About the Book

Prologue

Alabama. September, 2005

My assignment: A magazine story about poverty in Alabama. Fifteen hundred words. Real people, real names. Due in two weeks.

High stepping, but I knew where to look. I’d worked at walk-in social service agencies, taught school in rural Alabama, and clerked at debtors’ court. I cast a big net. Soon, the director of a women’s shelter suggested I meet someone on her staff.

That’s how I came to know Ginger McNeil.

We met at a sandwich shop. A woman dressed in lime green and brown linen dashed through the door. I spotted her briefcase and guessed she was Ginger, hurrying from court in the next county.

The woman stopped short. The tentative expression that crossed her face as she scanned the room turned into a broad smile when she saw me waving from a back corner. Her brown page boy bounced against her collar as she made her way toward me, hand out, half-way through an introduction even before she reached my table.

“I’m late,” she said, dropping into her chair, “but at least I’m not in jail.”

I did a doubletake.

“Auto theft.”

She dropped that bomb with a straight face.

“In the courthouse parking lot. Under the nose of the sheriff.”

Her eyes were the color of coffee. I spotted mischief in them and smiled.

She leaned forward in her seat and lowered her voice.

“As I was racing to come here. My key wouldn’t fit in the ignition. Then I heard a tap on the window and there stood the judge. I was in her car, not mine. I ran before the law came.” She threw her head back and laughed at herself.

Her words flowed but she hung onto mine. She talked about her work with abused women and I could read on her face the satisfaction in it. I ate my chicken salad.

But abuse isn’t about poverty. I didn’t know.

We talked through lunch and refills of iced tea. Pleasant chatter, but the clock was ticking toward my deadline. I needed to find a source for my story.

Just as I thought we were finished, Ginger said, “I’m a former client of the shelter. I didn’t have two dimes the day they took me in.”

I settled back into my chair.

“I lived in a cabin in the woods, too poor to afford electricity and too afraid of my husband to leave. I even made my own soap.”

“You made soap?”

“From hog fat. You have to butcher the hog first.”

She told me she slaughtered, butchered and canned, shingled roofs and bushhogged land—whatever it took for her and her two sons to survive.

“And you were afraid?”

“He hit me.”

This woman with a briefcase. What I heard clashed hard against the image before me.

She drew a map to the cabin, twenty miles north up the Natchez Trace, left on one dirt road, right on the next. I promised to meet her there the following Saturday.

The first road I found quickly, then I topped a rise and looked for the second. Nothing but scrub oaks, piney woods and red dirt lay ahead. Three times I drove back and forth before I spotted tire ruts between two scrawny oaks. Then the open gate appeared against the undergrowth.

The road wasn’t hidden, but nothing marked or announced it. Had I not known there was a road and a house and once a family living back in the trees…that thought played in my mind even after I returned home late that afternoon.

The road dipped, rose and circled through the trees to a small clearing in the midst of sheds and a cabin. Ginger had heard my car and she bounded toward me. No briefcase today. Instead she wore jeans and heavy boots. The cabin behind her was a cracker box with a tin roof and board and batten walls. Leggy red geraniums strained out of a clay pot by its front door.

Ginger ushered me inside, past the black wall-to-wall wood stove that dominated the first room, and through two bedrooms hardly larger than their beds. Cozy. Neat. We popped cans of Diet Coke and stepped out into a dry day with no breeze on this last weekend of September.

“I’ve made changes,” Ginger said. “What you see as a clearing used to be so thick with vines and thorn bushes, someone could be within thirty yards of the cabin and never see it. That’s how Mike planned it. He didn’t want company coming.”

We strolled along the dirt road and picked through tall grass to a metal contraption attached to a hickory tree.

“See this winch? After Mike slaughtered a hog, we hoisted it here to cure. Later I ground the meat into sausage.”

I pointed to a mound of gray ashes.  “And that fire pit.  Is that where you boiled lye with the fat to make soap?”

“No, boiling fat is too dangerous with children around.  I dissolved the lye in water, the cold method you know. “

All I know was that I’d never made soap from any method.

I’d visualized the cabin tucked behind tall trees in a deep forest, solitary and haunting, not cluttered with sheds and tools. I hadn’t taken into account the realities of living off nothing, the making-do with whatever could be caught, grown, or bartered.

