were talking about it openly.

  The violence against Mom hadn’t been her fault; she didn’t ask to get choked or to have a knife pulled on her and have her own daughter witness the assault. Mom was a good woman and hadn’t done anything to deserve being attacked. No matter what Helen felt she might have done to be worthy of any blame, I was not going to allow history to repeat itself: a crime against a woman having no consequence. There would be no burying of heads in the sand this time. There would be no embracing the attacker as if nothing had happened. The facts were undeniable. The only one at fault was Dad, plain and simple.

  The autumn air was thick and clouds formed in the night sky poised to burst with rain. I was standing outside Michiko Studios on Forty-sixth Street, missing a rehearsal of an off-Broadway musical I was co-producing. I had just gotten a call from the district attorney in Fort Worth, who had dug up Dad’s 1988 conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against Mom. As the sole witness listed on the police report, she was prepared to call me to testify for the prosecution at Dad’s trial. “Well, Ms. Crews, it’s either you or your mother. We don’t care which one of you it is, but we will subpoena you if it comes down to it.”

  Everything from fourteen years earlier was abruptly in my life again. I had spent the last decade and a half distancing myself from my family’s drama. My hopes of college and an acting career had been dashed back then, and now I felt like my dreams were being threatened again. I was in New York City on the cusp of something. I was not going to miss my first real off-Broadway production for their drama. In a panic, I raced downstairs so no one at the rehearsal would overhear me.

  When Mom answered her phone she was caught off guard to hear me frantic and gulping back tears. “They want me to testify against Dad.”

  “What? Testify? Why? What for?”

  “For what he did to you,” I sobbed. “I’m listed as a witness on the police report so they want me to testify.”

  “Kambri, calm down and tell me what happened.”

  I recounted my brief conversation with the DA and how they pulled the old case file. For the first time ever she and I talked about August 15, 1988. Mom had little recollection of that night. I was baffled. How could anyone forget the details of an attack at the hands of her own husband? I presumed that she had moved on in a way that allowed her to wipe clean any remembrance.

  For me, the memory was vivid. In the middle of the Manhattan sidewalk I erupted into a flurry of words. I reminded her of the holes in the walls, the hours of interrogation, the choking, the knife to her throat, my frantic 911 calls, and me pleading with Dad to spare her life. As the details emerged, the fog was lifted and she began to remember, piecing together the fragments. We were sobbing hysterically when I noticed a group of fanny-packed tourists headed straight for me. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I hid behind a street sign pole in a pathetic attempt to avoid eye contact with the ladies, who couldn’t help their voyeuristic curiosity.

  Baring the resurrected pain left me exposed and outraged, and opened old wounds. “You let me get married in high school and fend for myself. Why didn’t it dawn on you that ‘Hey, maybe it’s illegal for seventeen-year-old girls to get married for a reason? Maybe Kambri deserves to go to college!’ Well, you failed me then and I am asking you to not fail me now. Please do not make me testify against my own father!”

  Mom took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kambri,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  And she did. She called the d
istrict attorney and volunteered to go in my place. She would confront her past face-to-face and protect me from having to do the same.

  A few weeks passed and I was at my desk at the law office when my phone rang.

  “Hi, Kambri,” Mom said grimly, her voice trembling. “Twenty years.”

  I knew Dad would be found guilty. I knew he deserved whatever punishment he got, but, still, the breath was knocked out of me. My head spun.

  My daddy is going to spend the next twenty years in jail.

  Throughout the trial it was revealed that not only had Dad nearly killed Helen, but he had a history of abusing her. Prior to assaulting her with the knife, Dad had broken her ribs during an incident in Dallas. He had received probation and an order of protection was put in place against him. But he violated that directive from the court during another altercation. To evade repercussions for that assault, he used his twin brother’s name and Social Security number as an alias, something he had apparently done before. He used his brother’s ID to earn money on a job while he was collecting disability payments from the government via his own Social Security number, which was illegal as well as damaging to his brother. They were on to that scam now, too, and he potentially faced federal charges for the fraud.

  By the time Mom was called to the stand, the jury had already found Dad guilty. She was meant to be a character witness for the prosecution during the punishment phase. Their goal of putting her on the stand was to ensure that my father received the harshest sentence allowable under the law. Seeing Dad looking so old and frail, convicted of attempted murder and without a single friend or family member present in support, tugged at her heartstrings.

  “When they called me to the stand I was nervous but I felt like I could do it. They asked me questions about where I lived, how I met your daddy, our marriage. I gave all good, positive statements. Then they asked me about the 1988 incident, and I said that …” She stopped.