Unsheltered: A Young Man Finds Respect

By Rebecca Louise Anderson

Mikey gets scared of his fathers power and control issues. He tries to shield his younger siblings and their mother. They all spend time in domestic violence shelters, and a restraining order seems to solve the problem. However, the aggression escalates, and eventually, the family flees farther. The new life he forges in Alaska proves to be the setting for him to figure out some of his old puzzles, including settling into a relationship with Jesus while becoming the man of the house at his coming of age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543414226

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Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Louise Anderson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/21/2017

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1: In which Dad plays hooky and terrorizes the family

Chapter 2: In which we meet Faithful

Chapter 3: In which conflicting forces collide and choices are not clear

Chapter 4: In which boundaries clash with respect

Chapter 5: In which home is better than visiting

Chapter 6: In which the storehouses overflow

Chapter 7: In which we moved out of the frying pan

Chapter 8: In which I was too big for tears

Chapter 9: In which the change is like day and night

Chapter 10: In which homeschooling is resumed and we learn more about DV

Chapter 11: In which we realize we’ve moved into the fire

Chapter 12: In which adjustments are made

Chapter 13: In which we homeschool in another shelter and learn more about DV

Chapter 14: In which life becomes normalized and goes on in peace

Chapter 15: In which there were more perps

Chapter 16: In which Dad has reasons to be jealous

Chapter 17: In which grief somehow mixes with hope

Chapter 18: In which we see a mountain rather than a molehill of respect

Chapter 19: In which we take steps toward home

Chapter 20: In which we are temporary refugees

Chapter 21: In which I begin to measure my relationship with God

Chapter 22: In which relationships develop naturally

Chapter 23: In which my anger goes too far

Chapter 24: In which home has wildlife and wickedness

Chapter 25: In which God handles grace, compassion, and justice

Chapter 26: In which God is able to keep us from falling

Chapter 27: In which I can be trusted to learn what matters

Chapter 28: In which we respect tone inflections

Chapter 29: In which busy bodies help calm busy minds

Chapter 30: In which Dad stages showdowns and respect wins

Dedicated to Warner.

Mike experiences the effects of domestic violence and sexual assault as the secondary victim. DV’s effect on him as a child includes hypervigilance. His personal spirituality culminates in the self-respect he finally discovers.

CHAPTER 1

In which Dad plays hooky and terrorizes the family

T HE FAMILIAR SOUND echoed through the house and settled in the empty area in my chest. This was an empty area because my stomach did a dive and when it dropped, my heart fell too. I realized I was holding my breath, waiting to see what Mom would do. Sometimes I could hear her quickly take a breath before she set her jaw and pretended not to hear Dad pounding on the wall, but other times she dropped everything and rushed down the hall to see what he wanted.

Of course, even when she answered the summons, the outcome was unpredictable. She might open her bedroom door and sweetly ask what he wanted, or she might bang the door open and say in a low but plainly audible voice that he needed to STOP DOING THAT before she shut the door firmly and sort of stomped back down the hall to the kitchen. Then again, she could do something new, something she hadn’t thought of before, which made the whole experience especially nerve-wracking.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

She must have decided to ignore it this time. She was in the laundry room where I could see her back but was too far away to hear her breathing or counting or whatever she was doing while Dad kept at it. While I was wondering, I heard her quick footsteps moving down the hall. Interesting. She’d waited and then rushed after all.

I held my breath some more, trying to hear the sounds of their voices. Were they angry at one another or was Mom going to do anything Dad asked just to keep him quiet? I knew I didn’t really know what her reasons were for anything she did, but I’d been watching her and noticing what both of my parents did and I sometimes thought I really could read her thoughts. I never really thought I could read his, even though we are both male.

It seemed like this time she’d opted to hopefully keep him quiet rather than having another argument, but nothing ever worked with him for long. Keeping my eyes on my page of long division problems was easy enough, but keeping my mind there was almost impossible with the deep rumbles of Dad’s ordering voice and the softer sound of Mom’s answering voice from their bedroom down the hallway.

At least with Mom out of the room for this one reason, Davy wouldn’t start goofing off and make a big mess that would interrupt school and keep us inside even longer. Even Davy knew it wasn’t a safe day for his usual nonsense. I peeked at John and saw that he was serious about coloring the picture Mom had started him on before she gave assignments to the two of us older boys.

