A Cinderella story

My husband and I were watching television, and a woman was speaking about how the classic fairy tale is bad for the young girls of today, as many believe such a thing could happen to them. I was rolling this around in my mind when my husband laughed. I gave him the raised eyebrow of “What am I missing here?” and he thumbed at the TV. “What? You don’t agree?” He laughed harder still. Now thoroughly confused I said again, “What?!” He just looked at me completely dumbfounded I didn’t see what he found so funny. “So you’re saying that fairy tales do come true?” I guessed.

“Well Cinderella you tell me…” he said with a dry look. I had to laugh, I laughed long and loud and hard, and not for any other reason than…he was right. He was entirely right in every possible way, means and manner.

I have lived the Cinderella story, and I found my Prince, and we lived happily ever after. I never really thought about it, but it’s true. I knew men, by their nature liked to be the white knight riding in to save the damsel in distress, but I never really pictured myself as the damsel that needed saving. Hindsight is 20/20 though, and pretty much he was dead on.

I am the progeny of a bodybuilding Army man and a Sum Cum Laude SUNY model. I was even in a popular magazine as a wee fetus. Mind you, you can’t see me, because…well I was inside my mother, but I’m there. It was her big break, or so she’s told me. Mother of two boys, she got the nod and went to New York for the shoot for a men’s magazine. She was the wife of a soldier in Vietnam, and they chose her. It was a men’s magazine, and no I’m not telling those who do not know which one. That’s just gross, it’s my mother. I was also the one who utterly destroyed the last of my mother’s career for some time by being conceived. I was the whoops that my father left behind on leave. All I can say is I am very glad this was before Roe v Wade, or I would not exist. Anyway, due to well…I guess many factors and trying to get rid of me, I was born 3 months ahead of schedule. Being rather dinky, after they cooked me up for a while I was brought home. I spent my first half a day of being home being packed up. My mother put me and my two brothers in a taxi and sent us to my Grandmother with a note safety pinned to my oldest brother’s shirt. “Keep the ****ing things!” is all it said.

We were all one and one half years apart, nearly to the day. My Gram, who took in strays, stray cats, dogs and kids did that very thing. The first 7 years of my life were quite literally story book written ideal. I had a St. Bernard who followed me everywhere I went, including the bathtub, much to my Grandmother’s chagrin. I had two older brothers who loved me and who I went everywhere with. I had more love and happiness and joy then any single tiny human being should ever have the pleasure to know exists.

I learned how to be everything I was supposed to be, had all the building blocks of how to do the right things, and learned right from wrong. I learned that nothing is impossible it simply hadn’t been done yet. And I learned that some day I would want to find a man exactly like my Grandfather to spend the rest of my life with. He was strong, he worked hard, he was amazingly intelligent, and he was kind. He was quiet, not one to say much but he missed nothing that anyone else said. He listened to everything, took it in and if asked he knew the score on everything going on around him, usually he just had no comment on it. He taught me algebra at the age of four. It is to this very day the only math I have ever understood. I can add up as many variations of algebra you can give me, but give me a circle and ask me to figure out angles within it, or God forbid calculus, forget it. I’m otherwise entirely math illiterate. I carry a calculator everywhere I go. I can add a laundry list of supposed letters in my head to come up with the right answer, but put those same things in terms of actual numbers, forget it. I realize this makes no sense at all; it’s just the way it is.

Eventually time and circumstance put us back with my mother. Our lives changed from the happy intro of Bambi to …well nightmare on Elm Street. Although Freddy was now played by a stunning woman who could turn on you in a heartbeat if you said hello in a tone she didn’t like, then after wiping you out ask if you would like some ice cream once you regained consciousness.

My father went through a string of wives, all of them “Army bunnies” who loved the uniform but not the man inside of it. None of them worth are mentioning beyond that. This was why I swore I would never marry, ever.