We stopped beside what looked to me like a concrete block chimney.

“This is a final exam.” Ginger touched her hand to it. “It’s a smokehouse. My boys were barely teens when they built it. Had to use solid geometry, math, and physics.”

The boys had passed their test.

I failed mine I tried to operate the chicken plucker but, without a chicken, I didn’t catch on. All I got was a red face while Ginger got a good laugh.

I was ready for shade. We opened more Cokes and settled into lawn chairs under hickory trees.

“You lived like pioneers or survivalists,” I said. “Did you choose this way of life? How did you get here?”

“How long do you have?” Ginger laughed, then her face grew serious. “Was there a choice? Yes. I made my choice when I married Mike. He chose this way of life for us and I bowed to his decision. I never expected it to lead to such poverty.”

She pushed her hair off her face and took a swallow of her Coke. “Strange as it may seem, poverty can be a choice, especially when it allows one person to control another.”

We talked for more than an hour. When I stood up to leave, Ginger pointed to a path. “The root cellar is up there. You’re welcome to see it. I don’t go there.”

“Not me. I’m claustrophobic.”

I didn’t question why Ginger shied away from the root cellar until I was in the car on my way home. I had an hour’s drive to marvel at her skills and the strength and energy they required. And to ponder why they had lived as they did in a place so hard to find.

I wrote fifteen hundred words, but the story begged for more. Much more.

When I approached Ginger about a book, she mulled it over for several weeks, talking with her family over the Thanksgiving holiday, exploring her feelings and theirs.

Ginger and I met again at the sandwich shop. She was somber and thoughtful.

“When I sought safety at the shelter,” she said, “my bed was waiting, the sheets already turned down. I had my own kitchen with a refrigerator and gas stove, and food, shelves and shelves of food, canned goods and food in boxes. Everything I needed. Somebody had prepared all that just for me and my kids.”

She paused, her eyes focused over my left shoulder, locked on something I would never see. A slight smile crossed her face

“They didn’t know my name or that I’d be coming, but they did this for me,” she said. They anticipated what I would need. I’m still overcome with gratitude for this person … these people. I’ve wondered how to repay them.”

She placed both palms on the table, and her eyes suddenly shone with tears. “Telling this story is what I can do. It’s worth whatever the cost is to me.”

Whatever the cost. Those words had little meaning for me. I had no measure then of how great the risks would be for Ginger.

We began regular conversations wherever we found a quiet private place, her house, a secluded corner at the public library, an artist friend’s studio. Sometimes we pored over photos, journals, letters, some dating back to childhood, some from her children to her, including the son she lost.

Ginger was unflinchingly honest, even when probing scarlet pain and remorse.

“Everything I was taught and believed and have done, it’s all part of me. It’s what made me a sitting duck for a man like Mike. And it’s where I drew my strength in the end.”

Long before the magazine article turned into a book, I knew I had to speak with Mike. I had to allow him to tell his side of the story. So I phoned him, asked if he would meet with me. He agreed.

I was apprehensive. I had no idea what to expect of him, especially when I’d have to confront him with questions about physical abuse. Was I courting danger? I didn’t know.

We met at a Waffle House in the late afternoon. His choice, his territory. He’s a regular there. But it’s a public place, which I hoped meant a safe place for me.

I stepped inside the doorway and stopped. Several men were hunched over their coffee and ashtrays at a gray counter. In booths opposite the counter, other men and a few women talked in twos and threes. Two men sat alone in two booths, the first with his nose in a book.

I approached the second, a man with gray-blonde hair, a white mustache and bushy eyebrows who was scrambling to a half-stance in the booth.

“Mike?”

“You got me.”

He smiled. His eyes were Paul Newman-clear-blue and his face was pleasant. He slid back to his seat even as we shook hands.

Firm handshake. Strong hands. Medium height, fit enough for a man in his fifties. Wearing a white dress shirt like he’d rather not, unbuttoned at the neck, the sleeves rolled up, and no undershirt.

“Have a seat.”

I did and ordered coffee. I never glanced at the man reading the book. He was my husband, ready to come to my aid if needed.

There was no need.

