06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (2 page)

Yet so love precedes hatred,

desire precedes aversion,

hope precedes despair,

fear precedes daring,

and joy precedes sadness.

—St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica,
Part I

Evil flourishes far more in the shadows than in the light of day.

—Jawaharlal Nehru
The Unity of India
(1937)

What attracts one person to another has long fascinated poets, perfumers, psychologists, astrologists, and biologists. Is it an emotional, spiritual, or physical link that binds a man and a woman? Unable to diagnose passion, experts have relegated the phenomenon to the territory of the unknown. “No human creature can give orders to love,” dismissed George Sand. “Do you know how uncontrolled and unreliable the average human being is in all that concerns sexual life?” asked Sigmund Freud.

When a union turns violent, criminologists are left to ponder the dilemma of what first drew, and later bound, a woman to her lover/abuser. Why didn’t she just get out? they ask. Such large numbers of those battered as adults were abused as children that decades ago experts reluctantly came to one conclusion: Somewhere—whether in DNA or day-today experience—there is a force at work that defies random coupling. Abusers and victims seek each other out.

After it was all over, with the acute perception of hindsight, Linda would conclude life had set her up for James Bergstrom. That she had been bred to accept violence. And that their union was a tragedy she was fated to live.

The neighborhood in which Linda Martinez, nicknamed Lily by her family, grew up is the type of uniquely Houston setting only possible because of the city’s lack of zoning. Businesses and industries mix with homes in a patchwork of
unrestrained urban development. Tucked just outside the 610 Loop, the area is bounded by two thoroughfares on which strips of prefabricated metal warehouses, stores, and factories are interrupted only by the occasional tavern or storefront church. Nearby is a heavily industrial district bordering railroad tracks. Even on quiet side streets, like the one on which Linda’s parents, Santos and Jesse Martinez, bought a modest frame house in 1963, the homes are interlaced with small factories and businesses.

Despite strong Hispanic roots, both Santos and Jesse were born in the United States, the children of Mexican and Spanish parents respectively who immigrated in search of opportunity. They met in Arcola, a small town southwest of Houston where Santos’s parents raised ten children surrounded by trees and rolling acres to run. In 1958 they married and moved to Houston to start a family. The children came quickly: first Gino, then Mary, Linda on Halloween day, October 31, 1963, Alice, and finally Daniel. Another son died at the age of two, a victim of pneumonia.

The Martinez house, sitting firmly in the center of the block, was proud if modest. Its white clapboard exterior was faded but not unkempt. Its yard, like those of its neighbors, was encircled in a sturdy metal fence to ward off the encroaching violence of the city. Inside, it was well maintained, decorated with framed religious prints depicting the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus amidst photographs of the couple’s five children. Jesse had a good job working days in the shipping department at Devoe & Raynolds, a regional plant for the national company which manufactured paint for stores throughout the Southwest. The factory was just a short walk over the railroad tracks from the house. Each evening when Santos, a seamstress, returned from work, the Martinez house filled with the pungent aroma of frying corn tortillas and simmering tomatoes.

Despite its peaceful facade, Linda’s childhood home was a terrifying place. “It was like a prison camp,” she would say, with a grimace. Of course, there were the happy times:
fishing trips, parties, weddings,
quinceañeras
(elaborate fifteenth-birthday celebrations in Hispanic cultures that mark a girl’s entry to womanhood), picnics, and afternoons on the beach. Yet from the beginning, Jesse, a short, stocky man with dark brown hair and strong, thick hands, was a frightening presence. Though he worked all day and often drank with cronies at night, when he was home, the family trembled under his domination.

One of Linda’s earliest memories was of an incident when she was five. “My father was angry with me because I got up off the couch. We were never allowed to walk around unless we got permission,” she whispered. “He took a belt and began walloping me.” Santos stepped in to save her middle daughter and shared in the flogging. Days later both were still marked with bruised reminders of the battering.