She came back into the kitchen carrying a tray filled with Dad’s dirty dishes from his breakfast in bed. She put them in the sink and went outside. All three of us looked up to follow her with their eyes across the covered patio to the garage. She was only taking a load of laundry out to the dryer, not leaving without us, not that she ever would now that we were her job instead of working at that big office she went to before Annie was born. The sound of their bedroom door and then Dad’s heavy steps made us all look back down in a hurry.

Hi, guys! Whatcha doin’?

Dad always sounded cheerful and loud when he talked to people, especially to us kids right after he’d been mean to Mom.

I tried to remember if I’d seen Mom’s face before she went to the garage. Had she been crying? I hated when she cried because she was the one who made the world all right when Dad was doing a bigger and louder version of the commotion Davy did all the time. I almost forgot Dad had asked a question.

Nobody answered.

Oh, I see, you’re doing your schoolwork like good little students. Isn’t that nice. The sarcasm dripping off his voice was sickly sweet. Listen, how would you like it if Mom and I don’t live together anymore?

No! we all said at the same time, almost in a panic. I felt mixed thoughts and feelings with the idea of us living here without Dad and the realization of that idea as a good thing, but then my mind immediately pictured us living here without Mom and that was horrid.

It would be nice, Dad said with a wheedling tone, making his voice seem to be begging us to see it his way. Nobody knew where to look with that. We’d just have a nice time with us guys and we wouldn’t have to have that b**** bossing you around anymore or whining and sniveling or making a mess. Just look at the filth here where we have to live with her!

The only mess I could see was the kitchen with dirty dishes from Dad’s special breakfast that he had after we’d started schoolwork. Mom wasn’t the one who made messes; all of us, and probably even Dad knew that. We were. And Dad was. But Dad had said the B word, and he’d said it about Mom. We were all silent, processing this, but not in shock. It wasn’t the first time even though it was the first time he’d said he wanted to live without Mom or Annie, with just him and us boys.

I said I think we need a mediator, but I most certainly did not mean our children! Mom was rushing back across the patio with a load of clean laundry, and she was mad. She had obviously heard Dad talking. That was another thing I’d gotten good at noticing. When people, especially Mom, had strong feelings about something, their voices would get higher and they would talk faster. She was talking fast now, and in such a high-pitched tone that I knew she had strong feelings about what she was saying. I wasn’t sure what a mediator was, but it didn’t seem to matter to Dad anyway. He spoke in that superior, brush-off voice with a fake laugh in it.

Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad, you lunatic. Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a mental patient. This last was said with his mouth full as he walked back down the hall to their room. I wondered what Dad was eating. Wasn’t it almost lunchtime?

All right, boys, leave your papers on the table and take these popsicles outside. Time to play for a while! Mom’s voice trying to be cheerful wasn’t much more convincing than Dad’s, but at least I could tell she wasn’t blaming us. I couldn’t always tell with Dad’s blaming, but it was always someone other than himself. We boys went outside, way around to the edge of the yard by the little tree, where we had the road started for the trucks and cars.

Davy was really good at the construction, but his ideas didn’t always match mine. John was too little to understand what we were building, but he either did what we told him to help our project or he sat a little further away, playing in the dirt by himself. I was eight years old, Davy was seven, and John was five. Annie was two and played in the living room while we did home school in the dining room. Mom usually let her come outside with us even though she messed up our whole project, but not that day. I wondered what Annie was doing and if I should go check on her, with Dad home and Mom maybe not free to do the normal school stuff.

Pretty soon I heard Mom’s voice again. Okay, now that you’ve had your dessert first, come wash your hands for lunch!

We all trooped into the kitchen, to the stepstool at the sink. Nobody liked going to the bathroom just to wash hands, not when Dad was in the very next room and might talk to us. After lunch, Mom put on the train movie that always made Davy and John fall asleep. Annie was in her crib for her nap. Mom sat down to write in that big notebook she used for everything during the movie with that song and the train saying, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Quiet time was actually quiet, probably because Dad was home and nobody knew what to expect next. The peace after the wall banging and the tension with Dad around was such a relief I almost wanted to go to sleep like Davy and John.

Boys, get your shoes on and get in the car, Mom said suddenly.

She’d spoken so quietly that she had all our full attention. Without a sound, we picked up our shoes and went outside to the garage. Mom was right behind with her purse, her Bible with the notebook inside the case, and Annie. Annie’s shoes were sticking out of Mom’s purse. Mom quietly closed the back door and made sure we were all buckled or in booster seats before she started the car. I wondered where we would go that time.

