Goldie and the Three Wisconsin Bears

During the time we were together, I was either an angel or a slut in Tommy’s book. There was never any in-between. So I worked hard to always be the beautiful angel he wanted me to be.

I hadn’t pressed him for sex, even when months went by. I dressed like a stripper to make his friends jealous. But I never acted like the stereotype behind closed doors. I was the opposite of the chorus of “Nasty Girl,” that Ludacris song I used to dance to at Magic Peaches. I was a freak in the streets and a lady between the sheets.

I sashayed past Tommy’s buddies, but I never mentioned or even looked at another guy. Ever. And I kept my mouth closed as the weeks between sex sometimes became months. I quietly graduated from Emory, and I didn’t even try to float the idea of applying to interior design firms.

I pushed my dreams into a mental Someday/Maybe folder. And I pretended that I didn’t need or want a career outside of planning for our wedding and preparing to become the mother to his brood that he’d always envisioned.

But it wasn’t enough. Tommy always found something wrong with me, some reason to fly off the handle. He just yelled and screamed at me at first. But then, eventually, he started hitting me. I should have left the first time he laid hands on me. But I didn’t.

I still can’t explain why. I guess I was so beaten down by his words by the time he started hitting me, I didn’t know how to defend myself against his blows—the verbal or the physical ones.

But the abuse escalated, and the one time I’d suggested we break up, he pulled out his service revolver.

“You think I won’t blow a hole in your head if you ever try to leave me? After everything I sacrificed to be with you? After everything I gave you? You think I’d let you leave me to be with some other schmuck who couldn’t see past your beautiful face? Nah, babe, if you break up with me, I’m not going to take it. I will kill you and whoever you try to hook up with next. I will kill the both of you and burn down this house with you inside it.”

That had been a year ago. And I’d been so confused about what to do after that…

Until those two lines appeared.

Then suddenly, I wasn’t confused at all. I knew Tommy would be ecstatic when I told him. At least at first.

But then would come the accusations. Was the baby his? How did he know? Who had I been speaking to, flirting with behind his back?

The answer was no one. I’d dropped my Magic Peaches friends one by one because Tommy didn’t approve of them. How am I supposed to believe you aren’t cheating on me when you’re hanging out with strippers, huh? And even talking to Cynda and Billie had become too hard.

After accusing me of complaining about him behind his back, he’d insisted on sitting in on every three-way FaceTime call, in the background where they couldn’t see him. It had been so hard to act natural while Billie and Cynda talked about their normal lives. And I guess I didn’t do a good enough job. Even though my two best friends couldn’t see Tommy, sitting off camera, they kept asking me if I was all right and saying I seemed a little off.

Eventually, it just became easier to make last-minute excuses about why I couldn’t join the monthly call. Guilt washed over me every time I did it, but it felt even worse trying to pretend I was alright when I wasn’t.

I might still be dodging their calls if I hadn’t missed my period after Tommy flushed my birth control pills. But after I found out I was pregnant, I knew no matter what I’d been trying to tell myself, my life wasn’t alright. My baby’s life wouldn’t be alright. It couldn’t be if I stayed with Tommy.

Yes, he’d be happy at first. But then this baby—after he was finally convinced it was his—would become just one more thing he would use against me for leverage. He already made me give up my job and my friends. What would he make me do to keep our child safe?

As happy as I wanted to be about this pregnancy, it felt like the final lock on the cage Tommy had been slowly constructing around me for the three years we’d been together.

I didn’t have any money of my own, any freedom, or any friends I could easily turn to without endangering them. That’s why I ran after my hair appointment, with nothing but my passport, my mother’s birth certificate, a hastily withdrawn five hundred dollars from my old bank account, and the clothes on my back.