Mike fidgeted. He smoked nine Winston Reds to three cups of black coffee. But he spoke candidly about his marriage to Ginger.

“Ginger was always out to please. Nobody in her growing up gave her approval, and I had to turn all that around. Most of my life I spent battling to get her to take up for herself.”

He talked about picking peas and going to church, at no time showing any animosity toward his former wife, a woman whose public speeches identified him as a batterer.

Neither of us had mentioned the subject, though it was the reason I’d asked for this meeting.

“Ginger told me there was abuse, physical abuse. Was there?” I tensed, ready to flinch or duck.

“Yeah, there was.” He thought for a minute. “One time I hauled off and slapped the fool out of her. She said I shoved her other times. But you have to remember, this was over twenty years.”

“So you acknowledge there was abuse that included physical abuse?”

“That’s what I said.”

Matter-of-fact. Without apology.

I wrapped up the conversation, thanked him and was five steps toward the door when he called out to me.

“Hey! You didn’t pay for your coffee.”

Heads turned in my direction. I felt my face flush. “You’re right. Sorry.”

I settled my bill and left. Mike won our first encounter.

Two months later, with the article growing into a book, Mike emailed me that he wanted to participate. I didn’t know why and didn’t ask, afraid he’d reconsider and bolt.

We continued to meet at the Waffle House until its clatter chased us to quieter spots. By then I was less uneasy around him. He never denied any of the bad times. “Men will understand. Men know what the program is.”

He has no remorse. “I wouldn’t change a thing if I could go back.”

To Mike’s thinking, he and Ginger couldn’t be where they are now without having experienced it all.

Mike has a story too. It trickled out as if from a medicine dropper. He announced early on he would have “his say,” and one day he did just that. Mike took me inside his skin or let me think he did.

Either way, I came to appreciate what it revealed of him, even the parts that to this day I can’t fully comprehend.

This story has many voices. Ginger and Mike speak, as do their family, friends, coworkers, and court officials. They tell what they remember, or what they chose to divulge, about things that happened a long time back, then comment on them in the present. In some instances, I’ve changed names and physical characteristic to protect their privacy.

2005. That’s when I came in. Not that I intended to do more than listen, record, and tell. But my questions took people back to old places, sometimes dark places, and this time I was along when they relived the memory. Sometimes they uncovered something new.

And so I joined the journey.

This is Ginger’s story, and Mike’s. It didn’t begin with them and, despite Ginger’s prayers, it may not end with them.

Chapter 1

A noise. Ginger awoke, listened. The hum of a motor, the scrunch of tires creeping along the road outside the cabin. She reached over to her husband‘s side of the bed. Empty. Where he was heading in the thin light of dawn, she didn‘t know. Mike McNeil didn‘t offer explanations for his comings and goings. She knew better than to ask.

She rolled back onto her pillow, wide awake now. She could see the black handle of Mike’s .38 at the edge of the closet shelf. Mike seldom strapped the gun to his belt anymore. He had made his point. She wouldn‘t take it again and he knew it.

The light was still too dim to see the photos fastened with thumb tacks to the rough-sawn boards next to the closet. It didn’t matter. She pictured them in her mind. She and Mike had squeezed into the metal kiosk at a truck stop that day and posed fast, before their quarter ran out. Mike had just trimmed his beard. A good memory.

Birds chirped outside.

Time to rise. She rolled out of bed.

In the boys’ room, she stood over her sons and smiled. Casey’s feet hung off the foot of his bed. He‘d hit a growing spell the day he turned thirteen. She kissed his forehead, then his brother’s.

“Wake up, both of you. Casey, I’m going to put a brick on your head or you’ll outgrow everything you own.” She laughed and gave twelve-year-old Jody a nudge.

In the next room, she built a fire in the woodstove to chase off the morning chill. Atop the stove, water for coffee heated in a blue enamel pot while the last of the oatmeal cooked in a dented stewer. The boys would have the oatmeal. She wasn’t hungry.

She laced up her boots and trudged up the hill to milk the cow while they ate breakfast.

An ordinary morning at the cabin in the woods where she lived with Mike and their two sons.

Nothing different or ominous, nothing to suggest that before noon Ginger would make her escape.

