by Irene Pence
She didn’t want the doctors to wipe off any blood until her picture had been taken for evidence, but her bleeding was so profuse that the doctors needed to find the source, and were forced to clean off her face.
An orderly wheeled her into surgery. In minutes, a doctor found her vein and inserted a needle to administer a general anesthetic. The doctor then popped her nose into place and packed it with cotton to stabilize the cartilage, and bandaged the bridge where the broken bone had burst through the skin. Examining her jaw, the doctor saw that it wasn’t broken, but was severely dislocated. He wired it into place, fearing his patient would suffer temporomandibular joint disorder and a lifetime of pain because of the injury. It would be a month before Michelle could eat solid foods.
Of all her injuries, the doctors were most concerned about her eye. Michelle had told them earlier that when John first struck her, it felt like her eyeball was hitting the back of her skull. There was nothing they could do for it now because the area was so severely swollen.
After surgery, she was checked into the hospital and wheeled to a private room. A sympathetic woman from a battered women’s shelter came and took her photograph.
“We’re here for you,” the woman said, as she patted Michelle’s hand. She left a card from the shelter on a table by the bed.
The anesthetic caused Michelle to keep dozing off. A nurse came by periodically to slip ice chips in her mouth.
Then she was awakened by a uniformed officer who had come to take her statement. He had introduced himself, and his name sounded familiar. After trying to answer his questions, she realized that he was the same policeman who had taken John’s complaint when he filed an assault charge against her.
The connection dawned on the policeman as he wrote her name. He said, “Oh, you’re the gal who beat up your husband.”
Michelle groaned and closed her swollen eyes.
ELEVEN
On the evening of the attack, Michelle’s parents flew in from Baton Rouge and rushed from the airport to Presbyterian Hospital. When they reached their daughter’s room, the sight of her shocked them. They walked in quietly, barely recognizing the once-pretty face that was now shaded black and purple. Her swollen eyes, nose, and jaw rounded out her features, making her look like a balloon. They hovered by her bed most of the night, not wanting to leave her side.
The next day, on Thursday, Mark Weisbart visited Michelle at the hospital and brought her the Texas Penal Code. She was anxious to begin her research. She wanted to find something solid so the police could charge John with a felony assault and arrest him immediately.
After Mark left, she pored over the Code, but everything classified her beating as a misdemeanor. She glanced at her swollen face in her compact mirror and scoffed. The bruises didn’t look like a misdemeanor to her. Finally, she found a passage about breaking someone’s nose. That constituted a felony assault. She called the police.
On Friday, after two days in the hospital, she checked out and spent the weekend with her parents at their hotel. She couldn’t bring herself to return home until John had been arrested. Now she was completely terrified of the man.
When Michelle was finally able to describe the beating to her parents, they listened with tears in their eyes.
“For months we’ve been anxious for you to get away from John,” her mother said. “Then once you’re divorced, he attacks you worse than ever.”
Michelle nodded. “People always ask, ‘Why doesn’t the woman leave her abuser?’ But I’ve read the statistics. Three-fourths of murders and serious abuse take place after the couple has separated. John must have felt he was losing control since I was no longer legally his, and he was determined to prove that he was still the boss.
“I’m so grateful for one thing,” Michelle said. “A fire truck arrived first and blocked the view between my house and where I was on the sidewalk. The kids usually come out on the porch and wait for me to get off the bus. I’m so glad they didn’t see the beating.”
Michelle was trying desperately to protect her children. She had been thinking about them as she lay semiconscious on the sidewalk. In her mind she had seen a fire truck hovering there like a guardian angel. However, no witness ever reported seeing a fire truck on the scene.
John Battaglia was arrested at his garage apartment on Sunday afternoon. He made his familiar trek down to the courthouse and was fingerprinted, but he had to spend one night in jail as arrangements were made for his bail bond. The next day, he paid his ten percent and left. However, this time he was charged with a felony assault and would stand trial for his crime. Until then, he was a free man.
Unbeknownst to Michelle, he continued to follow her every activity like a hunter stalking prey. When the hospital released her with ice packs on her face, he tailed her parents’ rental car from a safe distance as they drove her to their hotel.
Michelle was sad to see her parents leave on Monday, for now she felt truly alone and more defenseless than ever before. While she was gone, her son had stayed with a friend’s family. Odice had taken care of Laurie for the past four days and nights with frequent and welcome visits from Michelle’s parents, but Michelle needed to give Odice a break.
However, there was no way Michelle could stay alone at night after the beating. Her friends were eager to help. Old law school buddies volunteered to stay a few nights, paralegals and secretaries from her firm took turns staying over, and many times she and her children slept next door at the Dicksons’. If John Battaglia were to touch her again, she was positive he would kill her.
Once Michelle returned home, she found that there was little food in her house. The food brought by generous friends when they came to spend the night had run out. Although she was mainly on a liquid diet, she eventually had to go to the grocery store where she would also buy school supplies for Billy. Still swollen and bruised, she gingerly placed large sunglasses over her eyes, which now resembled two chunks of black coal. She grimaced as the glasses touched the red scar on the bridge of her broken nose.