According to Linda, when she was nine the physical abuse turned sexual. It began one morning as she stood on a footstool washing dishes. Her brothers and sisters were relegated to the living room, where they silently watched Sunday morning church shows on television. Her mother was visiting a neighbor. Alone in the kitchen, Linda heard her father enter, so quickly she at first feared his intention was to punish her for some minor offense. Instead, he pulled her toward him, groping between her legs. To her surprise, he stroked and fondled her. Linda wasn’t sure what he was doing or why, but something told her it wasn’t right. “I was terrified,” said Linda. “I cried so hard, I couldn’t stop.”

The scene, she maintains, repeated itself twice more. After the final incident, Linda cried so uncontrollably, despite her father’s threats, that her mother, who was in another part of the house, came to investigate. Pressing her head against her mother’s chest, Linda recounted amid sobs her accusations against her father. Jesse Martinez denied Linda’s accusations, yet an angry Santos warned her husband, “If this is true, it better not ever happen again.”

By the time she was ten, Linda had become a reclusive yet pragmatic child. Since the alleged sexual abuse took place
when she was alone with her father, the solution was not to be alone with him. “She would follow me wherever I went,” said Santos. “Lily became my quiet, little shadow.” On Saturdays when her mother cleaned another house on the block, Linda would tag along silently behind.

Still there was the physical battering, usually administered with her father’s belt. Here, too, in Linda’s methodical, childlike calculations, there had to be a way to survive. At first she, like her brothers and sisters, hid in her bedroom terrified as her father patrolled the house, cursing and screaming. When hiding failed to spare her from his wrath, Linda reasoned there had to be another option. “I began crying even before he hit me,” said Linda, explaining how she eventually escaped Jesse Martinez’s rage. “And I’d pretend that he’d already damaged me, that when I got upset, my hands didn’t work right. My mother would scream that he’d get arrested if he hit me and he’d better leave me alone. Usually he did.”

Though she wanted to tell her siblings about her scheme, she knew she couldn’t. If they all adopted her act, her father would realize it was nothing more than a child’s ruse. Soon it would cease working for any of them. So although she was no longer a target, Linda was still subjected to watching her father exact punishment on her mother, brothers, and sisters. “Sometimes I just couldn’t stand it,” said Linda. “I thought if he hit them one more time, he’d kill them.”

On occasions when the violence was so traumatic she simply couldn’t bear it, Linda gathered the boldness to use her untouchable status to cool things down, wedging herself between her parents as they fought. “Down deep, Lily was always a tough little kid. She’d stand up for herself when the rest of us wouldn’t,” said Daniel, her youngest brother. Though she dared not do it often, at times her interference would surprise her father long enough for the situation to cool.

Still, Linda feared him. So much so that if she awoke at night in the bedroom she shared with her two sisters and
needed to go to the bathroom, she would silently shiver, afraid of venturing the short distance through the house alone. She couldn’t bear the prospect of a chance meeting with him. Often she would wet her bed before summoning the courage to hazard the darkened hallways of her own home.

As bad as things were, they only worsened one afternoon in 1972 when Jesse drove home after working the day shift at Devoe. Just as he passed over the railroad tracks, a dump truck hit him head-on. A family friend ran to the Martinez home to tell Santos her husband had been gravely injured. By the time Linda saw her father, he was in Ben Taub, Houston’s publicly funded hospital and trauma center, his head was swathed in white bandages, and she soon realized that he didn’t recognize her or any of her brothers and sisters. Linda, then nine, recalls feeling conflicted about whether she preferred her father to live or die. When he returned home, weeks later, she often concluded she would have been better off if he had died.

While his rages had plagued the family for years, the Jesse Martinez who returned to the small, white clapboard house was even more obsessively controlling than before. With a steel plate covering part of his skull and nerve damage to his legs making it impossible for him to work, Linda’s father was a constant presence in the household. He was the invalid, his spells the reason ambulances were called in the middle of the night. With braces on his legs, his pride kept him from tolerating even his children’s laughter. “Whenever we’d giggle or laugh, he always assumed we were laughing at him,” explained Linda. “That he was a cripple and we were making fun of him.”