She forced a needle through pigskin for a rifle pad while each boy pulled on his one pair of jeans. Better pick beans today before the sun gets up in the sky. Summer didn’t like to let go here at the bottom of Tennessee, and this day would be hot by noon. She twisted her hair through her fingers, wishing she could pull it up off her neck. Or cut it.

Casey crossed the kitchen in two steps, gathered his homework under one arm, and dashed out the door. Knees, elbows and perpetual motion, he disappeared up the hill. Jody lumbered in from the bedroom and fumbled with his papers, a scowl on his face.

Still my little freckle-faced boy.

Jody and Casey had entered school for the first time this year, a small church school just across the state line in Alabama. She‘d hoped they would like a regular school but so far it was a split decision. It was early, just three weeks into the school year. Plenty of time yet to adjust.

She gave Jody a quick squeeze before hurrying him toward Casey and her old Honda. They had ten miles to drive to school.

Mike spotted the blue of Ginger‘s car in the distance as he returned home. He checked his watch and calculated when she‘d be back. At the cabin, he opened his Bible to Revelations and read until time to go. He tromped down their dirt road to the blacktop where he ducked into the trees to watch for her car. Leaning against a pine, he lit a Winston Gold, then another as soon as it burned to the filter.

The last time she left, he‘d watched her. He could see to the bottom of the hill where, that time, she‘d stopped for a few minutes, backed up the road, then stopped again. She was trying to pick up a signal on that car phone, way out here.

He was on to her.

Ginger slowed to turn between two scrub oaks onto their road. The galvanized metal gate stood open. Mike didn’t always padlock it now like he once did. He‘d made that point, too.

Her tires crunched against the road as she headed the quarter-mile toward the cabin, hidden by honeysuckle vines and briars. Mike didn’t want anybody in his business. If somehow anybody slipped past the padlock and wandered up the road, they could pass within thirty yards of the cabin and never know it was there.

They‘d built the cabin back in 1996, when they had to vacate the rental house in a hurry. She and Mike sawed and hammered while the boys, young as they were, toted and hauled. Five hundred square feet divided into two rooms. No electricity, no phone, by design.

Mike‘s car sat in tall grass just off the road. She parked beside him and called his name when she got out of the car. No answer.
Backtracking down the road, Ginger walked to Trent’s tree, a young sycamore named in memory of her oldest son. She‘d first planted an apple tree for Trent, but ants made a bed at its base. When she poisoned the ants, she killed the tree. The sycamore was a sapling that came up in the compost pile. A smile spread across her face. The sycamore was thriving. She‘d kept a close watch on it.

She hurried to the garden. Time to pick beans.

Later, listening to the beans simmer, she eased a thimble onto her sore thumb to resume stitching the rifle pad. Wayne, a neighbor from two miles up the blacktop, had hollered from the gate with an armload of corn a few weeks back. Mike didn‘t encourage visitors, and Wayne respected his distance, which allowed them to be friends, if at arm‘s length. Wayne was half Mike’s age, clean shaven and buzz cut, and to him neighbors were next to kin. Mike had been oiling his rifle and their talk turned to guns.

“Ever seen a pigskin rifle pad?” Wayne said. “That‘s what I want, but I guess I‘ll have to get it special made.”

“Tell me what you want and I‘ll make it,” Ginger said, watching Mike‘s face as she spoke. As much food as Wayne‘s garden put on their table, it was the least she could do.

For two weeks she‘d struggled with the rifle pad, from drying white sand in the woodstove to fill the cushions to forcing a needle in and out through three layers of leather. Her thumb and forefinger smarted at the touch, but as soon as she whipped the last seams together, the pad would be finished.

She heard stomping feet outside.

Mike called out, “How about bringing me a cup of coffee?”

Ginger spread the rifle pad across the kitchen table and took Mike his coffee.

He lolled in the swing under the hickory tree within earshot of the cabin door. His beard, blonde like his hair, reached to his belt. He tucked his Bible under a thigh so the loose pages wouldn‘t fall out and reached for the cup.

Ginger joined him in the swing, sweeping the skirt of her denim jumper to one side. She ran her arm under her hair, lifting it off her neck. “My hair‘s making me hot. If I don‘t get it cut, I‘ll soon be sitting on it.”

