“When will the store open?”
“In a couple of months. We’re going to call it Like New. That’s what the women are when they find Christ and learn that with His help, they can control their lives.” She grinned. “We just signed the lease for a store in the center of town, and I have no idea where the monthly rent is going to come from. As you undoubtedly noticed, we can’t even afford to paint this place. If the store succeeds, it’ll be all because of God.”
She spoke as if trusting God this way were commonplace, and I thought that for her, it probably was.
I peered into the living room as we walked past. It was filled with chairs of all sizes, colors and fabrics.
“A motley mess, isn’t it?” Stephanie said cheerfully. “But we don’t have the luxury of being choosy. If someone offers us a chair, we take it. As long as it’ll hold a woman up safely, we don’t complain about the looks.”
We settled on a dirty, well-used sofa and chair in a corner of Stephanie’s office. I checked my little tape recorder to make certain it was working properly. Satisfied, I leaned back.
Stephanie patted her chair, and thousands of dust motes burst free, sailing through the air like seeds from an exploding pod. “A mission in Allentown was going out of business and they offered us first dibs on their furniture. Isn’t it comfortable?” She was clearly delighted.
“It is,” I agreed, though I had just been thinking that I wouldn’t give the ratty stuff house room. I swallowed, feeling shallow and materialistic.
“How did you get involved in Freedom House?” I asked. I knew the short answer to this question from my research, but it was still a good place to begin.
Stephanie looked away from me for a minute, staring out the window.
“It always amazes me when I have to admit that I was an abused wife. Not that I’m ashamed or feel guilty. I’m just amazed. How did I let myself get trapped like that?”
“How did you?” I marveled that someone as strong and assured as the Stephanie sitting in front of me had once been a victim.
“I got trapped for two reasons. I wanted to please. And no one had ever taught me the power of choice. And I was only eighteen when I married.”
“Is marrying at a young age typical of abusive situations?”
She nodded. “Often, though not always. In our case it was too many stresses before we had the ability to handle them. When I married Wes, I was in a romantic fantasy. I saw him as strong and knowing, my knight to protect me from the world. I would be the best wife a man could ever have, and he wouldn’t lose his temper at me anymore because I’d make him so happy.”
She looked into space, I suspected seeing herself at eighteen, twenty, twenty-five. “I bent over backwards to please him. When he got angry, I knew it was my fault because I hadn’t tried hard enough. When he hit me, I knew I deserved it. When he heaped verbal abuse on me, I knew I was all those terrible things he called me. After all, he’d never say them if they weren’t true.”
“But you’re an intelligent woman,” I protested.
She nodded. “But he was incredibly clever, a master manipulator. And he always begged for forgiveness with tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you. You just made me so mad. Let’s agree that you’ll never do that again. Then I won’t have to hurt you again.’”
“That’s no apology at all.”
Stephanie nodded. “I know that now, but then I only heard the I’m-sorry part, not the it-was-Stephanie’s-fault part.”
“How long were you married?”
“Nine years. Nine long years.”
“Why did you finally leave?”
“Deep inside I knew it was wrong to hit people, even stupid wives. I just couldn’t admit it out loud. But I started reading things about abuse after a nurse talked to me the time Wes gave me a concussion and broke my arm.”
“How did he break your arm?” I cut in.
“He threw me down the stairs for not making the bed with the sheets he wanted.”
I blinked. “You’re kidding.”
She shrugged. “At least that’s what he said.
In reality he was about to lose another job and was taking it out on me. You see, if it was my fault he hit me, then he was still the good guy. I was the evil woman.”
She smiled grimly. “When you’re in an abusive marriage, it’s like you’re addicted. There’s this intimacy and these soul ties from the sex, often violent or demeaning. You think you can’t live without him even as he’s killing you. You think it’s normal to live with this tension, this pain. And you know everything will be all right if you can just love him enough.
“Which of course you can never do because for him the issue isn’t love but absolute authority. Total control. That’s the goal of every abuser.”
“The puppeteer pulling the strings,” I said.
“That’s too kind an image, but it definitely gives the idea.”
“How were the kids during this time?”
Stephanie smiled. “They were the one bright spot in my life. But they misbehaved, as all kids do, and I began to fear that Wes would beat them too.”
I thought of vivacious Sherrie and felt sick at the thought of someone hitting her. “Did he?”
She shook her head. “Wes never laid a hand on them, but they learned what they saw modeled. One day I was outside in the garden when I heard Sherrie begin to cry. She was about five years old. I rushed inside and found her and Rob in the living room. Rob was yelling at her like Wes yelled at me. He was calling her the same names that Wes called me. And on her cheek was a red handprint from where Rob had hit her.”
My blood chilled as I thought of the handsome kid in the booth last night at Ferretti’s.
“‘She didn’t do what I asked,’ Rob said. ‘I told her to get me something to drink and she didn’t.’ ‘I didn’t, Mom,’Sherrie said, hanging her head. ‘I’m sorry.’”
Stephanie swallowed hard, the memory obviously still painful. “‘You can’t hit her like that, Rob,’ I told him. ‘It’s not right.’ ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Daddy hits you.’” Stephanie looked at me. “That’s when I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t let my children become Wes and me. I called that nurse and she sent me to a safe house. We lived there for two months. I couldn’t go to my regular job because Wes could find me there, but I found another one in another town nearby. And for some reason I began to go to church.”
She turned and pointed to the photo of a little white building that looked more like a VFW hall than a church. It hung on the wall beside this year’s school pictures of Sherrie and Rob.
“The safe house gave me protection when I needed it and helped restore order to our lives, but it was at church that I met Jesus. There I learned the power of choosing God’s way. That’s when I determined to offer women everything the safe house had offered me plus the power of God to redeem broken lives.”
“And Freedom House is the result?”
Stephanie nodded. “We only make a small dent in a very large problem, but we can do that.”
“Did you ever see your husband after you left?”
“I