Early 1996, I had a 3 month old baby and another on the way. Thankfully, the morning sickness only lasted a short while this time, because I had a million other things to worry about!
To try to detail all the crazy things that happened in the next few months would be both monotonous and stressful — since it was the same ol’ garbage. But there are a couple different things to note.
I had gotten used to to this cycle:
- Ray finds a job
- Pay day comes – & no matter how much he promised he would be home after work … he wouldn’t
- By the time he would saunter in at 4, 5 am, he would be penniless & too tired to go to work.
- This would happen a couple of paychecks until he got fired.
- A couple of days were spent desperately looking for a job. Somehow, he would always find one rather quickly, though.
- …. and the cycle would repeat.
One payday night he came home at 130am. I was furious, panicking and devastated, as I usually was on pay day nights — but this time, his head was bleeding, he was breathing really hard & limping. He said he was walking home and a random gang attacked him, but looking back he probably owed someone money. I ran to the store to call 911 on the pay phone. The ambulance came, made sure nothing was broken & then left.
Another day, my dad was in town at a party at my uncle’s house that he invited us to. I was happy to go, but Ray was in a foul mood and stayed behind. While I was at the party, I felt guilty because there was so much good food there and we had almost nothing at home. I decided to take him a plate of food did so he could at least eat something.
When I got there, he told me to ask my dad for some money. I told him I had already had to ask for too much money so I wasn’t gonna do that. Of course, he became furious. Before he could get too violent, I ran out the door & got in the car to go back to my uncle’s house. Ray followed after me, took the plate of food I had taken him & hurled it at the car as I was driving off. I drove back so sad for him because he was going to be hungry, all because he couldn’t control his temper.
Later that night, he had thrown everything around in our apartment & broke a window. I was afraid he was going to hit me too so I went over to the store yet again to call 911. I decided I couldn’t report him though, so I just drove around for a while instead. However, I had actually dialed 911 and hung up before I said anything — so that caused dispatch to send officers out to that pay phone.
I hadn’t worked at Flying J for about a year, but there were some officers who ate there all the time who I had talked to a lot before I left. They knew I lived there in those apartments after I had had to call 911 when he got beat up. Given the proximity to the pay phone & their knowledge of our situation, they decided to check on us. When I went back to the apartment, they were there. Ray was screaming at them that they were only there because they wanted me, which was so embarrassing. One of them was really irritated & wanted to arrest him, but somehow I talked him into giving Ray a ride to his grandpa’s house to diffuse the situation. I couldn’t afford bail and I didn’t want him to be stuck in jail and lose yet another job.
With all of these problems getting worse & worse, Ray said he really did want to change, but once again had gotten too tangled up in the drug scene. He had somehow been in contact with his dad who invited us to go up to McCall, Idaho, where he was living. Ray was convinced it was what we needed to do, but my doctor said it was not a good idea to go up and try to find a new doctor with all the problems I had had in my last pregnancy (I left out a few things – I was hospitalized for several days at 7 months with Jordyn because one day, the morning sickness lasted all day into the night and I went into pre-term labor.) We agreed that he would move up there, get a life started for us and I would stay behind until the baby was born. Then I would move with him.
My aunt & uncle, Leila and Jerry, let me move in with them. The day Ray left in June, he actually felt incredibly sad. He said he hadn’t realized how much he cared about me & Jordyn until he had to leave us and now his sadness was even comparable to the way he felt when his mom died. This was shocking to me because, while we had a few good moments in the last year, he was usually viciously mean. I was convinced that he didn’t care about me at all, so now my heart soared with hope— he was starting to come around!
When he got to Idaho, he immediately found a job at a motel as a maintenance/housekeeping supervisor. They provided him one of the rooms to live in, in addition to his wages. Long distance calls were super expensive so we didn’t talk a lot on the phone, but he wrote me letters almost every day saying how much he loved us & couldn’t wait to see us. He started getting really sad about us not being there, so we made plans for me to go up and visit for a month before I had to get back and get ready to deliver the baby.
Jordyn & I went up on the bus in September. While I don’t think it’s possible to be in a relationship with Ray without some level of arguing, I can’t remember any big fights while I was there. We actually had the best time during that month. I helped him clean rooms & do laundry. While we were folding sheets in the laundry room, he would tell me story after story of his life and I really felt like I was beginning to understand him.
One thing I really began to grasp was where he learned some of his abusive behavior. His dad was relentless in his insults and criticism. Every time we hung out with him, he would just pour out heaps of negativity onto his son. He said Ray was an ugly idiot who would never amount to anything. One afternoon, he was being particularly nasty and I watched Ray as his head drooped lower and lower and lower. I’ve never been one to have any kind of courage to speak up or cause confrontation, but finally I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I think he’s the most handsome, intelligent man I’ve ever met.” His dad stopped in his tracks, stared at me long and hard and said “You DO?” Ray suddenly lifted his head straight up, and slowly smiled from ear to ear. His dad just sneered at me and mumbled something, then left soon after. That was another afternoon I vowed to make sure I loved this man forever. He needed me.
When my month-long visit was up, Ray took me to the bus station. I was sobbing. Ray promised me he would be on his way soon to help get ready for the baby, who was due in a month. Jordyn & I boarded the bus for our 3 day journey home.
Once we got back, my stomach started hurting pretty bad. I tried to ignore it but finally went to the ER at the request of my doctor. They did all kinds of tests & couldn’t find anything so they said I could go home in the morning. Before they let me go, they did one more test and discovered that over that long bus ride, my placenta had torn. I was going to have to have another c section as soon as possible— but first they wanted to give me a shot of steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop and little faster since it was so early. I got a hold of Ray & let him know so he could start making his way down.
I was on strict bed rest in the hospital for several days. They finally scheduled the surgery, but Ray’s bus was broken down somewhere between here and Idaho so I had my sister Lisa come with me for the delivery. We hadn’t been able to determine the gender of the baby during the whole pregnancy. I was sure it was going to be a boy and I was kinda sad about it, because it thought it would be so nice for Jordyn to have a sister. But I planned on naming him either Brandon Dylan or Dylan Brandon, after my favorite characters on 90210. I was completely in shock when the doctors said “it’s a girl!!” Again, I was crying tears of joy.
We had also been watching the TV show “Mad About You” a lot around that time & absolutely loved the name of the main character, Jamie. Ray & I had talked about giving our baby that name if she was a girl, so I felt comfortable telling the hospital staff to put it on her birth certificate. Later that afternoon, my Gramma called me and said that Ray had called her from his last bus stop to let her know he was finally on his way. She informed him the baby was a girl, so he told her to make sure I named her Jamie.
Ray finally got to the hospital that evening, just as they were bringing Jamie into the room. He was so excited to meet her! I just remember him saying, “Hi Baby Jamie” over & over again. That night, the nurses came and took her, saying she needed to be in the NICU due to her lab results. I called my Aunt Leila sobbing out of control because I was so scared. She prayed with me, and I felt better. Thankfully, Jamie only had to stay in the hospital one day longer than I did.
We decided not to go back to Idaho. Ray’s dad had been so horribly mean towards him after I left that he lost interest in living near him. So we stayed with Leila & Jerry for little while after that. Ray found a job at Village Inn in El Paso, and we soon got a little apartment down the road, close enough where he could walk to work. I was a little overwhelmed the first couple of weeks adjusting to two babies, but soon everything just felt like it was falling into place and I was happy with my little family.
Out of the Box 
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