Love Me or I'll Kill You

by Lee Butcher

  Chino was a boy who didn’t get many breaks in life. He was born to a child and raised by one parent, had little supervision, no feeling of belonging. His role models were drug dealers.

  “Ma, I’m going to be a drug dealer,” he told Lissette. “They’re the only ones who have money, cars, nice clothes, and girls.”

  Lissette listened and shook her head. What was going to become of him?

  When she was fifteen, Paula skipped school and went to Manhattan to look for something to do. She spotted a boy about her age watching when she got off the subway train. Paula felt a rush of excitement. The boy was about six feet tall, muscular, Hispanic, and he had close-cropped hair that fit him like a helmet. He made every part of her tingle.

  Paula was giddy when he approached her. He introduced himself as Nestor DeJesus, but people called him Chino. Paula’s heart skipped a beat. Chino made her feel wonderful. He was charming, attentive, affectionate, and made her laugh. He seemed mature for his age. As long as they were just killing time, he suggested that they do it together. When he asked to see her later for a movie, Paula eagerly agreed.

  Paula didn’t tell her parents, who were still at work, that she was going out. Instead of seeing a movie, she went to Chino’s apartment, where the two teenagers smoked pot and had sex. Chino continued to be charming, and he told Paula how beautiful and special she was. She was so enthralled by him that she didn’t think about going home, or telling her parents where she was, until three days later. By then, Paula and Chino were madly in love.

  “You’re my one true love,” Chino told her, gazing into her eyes. “You’re my first true love.”

  When Paula returned home, her parents were beside themselves with worry. Where had she been? What had she been doing? Why didn’t she get in touch with them?

  “You’re grounded,” Luis told her. “You can be at school or you can be at home. You can’t go anywhere else unless one of us is with you.”

  Paula said they couldn’t make her.

  “You can go to boarding school or back to Colombia,” Luis said.

  “You’re trying to raise me like we’re still in Colombia,” Paula said. “You can’t ground me.”

  “Yes, we can,” Luis said.

  She told them about the boy she had met, and they wanted to meet him. Paula had him come over the next night.

  Paula’s parents looked at Chino and saw nothing but trouble. He was rough, as only life on the streets can make you. He was also rude and showed them little respect. All of Luis’s instincts told him that Chino was a young man with a lot of problems. So far as Luis could tell, Chino and Paula had nothing in common.

  “We don’t want you to see him anymore,” Luis said when Chino left. “That boy has nothing in common with you. He’s going to be trouble.”

  Paula refused to listen and continued to cut class and see Chino. She liked it that he always had money and pot, and he treated her so well. He made Paula feel special. Over the next few weeks, Luis and Melba tried to break up the relationship, but finally they gave up. Paula spent more time with Chino, not less. Having failed to break them up, Melba and Luis decided on another plan. They invited Chino to spend more time at their apartment. Maybe he would change if he saw what a normal family was like. Melba wanted to take him to church and hoped that Chino would find Christ. Just as important, they could act as chaperones.

  Melba was a devout Catholic, and that played a major part in their decision to try and help Chino. “There is some good in everyone,” she told Luis. “Everybody can be saved.”

  Chino shoved Paula so hard that she almost fell over.

  “Don’t do that, Chino,” she told him.

  He glared at her. “I’m the man. I can do anything I want to.”

  A month into their relationship, Paula had seen Chino change. He wasn’t kind, gentle, and loving anymore. Instead, he shoved her around. They weren’t gentle pushes, but hard shoves where his palms stung and sent her reeling. The shoves were becoming more frequent and more forceful. Chino also gave her orders on how to act in public.

  “Keep your eyes on the ground and don’t look at anyone,” he told her. “Don’t make eye contact and never speak to anyone. Walk a step behind me. That’s how a woman shows respect for a man.”

  Even though she loved Chino, Paula began to feel that he was overbearing. It seemed that he wanted to own her, body and soul, and didn’t want her to see anyone but him. Paula attended John Brown High School and Chino started popping up there to check on her.