She exaggerated, a joke to test Mike‘s mood. Her hair fell below her shoulder blades, not her waist.

Mike leaned forward to scratch Samson, his blue heeler, cupping the dog‘s snout in his hand.

“You‘re not cutting your hair.” His voice was low but firm.

“If I cut it, Mike, it‘ll still be long.”

They‘d had this conversation before.

This time he spoke into her face, emphasizing each word with a downward thrust of his fist, index finger pointed.

“I said—you‘re—not—cutting—your—hair.”

He still kept his voice low, because he didn‘t need to yell.
He jutted his head forward and stared into Ginger’s eyes. “You don’t have the authority to decide what you want.”

She clenched her jaw, holding tight inside what she dare not say aloud: Move over, God, Mike’s in charge. He knows what’s best, and I no longer exist apart from him.

Mike’s words tossed in her head, picking up energy with each tumble until they exploded like marbles fired from a pinball machine, her anger and indignation rising with each ricochet.

She could sit still no longer.

Stalking into the cabin, she let the screen door bang shut behind her. The swing stopped. She watched Mike plant his boots hard against the ground.

He stood up and marched straight toward the cabin, controlled, careful not to spill a drop of the steaming coffee.
Ginger leaned against the kitchen table, her fingertips brushing against the rifle pad. Seeing his face, she dropped her arms to her sides.

He eased the cup onto the table. Snatched up the rifle pad. Pushed the screen door open with one hand, and slung the pad onto the ground outside.

“I‘m sick and tired of this crap.”

The pad hit with a splat. Its seams burst open and white sand spilled onto gray dirt. Samson skittered out of the way.

Tears rolled down Ginger‘s cheeks. Mike knew how many hours she had put into the pad, knew how hard she had worked, knew the needle hurt. Wayne was his friend, and they owed him. Besides, Wayne had paid for the materials. She had to account for them.

For a while, she busied herself about the cabin. When she thought Mike had turned his attention elsewhere, she carefully circled past him and slipped out to retrieve the pieces of the rifle pad.

She sensed heavy steps behind her before she heard them, sensed the weight of his presence as his hands grabbed her arms and shoved her aside.

“I said no more of this crap.”

He kicked the rifle pad. It slid like a deflated football six feet away, leaving a thin trail of the white sand. Facing Ginger, feet planted apart, he swiped his fist across his chin. “Now you get in the house.”

What’s he going to do?

Ginger dropped her head, her eyes avoiding Mike’s glare. “I don’t want to go into the house.”

Mike charged. He grasped Ginger by her arms, lifted her off her feet, dragged her to the porch. He let go and she stumbled. Before she could get her balance, he shoved her hard through the open door.

She shuffle-stepped, her arms flailing like a rag doll‘s, grasping for a handhold in the air. Her knees smacked against a wooden arm of the couch, and she fell onto its cushions. The screen door slammed shut.

She lay still. She needed to catch her breath, yet not look his way. She had to steady herself, to think. To make up her mind.
Mike positioned himself in the bedroom doorway next to the couch, one elbow propped against the doorframe, his hand against his head.

Ginger pulled up. Five steps took her across the tiny room to the sink, her refuge. First she washed her hands, then the breakfast dishes, then her hands again, soaping to her elbows and rinsing. It was what she did when she needed to go to a private place, and she needed that now, needed to wash away her indecision. She needed to wash away Mike and everything else that bound her to this place.

Behind her, she heard him pick up his coffee cup from the table. Heard him step toward her. She spun to face him. And gasped.

With his arm crooked over her head, Mike dumped the coffee over her. She squeezed her eyes shut. The brown liquid rolled down her forehead and spilled over her cheeks. She felt it puddle in one ear and run down the back of her neck.

It didn‘t burn, it was lukewarm, but it scorched her heart.

She shook her head, slinging droplets. She turned to the sink and dipped her head under the faucet to rinse away the coffee.

When she reached for a dishtowel, Mike grabbed her by the arms and pulled her face to his, his nose almost pressing her nose. She squeezed her eyes shut. If he looks into my eyes, he’ll see that it’s over, and I’m afraid to let him see that now. Afraid of what he’ll do rather than lose me. She thought of the root cellar with its prison-thick walls.

