Her face was swelling already.  Tomorrow, her eye would be black much like her wrists, chest, and back.  The rivers of blood flowed out her lips and over her chin as the bedroom door opened and her four-year-old son tiptoed in, “Mommy, you’re hurt.”

That was what my cousin’s little boy saw the other night after her drunken, ex-Marine MP boyfriend threw her all over her bedroom.  I’m so angry right now that I don’t know how I’m going to be able to take care of the kids without crying this weekend, and I can’t even begin to think of the work that has to be done in the coming days.  In this day and age, that scene should never EVER happen. She and I have never been as close as Tina is with her, but this tore me up. I had to write this.

My cousin, Flaxen, has made a lot of poor choices in her life, and most of them have been of her own doing.  She became pregnant near the end of her first semester in college.  It was the first time she’d been away from a pretty over-protective mother (my aunt is a good mother…she went through almost ten miscarriages and still-births before she finally had her 4 kids…she tried to do everything for her kids and still does, but that means that most of them haven’t learned to stand on their own 2 feet…unfortunately, they’re proof that you can do everything right and it can still fall apart).  Flaxen was drinking and had/has pretty low self-esteem, and the guy she hooked up with was “hot” and had just joined the Army reserves.  They had a short-lived romance and Tina is pretty sure that Flaxen was actually trying to get pregnant at the time.  The minute the boy found out she was pregnant; he told her he was taking a flight to Bosnia to “meet up” with his unit (that’s not how deployments work).  He, of course, was just leaving her holding the ball.  She’s spent years arguing with this guy and frankly, still obsessing over him.  She convinced herself that there was a fairytale ending there.  There was never going to be.  She’s spent years trying to live on less than $500 a month in welfare or in his child support payments when he’d get around to paying them.  For a long time, I honestly thought she was just going to end up living in the system her whole life.

About a year ago, Flaxen made a 180.  She got a job in a preschool and made arrangements for her son, Turtle Boy, to stay there too.  She got her own place far enough away from her family that she could make a tentative start at taking hold of her life.  She not only made plans to go back to school, she went through with it.  I was skeptical at best, as usual.  I hoped it would stick.  It was the farthest she’d ever come.  Her issues still weighed on her and she struggled with them constantly.  Tina has spent untold hours with her on the phone helping her work through them and being a shoulder for her when her few friends would just lose interest.  Then this Marine showed up.

On the face of it, this guy was great.  He works at an after-school program with kids.  He was taking college courses to become a teacher.  He showed all the chivalry that most Marine’s live by.  He took care of his own 2 yr. old little boy, but he constantly fought with the child’s mother over custody to the point that she was arrested for hitting him in the parking lot of Flaxen’s apartment building.  All signs pointed toward a good guy caught in a bad situation.  I was impressed by everything I’d heard about him and their relationship, and if you’ve been here a while, you know that takes A LOT.

Not long before their visit in April, Flaxen let this guy move in with her and Turtle Boy.  She was still working and she started a business course at the community college.  Their two sons were joined at the hip.  It seemed that fairytale ending was finally in sight.

Since their visit here, things went downhill fast.  He stopped paying his share of the rent and utilities.  He borrowed money from her to buy his son diapers but spent $300 on a leather motorcycle vest.  The other night she called Tina because she’d discovered that while she was down here, he had started visiting porn sites and the activity had continued every second Flaxen wasn’t in the room (if he had 5 minutes alone, he didn’t check email…he found a porno).  Flaxen had finally decided that it was over.  She is completely non-confrontational, and was trying to find a way to tell him.

That horrible, fateful night she still hadn’t had the courage to tell him to leave.  Instead, when he came in drunk, she tentatively suggested that he go stay at his grandfather’s place until they could think things through.  He immediately lost it throwing her cellphone, her only means of communication with the outside world, across the room breaking it apart.  When she stood to get the phone, he slammed her into a wall and then a chest of drawers.  He threw her onto the bed and got on top of her holding her down.  He hit her across the face repeatedly.  She finally managed to get free of him when the bed broke apart in the struggle.  When her son came in, he was coming toward her and stopped.  Flaxen grabbed her 4 yr. old and her phone and told the ex-Marine that he could stay at the apartment that she’d leave.  She begged him to let her call her dad to pick her up while frantically trying to make her cellphone work with one hand and holding on to her little boy with the other.  When the guy wouldn’t let them leave the apartment, she convinced him that her phone was dead and that she’d have to use the girl across the hall’s phone.  When the other girl opened the door, this guy was standing there watching and warning Flaxen not to call the cops or to tell her family what happened.  Flaxen escaped into her neighbor’s apartment with her son in her arms; the two women got the door locked before he could break in.  The rest of the night was a blur of her mother and father coming and then the cops arresting him.

In these few hours, Flaxen has found out that this guy and his ex had so many issues because he hit her.  His family didn’t think he’d “do that to Flaxen” because he and Flaxen had been so happy, and because his ex had always been just as violent as the ex-Marine (hence, there were no previous battery charges against him…the two wouldn’t call the cops because they had both been hitting each other).  The cops pressed charges against the guy, a long list of them; Flaxen didn’t have to because her son was there during the commission of the crime.  There’s an automatic restraining order in place because of the charge of domestic battery.

I’m honestly scared for this girl turned woman.  This is such a pivotal moment for her.  She either has to stand on her own feet and hold on to this precious bit of progress her life has made, or she’s going to lose everything and fall back into her old life.  I’m sick to my stomach with worry that she’ll let this guy back in her life.

He WILL come knocking on your door begging you not to ruin his life by coming to court, Flaxen.  He WILL try to sway you in every way possible.  Even if you felt like you were just going through the motions for him by getting the job, the apartment, and going back to school, you still made the motions.  You moved forward.  You have a life.  He just shouldn’t be part of it anymore.