Out of the Box

1997 began with both the same and new, different types of problems. After we moved into our new apartment, Ray went right back to the same stuff. I really had to keep an eye on him on payday to make sure our rent got paid, but most of anything beyond that was spent on his habits. The yelling & name-calling also returned with a vengeance. I had just given birth to my second baby in two years, and Ray just loved to point out how fat I was, even though I was much thinner than I had been when I met him.

At some point I noticed that the mailbox key was missing all the time. I couldn’t figure out why the mail box key would be something to hide – of all things! Driven by curiosity to know why, I searched until I found it and then hid it from him. After checking the mail every day for a while, I soon found out what he was hiding. We had gotten cable for the first time ever and the bill arrived — with several hundred dollars worth of pay-per-view porn charges listed.

This was a baffling new thing for me. I had grown up so sheltered that I had never seen anything along those lines. By the time I got old enough to catch glimpses in random places, I thought it was just something gross that very few nasty people took part in. Several months prior to seeing this bill, Ray had told me he had a magazine under the mattress. I was so shocked that something like that was in my house! He reasoned that every grown man watches it — it’s just what men do. At first, I tried to go along with it, but when I saw this crazy cable bill I started to get offended. How could he like this stuff so much that he would spend this kind of money that we didn’t have on it? We could have bought something nice for the babies or paid some other bills, but he’d rather see all these girls?

I confronted him about it and again, he said that it’s something men need –and he especially needed it since I had just had two babies. I tried to digest that statement, but it really hurt my feelings. Another night, we had gotten into a really nasty fight. He called me every name in the book, of course pointing out how ugly and fat I was, and then went to sleep on the couch. After an hour or so, he called out to me “Les, I’m sorry. I’m just in a bad mood. Come here.” I went into the living room & stood next to him. He pulled me down & started kissing me. I thought he was trying to make up for his words, & my bruised heart really needed some affection so I laid down with him on the couch. He continued to kiss me and started getting more touchy… and then I heard the high pitch of the TV coming on. I looked over and he had turned on a porn movie —because apparently he needed something better to motivate him to pay attention to me. I got up and ran into the room crying … and he yelled about how stupid I was being.

I grew to despise this new problem even more than I did the drugs. I would stare at myself in the mirror & say “Well yeah, Les— look at you! Hideous! Why would you think he could ever love you?” I got more depressed than I had ever been. Any time I was in public, I kept my eyes on the ground, never making eye contact with anyone because I assumed everyone thought I was as disgusting as Ray did. They were just too nice to say it because not everyone could be as bluntly honest as him.

Suddenly, I became determined to not be disgusting anymore. I started exercising obsessively. When I went grocery shopping, I wouldn’t buy anything that had any more than 5 grams of fat in it— but I preferred zero. Most nights I ate diet jello with diet cool whip for dinner. I have always been about 165-200 lbs, but within about two months, I weighed 130 and still felt ginormous. The day I was able to squeeze myself into size 5 jeans, down from my size 12s, I was in total disbelief. I couldn’t believe I fit into those things when I was still so grossly fat!

I also became desperate for God to help me. One of Jesse’s uncle’s churches was a couple miles down the road. We were without a car again, so I began packing up the babies in the stroller and walking to church. The first Sunday I attended, I saw that Jesse had actually returned from California. He saw me and came over to chat. After the service, he even walked with us to the park that was on our way home. We sat down and talked for a while, and soon he was even crawling around in the sand, playing with Jordyn. My heart began to ache because I felt like if I had just been more patient, maybe what I had thought I heard from God would have come true. But no… I had gone and messed it all up. I was willing to bet Jesse would never treat someone the way Ray did. And he probably would never look at the trash he did either. But I had made my own choices and now had to live with them.

One evening Ray was off of work and was being so ugly that I couldn’t stand to be at home. Earlier in the week, I had had to call my sister Lisa to come get me because he had actually punched me in the head. I wasn’t interested in seeing if he’d do it again. We had finally gotten a car, so I put the kids in there and went to walk around Walmart at midnight. (Back in the day when Walmart was open 24 hours)

I was wandering around WalMart haphazardly, when of all people in the world, I ran into Jesse. He was surprised to see us there that late. I told him we were having a tough time and he asked if we’d like to go to Village Inn to get hot chocolate. We went and talked for a long time. Not the best situation for kids of course, but surely better than hearing all the yelling at home. When I got home, Ray was passed out. I stared at him and loved him so much, but deep inside felt so cheated. What HAD that night at Jesse’s church meant? It was so real. I really didn’t think I could have made it all up in my head. Did I screw up all of God’s plans?