“Get the crap out of here before I hurt you,” Mike yelled down her throat. “I don‘t want you around me anymore.”

Drops of warm spit sprayed onto her face.

She picked up her purse—it held no money, nothing but her keys and driver‘s license—and hurried to her car, the ten-year-old Honda that was wrecked when they bought it. She hoped the junker would start.

It did.

At first she inched forward; she had to be sure. She stopped at the sycamore tree. Trent‘s tree. Can I abandon Trent again? She whispered a long goodbye, her heart aching.

A rock hit the car. Mike was pelting the car with rocks and yelling, “Go! Get out of here. Git!”

She accelerated toward the open gate, its padlock hanging from a post, and raced to the blacktop. Cold water trickled between her shoulder blades, and she told herself that was why she was shivering so hard.

She had left before, and those memories washed over her now.
One day she drove two miles up the blacktop to a country cemetery. Hiding among the tombstones, she knitted a sock. Each clack of the needles measured the moments until the toe shaped to its fit and she would go back. She had no money and nowhere else to go.

This time, maybe it would be different. Months ago, she‘d seen a billboard advertising a women‘s shelter across the state line in Alabama and chiseled its phone number into her memory.

Her mind screamed It has to be different this time! as she screeched up to the curb by the school playground. Her boys were huddled together, not quite in the midst of the other children.

Ginger called to them from the car, “Come on, boys. Hurry, hurry!”

She saw them glance at the other children, the classmates they scarcely knew, before they rushed to her.
She gave them their choice. They could go with her or stay with
their father.

“I’m going with you,” Casey said. “I don’t know what happened this time but I know if we don’t go with you, you’ll come back.”

“Me, too,” Jody said.

While Ginger drove, she thought of the first time Mike threw coffee at her. She left then, too, her face bruised by a blow. That escape had started just like this one, with coffee poured on her by a man who swore to love and honor her, but never had. Or maybe he did, but in a twisted way she would never be able to understand.

This time can’t end the same way. It just can’t!

She yanked her mind away from the memory and kept the Honda speeding toward the shelter thirty miles away, watching the rearview mirror for Mike‘s brown Chevy Caprice. As she drove, her sons bombarded her with questions.

“Are we going to tell Dad where we are?” Casey asked.

“Are we going back to school?” Jody asked.

She had no answers for them. She had no answers for herself.

When the car buzzed into The Shoals, Ginger ducked behind a service station to call the number she‘d memorized. She followed their instructions, keenly aware of the secrecy the shelter insisted upon. A matter of life and death, they had said. Yes, thank you. Checked her rear view mirror one more time.

Not until the shelter’s gates clanged shut behind her did she feel safe.

The staff gathered them behind the closed doors of a pale yellow room, hugging them, welcoming them.

I feel like I’ve come home to family yet I don’t know a single one of them. At the same time, she felt hollow, exhausted as if she‘d been up all night, knowing she had stepped from one planet to another. Safe, yes. Also afraid and guilty and weighed down with the responsibility of what she had done.

She blinked back tears. Turning her face away from her sons, she wiped at her eyes. Can’t let them think I’m having second thoughts, not after coming this far!

“Would you boys like a snack here in the rec room while we talk with your mother?” A staff member asked.

Casey stood in front of Jody at the threshold, each of them taking in all the rec room had to offer, hesitant. Their entire cabin could fit inside its walls. Soft brown chairs semi circled a TV set, and a boy about their age slouched in the largest one. He glanced up, smiled, and turned back to his program. Nearby a Monopoly board was open across a game table with four chairs. Blue bookshelves lined the back wall, up to a toy box spilling over with Nerf balls and little kid toys.

Jody asked for a glass of milk.

Laine, the counselor on duty, showed Ginger into a cubical where they could talk privately. When Ginger tried to fill in the paper work, her hands trembled so much that Laine took the pen and filled in the blanks for her.

“And you live in a cabin where? What’s your 911 address?”

“911? We don’t even have a mailbox.”

Laine looked up from the papers at Ginger.

“I‘m a mess.” Limp brown hair hung loose halfway to her waist. Her eyes sunk into hollows. Her face was pale, yet her arms had a farmer’s tan, brown past the elbows then white where her shirt sleeve fell. She knew she was lean and sinewy but probably looked malnourished—just downright old and haggard.