Not too long ago, Mom had loaded us all up but not so quietly and seriously, and she’d been crying that time. She had known exactly where we were going and we’d ended up at the house of a quiet lady from Mom’s Bible study, the one who also home schooled her kids. They lived in a big house with hardly any furniture. She and Mom had talked about husbands and about being good wives and mothers. Boring stuff, but the kids were allowed to stop their school stuff that day and play with our family.

We’d spent all day away from home that time, and I remember wondering what would happen when we got home. Would Dad be mean? I remember asking Mom about them, glad I got to ride in the front seat.

Where was their dad?

He doesn’t live in California right now, Mom said. She says they were all together in Illinois or wherever they came from. They all moved here, then he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore and he went back without them. That’s why they rent a house with no furniture and aren’t sure where they’re going to stay.

I liked it when Mom talked to me in a serious way like that, telling details she wouldn’t normally talk about to a kid. It was like she was talking to sort things in her own mind and I was lucky enough to be in the conversation by accident. Now, while we were going away from our house again, I wondered about that other family and got a queasy, scared feeling in my middle when I thought about what Dad had said about not living with Mom.

Now Mom smiled and looked happy for the first time all day. Nobody asked where we were going, but we all sat quietly in the car and watched out the windows as Mom drove. It seemed like she knew where we were going and that made me, and probably the other kids, feel safe. Other times when we’d left the house while Dad was mad had been different. Mom had been crying and Dad had been yelling or saying bad words. Mom usually didn’t know where to go once she was driving the car full of kids away, and usually didn’t seem to care either, not as long as we were going away from the house and away from Dad.

It was funny, though. Dad wasn’t a bad man, at least not all the time.

Thinking about him being good or bad was a bit weird, but the thought occasionally crossed my mind. Well, the thought was not there all the time, but it did seem to come more and more often, as if a thought could attract other thoughts just like itself. Dad was partly good and partly bad, which didn’t make sense. In movies, a character is either a hero or a villain, but Dad seemed confused overall.

He wasn’t exactly a good guy, not for sure, not like some of the dads at church or even at Recovery Group where Mom went on Saturday nights. We kids didn’t go into the meeting with the grown-ups, of course, but there were some teens whose parents were there who played games with us and other kids in the next room. Dad wasn’t clearly evil like the bad guys in stories. He wasn’t one of the strong men who always did the right thing, either. He was strong, scary strong, but I, and probably all the kids, felt safer with Mom even though she was not as big and strong as Dad.

Except when she seemed sure, like that day. Just then, in that moment, she had a strong and quiet voice that gave her a solid presence. She was not stiff and stubborn, but she was like one of those branches on the magnolia tree in our front yard, with leaves that stayed green all year on branches that moved with the wind but did not snap off in the wind. She was flexible and did not easily break.

Mom backed the car out of the garage and didn’t push the garage door opener clipped on the visor to close it. I was glad she left it open, because otherwise the sound of the garage door might have attracted Dad’s attention. As it was, the car backing out of the driveway seemed unusual enough in the middle of the day already marked by unusual behavior.

I watched to see if Dad came out. I wanted to know if Mom was scared of Dad seeing us leaving, but I didn’t dare look at her face to see if she was looking at the house—I might have missed seeing him. I wasn’t sure what I thought would happen if Dad did come out.

Would he run down the driveway, as if he could catch the blue car and hold it back from leaving him? Or would he yell out for Mom to stop? If he yelled, would Mom obey him? If he jumped in front of the car because he ran out the front door while we were watching the driveway to see if he was coming, would he head us off before Mom pulled into the street?

I knew the questions in my mind were pointless. I didn’t see Dad before Mom turned the corner and the house was out of sight. Were we leaving him? How long would it be before he really missed us? He’d stopped Mom from leaving before and Davy and I were in the car at the time. What was going to happen now?

Where were we going this time?

CHAPTER 2

In which we meet Faithful

B ILL WAS A big man, and obviously knew something already about our troubles. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. Bill asked his wife, Cheryl, to take us into the back yard for a little while so he could sort things out with Mom. I wanted to stay near Mom in case she needed help, but she seemed bigger at this house than at home. Bigger might not have been the right word. Maybe she didn’t seem larger, exactly, but more solid at this house. Even when I saw tears running down her face, her crying didn’t make me feel scared here.

I wanted to hear what Mom and Bill were saying. Why had we come to this house where we’d never been before? Well, I knew we were here because of what Dad said in the kitchen, but maybe he’d said even worse things to Mom in their bedroom. Was she as scared as we kids were? Or as scared as I was. Davy, John, and Annie didn’t seem scared or upset at all. Mom usually didn’t have a scared look, even when the danger level was high and she was walking toward it instead of keeping a safe distance like I wished she would.