After his return, the children were relegated below to-be-seen-and-not-heard status. He ordered them to sit quietly at all times, their hands folded on their laps. If they stood up or talked without permission, they were subject to his vengeance. Their every move was his concern. Even when
they studied, he was not happy, sometimes turning off the electricity so they would have no light to read by. Day after day, they were barred from playing outside with friends, instead banished to their rooms. The happy times became those brief episodes when Santos and Jesse drove off together, leaving the children at home. They escaped, spilling over the street and yard. Bounding with pent-up energy, the Martinez brood ran the block. “Sometimes we played kick ball and made too much noise and we wouldn’t hear them drive in,” said Linda. “When that happened we all rushed inside and hid in our rooms. We knew he’d be coming and that he would be furious.”

Santos Martinez, a handsome woman on whom the pain of the years, like the dark circles under her eyes, hung heavy and thick, understood her children were suffering. Finally she determined her husband’s reign of terror had to end. With her brood urging her on, she ordered him out. “Jesse was acting crazy, he even waved a gun threatening to kill the whole family,” she said. Still he came around, one night attempting to force his way into the house. Terrified, Linda and her brothers and sisters barricaded the door with a sofa. As Jesse’s youngest daughter, Alice, watched through a window, in desperation he feigned a heart attack, throwing himself to the ground clutching his chest. When no one opened the door to investigate, he reluctantly left. Days later, Santos filed for divorce.

As the late seventies approached, Linda was developing into a vaguely troubled but beautiful teenager. She made average grades in school. Though the family had little money, the freedom afforded by her father’s absence made her feel wealthy. Like her girlfriends, she craved rock ’n’ roll and fast cars. She suffered the occasional crush, and sometimes her mother fretted, with a laugh, that she was becoming “boy-crazy.”

By the time she turned fifteen, Linda was five feet tall and slender. She had an infectious laugh and a wide smile. Only those who looked closely would see that it often melted into
a slight frown. That year, Linda was allowed to date for the first time. In school, her boyfriend was considered a real catch. He was not only handsome but played bass guitar in a neighborhood Latin band. With typical teenage enthusiasm, Linda felt her life was changing, that from here on out, nothing would ever hurt her again.

Of course, she was wrong.

One night when Santos was busy, she asked a close friend to watch over Linda. The older woman offered to take the teenager to a local club to hear a popular new group. Linda agreed. The club was a hot, smoky place filled with a Latin beat and the pungent odors of alcohol and sweat. There, Linda happened upon the manager of her boyfriend’s band. He was a bossy, disagreeable man at least ten years her senior, who had never paid any attention to her in the past. This night, however, was different. As Santos’s friend danced, he plied Linda—who had little experience with alcohol—with one drink after another. When she didn’t drink fast enough, he playfully chided her for falling behind. Before long Linda felt fuzzy-headed and giddy. Then the older man whispered that he had something in his van for her, a copy of a new publicity photo just taken of her boyfriend and the other members of the band. “Would you like one?” he asked with a smile. Linda jumped at the chance and padded along behind him as he headed for the parking lot.

The moments after he opened the back of the baby blue van and motioned for her to go inside will live with Linda forever. Instantly he was on top of her, pushing her head against the corroded metal of the van’s filthy floor. Pinning her arms above her head and pressing against her with one knee, he shoved up her dress, then yanked down her panty hose. She could hear the rhythmic beat of Latin music pounding in the distance and smell the stench of liquor on his breath. “I was crying, shouting, ‘Stop it. Stop it,’” said Linda. “I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

It was over in minutes. She crouched in the corner of the van as he smiled down at her, zipped up his fly, and cinched
his belt. When she asked why he had done it, he simply laughed.

Linda returned to the club in tears. Her mother’s friend asked what happened, but she didn’t answer. In her bed that night, she cried herself to sleep. By morning, she had decided not to tell anyone about the rape. Her mother had enough of her own problems keeping the family together, she reasoned; why burden her? In the glare of daylight she faced the sobering reality of how it had happened, and concluded it must have been—at least partly—her fault. Why had she followed him outside? Into the van? For a picture? Shouldn’t she have known better? “Could I have stopped it?” she pondered. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, I was to blame.”

More than anything, Linda wanted to put it out of her mind, to bury it forever. But she couldn’t. From that night on, the horror in her nights was no longer her father but the man who had raped her. The nightmares were terrifying. She could hear the music, smell the alcohol, and relive the pain in her loins when he forced himself inside her.