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Show I'ark Record Thursday, April 25, 1991 Page A3 H ft f r UM U f a - - I in n vm by TERI ORR Record editor Editor's note: This is the second part of a three-part series on spouse abuse in observance of April as National Awareness Month for Domestic Violence. Last month, Editor Terl Orr spent three days and two nights in the Y.W.C.A. shelter in Salt Lake City called Women in Jeopardy. She listened to dozens of stories of abuse. Last year, 10 of the suspected 360 victims vic-tims of spousal abuse in Summit County stayed at the shelter. One of those women, Nada Lee Noble, was shot and killed by her estranged husband in February of 1991, outside out-side Albertson's in Park City, on the same day she checked out of the shelter. The names and some details of the following stories have been altered to protect the victims. All their stories are true. The early morning hours of the shelter are a hubbub of activity-just activity-just like in a dorm, women (and in this case, children) are taking turns in the showers and in front of the mirrors, using hairdryers and sharing sinks. There is music, mostly twangy country western. The Tammy Wynette Stand By Your Man kind of songs haunt the halls. The children are dressed and readied for their day there is day care for the younger children and a school for older kids. This allows the women time to meet with counselors, legal aid workers and Job Service representatives, and look for housing. It takes a great deal of time to start your life over. Breakfast is downstairs in the cafeteria, dished out by smiling older women who know that part of their job is to serve up compassion along with the powdered eggs. On a side table there are the makings for sandwiches lunch is not served serv-ed at the shelter. The too-blonde pregnant woman I met the night before with the blackened eyes sits down at my table. She talks about having left once before, after her abuser had just "knocked me around a little." She went back and experienced the textbook classic "honeymoon phase." Her abuser was "sorry" there were flowers, "dinners and even a little weekend i away. Until the next time the last -time when he came home and ac-v ac-v cused her of stepping out on him when in fact, she was at work at jier job as a fast food operator in a downtown mall. That's when he beat her up, "so nobody will want . to look at your face". He left her crying, and fearful that he had also done something to damage her unborn un-born child. i "I knew, for the sake of the baby, k I had to leave." - f A friend's mother knew of the ' shelter, and told her she would be 'safe there. This morning she is go-'ihg go-'ihg to court. She is distrustful of ihe legal system, but nevertheless 'she will press charges against her 'abuser. I go upstairs and find my assigned assign-ed chore I am to clean the kit- chenette area on the second floor by 1:00 p.m. I go to work scrubbing the fridge and sink, and wiping down the counter. There isn't much garbage in the bag, so I decide to empty the trash later. Then I go downstairs to talk to the front desk receptionist she is a grandmotherly-looking woman who I would guess to be in her early ear-ly '60s. She tells me after 20 years of abuse she left her husband in Philadelphia a cop, who hid behind his badge and avoided prosecution pro-secution by other professionals. We are talking when Janie walks up, shaking, saying her abuser has found her. Janie's husband has found a way into town. (Janie took their only car). Her jaw, broken by her husband, hus-band, still hasn't healed and she rubs her model-perfect cheek unconsciously. un-consciously. Her abuser has asked for her by her legal name, and he was told she was not in the shelter. Every woman, upon entry, is given an alias. Only those people who know that name can make contact with her. If Janie had given her alias to her abuser and asked him to come to the shelter, she would have been terminated from the program. pro-gram. It is obvious by Janie's demeanor de-meanor that she did not invite him. This striking black woman, a good six inches taller than I, cowers behind me as I lead her out the back door of the building. We walk down the street to a deli and share a Coke while she tells me how her abuse has changed the way she views the world. "Last year when my sister got married, I tried to be happy for her. But all I could think about was the fact that this guy had a black belt in karate and they just moved into an apartment on the top floor of a high rise apartment building. I could just see this guy overpowering overpower-ing her and pushing her off the balcony. I don't think I would have ever thought that way before I became abused. " We walk back to the shelter and see a note that has been left on the windshield of her car. It is from Howard, her husband and her abuser. It says.. ."With you gone I now understand pain and I will do anything to ease your pain. Please come back. Please call me and let me know you're alright...Howard." She takes the note and folds and refolds it over and over. She says she misses her home, her clothes, her privacy. She doesn't want to stay in the shelter, but she has no close friends or family in the area to whom she can turn. She decides to keep her appointment with Job Service and see what options may be available. She heads upstairs to ready herself for her afternoon. At my appointed time I meet with the counselor. In response to her probing questions, I find myself revealing old wounds and sharing thoughts I hadn't intended to talk about. She talks softly and slowly about how long the scars can last, and I end the session feeling drained. drain-ed. I go to the front desk to see if I have any messages. Someone has donated bright yellow daffodils, stuck in plastic drink cups, and placed them around the building. They look too cheerful somehow garish. I am reminded of a Sylvia Plath poem about someone sending her flowers in the hospital after another suicide attempt. It goes something like... "the tulips are too excitable, it is winter here." I am handed a pink slip a detention slip as it were. The monitor checked on the clean-up of the kitchenette and discovered a full trash bag. So I have my first warning slip. Four warning slips, and a woman must meet with her counseler to determine the problem and see if she can continue in the program. I am grumpy now and resentful. I wanted to be a part of this program, pro-gram, but this is carrying things too far. I walk upstairs and discover Janie she too is waving a pink slip. "I don't believe this It's not like I don't have enough to worry about. They gave me a pink slip for not sweeping up the laundry room. But I scrubbed it down and picked up trash. I didn't sweep it because I couldn't find the broom." So we stand there in the hallway and grinch about The System. Of course, that is part of the plan. We have to focus on someone and something other than ourselves. We have to admit we are responsible to the greater community in the building, and