Hello, Veronica! For me this is a pleasant surprise, Bill said as he held their front door wide open. I felt warm and welcome even though I barely knew him from Recovery Group, from church, or from the few times he’d come to our house to try to talk to Dad. Even though I’ve meet all you kiddos before, I’m afraid I don’t remember your names. Please tell me your names, one at a time, beginning with you, young man.

Hi. I’m David Martinez but mostly I like to be called Davy, and Davy stuck out his hand to shake Bill’s hand even before Bill offered his. I couldn’t tell if I should be embarrassed or proud of how my little brother sounded so sure.

Hello, Davy. You probably know I’m Bill and your mother may have instructed you to call me Mr. Walters or something like that but I prefer to be called Bill. Then it was John’s turn and he copied Davy’s manners before it was my turn. As the oldest, I realized I should have gone first, but I was standing closer to Mom and we went in the order of where we were standing. Mom was holding Annie, who just smiled but didn’t talk because she had her thumb in her mouth, as usual. I started to be embarrassed about Annie sucking her thumb, but she wasn’t embarrassed so I decided to stick to my own problems and to be glad Annie wasn’t babbling like Davy.

So we all shook Bill’s hand and then Cheryl took us outside to play while Mom and Bill talked about what brought us there just then. I needed to hear this conversation Mom was having with Bill, so I was glad for how much Davy talked. He had Cheryl in a conversation about the best way to blow huge bubbles, so I was glad she’d brought soap bubbles outdoors to the back patio to play. I moved closer to the back door, listening.

The verses this morning seemed to speak to me, directly, Mom was saying. She went on to talk about Ezekiel and about how telling information meant the listener was responsible for the news, not the teller.

That’s the same passage Jack and I were praying over this morning, Bill said. Tell me more. I listened, wishing I could turn up the volume on Mom’s conversation and turn down the volume on Davy’s. And I wondered who Jack was and if he knew about our family. Bill had sounded like Mom knew Jack.

I had the letter you and Cheryl assigned me to give to him and I was scared to do it so I was still procrastinating, Mom said in a calm voice while I wondered what sort of homework assignment Bill and Cheryl were giving to Mom, who was a grown-up. This morning’s verses and prayers were those verses I told you about and I knew they meant I needed to give him the letter even though he was probably going to be angry. He wasn’t supposed to be home today anyway, and didn’t even call in sick—he just didn’t get up. I was already up with the kids and had their breakfast finished and their school lessons started when he did his banging on the wall. Here I heard Mom’s voice break and I noticed she started crying again. Why did talking about Dad’s way of banging on the wall make her cry, now that we were safe here at Bill and Cheryl’s house?

I wondered if Bill had ever heard of anyone banging on a wall like Dad did all the time, or if he’d ever heard about Dad doing that. He was quiet, and it didn’t sound as if he was shocked or particularly worried.

What it did sound like was that Mom had that mixture of embarrassment and fear about Dad banging on the wall, the same as I had whenever I heard it, only maybe more.

I don’t think I’ve ever told you about that before, but it’s so demeaning and actually intimidating even though Scott says it’s just his private PA system, and she sniffed or blew her nose, I couldn’t tell for sure which when I was only listening and trying to watch from a different room. She explained about the sound and Bill just nodded and let her blubber and finally calm down, and then continue talking reasonably. All this time when Dad had been doing that and she had been acting like it was perfectly normal, she had been upset about it, too? This information sparked a mixture of feelings about what was real and what had been merely my imagination.

Had I been afraid during the same times as Mom? As the oldest kid in the family, I naturally remembered more of the family history than the others. The thing is, I couldn’t remember certain details, like about the places we’d lived before. Now, while Bill waited and Mom quietly cried, I wondered.

I’ve seen pictures of our other houses and Mom was good for telling stories that did help to cement some memories. She told stories about the apartment we’d lived in when I was a baby and my babysitter was a lady in the same building. I didn’t remember Louise, except for her long black curly hair that she took off and carefully placed on a white foam head that one time she was my overnight babysitter at her apartment. Mom liked to remind me of the way I’d told her Dooweeze takes her hair off always laughing about how she’d never known Louise wore a wig. Memories and perceptions were strange, this way. People didn’t see the same things in the same way as each other, not all the time anyway.

Had Mom been experiencing Dad a completely different way than I had? Or had Davy and John seen him the same way? They hadn’t known Mom or Dad as long, and all of us boys had been in our family longer than Annie, but