My brother had moved out, and on his own and I was left to fend off Freddy for myself. To this day he feels guilty about that, and despite the fact I tell him not to he does. (It’s ridiculous, so stop it, any rational human being would have done the same, I would have too in your shoes. You are the best brother that ever lived, and I know.) Anyway, it’s all part of who I am, and who I became. All pieces of the weirdness pie I am today. So my now husband who was never very good at listening when I told him to do something he didn’t want to do, and wasn’t nearly as blind or dumb as I wished him to be, simply didn’t listen. We were outside, a large group of us, and we were hanging out and being silly, and I had hoped at this time my mother would be asleep. I told everyone I’d be right back and told him to wait there for me, key words being “right there”. This meant do not follow me, do not come with me, wait here. Apparently this to him was an open invitation to scoop me up and give me a piggy back ride to my house. This posed a slight problem, but I figured I’d make him go away once we got there and this would solve the problem. He certainly couldn’t come in, so maybe that would make him go away in case she wasn’t asleep after all. I hopped off his back and ran to the door quietly calling out that I’d meet him back there and shooing him in that direction. I watched him begin to head that way and figured, wrongly, he was going back. I snuck into the apartment, quiet as a church mouse only to find she was wide awake, and cranky. I hurried to the kitchen to grab the soda I had promised I would bring back so we would all have something to drink. That was when all hell broke loose.

He stood right outside the patio window, a young kid stunned and shocked by what he heard coming from that apartment. He had never experienced anything like that in his young life, and he had no idea what to do. He was dumbfounded, angry and trying to find a way into the apartment building when I came literally running out like hell itself was chasing me, since…well she was. I had simply gotten away, a rare, but lucky break, but I knew that she would not come out of the apartment and if I could make it to the front door I was free. Eventually later that night I’d have to go back, but for that moment I was free, and she would hopefully be asleep when I returned. I ran around the corner still sprinting with everything I had and bumped quite literally into him. The look on his face said everything. He had heard all of it. I had no need to explain the marks, the blood, he already knew. The look in his eyes I will never forget. He was stunned, reviled, angry, anger so fierce, and yet not at me. I had never had anyone angry for me instead of at me before. It was odd. I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him away, back towards our group of friends down the street, but he wouldn’t budge. His burning eyes were on the door behind me. I just kept shaking my head and yanking at him my eyes pleading with him to just come with me. He relented.

We went back to the group and nothing was said between us. I had cleaned up on the way. I slapped my smile back on and was the same old happy self they all knew. He was however brooding and angry. He wasn’t used to the shift of emotion, the façade of normalcy that you drop like a curtain at a play. I didn’t know what to say to him. I knew eventually I’d have to say something, but …what? How do you explain the unexplainable?

Later that night we said goodnight, and he went home and I, despite his urging to go with him, went back home as well. I was not going to live with some guy in his parent’s house. I had plans, I would be getting my own apartment soon enough. I had money stashed away, things you need to start an apartment, I was going to get out, soon enough and I would not be dependant upon anyone else to do it.

Later that night I ended up in the hospital. I had crawled to my friend Sue’s house, and her fiancé drove me to the hospital. I was bleeding from every opening in my body. The doctor said I looked liked a dog hit by a car. I tried to smile at him to show it wasn’t really all that bad. She tried to kill me that night. The weird thing about abusive relationships is you become accustomed to them. They asked me what happened, my only answer was “I don’t know.”. I was too afraid if I told them she would finish the job.

I called my father from the hospital, left a message about what had happened, but his wife at the time erased it. He never knew, never called, never came.

The next day Matt arrived at the apartment, and I tried not to look as horrid as I knew I did. He took me to his parent’s house and we had a long talk with his mother. She told me I would from that point on be living with them. I thanked her but refused. He has two younger sisters and I was surely not going to expose them to this dark side of life. There was no reason in the world to think my mother wouldn’t come there to make life miserable for everyone. No this was something I had to handle on my own. She was my problem and my problem alone. However, I wasn’t really alone, I had Matt. I didn’t really understand that at the time though, I never had someone aside from a brother to rely on in so long it didn’t seem possible.