I continued to go to that church, but Sundays were such a battle in my mind. I wanted to be worshipping but instead I was questioning why things were so unfair. A lot of times, Jesse was even leading the worship so that was even more distracting. I scheduled a talk with the pastor, Jesse’s uncle. I wanted so badly to do the right thing. I went to revivals in town, I read my Bible. I prayed. But I still didn’t understand a lot of what I was reading, and I still felt like God was mad at me for screwing up his plans, so now he was punishing me extra.

Around March or so, we just couldn’t pay our bills. There was no doubt I was going to have to go back to work. Ray said he could probably get me a job at Village Inn, so we scheduled an interview with the manager. The night before the interview, Ray stayed out late drinking with some guys from work. When he came home, he had a guy with him. I can’t even remember his name, so I’ll call him Patrick and hope that’s not his real name. Patrick had driven our car to give Ray a ride home and now he needed a ride home— but Ray didn’t want me to take him. He said Patrick was going to sleep on our couch for the night.

Back in those days, our bed was just a full size and we didn’t have cribs. So I piled up every blanket in the house on the floor next to our bed to make a pretty decent “mattress”, and the babies and I slept on that. Ray passed out on the bed and I had just laid down on the floor with the babies when I felt a presence over me. Patrick was crawling onto the blankets, trying to kiss me. I told him I was not interested as nicely as I could – because I’ve always been that person afraid of being mean. He went away, and I went back to trying to go to sleep. Again, I felt him back in the room, crawling towards me. This time I pushed him away, so he left. A few minutes later, I felt him again, this time more persistent. I kneed him in the chest and he left again. I started to get really scared, so I crawled up into the bed with Ray and started trying to wake him up by pinching him and scratching him. All I got in return were deep snores. The next thing I knew, Patrick was climbing into the bed with us, getting extremely aggressive.

Just when I was really getting terrified, Ray woke up. He yelled, “what the **** is going on?!” Patrick ran into the other room and I told Ray what had been happening. He yelled at me, “Well, what did you do to lead him on?!?!” Patrick wasn’t someone I would have been interested in even if I had been single! I told him I couldn’t believe he was blaming me. He just shook his head and walked out of the room. I heard him say, “Come on bro, I’ll take you home.” When he came back, he said I was a ho and that’s why this guy was trying these things.

The next day, I had my interview at Village Inn. The manager said he really liked me and was going to hire me. Patrick was a server there too, though, so I told the manager what happened and asked if I could work different days than him. He told me I wouldn’t have to worry and fired him that same day. I was hired for swing shift serving.

My first night there, they introduced me to the lead server, Kevin, and said he was going to be training me. I was mortified!!!! Kevin was extremely handsome and the epitome of all things cool. I did not want him anywhere near me, much less training me! I was sure he thought I was an idiot and was upset that he had to deal with me. As we talked, it came out that I was Ray’s girlfriend. He appeared to be super surprised and said, “Wait, YOU are RAY’s girlfriend?” I immediately put my head down, thinking he was one of those people who expected Ray’s girlfriend to look like Brooke Shields, only to be disappointed by me. He could see my reaction and followed up with, “Hey, I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I actually thought you’re way too good for him.” I couldn’t believe he said that! Then I reasoned that he was being nice to me because he felt sorry for me.

Over the next couple weeks though, I started to get a lot of attention. More attention than I had ever gotten in my life! Just some crazy things that happened in those first couple months at Village Inn:

• A guy I waited on called me on the restaurant phone after he left to ask if I wanted to go on a date.
• Another guy wrote, “I’m in love with you” on the tip that he left on the table.
• I was promoted to lead server fairly quickly, and one of the other servers yelled that she was tired of getting passed over in favor of Barbie dolls.
• A girl passing through El Paso asked if she could take a picture of me and this other ridiculously handsome server named Alfred. She said she wanted to show her friends how good-looking people were in El Paso.

I was genuinely confused because I kept hearing all these compliments, but I knew they were wrong. In fact, I don’t have a single picture of me during this time frame because I felt so hideous that I hid any time some took a camera out. It was a really conflicting time because I knew how I felt about myself, and then I heard what people were saying. It made no sense! One thing for sure, though, I sure did learn to love being at work. The things I heard there were far better than the things I heard at home.

Ray started to get extremely jealous. He would sit outside the restaurant and watch me my entire shift. If I spent too much time at one table, he would start flashing the headlights. He actually wound up getting fired one night, because he felt I was talking to someone too long and came running inside, screaming at me.

Without his job, we wound up not being able to pay rent too many times and had to move again. We found a mobile home in a run down trailer park and moved into there. The months that we spent in that trailer were some of the worst days of my life. Ray became the most abusive he had ever been, both verbally and several times physically. He would break my curling irons and throw away my makeup because he didn’t want me to look nice at work. Then after a couple months there, we had to move again because we couldn’t pay that rent either.

