I Stood Accused of Assault with a Deadly Pillow
The path toward ending my marriage... and ditching my 30-year-old pillow
I wake to a ruckus coming from downstairs.
Loud, slurred male voices. Then Mom’s voice saying, “Shhh! You’ll wake the kids!”
I pull my feather pillow over my head to block out the sound. I’m nine years old. I’m not sure who’s making the noise downstairs, but I’ve been to enough grown-up parties to know when someone sounds drunk.
The men downstairs sound drunk.
“Show me the way ta go home! I’m tired and I wanna go ta bed!”
They’re singing now. Loudly. And Mom is still shushing.
Suddenly my bedroom door opens and light from the hallway spills in. I pretend to be asleep but open one eye just enough to see Mom’s silhouette. She creeps into my room, takes the feather pillow gently from off my head, and slides stealthily back out the door, closing it softly behind her.
My pillow!
Not many things in my house belong to me. My canopy bed is one. My Breyer horses are another. My notebook, my colored pencils.
And my pillow.
I am strangely attached to my soft, lofty, snuggly pillow. And now it has been ripped away from me in the middle of the night.
In the morning, I will learn that my uncle had been on leave from the Coast Guard, and he and his Coastie buddy had been out doing what men on leave often do. Mom had sent the two men to sleep it off in the living room, and she’d commandeered my pillow for the cause.
I slept one whole night without my pillow.
It took a while to forgive Mom, not to mention my uncle, for that offense.
Growing up, I never knew we were poor.
Only now, as an adult who has waded through a housing market crash, recession, and inflation, do I recognize the daunting challenges my impossibly young parents faced raising me. They not only endured historic inflation and economic turmoil in the 70s and early 80s, but they also lived through the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Watergate, Cold War tensions and rapidly shifting social norms.
My parents were fighting to feed and clothe us, pay the bills, and keep a roof over our heads. There was little money for toys or other non-essentials.
Many of my most cherished childhood possessions came from my doting grandparents, members of the Silent Generation who had survived their own years of turmoil and emerged, if not wealthy, then at least fiscally secure.
We lived in a rural Wisconsin community, so our infrequent trips to the Milwaukee suburbs for shopping at Kmart were a Big Deal. On those trips, Grandma delighted in letting me choose a gift for myself. I often came home with a Breyer horse or a Barbie. I also got a record player and little books with 45s tucked in the back sleeve. I could listen to Disney stories on the record and read along.
Turn the page when Tinker Bell rings her bell like this: Rrriiinnng!
Although I didn’t consciously register that we were poor, I knew the things Grandma gave me were special. I became possessive, eager to protect my precious resources from my rambunctious little brother and cousins, who were known for breaking and losing things.
Grandma had also given me a feather pillow clad in a quilted cover with fairytale designs on it. As an adult, I would zip on more covers to keep the feathers from leaking out. The pillow grew heavier and more dense as time passed.
I’ve since learned the thoroughly disgusting fact that dead skin cells, mites, and other detritus are what cause pillows to grow heavier with time. These days, I replace my pillows every couple of years, but back then I refused to give my beloved feather pillow up. I kept it until I was well into my 30s. If anyone dared to rest their head on it, I would swiftly pull it away and replace it with a different pillow.
No! This one’s mine!
Peter and I are fighting.
This time, for a change, it’s not about his lying or cheating. Instead, it’s about an online flirtation I’ve been having with a man I met playing the multiplayer online roleplaying game EverQuest.
“I’m working to support you and the kids so you can sleep with another man?” Peter rages.
I roll my eyes. “He lives in Bumfuck, Canada. Exactly when do you think I traveled 2,000 miles to have sex with him?”
Peter’s wild eyes are a sign things are escalating. I should surrender. I should try to soothe him. But years of twisting myself around his chaotic emotions have left me both weary and defiant.
Nothing good can come of a weary, defiant woman who’s just been accused of sleeping around by a man so deeply dishonest and fidelity-challenged that she discovers a new mistress every few months.
“Do you love him?” Peter asks.
I gaze, unflinching, into his crazed eyes.
“Yes.” I’m not sure I do, but the answer feels satisfying.