“Do you know what you weigh? How tall are you?” The questions weren’t on the forms. Laine was just concerned.

“About a hundred and six. Five feet seven.‖

Laine made notes, then pushed her chair back and took off her glasses.

“Tell me about yourself.”

Ginger stammered and muttered at first. Then the words spilled out on top of each other. “No phone. No electricity. I had my babies at home…. I butchered hogs, made sausage, rendered the fat and made my own soap—My husband threw rocks—poured coffee on my head….I don‘t have any money.”

Laine led Ginger, Casey, and Jody down fresh-smelling hallways to their room. Three single beds, a desk and dresser left little walking around space. Ruffled curtains, hooked rug, pastoral landscapes on light blue walls. Blue plaid spreads covered the beds.

Next, she showed them through the shelter.

Each family had its own kitchen space within a larger room, with a stove, refrigerator, and a pantry. Ginger let out a little cry when she saw the refrigerator and freezer, another one when
she opened the pantry door: shelves and shelves of canned meats and vegetables, packaged cereals, grains, bread, cookies, frozen foods, more than they could want.

Ginger was too overcome with gratitude to say a word.
I can’t believe this. Someone prepared this for me. They don’t even know me, but here it is, ready for me now, when I need it.

“Did you bring a bag with you? A change of clothes?” Laine asked.

Ginger glanced down at her jumper with its coffee stains, suddenly aware of feeling sticky. “No, only this dress. And the boys‘ schoolbooks.”

“I‘ll call,” a staff member told Laine. She phoned the agency that provided clothing.

“They were locking up for the weekend,” she said, “but they‘ve reopened. Let‘s go.”

January, 2005

I parked behind Ginger’s ranch-style house. Just home from work, she waited for me under a flood light. Darkness had fallen in the late afternoon that Monday in January.

“From now on, you’re a back door friend,” she said as we wound through the garage and into a pine-paneled kitchen. She clutched two grocery sacks in her arms. I carried a take-out order from The Speedy Pig for the first of our working suppers.

Nowadays she races from court to court in six counties, a counselor employed by the shelter that once gave her sanctuary, bolstering other women who seek its safety. A professional woman with confidence, skill, and a briefcase.

The transformation wasn‘t easy.

She and two boys with teenage appetites lived on $543 a month Supplementary Security Income in a house owned by the shelter. Forty-two years old and working part-time, she entered college. That led to a B.S. in behavioral science and a job with the shelter.

“Abuse is about control. I heard that over and over at the shelter and later in class.” She kicked off her heels and shoved them out of her way.

“Isolation and dependence are the tools of an abuser.”

:You could have taught these lessons,” I said. They hadn’t even had a mailbox. She had to go through Mike to send or receive mail.

“Isolation and poverty formed the backbone of my marriage,” she said as she sliced store-bought tomatoes for our barbecue sandwiches. She opened a jar of homemade pickles and put a second jar on the red Formica counter for me to take home.

“I didn‘t even think about it then,” she continued when we sat at a maple table to eat. She had traded her suit jacket for a nubby sweater while I put a log in the fireplace. “The less we had, the more I stretched. Stretching became my weapon, my way to fight back. Stretching was my strength.”

She put her sandwich on her plate. She needed her hands to help find her thoughts.

“Stretching meant—or I believed it meant—I was a competent wife and mother who could overcome whatever hurdles I faced—”

She stopped.

“Do you know what I just realized?”

I had a mouthful of barbecue, so I shook my head.

“I built my own prison. I used my strength to wall myself in.”

“How was that?”

“If I hadn’t stretched our money, watered the soup or whatever, if I’d just let it all collapse, then Mike would have had to go to work. Or else we‘d have fallen apart much sooner. I never thought of that.”

She shook her head, thinking about what she‘d just figured out.

“Mike’s primary tool was economic abuse. And I made it possible.”

After supper, we leafed through Ginger’s high school yearbook and a box of photos and letters she kept under a bed in a spare room.

Ginger didn‘t know poverty before marrying Mike, nor did she expect it. She did know about control. That she learned well growing up in Baycross, Texas, in the 1960s and 70s.