Read an Excerpt
Women Escaping Violence
Empowerment Through Narrative
By Elaine J. Lawless University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 2001 Elaine J. Lawless
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-6267-7
CHAPTER 1
Safe and Unsafe Living
After nearly 17 years of marriage, Charlotte Harris tried to leave what she described as a physically abusive relationship by moving out of the duplex she shared with her husband and two children.
Angered by the breakup, police said, Dannie Harris yesterday drove to the apartment where his estranged wife had taken refuge and killed her.
One of the couple's two daughters was inside the ... bathroom after her father, carrying a shotgun, forced his way into their second-floor apartment at 251 Apple Tree Court, Captain Randy Boehm said....
Since June 13, three judges have barred Dannie Harris from having contact with his estranged wife.
[In an affadivit,] Charlotte Harris [had written that he] told her "We weren't through" and started choking her. He also threatened "to but a bullet in my head.".
The abuse had persisted throughout their marriage, [a neighbor] woman said. "Charlotte said he told her many a time" that "if she divorced him, he would make sure no one else would have her."
The [neighbor] woman's husband ... said Dannie Harris "said he was going to kill her several times."
Columbia Daily Tribune, July 31, 1997
THIS MORNING I WAS at the shelter by 8:10. I had an interview set up to tape record a resident's story. This is maybe the fourth or fifth appointment I have had with this particular woman. It has been difficult to get her to commit to a time and date. She keeps saying she will; she tells me she wants to tell me her story. She understands her story has a kind of power, and she is the power broker, suddenly. Last week she gave a portion of her story to a couple of newspaper reporters and her words were included on the six-o'clock news. But she keeps missing appointments, asking if we can postpone, telling me she's not feeling well or is too "messed up today" to do it. I learn patience here; I tell her that's fine. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be around; how about Friday? Sure, she tells me, and by now I know that Friday may come and go and I still won't have her story. But I would love to hear her story; I want it for this study—and so I wait patiently, hoping someday we will sit down together and she will tell me what has happened to her.
So I am here early and the place is short-staffed. I am here to tape record a story, but soon after I walk in, I'm releasing one woman's mail to her from the shelter's safe box even as I'm reaching to answer the phone. Only Karen is in the office, trying to answer three phone lines at once. I answer a line as I try to take off my sweater. I know the script: "Shelter—can I help you?" This time it is a call for Sally, the director. I check to see if she's in; she's not; I take a message. I run to the bathroom before that line or the two others begin to ring again. I make it, barely. "Shelter—can I help you?" This time I don't get off so easy. This woman wants to talk to Karen: She's in jail—her husband beat her Saturday night and so she "cut him." Of course, by the time the police arrived, he was bleeding profusely and claiming she tried to kill him; she told them, no, he'd been beating her all night and raped her twice, and that she was just fed up and escaped to the kitchen and grabbed the closest knife and cut him when he lunged for her. But she's in jail and worried about her kids, could she talk to Karen or maybe Barbara, the DOVE (Domestic Violence Enforcement) coordinator, who facilitates interaction between victims and the police?
The other line is ringing, so I put her on hold and indicate to Karen, who is still on line 1, that she's needed on line 2, while I answer line 3. The phone looks like a Christmas tree, all lit up with blinking red flashing lights, in contrast to the police car lights that are inactivated at this moment as Officer Caldwell pulls into the driveway. He's here to take photographs of a resident's face. She came in last night and is pretty badly beaten. Officer Caldwell has returned today because the imprint of a booted foot is emerging in technicolor on her face and the prosecutor needs a photo of it. Caldwell will take pictures of her back and legs as well while he is here. The bruises often do not really emerge for a day or two; then they are really mean and ugly—the best time for the polaroids. Walt is a good cop. There are good cops and bad cops in this town, and we generally know which is which. Walt is one of the best we've ever worked with. He's the policeman involved in the DOVE unit, a federally and state funded program for arresting and prosecuting domestic violence offenders—wife beaters. Walt wants to put them all away—for a very long time. A good cop. I push the release button to "buzz" him into the building even as I answer the phone again. Then I have to warn everyone that a man is entering the building, a policeman—but he's not here for any of them; they don't need to be concerned. But they do need to hold their children, who always seem terrified when men enter their new safe space. For them, at this moment, all men are terrifying. And policemen are closely associated with the terror they have been living with.