someone else had to do our chore because we didn't complete it. 1 At dinner, a pretty petite woman with dark hair, dark eyes and a cheerful disposition asks to join me. Eddie explains she lives on the third floor of the Y. I remember that is the halfway house for Utah State Prison. I ask her why she was sent to prison. "For committing a crime," she says sweetly. I'm tired and not in the mood for this cat-and-mouse game. "No kidding," I snap back. "You want to tell me what?" "I don't want any trouble," she says quietly now. "I'm working real hard to get out early. I got five kids living with my sister and the youngest is five months old. They don't know where I am or why, and I if keep doing good I could get out of here in three months." Eddie explains how, after 15 years of a common law marriage, her husband took up with another woman and left her and the kids. She had never worked a day in her life. So she paid the bills just like always writing checks but this time there was no money. "I got a job downtown now as a maid at a hotel. I mean, after 15 years, the only thing I really know how to do is clean. Look, nice having hav-ing dinner with you. Hope you get what you need here." And she busses her tray and leaves quickly. After dinner, we all head upstairs to the television room. Anita from the reservation does bead work as her one-year-old toddles over to me, bottle in mouth. I pick him up and stroke his hair as a new woman to the shelter, Marsha, shares her fears about her pregnancy. She is a tall woman, big-boned and very thin, with stringy str-ingy dishwater-blonde hair. She is eight months pregnant but hardly showing. She has been to the doctor today, and he has told her the placenta appears to be older than the baby and is perhaps detaching. She cries silent tears down her hollow cheeks and rubs her blackened eyes. Her nine-year-old son strokes her arm and tries to comfort her. Two other women come bouncing into the room with good news. They have found a big old house in a decent de-cent section of town which they can vbare. There is enough room for their combined six children. They have just enough for the rent and there will be no deposit required, because the landlord wants to work with women in the shelter. It is a joyous moment. And while hardly a Kate and Allie sitcom scenario, there is a sense they just might make it. With all the noise, the baby starts to whimper in my lap and I rock him back to sleep. The television is blaring the latest Nike commercial. "Just do it," it urges. I decide to put the baby to bed. Janie follows me, and ends up in my room. She has called her husband, hus-band, and is considering leaving the shelter tonight to drive the 80 plus miles back to him. "He said he was so sorry," she says, half-defeated, half-encouraged. half-encouraged. "They always are," I snap back. I'm surprised at my angry response. "Give yourself a little more time, Janie," I hear myself saying. "You're the one who told me you didn't want to end up like your mother killed by someone who 'loved her.'" Janie looks down at her feet and I feel her slipping away, but she agrees to stay one more night. Carmen comes in and says she is working with her relatives to try and regain custody of the two children she has lost. Janie tells her she is thinking of going back to Howard. Carmen tells her to stay another night and Janie says she will. I hear a snatch of sassy conversation conver-sation out in the hall... "So, I finally final-ly just says to him, you keep trying to dig a hole for me, and soon enough you're gonna fall in it, boy..." I laugh out loud at the image im-age and I realize it is the first time I have laughed in two days. Somewhere around midnight the last woman leaves my room, and though I try to sleep, the city sounds aren't soothing. The sirens and drunks make me edgy. The morning finds me weary and not at all rested. After breakfast and a shower, I ready myself for one of the group sessions that is open to the general public at the Y. It is for women in abusive relationships who want to get out. The counselors provide worksheets on self-esteem and lots of handouts on parenting and self-growth. self-growth. The women are told to pair up and ask each other questions on the worksheet. In front of me are two very different women one has come in from the outside. She appears to be wealthy, well-educated well-educated and in her late '40s. I find out she has been a part of this group for almost a year. The other woman speaks very little English, and in her broken Spanish, she explains ex-plains she has been in the shelter three weeks. She appears to be in her late '20s. The older woman decides to practice her Spanish, and asks her questions in a Berlitz accent. The younger woman smiles patiently. I am fascinated by the answers they give to the same . " questions. Especially, "What kind of people do you want to surround yourself with in the future?" The older woman says "strong women," and the younger woman smiles. "Women who are... Strong yes, but how you say.. .ripe." Then the leader asks for responses around the room."What do you want most from life?" A no-nonsense looking black woman with short-cropped hair, six months pregnant with her ninth child answers. "I want joy. I've known pleasure and it's such a temporal thing, I think now I want to know joy. And I don't want to accept ac-cept any abuse ever again. Not any. It builds up you know, like barnacles on the bottom of a ship. One time maybe doesn't seem like much but before you know it, a whole lot of times have built up and you can't seem to scrape away the slimy feeling." There is a silent nodding, a camraderie cast in conflict, these women share without speaking. After the session it is time for me to leave. There is a strange sadness as I pack my things. I can't explain how sequestered I have been from my real world by being thrust into this real world. And I am haunted by the desire to know where these women go from here... POSTSCRIPT: Janie left the shelter the next day and went back to Howard. Carmen's family has custody now of her two children and they have been taken to a safe place in South America while she works at Hardee's and tries to put her life together. Anita is doing very well. She and her baby should be moving out of the shelter and into in-to a place of their own soon. The three pregnant women are all still pregnant and working on relocating. Most of the remaining women returned to their abusers. Next weefe, Women in Jeopardy concludes with a Park City woman sharing her story of abuse, and interviews in-terviews with health care providers in Summit County focusing on the network of resources available to victims of abuse. RESOURCE LIST Police Department 9-1-1 YWCA Shelter 355-2804 The Counseling Institute. 649-2426 Valley Mental Health 649-8437 Park City Care 649-7640 K ) 4-6 p.m. Nightly At the end of the day, you deserve a steak dinner that will warm your insides without burning a hole in your pocket. 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