Flat Broke with Two Goats

by Jennifer McGaha

  The house was the very picture of domestic tranquility. The furniture had been righted, the debris cleared away. All indications that something terrible had happened there were gone. Scott reached for my suitcase, and I eased onto the tattered sofa. I wore navy stretch pants with an old-lady waistband and a blue-striped sweater I had gotten at the hand-me-down shop. I rested my hands across my massive belly.

  “Would you like a glass of tea?” Scott asked as if I were a neighbor who had stopped in to say hello.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said.

  Two months later, on a frigid November morning, Alex was born—an enchanting baby girl with dark-brown hair and deep-blue eyes. The following months are a blur—my beautiful daughter, the spot on her forehead that blushed red and crinkled when she cried; my crazed, out-of-control husband, no better at all, perhaps even more vicious now that he had a baby to care for; my own mental stability shaky at best. At night, I slept with a steak knife under my pillow. Am I crazy? I constantly wondered. I must be crazy.

  One evening when Alex was nine weeks old, Klas and Beth, the witnesses from our wedding, came over for dinner. We had finished eating, and Alex was asleep in her room. After debating what to do next, Scott and our guests settled on watching an action film. I had always been sensitive to violent films, but now I was even more bothered by the slightest suggestion of violence—guns, knives, fighting, even yelling—so after the movie began, I picked up a book from the end table.

  “Are you reading?” Scott asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Don’t read.”

  Something about his tone made me look up.

  “I don’t like this movie,” I said.

  “You’re being rude,” he said.

  I knew by his eyes I should put the book away, but it was late, and I was tired. And he had had counseling. He was supposed to be okay. I got up and walked to our bedroom. I was sitting on the bed reading, my back to the doorway, when he came behind me. He snatched the book from my hand and hurled it through the air. Then he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. First, he punched me hard in the jaw. His eyes were dark and wild, moving rapidly around the room before settling on me.

  “Cunt!” he screamed. “Why do you do this, you goddamn bitch? You goddamn, motherfuckin’ whore, I’ll kill you!”

  He was on top of me then, his fingers curling around my throat. The room began to turn smoky and gray, and I gasped for air. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Klas yelling at him to stop. Scott turned to yell back at him, to tell him to mind his own fucking business, and that was just enough time. I kicked Scott hard in the groin and broke free. And then I ran to the nursery.

  Awake now, my daughter gazed quietly at the multicolored mobile above her crib. She was so very tiny, so incredibly vulnerable. Maybe I was too broken, too weak to protect her. Maybe she would be safer without me. For one brief instant, I considered leaving her. And then I grabbed her and ran.

  Perhaps Scott considered letting me go, or perhaps this was just part of his fun, watching me run. In any case, I had time to get out the front door and to the car, to fasten my startled baby into her car seat. Her eyes, the eyes that had been so dark blue when she was born, were now a deep brown. She watched me silently.

  Just as I was backing out of the driveway, the front door slammed, and as I started down the curvy mountainside, I heard the sound of squealing brakes behind me. Then, out of the blackness, a flash of headlights. His car jerked forward into the lane beside me. I turned to face him.

  “Pull over!” he mouthed.

  He smiled and edged nearer. I steered as close to the edge as I dared. He swerved to the far left, then back again, closer. There was no question in my mind that he would do it. He would run me over the side of that mountain, down onto the abandoned warehouses below.

  I pressed the gas while Scott zigzagged behind me. Finally, the road spilled into the Westgate shopping center parking lot. I thought about trying to run for help, about screaming until someone heard me, but the parking lot was deserted. In the backseat, my daughter wore a pink onesie with a tie at the bottom, like a miniature cinch sack. One of her feet had broken free, and she bounced it up and down, five tiny, perfect, pink toes. I slowed to a stop, turned off the engine, and unfastened my seatbelt. Scott met me outside the car. From somewhere above all this, somewhere just above the roof of the car, I watched a young woman being beaten. And the only coherent thought that I had was to wonder what that baby in the backseat was thinking.

