You were a beautiful child. I don’t know what happened to them, but I had boxes and boxes of pictures of you when you were a baby. You weren’t even six pounds by the time we brought you home, but you were strong. You were a fighter.
I was so proud of you.
You gave me a reason to live, Justine. If it weren’t for you, I … well, you don’t need to hear that side of it.
For the first little bit after you came home from the hospital, your father and I got along. He seemed to have changed his mind about not wanting to be a dad. I think part of him just liked the attention he got because of you. But I think there was a part of him, however small, that loved you in his own way.
Your father had demons, Justine. I’m not sure I mean that in the literal sense of the word, but he didn’t necessarily want to be a monster. I don’t know what went wrong with him, and it’s too late now to try to figure out anyway.
You had just started crawling when the beatings started again. Dennis was taking me to different doctors, telling them that I was unstable. Post-partum psychosis, they called it. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t crazy.
I was a prisoner.
Dennis found a doctor who prescribed me something horrible, something meant for people with severe mental illnesses. It knocked me out. Made me gain fifteen pounds the first two months, and that’s on top of all the weight I gained during the pregnancy. I couldn’t nurse you anymore. Could hardly function.
He took me to more doctors. Complained about my behavior. Hinted I might not be safe around our child. Hired a cute, perky au pair to move in with us and “help out with the baby,” as he put it. Really, he just wanted someone to take to bed since I was so drugged up and overweight by then he’d lost his interest in me.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was relieved when he found another focal point for his attentions.
The drugs kept coming. You kept growing. Dennis told the au pair all kinds of terrible things about me, made it sound like I couldn’t be trusted alone with my own child. She took you out and about every day, leaving me home alone. Nothing to do but cry and beg God to end my life.
I could have done it, but I held onto the hope that if I managed to get myself healthy, Dennis would let me be your mother again. I did everything he told me to do. Ate nothing but cabbage soup for weeks on end because Dennis told me I was fat. Took my meds, not having a clue that my problem wasn’t a mental illness but that my husband was drugging me up to keep me compliant.
I don’t know what happened to the au pair, but she disappeared. Dennis told me her mom was sick and she flew back home, but she’d told me she was an orphan. Truth be told, I bet he killed her. They’d gotten into a terrible fight the night before. I heard him yelling at her.
The next day she was gone.
Of course, I can’t prove anything. When I mentioned it at the trial, the judge told me to shut up. Said it had nothing to do with the case. I think it had everything to do with the case. I was scared for my life. If Dennis could make an au pair simply disappear, a woman nobody came looking for, a woman with no connections or legal representation, what could he do to me? He’d already gotten multiple doctors in his pocket, men who testified that I was unstable, unfit to be a mother.
Dennis controlled every single aspect of my life. And the nightmare was far from over.