“So, you’re leaving me for him?”
“What part of Bumfuck, Canada, didn’t you understand?”
“I don’t even know what you mean by that!”
I’ve been sitting on our bed while Peter paces the room, ranting. Now, I straighten my spine and cross my arms over my chest. “It means I’m not running away to Canada any time soon. There’s no way in Hell I’m leaving my kids.”
Peter quickly does the emotional math. “You said nothing about not leaving me.”
I purse my lips and stay silent. I don’t have an answer. Everything in me tells me to get far away from Peter, but I know the reality. We would have to share custody, and I’m terrified of leaving Peter alone with the kids. Dave, the man I’m emotionally involved with online, has been a source of affection and adoration I hadn’t known I needed.
“Answer me!” Peter rages. “Is it gonna be him or me? Choose!”
I’m rarely candid with Peter. I’ve long since learned that moderating my emotions yields far better, safer results than telling him how I truly feel. But this time I can’t seem to hold back the truth simmering inside me. It rises to a boil.
“Neither!” I finally cry. “I’m fucking done with you, him, all of it!”
Peter narrows his eyes and lowers his voice to a menacing near-whisper. “Then you can slink off like the whore you are,” he says, “But the kids stay with me.”
With that, I grab the only weapon available — my feather pillow full of 30 years’ worth of dead skin cells and dust mites — and swing it at his head. It connects with a satisfying thunk.
What comes next terrifies me. Peter storms out of our bedroom and into the room our children share, waking them from a sound sleep. He locks himself in, barricading the door.
“Get the fuck out of this house!” he screams. “But you’re not taking them with you!”
Them. As though Ian and Shayla are collateral, not the precious young souls I bore and have struggled to raise amidst the daily turmoil their father causes. I can only think about how terrified they must be, awakened from a sound sleep by their volatile, rage-filled father.
My mind flashes back to about a decade earlier when Peter had clutched our nine-month-old son and uttered the words, “If you leave, I’ll kill him.”
I dial 911. Then I call my mom, who lives three miles away.
I don’t remember much of what happened during the rest of that terrifying night.
Instead, I can only summon little glimpses:
The cops coercing Peter to release the kids from their bedroom.
My daughter, dragging one of the officers into our living room to proudly show him our pet cockatiel.
Ten-year-old Ian calmly suggesting that the police might take his dad away for “anger management.”
Two cops standing in our kitchen, asking for details, and then finally coercing Peter to come downstairs and give his statement.
It’s the statement that lingers in my memory. Peter told the cops I’d been having an affair, we’d gotten into an argument, and I’d assaulted him. By all rights, he said, he should’ve been the one calling the police.
“Can you describe the assault?” one of the cops said.
“She hit me with a pillow!”
The two police officers stood dumbfounded for a moment and then tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle laughs.
“A pillow?” one of them finally asked, still grinning.
Peter glowered, hung his head, and muttered, “It’s a very heavy pillow.”
Both cops laughed again while Peter fumed.
All I remember beyond that was being given the option to stay in my home, forcing Peter to leave for the night, or to go someplace else. I opted to take the kids and leave with my mom, who showed up ready to rescue us.
I wish I could say I left Peter after that night.
But just like an old ratty pillow full of mites and skin cells, sometimes I hold onto things that don’t serve me anymore. Sometimes, I’m haunted by the fear of scarcity and the weight of uncertainty.
I didn’t make enough income to sustain my two kids alone. I hated the idea of getting a second job and working so hard that I didn’t have the energy to raise them.
But most of all, I was afraid Peter would get joint custody and that I wouldn’t be able to protect the kids when they were with him.
So, I stayed until my youngest graduated from high school. Then, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and filed for divorce.
Both of our children ghosted their father as adults. Both have expressed relief since they’ve gone no-contact.
Although Peter tried to maintain that he and I were “better as friends than a married couple,” I began avoiding his phone calls and leaving his texts unanswered. Eventually, I felt safe enough to write him an email telling him how profoundly our dysfunctional relationship had affected me and the kids and asking him never to contact me again.
So far, he has honored my request.
And I’ve long since replaced that heavy old pillow.
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