  Scott punched my jaw, then my arms, my stomach. He grabbed my hair and pulled my head backward, spitting obscenities in my ear. I sensed that I should not fight back, that saying anything might get my daughter and me killed. So I tried to go somewhere else in my mind, to believe that instead of being in a dark, empty parking lot being beaten by my husband, I was curled up in bed reading a book or strolling down a sunny street with my dog. Finally, Scott’s anger subsided. He stopped punching me and simply stood there, his fists clenched at his sides, his chest heaving with each breath.

  “I want you to get in that car and go home,” he said. “Do you understand me?”

  I nodded. And then I got in my car and drove home. I realize now how crazy that sounds, but that’s what I did. I went home. As Klas and Beth were leaving, I put my daughter to bed. I filled the kitchen sink with Dawn and warm water, and I did the dishes. It was a normal thing to do, and I desperately needed to do something normal. I rubbed a warm dishcloth around the soft edges of two iced tea glasses, scraped the bits of dried lasagna from our dinner plates, wiped the breadcrumbs from the countertop. And then Scott appeared behind me.

  “Why do you make me do this?” he said softly.

  I stared at the wall beyond me, at the soft green lines of the wallpaper.

  “Why?”

  I turned. Tears streaked his face. He looked like a child. I wrung out the dishcloth, draped it over the faucet, and dried my hands on a towel by the drain. Then I reached for him and slipped my arm around his waist.

  “I wish you wouldn’t make me do that,” he sobbed.

  I patted his back. My jaw was stiff, my arms burning. I smelled like lemons. He collapsed in a heap on the floor, and I crouched beside him until he noticed. Then he pulled me down to him until my head rested in his lap. Rocking back and forth, he gently stroked my jaw.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  I think now that if it had been just me, I would never have left. I would have stayed in that house and let him wear me down until I could no longer distinguish pain from love, fear from fondness, crazy from not crazy. As it was, crouched on that kitchen floor, my husband’s bloody hands smoothing my hair, I closed my eyes and saw my infant daughter, her knowing brown eyes, her easy smile, the spot on her forehead that crinkled when she cried. I was a mess, a twenty-one-year-old wreck of a woman, but she was so beautiful, so perfect, so very brand-new. I did not yet know that I deserved better. I only knew that she did, and I had to get us out of there.

  The next day, while Scott was at work, I pulled a suitcase from the hall closet, the same suitcase I had packed to take to the hospital just weeks before. While Alex and Aggie sat side-by-side, Alex in her baby seat, Aggie crouched next to her, I hurriedly emptied the contents of Alex’s crib into the bag—stuffed animals, pacifiers, a cheery teal clown, the red-and-blue blanket she curled between her fingers while she slept. I opened her dresser drawers and dumped out a dozen brightly colored onesies, stretchy pants, tiny, embroidered tops, and lacy dresses. I threw in diapers, diaper ointment, baby nail clippers, pink hair bows. And then I moved to my bedroom.

  There, I had a full view of the front lawn and the driveway. Our house was the last house on a dead-end road, and once, when I heard a car rumbling up the hill, I thought, this is it. We are dead. All three of us. But then the car pulled into the driveway next door, and I frantically thre
w in a couple pairs of jeans and slammed my suitcase shut. And then, cradling my daughter in one hand and dragging the bag behind me, I opened the front door, called to Aggie, and ran.

  My car was maybe ten feet from the front door, twenty at most, but it may as well have been thousands. Terrified that Scott was somewhere nearby—waiting, watching—I imagined him in the hedge between the driveways, in the shadow of the single oak tree in the yard. It took every bit of strength and courage I had to look straight ahead and put one foot in front of the other. It was the longest journey of my life, but finally, I was there.

  “Hurry!” I told Aggie, opening the back car door.

