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I left the hospital carrying my daughter’s ashes when my husband finally called from wherever he was with his mistress and coldly said, “The bill has been taken care of. Stop bothering me.” I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t allow him to hear my voice break. Instead, I pulled out the old phone my father had given me three years earlier and called the number stored inside. The man on the other end had been silently preparing a legal case powerful enough to bring my husband and his entire family crashing down.
During Christmas, I decided to drop my 8-year-old daughter with her three-year-old sister at my parents house and said, "You guys head inside. I have to check on your dad in hospital." But my parents turned them away. Then they slammed the door in their faces. My daughter had to walk home with her tiny sister in the freezing cold while carrying her, but not having any idea of the area. My three-year-old c0ll@psed from exhaustion and cold. My 8-year-old tried to carry her but eventually l0st consciousness too...
I was still on the toilet when my husband grabbed my hair, dragged me into the hallway with my clothes half down, and slammed my shoulder into the doorframe because our newborn had kept him awake again. By the time I hit the floor, I barely looked like the woman who'd come home from the hospital three days earlier—my hair was stuck to my sweaty face, one cheek was swelling, my lip had split, and dark bruises covered my arms above the hospital wristband. His mother threw my crying baby onto a pile of blankets. I crawled to my son first, smashed the bathroom stool into my husband's shin, shoved her away, and locked us inside. Then he screamed that life had been better before I gave birth.