Just as we were about to move into the most depressing house we’d ever tried to live in, Ray’s grandma passed away. Family came in from out of town for the funeral, including his aunt from Arkansas. She had a soft spot for Ray because she had been very close to her sister, Ray’s mom. She told Ray he could go back to Arkansas with her, get a place going and then I could move out with them when it was ready. We were so desperate for change that we agreed. Ray left with them when they went home. I moved in with my good friend from high school. We had worked together at Flying J & had become pretty close. So she let me live with her until I was ready to go to Arkansas.

Those next few weeks were crazy. I almost got fired from Ray calling the restaurant about 80 times per shift, making sure I was still there, cussing and screaming at me all the way from Arkansas. Everyone asked me why I didn’t just take the opportunity to leave him while he was so far away. I seriously considered it, but I still just didn’t want my babies to not have their dad. I still believed that something had to give and we were going to make it. I just had to hang in there, as hard as it was — but it was getting harder and harder.

One night after work, all my co-workers decided to hang out in the parking lot & I joined them. We were only there for a little while when someone in the group suggested we go to their apartment a little down the road. I figured it would be ok to go for a while. We went and were having a really good time. It was nice to hang out with adults who didn’t scream at me. After a while, I had to go inside to use the bathroom. When I came out, Alfred —that super handsome server who was in the picture with me— was standing in front of the door.

To my hugest shock, he started to kiss me. I didn’t know what to do. I mean l, of course, the right answer would have been to push him away and run out of there. But I had felt so ugly for so long, had been tossed aside for porn girls, had been told I was too disgusting to ever get anyone else. Truth be told, just the fact that someone this good-looking would pay any kind of attention to me was too much for me to handle. It helped vindicate me & prove to Ray that all his words weren’t always right. So, all these years later, it pains me greatly to type these words … I didn’t stop him. And I didn’t stop him when he pulled me into one of the rooms. And I didn’t stop anything after that. I was just too caught up in the wrong things.

When it was all over, I had to face the reality of what I had done. I drove home in total panic. Seriously… WHAT HAD I JUST DONE??? There was no taking it back now. I had completely let Ray down. I said I was going to love him through his problems … and I failed miserably. I was sick to my stomach and so very sad. I wound up leaving to Arkansas just a couple weeks after that. I wanted to get to Ray, hold him tight and somehow make up for what I had done.

After I had been there a couple of weeks, I figured he couldn’t really forgive me if he wasn’t aware of what happened. So I prayed a bunch and then mustered up the courage to tell him. Predictably, all hell broke loose. He was so very angry. Said the meanest things he had ever said, smacked me around as much as he could in a quiet house where people were down the hall. This time, I felt like I deserved it, though. I wasn’t sure if God or Ray could ever forgive me, but I just kept praying that the storm would pass and both of them would eventually see how sorry I was.

A couple weeks later, Ray was at work and I was driving around looking for a place to rent so we could get our own place. I found a little house that had a sign in the window so I pulled up to the curb. I looked in the back and the babies were fast asleep. I didn’t want to disturb them just to get them out for the two minutes it would take to run out and get the phone number off the sign. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been to Arkansas in July, but it was SO hot and SO humid. Being without an air conditioner was absolute torture, so I left the car running while I got out to grab the number.

As I was nearing the window, I saw the reflection of my car behind me – and I thought I was seeing things, because it looked like the car was moving. I turned around to check, and sure enough, it was rolling away. I ran as fast as I could to catch up to it, and I saw Jordyn standing in the driver’s seat. I have no idea how she got up there so incredibly fast AND figured out how to put the thing in Drive, but …. she did. She was reaching both arms out to me, crying and screaming her head off. I opened the passenger door to get in, but the car was rolling too fast and I lost my footing. I fell to the ground and looked up – the back tires were rolling right towards me. I have no idea how I rolled out of the way in time.

I jumped up and bolted towards the car, but I had lost too much time and there was no hope of catching up with it. I watched helplessly as it crashed into a parked car, pushing it sideways, and then kept on going. It then rolled right over a giant apartment complex mailbox, crossed over the next street, and was headed towards an apartment complex. Time seemed to stand still and I couldn’t even believe what I was watching. My babies were going to be in the worst crash and I couldn’t help them. Just then, a man appeared. It looked like he was taking trash to a dumpster. He looked at the car, looked at me, and then looked back at the car. I somehow managed to squeak out, “Please help!!!” He ran like lightning, got into the car and stopped it, just millimeters from the front door of that apartment.

Sobbing with relief, I ran to the driver’s side and retrieved my poor Jordyn who was hysterical. I looked in the back seat and Jamie was still fast asleep, unaware that anything ever happened. The police showed up and asked how the car got stopped. I told them, “That man stopped it!” They looked around … and there was no man. To this day, I will never know if he was an angel or someone with warrants – but I never saw him again or got to thank him. I just couldn’t believe that God would step in and allow such disaster to be averted for someone as jacked up as me!!!!