I remember the absolute terror I felt when I heard someone coming into my front door and walking thru my house late at night when Jeremy had woken himself up for the first time to take himself to the potty all by himself. I was terrified he might still be awake and witness the rape and/or murder of his mother. I wondered what I could do if the person walked down towards his room instead of towards mine. I wished the pistol was still in the headboard because I knew I could and would kill if the person creeping into my home headed towards my son's bedroom. To think it took this to make me realize I wanted to live after all. Living after the death of a baby is hard. Jacob was just barely dead still.
The person turned towards my bedroom, and I resolved to be as quiet as possible because I didn't want my son to wake up and be scared or to attract the axe murderer's attention. All I could see was the black shadow of a man's body coming towards my room, back lit by a nightlight in the hallway. I can remember my need for quiet, in the hope that it was somehow a mistake and the man was just passing thru. My mind was not rational - it was focused solely on not attracting attention so to find the phone and speak didn't seem to be an option - he would hear me, and maybe reat badly? Perhaps if I was still, I could suddenly erupt into a wildcat, scratching his eyes out when he got close enough. Quietly.
At the doorway, he turned his head and his profile was familiar. Relief flooded over me like a flood of hot lava. I knew him, it would be okay, it was my husband who had left me many months before. But something was still wrong because he wouldn't say anything. Which made the something terribly, terribly frightening. Even tho I knew him.
I called the cops in the morning. I knew if I didn't, I would never be able to stop the next time, because I had remembered something while he took my house, my bed, my self.
In answer to the questions the cops asked
Yes, it was my husband.
No, I didn't remember if he had a key or not. (He did, I'd forgotten I'd given it to him when I needed a house sitter when I travelled a week after our baby died. Scuse me for forgetting - I had a dead baby on my mind.)
Yes, I think I marked him up with scratches on his back. On purpose, so his girlfriend would see.
Yes, I fought. At first, till I realized that's what he wanted. So I quit. Plus... the RELIEF that it was my husband and not an axe-murderer made me glad it was "just" him. The adrenaline from the fear, and then the relief made me strangely passive and tired and weak.
Plus what I remembered? It might make a baby. Our baby had died. And oh how much I needed a baby back in my arms.
I seem to remember he came over shortly after the cops had talked to him and I think he apologized. I remember he left angry, but was trying not to show it. That's when I felt it the most. He must have apologized in hopes that I'd drop the charges, but it was out of my hands at that point. Prosecutors were beginning to take it into their hands and keep it in their hands because too many women backed out of doing what needed to be done. I didn't care anyways. Once I told the cops, I quit caring about what happened. Cept for the part where I had to check the locks several times a night and sleep in long flannel nightgowns with sweat pants and a sweat shirt every night, for months.
The cops came back to fill me in. They told me the 3rd degree rape charge had been dropped down to 3 degree trespassing, and that he got 30 days in the Work Release Program. Which was ironic, because that is where I worked when Jacob was born, and had to quit so I could care for him. The prosecutor felt that rape charges wouldn't stick because I had given him a key voluntarily AND he was still my husband after all. I remember thinking that the trespassing part was good - the terror of having someone come into my house uninvited was something that I was living with every night. But the not saying a word, along with the terror, and the invasion still made it feel like rape to me. But who cared. My baby was still dead.
His defense was that I had told him about having a rape fantasy at one time. When they told me that, I exploded. How dare he tell anyone about our "pillow talk". I felt invaded all over again. And he didn't get it.
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Rape fantasies consistently rate among the top 3 fantasies for women. Check it out. I say this just in case my son reads this and feels icked out by thinking about the fact that his mother had sex fantasies. In rape fantasy role playing, the acts are 100% consensual. You and your partner are just pretending to the non-consenting.
The key word is “consensual.” Attempting to do this in real life without my permission was not okay, was not what I wanted. And most definitely, even if I had wanted it, I most certainly did not want the sneaking into my house in the middle of the night unbeknownst to me part. That was not part of the fantasy, if I had ever really thought thru ever really wanting it to come true.
Why do I bring this up some 30 years later? Read here.
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