She walked into the store, hating to embarrass her son, who was with her. Every customer turned to stare at her as if she had “Abused Woman” tattooed on her forehead. She hurriedly pulled canned fruits and vegetables from shelves and quickly tossed them into her basket, trying to get in and out of the store as fast as possible. Laurie was sitting in the child’s seat of the cart, but Billy had wandered into another aisle and Michelle went to search for him.
She froze.
There was John Battaglia. And worst of all, he had Billy by the arm. The child stood wide-eyed and scared. John, down on one knee, had made a fist and was holding it in front of Billy’s face.
“Did you see what happened to your mama?” he hissed.
Billy was too frightened to respond.
“Well, just remember. That could happen to you!”
Michelle grabbed her son’s hand and raced off to find the store’s security guard. She explained the situation to the uniformed woman, who accompanied Michelle around the store and out to her car.
At that moment, Michelle decided to buy a gun.
Tuesday morning, Michelle drove to the Oshman’s Sporting Goods on Abrams Road and went to the rear of the store where the firearms counter was located. The potbellied clerk had only to glance at Michelle’s battered face before suggesting a .38-caliber pistol for its power and accuracy. He patiently explained how to operate it. He also persuaded her to buy a purse that had a side pocket for the gun. She could place her hand on the gun with her finger on the trigger and no one would know. He also suggested a firing range where she could get some practice.
Michelle wasted no time. That afternoon she went to a firing range that was located in an old warehouse. It was hazy and smelly from the smoke of spent bullets. In no time, she had unloaded two boxes of shells into paper targets that had the outline of a man printed on them. Once she could cover the heart and head with bullet holes, she knew she was ready.
Billy’s school be
gan its fall session the following week. Still wearing dark glasses to cover her bruised eyes, Michelle accompanied him on the first day to explain Billy’s possible danger to the principal, teacher, and counselors. She gave them a photo of John Battaglia with instructions that under no circumstances was Billy to be released to John. To further protect him, Odice went to the school daily to walk Billy home.
The first week in September, Mary McGee, a paralegal at Akin, Gump, was spending the night with Michelle.
Michelle’s evening ritual was to shove a heavy chest of drawers in front of her bedroom door that opened to the rear patio. Double-bolted locks were affixed to all the doors leading outside her house. Her once-lovely home now reminded her of a prison. All of her curtains were closed and pinned shut. She thought how unfair it was; she was living in a prison and John Battaglia was roaming free.
About 11:30 P.M., Michelle and Mary tucked themselves into her four-poster bed. By 2:00 A.M. Michelle was sleeping soundly with the gun under her pillow.
Neither woman heard the footsteps outside on the thick summer lawn. But the first thump against the door woke Michelle. Repeated thuds sent her into a frenzy.
Mary slowly sat up in bed. “What on earth?” she asked, still groggy.
“It’s gotta be John,” Michelle whispered.
The banging on the door intensified and Battaglia shouted, “Michelle? Michelle? Open the door!”
Mary picked up the phone and called 911 while Michelle broke into hysterical sobs. “How could he? How could he?” she screamed repeatedly. “This can’t be happening again!”
Michelle tried to calm herself. She took several deep breaths, wiped her eyes, and stuck her hand under her pillow. The coldness of the gun felt reassuring in her hand.
TWELVE
In the three weeks since Bonnie Kingman had watched the ambulance rush Michelle LaBorde to the emergency room, she had thought of her many times.
Today Bonnie was hurrying to finish a client’s proposal for her part-time advertising job before her son awoke from his nap. She heard someone knock on her front door. The last thing she needed was an interruption. She stood up, pushed her chair back from the computer, and went to see who it was.
When she opened her door, she didn’t recognize the woman in sunglasses who stood before her.
“Remember me?” the woman asked, her purple-and-yellow-splotched face still swollen from the beating. “I’m Michelle LaBorde.”
“Oh my gosh!” was all Bonnie could manage when she saw what Michelle looked like.
“I came by to thank you,” Michelle said. “You helped me when I really needed it.” She paused a moment, then said, “I truly feel you saved my life.”
Bonnie didn’t have to be reminded of that awful day and the crumpled body on the sidewalk. She broke into a wide grin, knowing that Michelle was out of the hospital and on the mend. Opening the door, Bonnie invited her in, but Michelle shook her head and remained on the porch.
“I can’t stay. I’m leaving town and I just wanted to come by and say thank you. Remember what you said to me right after the attack? That John wasn’t ever going to touch me again.”
Bonnie looked down at her entry’s parquet floor, embarrassed by the bravado of her own words. “I remember. But thinking back, it was such an emotional thing. I realize now that there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him.”
“No, not in that way,” Michelle agreed. “But your written testimony can stop him. You were great to get involved and talk to the police.”
Bonnie stepped out on the porch, wondering how Michelle had remembered her words. Michelle had been almost comatose when Bonnie had said that to her. Both women sat on the concrete steps of the porch.