  “What are you doing, Chino?” Paula asked.

  “I’m checking to make sure you’re the one.”

  “The one what?”

  “My one true love who will never betray me.”

  On the plus side, he picked her up from school and always had marijuana and money. The sex was great, but it was changing. Chino started being rough. “I know that’s the way you like it,” he said.

  Sometimes he forced himself on her when she didn’t want it. Their social life consisted mostly of smoking pot and having sex. Once or twice, they tried some LSD, but marijuana was what they liked. She wondered where Chino got his money, since he didn’t seem to work.

  “I shoplift designer clothes and sell them,” he told her. “That’s how I live.”

  Paula didn’t object to the shoplifting, but she worried about Chino being caught. She liked having the money and the drugs, plus the clothing he gave her that bore designer labels, such as Tommy Hilfiger.

  On one surprise visit at school to check on Paula, Chino found her flirting with another boy. He flew into a rage. He attacked the boy and knocked him to the ground. Chino screamed and cursed and said he would kill him if he ever flirted with Paula. Then he turned his rage on Paula. He grabbed her by the throat and almost lifted her off the ground while he choked her. Paula’s eyes bulged and she could hardly breathe.

  “You can never leave me!” he said, his snarling face just inches from her own. “You hear me? You’ll never leave me.”

  Chino turned and ran away, leaving Paula gasping. She was confused. What had gotten into him? The charming boy she met in the subway station had turned into a raging monster. He wanted to control every part of her life. She made up her mind to break up with him.

  Paula was at home only a few minutes when Chino telephoned. He begged her to forgive him and told her how much he loved her. “I’ll change,” he told her. “Everything will be okay if we can just be together. I love you. I’ll change.”

  “I don’t want to see you anymore, Chino,” she told him. “I don’t want you coming around and I don’t want to go places with you.”

  “No,” Chino said. “We’re not going to break up.”

  “Good-bye, Chino,” Paula said, and hung up. But a short time later she was back on the telephone talking to him, and then they started to communicate on their computers. He wrote sweet, tender things, and Paula felt herself being drawn back into his orbit.

  After hours, Paula agreed to meet with him. She would tell Chino to his face, once again, that they were breaking up. He obviously wanted a more exclusive arrangement than she did.

  Chino was at the station when Paula got off the train. He walked quickly to her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her after him as he headed toward a group of stores.

  “Stop it, Chino,” Paula said. “You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m just holding your hand,” he said, not looking at her.

  When they arrived at the stores, Chino whirled around to face her. His face was almost purple and his eyes looked funny as he grabbed her by the throat and shoved her against the building, almost lifting her off her feet. He pushed his face inches from her own.

  “We’re not breaking up,” he said. “I’ll kill you if you leave me.” He recited her mother’s Social Security number. “I have it memorized,” he snarled. “There’s no place she can hide. With that number, I can always find her. The only way you’ll leave me is in a body bag, and I’ll kill your mother, your fath
er, and your two sisters.”

  Paula, terrified, struggled to breathe. “You’re bad, Paula. You’re just like me; you’re no good. Do you want me to tell your mother about the things you do with me? About the dope and the sex? I will, if you ever threaten to leave me.”

  Chino eased his grip and Paula gasped for air. “Remember what I said,” he told her, and then he shoved her against the wall so hard that it knocked the breath out of her. Things started to go black, but not before Paula saw Chino punch his fist through a display window, then release a flurry of punches against the building. He ran away with his hands bleeding profusely. Paula slid down the wall and settled into a crumpled ball on the sidewalk. A few minutes later she gathered her wits about her and looked around for Chino, but he was gone.

  My God, she thought as she struggled to her feet, what was she going to do?

