Читать книгу More than a Miracle - Susan Smith - Страница 8

First Marriage

By the end of my junior year, we were married. My parents begged us to wait. I was too young to get married and still had one more year of school to finish. It would be difficult, but we were full of hopes and dreams.

We had our first child, Donnie, a week after graduation. I had to start teaching that fall because my husband was still in law school. A good friend who also had a baby offered to babysit. We enjoyed life in a small college town until my husband finished law school.

Two years later, we moved to a duplex in Louisville, a rural town about fifteen miles northeast of Canton, Ohio. We rented an apartment for two years. It was a small, mostly rural town. Our second son, Nicky, was born the following year. I loved being a stay-at-home mom.

Don was busy establishing himself in his father’s family law practice. We moved to a house in Canton that we got at a good price from an estate sale. It needed a lot of work inside, but I thought it would be fun. We would have to do a little bit at a time. The house was more than one hundred years old. I got pretty good at wallpapering and painting. I was able to go to auctions to find furniture to fix up.

A year later, things started to change. Don became very controlling. If I went grocery shopping, he would demand to know how long I would be gone. I had to account for every minute. He also became critical of the way I dressed. Short skirts were in style, but I had to wear mine below my knees. He also didn’t want me to wear makeup. Slowly, I was losing my self-esteem. I started to long for the feeling I had as the free spirit in my youth.

Don started going out after work and would come home drunk. I would cringe when I heard him come in late at night. I was just starting to be honest with myself about our marriage when I found out that I was pregnant again.

The pregnancy was unremarkable until the day Michael was born. I woke up early in the morning on November 10 to discover that I was in hard labor and bleeding. We rushed to the hospital. As soon as the nurses checked me, they snapped into crisis mode. I was about ready to rupture, and the baby’s heartbeat was weak.

His position was called a “transverse lie.” Instead of being in a “head down” position, he was lying on his back across the birth canal.

An emergency C-section was performed. They didn’t even have time to prep me. Someone slapped a mask on my face and told me to start counting backward. As they made a long vertical incision, it felt like I was spiraling down a deep well.

Don was not there when I woke up. The nurse told me that he had nearly passed out during the ordeal. They sent him home. A short time later I started to hemorrhage. I lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion. At one point, I stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated.

During that time, the weirdest thing happened. I felt like I was floating up on the ceiling and looking down. I could see the doctors and nurses working on me but felt no fear. It felt like an out-of-body experience. I was told later that they were afraid they were going to lose me.

We hired a young Mennonite woman to come and help me at home. She was a sweet eighteen-year-old who was mature beyond her years. It didn’t take long for Donnie and Nicky to stop asking her about her funny hat and long dresses. She brought me the baby to feed, took care of Donnie and Nicky during the day, and prepared simple dinners. Don came home from the office those nights because he had to take her home since she didn’t drive, and I needed him to help me in the evenings. Getting Donnie and Nicky ready for their baths and bed was like a three-ring circus, requiring strength, patience, and endurance. He got quite good at making up bedtime stories. For a while I forgot how unhappy I had been.

*****

Several months later, we bought a house in a small nearby town. It had a bigger yard and room for the boys to run around outside.

My husband’s controlling behavior continued while I became increasingly unhappy. I felt trapped in a life with someone I no longer loved. One night I had a terrible nightmare. It was the worst dream I had ever had, and it scared me so bad that I started seeing a psychiatrist. The doctor tried to encourage me to think for myself. I didn’t have the courage to tell Don how I felt because he could have a bad temper.

The psychiatrist said that we should try to communicate more. We tried. One day he told me he was having an affair. He was with other women on those nights he stayed out late and came home drunk. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. His attempt at honesty only served to strengthen my resolve to end the relationship.

I asked Don to leave while I prepared the boys and our belongings for a move. Shortly after that, our neighbor, Bob, stopped me as I was outside walking up the street pushing Michael in a stroller with Donnie and Nicky scooting along on their trikes. He had a worried expression on his face as he told me about something Don had said to him the day before. He described his concern for the safety of Donnie, Nicky, Michael, and me due to the strange encounter with my soon-to-be ex.

Bob told me that my husband had shown him a newspaper article about a man in a nearby town who had shot and killed his wife and children, then turned the gun on himself. He then told our neighbor that he had bought a gun and was planning to do the same.

That was all I needed to hear. Soon after that I took the three boys and my car and went back to Ashtabula.

I had no money and didn’t know where we would live, but with every mile I put between us my feelings of self-worth increased.

We eventually agreed to divorce.