The Junk Of Our Whimpers

Shadow sculpture by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

It was at night. The lights were off. We were in bed. The ex- asked me for a hug and I told her I couldn't. I didn't think I loved her any more. I was tired. I told her that I was going to look for an apartment near by somewhere, so I could help with our child, but we would try living apart.

It was a whimper. For me, there was no longer anything that I could do that was good enough for her. We were having fights. She trashed the apartment, broke things, there was glass all over the floor and she only stopped because I slapped her. She yanked a bag off my arm, left a scar and she told me I deserved it.



She told me the next day that she couldn't continue to live where we were living. 
She called her step-father and he drove out from Texas and helped her move everything back there. I carried my daughter down to the car and gave her over to be strapped into the car seat.
Then she wrote letters and called once in awhile. She wanted me to come there, which I wasn't going to do. I was tired of moving as well. I sent her money.

Everyone, my shrink, my mother told me to let her have custody of my daughter. I didn't think it was right and still don't think it was right.

I finally called her and told her I wanted a divorce. She started screaming and got into some kind of physical fight with her own mother and the line went dead.

It would be a long time before I worked up the courage to file the papers and have her served. I was notified by her lawyer that I was already divorced. They had pretended they did not know my whereabouts and ran an ad in the Odessa paper and got the decree. They sent me a copy.

I would send cards and presents to her parents for my daughter and asked to see her, but was rebuffed. I finally wrapped a photo and a card inside the wrapping paper on a toy fire engine for my daughter. My daughter used to like to look at the fire engines near our apartment.

I got a message on my answer machine that I was not to send presents any more. My daughter was a girl, not a boy and she did not like fire engines. The ex- was remarrying and her new husband was adopting my daughter and I never to try to see her again. (Something like that- I've kept the tape all these years, for all the good its done me.)
I went for a week once and didn't tell her parents I was coming and parked down the street (a lot like my scary father might have done, now that I think about it, but I had no gun.) I thought perhaps the ex- might show up and I might get a glimpse of my daughter or I could follow her back to where she lived. My divorce papers said I had visitation rights. But I saw no one and had to go home.

The ex- sent my mother a long letter, I think hoping to justify herself. My mother sent it to me. It never came up again. I think I still have it some where too. It was a long letter about how scared she was and how I was the child of a abusive father and how she was afraid of what I might do to her or her daughter.

In the seven years we were together, I slapped her once to stop her from destroying everything we owned and slapped my daughter once on the behind too hard and left a bruise. I still regret both. I've forgiven myself for both, but have never ever hit anyone in my family.

I felt bad that she was so frightened. I understood she became a borne-again Christian or something like that.