Line 3: "Shelter—can I help you?" The woman on the other end tells me her name and says she is with Community Caring—a group I've never heard of. She is at a local school and has a woman in her office who has a six-year-old daughter in the school. This Caring staff person has just discovered that the woman and her child have been living in a car and in an abandoned house. The woman left another town in the state, about two hundred miles away, to escape an abusive man. He had been beating her daily and had molested the girl; she had called the police there, but they had not helped her at all. So, she put some clothes in a black plastic bag and left town. She thought she would be able to stay with some relatives in Columbia, but that hadn't worked out, so she was living in a nephew's car or in this old house and working for Job Service from 4 A.M. to noon to buy some groceries for her child. The Caring worker wants to know if I think this woman might qualify for coming to the shelter. I certainly think so, but I ask to speak directly to the woman. Within half an hour, we have invited her to come into the shelter; the Caring worker volunteers to bring her over and to bring her child later, after school. Karen takes down her story for the intake interview, and we gather together some clothes and food for her and determine which room to put her in. We ask her to make a grocery list and tell her we will provide food for her, and we give her a cabinet in the kitchen with her name on it. She sits down heavily in the chair in the office and begins to cry. I watch her shoulders heave as she crumples in the old recliner, unable to speak. I can only guess that these are tears of relief. She has found shelter; we are offering her a bed, food, warmth, assistance, safety. No one says a word. We let her cry and hand her the Kleenex box. And then the phone begins to ring again—all three lines at once.
Someone wants to bring in four bags of children's clothes. She had four children of her own, she explains, and she's washed and put into bags all of the clothes they had outgrown. She asks if we need children's clothes. I looked at the woman in the chair and tell her, yes, thank you, we can use those clothes. Another line, another donation of women's and children's clothes. I suggest they bring them right over but warn her I will only give her the address when she is actually ready to come and remind her this is a confidential location and she is not to reveal where we are located. She agrees, slightly put off by this information.
Line 1 is the police department looking for Walt; line 3, a woman trying to reach Sally. The woman is terrified about her husband coming this morning to take away her child. Can't we do a Child Order of Protection for her? I explain, no, we can't do those at the shelter, she will need to go to the children's division at the courthouse and get that. But they are closed. Damn—of course, it's Columbus Day. What to do? I'll find Sally. I hear Sally tell her she could come into shelter with the boy if that is what she wants and needs today, until she can get to the courthouse and get the order of protection. I'm thinking, where are we going to put another woman and child? Even as she's talking to this woman, I'm looking at the resident list. Some residents don't stay long. On the other hand, for most of them there's really no other place to go.
The rules here are pretty strict and rigidly enforced. It's not a hotel. For their own safety, and so the staff knows where they are at all times, the residents have to report "out" and report back "in." If they have children, they must care for them or contract with another resident to watch them; the staff has enough to do. Sometimes, though, they get a break when the children's coordinator plans outings, or play afternoons in the backyard, or games for a dreary winter day. The women have curfews that they must honor; they know it is about safety, but as grown women all these restrictions make them angry. They had to leave their homes, their possessions, their lives to come here into safety, and now there are rules and regulations and fear and curfews. The irony of how safety is achieved at their expense is not lost on them.
Someone left last night, I knew, so there was a room that might be available. But I'm guessing the bed needs to be stripped and the room aired out. That is one of my least favorite jobs, cleaning the rooms. I feel like such an intruder in their space, handling their clothing, their personal items, the children's toys.
I remind the new resident to make out a grocery list, but her vacant look tells me to remind her tomorrow when she's rested. Sally suggests she quit the Job Service job with the long nighttime hours and take a few days here in the shelter to regroup, rest, and decide if she couldn't find a better kind of job. We will provide for her for a while; she might just want to go upstairs and lie down for a bit. She looks at Sally with blank, unbelieving eyes and whispers "thank you" softly as she walks past us and toward the kitchen with Karen, heading for the pantry and food.
Between phone calls, answering the many questions and concerns of the current residents, and helping the latest arrival, Karen, who often also works as a court advocate, begins to tell me about two women she has been assisting who have agreed to give me their stories for my book. This happens a lot. The counselors, or the DOVE staff, or the resident staff, talk to women about my research project and ask if they would be interested in giving me their stories. I have more interviews than I can actually do in a week's time, given that I'm also teaching a full load now at the university and busy with about a thousand other things, as well as driving my two children to all their activities. I feel scattered, to say the least. But each woman's story seems so valuable and courageous. I just keep making appointments and squeezing my daytime hours closer and closer together; then I find myself over here at night taping one more story from a woman who has a day job. This work puts everything into perspective. A very good thing to learn.