  On Thanksgiving, Melba prepared a feast. The apartment was filled with the smell of cooking food. In addition to her daughters, Paula, Stephanie, and Louisa, Melba had invited Paula’s old friend, Soroya Benitez, and Chino to dinner, even though Paula was still trying to dump him. Chino had won Paula back through his usual flood of apologies and promises, his vows to change and professions of true love. Paula wanted to believe him, but she was afraid. He hadn’t kept his promises to change in the past, and his violence toward her increased. She was so stressed and frightened that she didn’t know what she was doing half the time. She felt like she was sinking into a pit from which she couldn’t escape.

  If she wasn’t so terrified of what Chino might do to her and her family, Paula believed she could find the strength to break away from him. She intended to tell him at the Thanksgiving dinner that they were through.

  Chino yelled a lot at dinner, as he usually did. He railed against society because it was prejudiced against Hispanics and was holding him back. You had to be white to get anywhere. Whites were the masters and everybody else was a slave. If a nonwhite wanted anything, he had to take it. Cops were lower than snakes.

  Chino especially loved to bait Melba about her religion. Knowing how devout she was, he tried to tear her religion apart. The Catholic Church, he told her, was nothing more than an organization created to control people. It would be stupid to think that there was any more to it than that. Chino said he hated the Church, just as he hated people.

  Soroya was nervous because this was the first time she had met Chino. He struck her as a wild, raving maniac. Paula wasn’t anything like she was when he wasn’t around. She smiled and chatted when Chino wasn’t there, but in his presence she was like a shrinking violet, always looking down, saying little.

  “She got so quiet when he was around,” Soroya said. “It wasn’t even like she was like herself. She was like totally reserved, quiet, kept to herself. When she wasn’t with him, she was a totally different Paula.”

  Chino struck her as being weird. “I was young and really didn’t pay much attention to it, but yelling, he did a lot of,” Soroya said. “The most vivid picture I have of him is he just went on and on about how he hated cops, and how religion was just an institution made to manipulate people and their minds,” she said. “It was, pardon my French, all bullshit. He was quite adamant.”

  When the Thanksgiving dinner was finished, Paula dropped her bombshell.

  “Chino, I want to break up. I don’t want to be with you.”

  Chino immediately flew into a rage. His jaw clenched and he pounded on the table with his fists. Then, to everyone’s horror, he took a razor blade from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He moved the razor around with his cheeks and tongue. Blood poured from his mouth.

  “You don’t want to be with me?” he yelled. “Then I’ll kill myself.”

  He took the razor blade from his mouth and slashed at his throat. Blood appeared where he cut himself, but it wasn’t a life-threatening wound.

  “If you leave me, then I’m going to kill myself!” he yelled. He knocked his chair over when he got up, ran from the table, and closed the bathroom door. Paula, Melba, Soroya, and Louisa were petrified. They frantically talked about what they should do.

  In a few moments they went to the bathroom door and tried to open it. It was locked. Melba pounded on the door.

  “What are you doing in there?” she shouted.

  “Killing myself!”

  “Maybe he’s had too much to drink,” Louisa said.

  The three women forced the door open and found Chino standing over the sink with a razor. He was covered with blood from cuts in his mouth, on his throat, his hands, his forearms, and his wrists. Instead of being shocked, Melba was furious. She exploded at this wild teenage boy who mocked her religion and showed her no respect. She grabbed his forearm and pulled him roughly from the bathroom.

  “You want to kill yourself, leave my house,” she told him. “You’ve got a right to kill yourself, but not in my house. Have some respect!”

  “Melba is a pretty tough cookie,” Soroya said. “She basically told him, you want to do it, it’s your freedom to kill yourself. You are not doing it in my house.”

  Chino charged out the door, but first he grabbed Paula by the hair and dragged her out with him. She screamed in pain. Chino dragged her for about a block. Melba had hoped that Paula would break free, but when she couldn’t, Louisa, her boyfriend, and a boy named Joey went after her. They got into a free-for-all with Chino.

