1983. At church on a Sunday night. Some idiot guy at our casual church dressed up in a suit. So I think its a visiting pastor and go introduce myself.
Charmer. Great big smile, 6' 4" to mine 5' barely 2". But something about him draws me in. He's got that southern charm down. Nice voice, with an accent of course, huge hands (later that were used to beat me), and all about his Momma.
I thought that part was quaint, "Oh, he loves his Momma" but it went beyond that. There was a sickness there, and being an only child didn't register the future problems to come.
Church going Mrs. Swanson down the street and around the corner takes me aside to lecture me. "Now, have you prayed about this man, are you sure he's the right one to marry" I blow her off. Had I listened to Mrs. Swanson all those years ago, I might never had gone through the tragedy and moved on to someone safer. But I was not listening then. Nor did I for years to come.
Cut to dating...I don't understand why this man, my fiance is giving his mother details about my body or our sex life. That doesn't register as normal to me whatsoever.
Cut to night before the wedding. The Iversen's let us borrow their van to pick up his best men and mother at the airport. I know the Iversen's, they've been close family friends for years. Jonnelle is best friends with my Mother and I am best friends with Lezley, their oldest. Yancey is OCD'ing, which I've never seen before over borrowing someone else's van. He drives a funky little red ford fiesta.
Okay so the parking garage at our Livermore apartment complex is made more complex by carefully placed metal poles between parking slots. Yancey lightly taps one with the bumper of the van and explodes all over me. Screaming at me, he orders me out of the van, he will take HIS car to pick up his mother and friends, I will sit at home and wait for their arrival. No damage done to the van, but a hint of the damage to come. I utterly and completely ignore my intuition screaming inside "Get out NOW, run like HELL, this could happen again" nope, it was a one time thing, he won't ever do this again and he'll apologize, too. Wrong on both accounts.
His mother shows up, and is a royal piece of work. I never KNEW what snake in the grass truly meant until I met that woman. She would talk for hours on the phone in whispers, with furtive glances toward you in case you overheard. Southern, disgusting Tennessee charm straight from the Bible Belt which had my stomach lurching everytime she opened her mouth. She believed in hit men, and in wives taking over the mother's role.
Once she called me yelling at me "My son is NOT happy, I know he's not happy and YOU are trying to keep him from me, its got to be the SEX that keeps him there" What???
I was so incensed I quickly yelled back "Why don't you give the sex a shot then" Wrong. Thing. To. Say. How was I supposed to know later Yancey would tell me about inappropriate touching that went on in his room as a high school student. After his death, of course we suspected worse, so much made sense.
Yeah. We got married. And then the abuse began....and the control. The affairs, the visits to lingerie clubs and luncheons he never told me about.
The startling note found in his Westinghouse SRS briefcase "You wan a slut in de barge" "Yeah, sure, why not" to which his face paled to white when confronted. But never told me exactly what it meant.
The run in at the local grocery store with a tall woman, who approached him in a drugged stupor "Hey, aren't you..." "No", but wait, "haven't I met you.." Yancey, "No, no, I don't think we have". Right. Something was going on at Westinghouse that had me furious and suspicious.
This was after our move from CA to SC, when the abuse really heated up. He would shove me, hit me, push me, scream in my face, threaten me, drive wildly and at fast speeds while screaming at me if he was pissed over something or I wasn't doing what he wanted.
And then the phone calls from his Momma. They were in place from the beginning. She would call him and tell her how depressed and suicidal SHE was that her grown son had left home, and he would fall right into the pits of despair with her, and they would both analyze what my problems were with laundry, clean underwear not being at the ready for him every morning like a good southern mommy is supposed to do for her son, and food - where was dinner every night?
Sorry but I was busy raising babies, and nursing them, I did not always have time for his laundry and nothing was keeping him from doing his own damn laundry. Oh right, nothing but hours of television and sitting on his butt eating sweets. Oreos and milk. Oreos and milk.
The abuses, attacks and rages...later
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