Two women come in for counseling and the woman with the boot mark on her face comes to get help with her bruises. Another woman comes in to report that she's still trying to get a job thorough the human services program. I wish her luck. She's been here a long time; gone, come back. She needs to find a foothold in the world, but the footing is quite slippery for her.
A message comes across the TDD from the deaf advocate. I'm not accustomed to this format, but it turns out to be quite simple, really. The operator serves as a translator, and I am able to voice my replies. I have been embarrassed in my interactions with the deaf. We've had deaf residents, and it's never easy. I often must resort to paper and pen, or mouth my responses in an exaggerated manner that must be an insult to the client. The use of interpreters from the deaf advocates and the new TDD have opened a new world of access for deaf clients.
One Thursday evening in January, I get to the shelter a little before 6:30. I would much rather be driving home. It is dark out, and it's cold, a mixture of rain and sleet crackling against my windshield. I try to pull into the shelter parking lot but I cannot: there are too many cars already parked there, jammed in the small spaces, beside the dumpster, lined up along the curb. A big group tonight, I think. As usual. I pull back into the street and park my car, locking the doors. This does not feel like a safe place to park. People are still coming out of the doors of the adjacent social service buildings, entering the streets, heading home or to the corner grocery. They brace themselves against the knifelike wind and the pelting ice that hurts their faces. I am parked half a block down the street and I'm uncomfortable with that, but I have no choice. I get out quickly, stashing my bag under the seat. I never know where it is safer, in the car or in the shelter. In either place a wallet is fair game. I risk the car.
I walk across the parking lot and toward the building, which looks a bit like a real estate agency. Wide front door, windows with closed venetians across the entire front. Smaller windows all lit in the upstairs rooms. There is a number above the door but no signs, nothing to identify this brick structure here on a street of run-down clapboard houses. I push the buzzer to announce my arrival and to gain access. The venetian blinds near the door part with a furtive finger. I see an eye behind the slit. I cannot tell who it is, but I know that my face is clearly visible in the glare of the porch lights. The noise of the buzzer lets me know the door is being unlocked for me. I have only a few moments to turn the knob and enter before the lock is secure again.
The foyer is cool, but I feel the heat from the hallway as I move towards the middle of the shelter. I reach a hand to the inside of the split office door, opening the door from the inside, aware that this marks me as a staff person, an insider. I am pleased to be reminded that I am accepted here. The office staff murmurs greetings; even those on the phone give a nod, a small wave, making me feel welcome. I get some hugs, lots of smiles, and the feeling is warm, comfortable. I like coming into this space now that I'm here. I like being a part of the staff—yet the work, the place, can drag me down almost immediately. I feel a little apprehensive about the next hour. I listen as the volunteers talk in low voices about things they can do with the children during the group meetings. Volunteers make it possible for the moms to sit quietly, without interruption (usually), for an hour of important connecting with other women and with the counselors. The volunteers herd the children, large and small, back into the kitchen area and around the big table already prepared with magic markers, large sheets of paper, games. Later, they will serve popcorn and maybe take the children out to the back porch if the weather permits.
Group meetings are always difficult. It is a time for residents as well as women from "outside" the shelter to come together to share, to comfort, to advise each other. Raw emotions, sadness, anger, tears, and frustrations abound in the living room these nights. An outpouring of souls in danger, who have come together to find a few minutes of safety, solace, and camaraderie in a harsh and uncaring world where pain is the order of the day.
I hang my coat and stash my keys before I move toward the doors that will lead me to the living room. Women are there hugging each other, sitting alone, smoking, crying quietly in a corner, trying to pry their children loose from their necks so volunteers can play with them for an hour while they share adult concerns with adults. It is a noisy space, smoky, crowded; smells from the kitchen are strong; the children are wild and loud, smashing into my legs, reaching up for hugs, smiles and tears all awash on smeared and smudgy faces. I see the Christmas tree is still standing, long after December has come and gone. It looks a bit bedraggled, but the red and blue lights are cheery and welcome. I don't blame them for keeping it here. I would hang on to it, too.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Women Escaping Violence by Elaine J. Lawless. Copyright © 2001 Elaine J. Lawless. Excerpted by permission of University of Missouri Press.
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