  She jumped in the backseat, and I tossed my bag on the floor, then lowered Alex into her car seat. Fastening her buckle, I looked into her solemn eyes and said the one thing I had no right to promise her.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  And then I jumped in the driver’s seat and sped down the mountain, my sweaty palms gripping the wheel, my breaths coming so rapidly, my vision blurred. Every time I saw a red car, I thought it was Scott. Every time a car passed me, I could see his menacing sneer, feel him edging closer and closer and closer.

  Do not faint, I told myself as I pulled onto I-26 and headed east toward my parents’ home. You cannot faint.

  For days and weeks and months and years to come, I would still see him there, the ghost of him, the ghosts of both of our pasts, intertwined. Even now, I see the remnants of snow on the grass, the fading sun low on the horizon, my baby’s silent and solemn eyes in the rearview mirror as I raced down the interstate. They say the average battered woman goes back over and over before she finally leaves, but after that day, I only went back once, one dreary winter afternoon when Scott called and begged me to come over.

  “Please,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

  I should never have answered the phone. I should have hung up the minute I heard his voice. But even with all the evidence to the contrary, part of me still believed he might change. And the other part of me—the part that knew the truth—still grieved for the loss of the husband I had wanted.

  So I left Alex with my parents and drove to the house on Annie Street. Cautiously, I pushed open the door. It was dark in the house. Only a sliver of moon shone through the heavy shades in the living room.

  “Can you see?” Scott asked, closing the door behind me.

  I nodded. Soon after I had moved out, my father had come and collected the rest of my personal belongings and the few pieces of furniture I had had before Scott and I got married. Now, the house felt different with all my things gone. On the carpet were the outlines of our old coffee table. The musty smell of wooden walls blended with the smell of forsythia coming from the open windows, and I thought of Scott all those months ago, just after we had met, how we used to study together in the college library, his curly head of hair bent low while he scribbled in a thick, blue notebook. Standing there in the desolate living room, I could still smell his musky cologne. And then I was crying, loud, gasping cries. Scott wrapped his arms around me and guided me into the bedroom, onto the softly worn sheets, and for a few final moments, I allowed myself to remember the man I had wanted him to be.

  Afterward, I lay beside my husband and gazed through the doorway to our daughter’s old room. A freight train passed by outside and sounded its low, mournful whistle. I closed my eyes and watched the train cross under the Westgate Bridge, weaving past the warehouses and abandoned buildings before rolling along the French Broad River, until finally, even the rumbling faded into nothingness.

  Moments later, I got up, dressed, and drove back to my parents’ house. It was the last time I ever saw Scott alone. Going to see him had been stupid and reckless, but it had also given me closure. I knew then that we were over for good. A few weeks later, at my parents’ house, I picked up the phone and called David. We hadn’t spoken in over two years.

  “David?” I said when he answered.

  “Hey, Jennifer,” he said.

  It had been forever, yet it had been no time at all. A year later, we were living together in a rented duplex in the country. Two years later, we were married.

  Now, it felt odd to think of David and Scott in the same breath, as if they were at all similar. David was the one who had loved and protected and restored me after I left Scott, the one who had told me how much I mattered until, gradually, I had come to believe it. And yet something about losing our home felt familiar, an old wound ripped open and oozing once again. Perhaps it was because, though the circumstances were different, I had remained stubbornly unchanged. Whatever it was that had allowed me to ignore the warning signs with Scott, to endure his abuse with futile optimism, had also allowed me to pretend that David and I had no real problems, that whatever financial difficulties we had were trite, trivial, inconsequential.

  Cognitive dissonance, psychologists call it, this ability to hold two contradictory ideas or beliefs at one time. On the one hand, your husband beats you. On the other hand, you believe that is not who he really is and that, one day, your real husband—the kind and loving one you see in your mind—will emerge. On the one hand, you know you and your husband are having trouble paying your bills. On the other hand, you believe this is not actually a problem, that the money is there somewhere and your husband just needs to look harder to find it. And when the money doesn’t materialize, you are astounded, your fantasy world obliterated.