“Look at my eyes,” Michelle said as she carefully removed her sunglasses. “They’re still pretty red.”
Bonnie had to stifle a gasp at the sight of Michelle’s swollen, bloodshot eyes. “I just can’t imagine all that you’ve been through,” Bonnie told her.
“Turns out he broke my nose—a compound fracture, and dislocated my jaw. So the doctors had quite a time of it putting me back together.” She replaced her glasses and tucked a strand of blond hair behind an ear.
“Did you hear what he said to me?” Michelle asked.
“I heard him call you a name. I know he was screaming at you, but I really couldn’t hear any conversation.”
“Oh, we had a conversation, all right. Albeit brief. When he first rode up to me on his bike, I was just shaking. He kept smiling at me and I could feel my heart pound. I was so scared.
“I had a protective order against him, and the day before the beating, I had filed charges because he shoved me down the steps. So he knew there was a warrant out for his arrest.
“That really made him mad because of the possibility he’d go to jail. When he came up to me that day, I tried not to make eye contact. But he said, ‘Well, if you’re going to put me in jail, there might as well be a darn good reason.’ After that I saw stars.
“I’ve finally come to the realization that I’m no longer safe here. John won’t stop till he kills me. Just last week he came pounding on my bedroom door, but by then I had bought a gun. I was really scared, but when I yelled that I had a gun, he left.” Michelle shook her head. “That man will stop at nothing. But that night after he left, I got up and looked in the mirror. I saw a very frightened face staring back at me, but I also knew it wasn’t the face of a murderer. I just couldn’t kill my daughter’s father. He’d be dead and I’d be in jail and she’d be an orphan. That’s when I decided I had to move. But I still carry that gun. Someday, I might be forced to use it.”
“You’ve been through so much,” Bonnie said. “Where will you go?”
“My family’s in Louisiana. Baton Rouge. My dad’s an attorney and he’s giving me advice. He’ll protect me. I’m also an attorney,” Michelle added.
“You make me feel like a frumpy housewife,” Bonnie confessed. “You’re dressed sharp even now, and here I am.” She looked down and realized she was wearing the same khaki shorts and pink T-shirt she’d had on three weeks ago.
“I remember the outfit,” Michelle said and smiled.
“You’re one neat lady. I’m going to miss you.”
“I wish there was some way I could thank you.”
“You already have,” Bonnie assured her. “You’ve thanked me by coming back and showing me that you’re going to be okay.”
Michelle walked back to her rented car. She gave Bonnie one last wave, then drove away.
The following month, Bonnie spotted a large white moving van parked in front of Michelle’s house. She felt sad, realizing that she’d probably never see her brave neighbor again.
THIRTEEN
Awash in sixty inches of rainfall each year, Baton Rouge is a lush subtropical city of a quarter million people. Magnolia trees blossom with white flowers as big as dinner plates. Baton Rouge, the state’s capital, hugs the shores of the Mississippi River, where commerce crawls from St. Louis to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico.
“Baton Rouge” is French for “red stick,” and it was a red stick, or maypole, that the soldiers saw in 1699, laden with fish and bear heads and dripping with blood that gave the city its name.
Michelle LaBorde happily reclaimed her birthplace when she moved back to Baton Rouge on September 14, 1987, and even welcomed its humid, eighty-five-degree days.
Michelle had left Dallas under cover of darkness, taking the 9:17 P.M. flight. She and her children took only the clothes they could wear and what they could pack in suitcases.
The following week, Michelle and her mother returned to Dallas to pack up the rest of the house, again at night.
Now in Baton Rouge, Michelle was happy to be back in the arms of her large, outspoken, southern Louisiana family, who raised their voices when they were excited, happy, sad, mad, or just wanted to be heard. Her parents and a brother and sister lived in Baton Rouge, and another sister in Lafayette. The antithesis of Batta
glia’s distant, noncommunicative family, Michelle’s family gathered at least once a month to share dinner and catch up on each other’s lives.
Michelle moved back with no job, no car, no place to live, and no school for her children, but she thanked God for the way her life began to heal itself. She may have missed the glamour of working for the large Dallas legal conglomerate, but she relished the calm of the small law firm, Anderson, Holliday and Jones, that immediately hired her. Then the insurance company paid her claim, allowing her to replace the car she had wrecked in the Dallas rainstorm. To her surprise, a nun at the best Catholic school in Baton Rouge made an exception and let Billy enroll in midyear. Then two weeks later, she found a lovely home to rent. Around the same time, the court had granted her bankruptcy discharge, so she now had a fresh financial start.
Knowing that John Battaglia would not suddenly appear on her doorstep made life more tolerable. Her children loved the hugs of their doting maternal grandparents. Life had finally become peaceful, or so she thought.
Once she had found a new home, she hired a moving company to take everything from her Dallas house. She provided the movers with the divorce decree declaring that everything in the house belonged to her, and warned that although John Battaglia would probably show up, under no circumstances were they to let him in.
Within hours of the moving van’s arrival, John appeared at the front door of the Bellewood house.
The first mover found him in the front entry and asked for his ID.
