"A Cold Night in Hell"

Late January 2011, I was told by a family court judge to get into a shelter immediately with my children as he signed a protection from abuse for me. I had documentation proving my reasons for asking for one, and the judge went a step further stating with a flourish, that he was signing my death warrant by granting my request. He also mentioned that this piece of paper won’t stop a bullet, a knife or a fist. He warned me not to go to any family member or friend’s house with my children as we would not only be in grave danger but we would also bring the danger to them as well. The judge made damn sure that I understood the gravity of the situation because by the time he was done explaining everything to me I was sobbing at the table wondering what the hell happened.

I drive home in the cold, dark night wondering where to go and how I would get there. My first ex-husband, the father of the oldest four of my children, gave me money and told me where I could safely go. I took my youngest four children with me as I watched my oldest son drive off into the night. My heart was breaking for what he was experiencing and I was powerless to stop it. In spite of the fear, trepidation, and overwhelming concern that I had for our safety, I decided to make a mini-vacation out of our impromptu fleeing from insanity. We ended up at a hotel where no one would find us while waiting for a court hearing. It had an indoor pool and the children were blissfully unaware of the dire situation we were in for the most part.

         After three days we had to move to another undisclosed place to wait for the hearing. The children were excited about the prospect of having a kitchen and several televisions at our disposal. I purchased food that I knew they would enjoy but still had some nutritional value. I figured they were the ones who were being inconvenienced the most, so I wanted to appease them as much as I could.

The second place was quickly scanned for anything suspicious; the children bathed and settled down for the night when I turned my attention to unloading the vehicle. It was bitter cold that night, with temperatures hovering in single digits. It was the night before my son’s eleventh birthday and I had been praying that this birthday would be better than the previous one when his father had been fired from his job for the first of two times that year. Yet didn’t tell me until it was way too late.

My son’s birthday was ruined as his father argued how everything in his life that had gone wrong was my fault. It was then that something inside of me clicked and I decided that I was not going to allow anyone to ever use me or accuse me of things that I had not done ever again. I had not caused his kidney stone, made him get arrested for anything (especially since his prison time was well before I had met him and he had hid his criminal history from me for over twelve years), nor was I ever the cause of his many firings from his jobs.

That freezing cold night, with snow covering the ground, is when my ten year old vehicle decided to not shut off properly. If I shut off the truck, the interior lights would stay on, draining my battery quickly and I needed to be at court early the following morning. I had taken everything inside the hotel; there wasn’t so much as a blanket, pillow or jacket in the vehicle. Not a single water bottle, a piece of gum or anything at all to eat.

It was ten PM when I decided I had to keep the vehicle running or take the risk of not making it to court. The temperature gauge on the truck read ten degrees, then it dropped to nine degrees. I tried calling a couple of people to ask them to bring me a screw driver so I could disconnect the battery. No one could or would come to my aid. I finally found a maintenance man and asked for a screw driver. He tried to loosen the screw, but he was shaking so badly from the cold he couldn’t disconnect the battery. I tried it and though I was cold, the rust on the battery screw was so tight that it broke the small screw driver without budging it at all.

I called my ex-husband to beg him to bring me a screw driver, yet he said he couldn’t. I hung up, cussed him out in my head then prayed that he would never have to experience the cold like I was doing. He kept texting me throughout the night asking if I was asleep. Oftentimes I wouldn’t answer his texts because I was so angry and cold that I knew I could never take back anything I wrote, so I didn’t write anything. I had the heat on full blast but because I was sitting with the truck idling in front of the hotel where my children were sleeping as the cold enveloped the vehicle, encircling it and somehow making even colder.

A friend from the west coast was talking to me. He’s a truck driver and was driving through Montana in weather just as nasty. He could hear my voice get groggy and he asked me if I had a window cracked. I said no, it was too cold and the exhaust would come right into my truck. He admonished me to open a window now, and after ten minutes I could close it until an inch was opened. Apparently his concern was carbon monoxide poisoning; something that hadn’t even crossed my mind. After about ten minutes he let me roll back up my window. By then I was so cold I couldn’t stop shaking. My cell phone was growing warm from talking on it and it provided the only warmth that I had that night.

My ex-husband continued to contact me throughout the night. I answered him sometimes, my temper long since calm. But my fingers were so numb that I could hardly text. After eight and a half excruciating hours of bone chilling cold, I simply said screw it. I went inside, the interior lights stayed on until my brother in law could come and cut the actuators in my vehicle door panels; he thought that would help, but it didn’t. When I crawled into bed I kept on my sweatshirt, Ugg boots, and used every available blanket inside the room that the kids weren’t using. The heat was turned up to 75 degrees, yet as I lay in bed I couldn’t stop shaking. After approximately two hours I had to get up to get ready for court. I showered but there wasn’t any hot water, adding insult to my already miserable night. The management apologized and said that a waterline broke due to the extreme cold.

I went to court, having been up for over twenty-four hours and was granted another temporary order. I came back to the hotel and simply crashed. I had my sister watching my children and she made us some food because she knew I hadn’t eaten in days. I passed out, still cold and still frightened from the experience. A few hours later when I awoke I felt somewhat better. I would eventually end up with pneumonia that would take me four months to recover from completely.

       A while later, long after this ordeal was over, I spoke to my ex and he told me why he could come bring me a screw driver that night. He said his wife had seen my estranged husband on their deck looking into their sliding glass door. They even have him on video because they have surveillance cameras installed outside their home. My ex told me he slept with his handgun under his pillow after seeing the boot prints in the snow on the deck. The police had been called but nothing was done because he had already left.

I thought I had been cold that night that I had to endure single digit temperatures, but when he had explained his reason for not coming, I unconsciously shivered. The judge had been right after all. My children would have been in danger had they stayed with their father. My ex-husband said that he wished that he would have come back to give him a reason to shoot him and I can’t help but think the same. The irony is that my second ex-husband thinks that he can ask my first one to testify for him. What he doesn’t realize is the deep-seated hatred for him because our children were put in danger. At best my first ex-husband be a hostile witness, and I can’t help but think it would not go well.

Many times people are put into situations where they have no control over the circumstances. Some people fare well, and others do not. Very few people rise from the ashes to become stronger, more compassionate and understanding. My children and I are such people. There isn’t anything that can happen to us that we cannot overcome. We have formed such a tight bond that no one could ever hope to weaken it. We have survived some of the most tumultuous situations, but somehow we became better for having done so.

Our journey isn’t through, and I hesitated sharing this with anyone prior to the conclusion of it. However, it has been nearly a year and a half since that dreadful night and I can still sense the foreboding fear of being found, falling asleep and never waking, or worse. I stayed awake to ensure no one walked passed or trespassed our hotel room. I noticed every single thing. It would be inconceivable to explain that night with mere words. I imagine that many have felt the same when they have served in wars over the years. My experience certainly would be similar to theirs. I feared the enemy. Only I knew who he was; I just didn’t know where he was, until my ex-husband told me.

I absolutely abhor cold weather, and probably suffer a bit from post traumatic stress when I see a snowflake, but I am no longer afraid anymore.