  Chino was already out of control and the attempt to take Paula away fed his rage. He fought like a devil and was giving Joey a severe beating. The others couldn’t pull him off. Melba called on a neighbor, a brawny man, and asked for help. He ran over, picked Chino up, and slammed him to the ground.

  While Chino was momentarily stunned, the others helped Paula get back to her mother’s apartment. Chino raged like a maniac—he cursed, threatened, and beat his fists on anything that was handy.

  Paula was inside, but still she didn’t feel safe. There was no telling what Chino would do. When she heard scuffling and scraping sounds outside, her worst fear came true. She looked up and screamed. Chino’s bloody face glared in at her while he tried to open the second-story window. He had shinnied up a water pipe to get there.

  Melba already had called the police, and before Chino could break the window and get inside, a patrol car arrived and two police officers took Chino into custody. No one wanted to press charges against him. They knew he would only be held for a few hours, and would be even angrier when he was released. There was no telling what he might do. They were all scared to death.

  The police officers put Chino in the patrol car and hauled him away to give him a chance to settle down. They released him on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, to make his own way home.

  Chapter 6

  On April 9, 1999, Paula gave birth to Chino’s daughter, a beautiful baby they named Ashley. The event caused Paula to experience a jumble of emotions and tied her even closer to Chino. She intended to keep the baby, but worried about how she could take care of her. Paula didn’t feel ready to have responsibility for a child, and she didn’t think Chino was prepared, either. Paula had antagonized her parents to the point that she didn’t know whether or not she could rely on them to help.

  She reconciled with Chino after he performed his ritual performance of apology, promises to change, and pledges of undying love. Paula couldn’t understand why she couldn’t break up with him. Why did she put up with being shoved, choked, punched, and threatened? Paula didn’t have the slightest doubt that he could kill her and her whole family in one of his rages.

  Chino was proud of himself for fathering a child.

  “You have to marry me now,” he told Paula. “We’re going to be parents.”

  Paula refused to marry him, but she agreed to live with Chino if he got a regular job because she didn’t want to worry about him going to jail. Chino agreed and attended a class to learn how to fix air conditioners. He finished the class and found a job in College Point. Cathy Donnelly, who hired Chino, liked him. She though
t he was a “nice young man and he worked hard.”

  Chino didn’t like the commute to work, but he didn’t have enough money to move. Donnelly loaned it to him. She considered Chino a “beautiful young man,” but she had seen him blow up and she warned people, “Don’t pull his trigger.”

  Six weeks after Chino moved to College Point, Donnelly received a telephone call from Paula.

  “Chino won’t be in today,” she said. “He was arrested for shoplifting.”

  “Has this happened before?” Donnelly asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope you understand that we can’t have him working here.”

  “Yeah,” Paula said again.

  Chino was convicted of shoplifting and served six months in a juvenile detention facility. He had a long string of petty crimes for fighting in public, skipping subway fares, writing graffiti, and—his favorite—shoplifting. None of this would follow him into adulthood because juvenile criminal records are expunged when an offender becomes an adult. It’s a chance for them to start over with a clean slate.

  Paula and Chino argued about his shoplifting. Chino became angry and telephoned Luis.

  “Come and get your daughter!” he shouted. “I don’t want her anymore.”

  Luis arrived at the apartment to find Paula and Ashley standing outside. Paula was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “We had an argument.” She refused to say anything more about it.

  She was back with Chino the next day. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Nothing she did ever pleased Chino. Maybe she really was no good, as he often told her. She wanted to leave, but she didn’t want to leave. She felt herself sinking into a dark pit and was unable to stop herself. A lot of times, her life seemed like a bad dream.

  One thing everybody agreed on was that Paula and Chino were good parents. There was no doubt that they loved their daughter. Ashley was a beautiful child, with dark curly hair, brown eyes, and a bright smile. Both Paula and Chino doted on her. Chino even shoplifted designer clothing for his daughter.