I had learned to never rely on another person. It’s an important lesson to learn, to be entirely self reliant. To know that no matter what at the end of the day if it’s not you, it’s not happening. I had sworn I would never rely on another person ever again. If you don’t need anyone you can never end up being let down.

Matt was mad. Not at me, at circumstance, at her, at the way the world worked. The money I had saved for my college and for my apartment was gone. She had taken it, every last dime and bought a new car. I had no money, and no way out. I did however have the determination to get out.

It didn’t take long before I had enough, enough to at least get enough money to pay the first six months of bills. I figured that would be enough to get me going. I told Matt of my plans, I also told him I knew there was no way she’d just let me go. She had told me this before. She “owned” me, I was hers and I was to do what she said, when she said it, how she said it. He told me then he was going to the police. I laughed. They’d been there, when the neighbors had called the police before from my screams. I stood at the door a bleeding mess and they said keep the noise down and left. They would do nothing. He wasn’t planning on going to them over a “disagreement” he was planning on going to report an attempted murder, and there were hospital records to back it up. Either she left, and left all of my furniture behind within three days or he was going to tell the police everything and I had the proof, which I gave to him. My jaw dropped. He was right, I had my ticket out! BUT…if he were to tell her this, she would kill him. I don’t mean in the simplistic overused sense of the word, I mean quite literally. Despite him thinking that he could have handled her, he had no idea what she was, no idea the levels the woman went to. I knew right then I would have to tell her this. If she chose to kill me I had a chance to escape, or to simply get even better revenge of living through it once again. All of it however rested on him, to keep those records safe, to be there after it had happened, to be the rock in the raging sea. For the first time in ages I let myself need someone.

That night she came home from work, and she was ready for me the second she walked in. I didn’t even have a chance to ask her to discuss things. As she was hitting me I told her everything, told her he was going to the police, told her he had the medical records, told her that she could kill me now and it wouldn’t matter at all because in the end I’d win. She was going to jail, and I was going to be free of her, alive or dead I didn’t care because she was going to get what was coming and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She couldn’t touch him and she knew it. With a smile on my face I accepted the final blow that put me out.

I woke up some hours later, sore but happier than I’d been in a long time. I picked myself up off of the kitchen floor, went and cleaned up and found her packing. She was packing! I had won! I went into my room and moved the bureau in front of the door so I could get some sleep. When I woke up she had left for work. For the first time I had Matt inside the apartment. We were in my room when I heard the front door open. I threw open my bedroom window and more or less threw Matt out of it. I lived on the second floor. Good thing he could jump well.

She told me she’d given notice at work and was moving to Pennsylvania. She’d be gone within 3 days. The car she was taking with her. The furniture I had bought what she had not destroyed the night before was mine to keep, along with the dishes and glasses she had not smashed on my head. Three days later, she was gone. Matt, and some friends of mine packed all her stuff in a U-Haul in under an hour and she was gone. I was free!

I grinned at my husband of 20 years, and knew in that moment had it not been for him, I would never had gotten out. I didn’t know how. He had indeed rescued me, he was the white knight. White knight with a black hat he’d say. We were only kids, and yet not. So perhaps fairy tales do come true. I can honestly say the last 20 years have been much like the ending to Bambi. We’ve had some tough times, some obstacles and tragedies, but at the end of day I look around me and I wonder how a silly kid like me got so amazingly lucky. I grew up a wife, and found out what life truly was while standing beside the best friend a person could ever have. I am by all accounts entirely spoiled, and have everything anyone could ever wish for. It truly is a Cinderella story. So maybe the woman was all wrong, and there are indeed white knights, and even those who wear black hats, all over the world, just waiting to save a damsel in distress. Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo!