Page 51 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

“Am I? Sometimes I wonder.”

“It’s only been a week, Hallie. How would you have acted a week ago if you’d heard Carrie Ann being paddled through that window?”

Hallie smiles. “I’d probably have rushed through the front door and tackled Danelle like I did Troy.”

Traci lets loose a hearty laugh. “Oh boy. What a memory that is. I’ll never forget the look on Troy’s face when you were on his back trying to strangle him.”

The girls spend a minute laughing about what, at the time, had been a very traumatic event for Hallie. That’s when she knows Traci is right. She has made a lot of progress in the last week.

Traci brings things back down with an unwelcome question. “So, are you ready to tell me about Gene yet?”

Hallie takes a deep cleansing breath. “You know, I think I am. I want him gone, and I’ve been carrying the baggage of him around with me for way too long.”

“So, your mom married him. How old were you at the time?”

“Sixteen. At first, I thought he was just a blow hard, but I soon figured out he was so much worse. He made us use all of Mom’s income to take care of the house and our living expenses because he said he wasn’t gonna pay to raise some other bastard’s kid. He then spent all the money he made on himself.”

“Sounds like a real peach.”

“You don’t know the half of it. He was pretty big into gambling. He went out almost every night, often coming home late drunk and in a bad mood if he’d lost that night. At first, he would just take it out on Mom. Do you have any idea how I felt as a sixteen-year-old virgin having to sit in my room and listen to my mother being roughed up by that asshole before he would… well… he got off on really rough sex. I broke in there once when she was crying out for him to stop and fought him off of her, but he backhanded me hard enough that I saw stars. Then the asshole forced me to sit in a chair in the corner and watch him finish her off that night, telling me if I didn’t behave, he would do the same thing to me. That was my introduction to sex, watching my mother be basically raped by a man she was stupid enough to marry.”

“Oh, Hallie, I am so sorry, for you and your poor mother. What a terrible trauma for her to live through.”

“Thanks, but that was just the beginning. Things changed pretty quick after that night. He didn’t even try to hide what he was doing to Mom after that. In fact, I think he loved the humiliation we both felt being controlled and afraid of him. I begged her to leave him. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what happened to my mom those last few years of her life. It’s like she was brainwashed by him or something. She stopped even trying to fight back.”

“Oh, Hallie. It breaks my heart that you had to go through seeing your mother as a battered wife. I have treated several women that have been able to recover, but I saw first-hand how hard it was for them to fight through their fear. Still, I’d have hoped she could have kicked him out if not for herself, then for you.”

Hallie feels the tears pooling as she remembers her mom. “She tried. Once. After a really bad night, she called a locksmith and had all of the locks changed while he was at work. We boxed up his shit and put it outside. I was so proud of her that day.”

“So what happened?” Traci’s quiet prodding helps Hallie keep going.

“He came back, all apologetic with flowers, promising he would change and that he would get help for his gambling addiction. She bought his line of bullshit. Things were better for a few weeks, but then went back to the way they’d been before, if not worse. By then it was my senior year and I had hoped to just make it until I could move away to go to college. Looking back, Aunt Gina offered to let me come live with them after graduation. I wish I’d taken her up on the offer, but I ended up staying home. I felt guilty leaving Mom there alone with him, you know?”

“She made her choices, Hallie. I’m sure she would have been happy for you to get away from him. What happened to your mom?”

“About a year after I graduated from high school, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She hadn’t been feeling good for a while. I had begged her to go to the doctor, but she was so afraid to go because she knew she would have to explain the bruises all over her body. By the time they found it, she was already stage four. She only lasted a few months. I don’t think she was afraid of dying, but I know she was terrified of leaving me alone with Gene. She made me promise to leave and go live with Aunt Gina, but the very night of Mom’s funeral, Gene tried to rape me. The bastard actually thought I was going to take Mom’s place, can you believe that shit? I fought him off and went over to Eddie’s. We really weren’t all that serious, but I had spent a lot of time with him and the band to avoid going home. They were just about to leave on their first tour, basically playing beer gardens across the south. We traveled in two cargo vans.

Slept in tents in campgrounds more often than real beds.”

“Sounds like an adventure.”

“Honestly, it was fun. At least more fun than the last couple of years before had been.”

“What happened with Eddie? How did you find yourself driving across country in the middle of the night in a snowstorm to get help?”

Her heart contracts. She understands how it’s said that people can have a broken heart. That is what Eddie did to hers, but not the way most would think. Eddie had been her friend first, and the loss of his friendship is what cuts her to her core. “I started feeling less and less like his girlfriend and more and more like his mother about a year ago. He was so fun before he started having some success. I’ve heard that fame can change people. He hasn’t even become that famous yet, but he’s already out of control. It started with him fucking around with groupies that would follow the band from gig to gig. At first, I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but eventually, I’d had enough. We pretty much broke up, but I stayed on as the band manager. It was like trying to herd a bunch of grown children around the country, trying to keep them sober and showing up to shows on time. Still, I helped get them a recording deal and then landed them the opening gig for Matchbox 20. They really are talented, and they have what it takes to make it big, but they are hell bent on throwing it all away.”

“That must really make you angry to see them messing up something that you’ve put so much time into.”

“I’m fucking furious, at all of them, but especially Eddie. They’d all started drinking and doing drugs so much that it was starting to remind me of being surrounded by a whole group of Genes every night. I had told them if they were going to keep doing drugs, I was going to be out of there. The night I left, they’d taken Gopher, the car, out to try to find a score. They actually missed the whole fucking opening show. Blew it off. Left me there to get reamed out by the tour manager. When they dragged themselves back to the bus hours later, I already had my one bag packed. I had planned on bluffing, trying to scare them all into cleaning up their act or I was going to leave. I told them the record company was done putting up with their shit and they would be replacing me with someone who could control them. Well, my threat didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.”

“What happened?”

“Eddie was high. I know he had to be, because he had never hurt me before, but that night… It was my worst nightmare. It was Gene all over again. He was so violent. We hadn’t slept together in almost six months, but he almost raped me that night, in between slapping me around and trying to choke me until I’d agree to stay. One of the guys in the band, Justin, finally broke into our room and stopped him or who knows if I’d still be here. I didn’t stick around to see what happened between Eddie and Justin. I just grabbed my bag, purse and the keys to Gopher and drove away. I didn’t really even know for sure where I was going until I had time to calm down and turned towards Eagle’s Pass.”

As soon as she stops talking, Hallie feels a wave of relief, followed closely by a wave of exhaustion, felt deep in her bones. Traci doesn’t try to say something clever to make it all better. Hallie suspects she knows no words can really change anything. Only time can do that. As her tears continue, Traci stands and comes around the island to scoop Hallie up into a strong bearhug. The strength of her embrace breaks down her last emotional wall that had been holding all of the shitty memories of the abuse her and her mother had survived since losing their beloved Nana. There in Traci’s kitchen, Hallie cries for her Nana, for her mom and for her own innocence lost. When the women pull apart several minutes later, Hallie can see the tears on Traci’s face.

Hallie reaches for the box of tissues, grabbing several and handing one to her new friend, before blowing her own running nose. “I can’t believe you’re crying too. I’m the one that’s messed up. I hated what Mom did so much and then I went and did the same thing with Eddie.”

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