  Cajun Shrimp

  •1 1/2 cups butter

  •8 ounces clam juice or seafood stock

  •5 cloves garlic

  •4 dried bay leaves

  •4 teaspoons dried rosemary

  •1 teaspoon dried basil

  •1 teaspoon dried oregano

  •1/4 cup lemon juice

  •1 teaspoon ground red pepper

  •1 teaspoon salt

  •1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

  •1 tablespoon ground paprika

  •1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

  •6 pounds shrimp

  Melt the butter. Add all ingredients except shrimp. Cook uncovered for 20 minutes. Add shrimp. Cook 10 to 12 minutes or just until pink. Serve with thick, crusty bread, and plenty of napkins.

  Chapter Four

  The moment we decided to move to the cabin, David seemed less burdened, more optimistic, and while I was still adjusting to the whole idea of rustic, back-to-the-land living, he jumped right into making the cabin more habitable. Using the money we had saved from not making our mortgage payments over the last few months, he worked on home improvements. Every evening after work, David cleaned the cabin floors and painted cabinets and walls. He tore out the ancient dishwasher and stove and replaced them with appliances he found on Craigslist. Every time we thought one project was finished, a new one presented itself. David patched a decaying spot by the kitchen counter, only to find another huge hole when he moved the refrigerator. He tore out the linoleum, only to find that the floor underneath was wet and mildewed.

  And then we found the mice—or evidence of mice. A lot of mice. We found droppings on the kitchen counter and on the cabinet with the cooktop. They were all over the boxes we had brought over to the cabin, wedged in the lid of my food processor, in the base of my blender. And then we found a nest in the utensil drawer—on top of an unopened baggy of forks and spoons and knives. David removed the nest and bleached the drawer. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to use the utensils.

  We weren’t eating at the cabin much anyway. The kitchen still reeked of mold and mildew, but occasionally, I cooked a meal at the old house and took it to the cabin. The kitchen counters at the old house were covered with boxes, some of them full, some of them not, but I left out some basic items—a can opener, a soup pot, a strainer—and using those bare necessities, I was able to create a few hearty meals that lasted for days. For example, my taco sou
p had all the qualities of a meal prepared by and for people in distress: It was simple. It was filling. It did not require overthinking. And it packed enough heat to jump-start our endorphins.

  Once the soup was ready, I wrapped a dish towel around the pot and wedged it into an empty box along with all the toppings. Then I threw the box into my van and carted it over to the cabin where David and I ate outside on the patio by the waterfall. Hawks circled overhead while our dogs, running free for the first time in their lives, darted in and out of the water and up and down the mountain. Tails up, fur drenched, bellies caked with mud, they yipped and yapped with unencumbered delight. Their enthusiasm for their new home was breathtaking. Chasing and calling each other, they squatted or lifted their legs, sometimes both at the same time, peeing on absolutely everything in their vicinity—bushes, shrubs, trees, rock, grass. Thus clearing the mountain of deer, squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, bears, bobcats, coyotes, and foxes, they swiftly and surely made this place their own, and I envied their passion, their adaptability, their certainty.

  Sitting next to my husband, satiated with pepper-fueled endorphins, I watched as the sun dipped behind the waterfall and the moon took its place—one single motion, one solitary breath—and I imagined living a good life here. It would be one endless summer camp session. When the air was crisp and new, the fog lifting off the mountainsides like a curtain slowly raising, I would walk my dogs to the bridge and back. In the afternoons, I would meander along the mountain ridges, searching for the break in the trees that afforded a clear view of the Pisgah National Forest. In the evenings, David and I would build a bonfire and roast marshmallows under a starlit sky. Later, drifting off to sleep under a pile of quilts my great-grandmother made, as haunting screams of screech owls pierced the night, I would snuggle into David, pressing myself hard against his back, willing him here forever, believing in that moment that we were suspended in space and time, hidden from the outside world. Here, we would never get sick or frail. Here, we would never grow old.