In 2018, my stepfather attempted to murder my mother. It is an incident that has become part lore, part cautionary tale in the sleepy mountain town where previously the most exciting incidents involved bears and trash cans. By all rights, my mother should have been killed as she ran up her driveway. But in what is perhaps the best product endorsement in history, the bullet lodged in the side of a bear-proof bird feeder, and not in her head, as it was intended.
What came next was a maze of legal mayhem that would jade the most ardent legal optimist. It would be revealed that my stepfather had been pill shopping for years, stockpiling guns, becoming increasingly verbally and emotionally abusive in the process.
Despite all of this, the inevitable divorce was still tilted in his favor. My mother found herself fighting to keep a house that her grandparents built, that has housed three generations of our family. She found herself drained financially from lawyers and court fees.
For years following The Incident, her sleepy little ranch house in mountains would have two separate SWAT teams descend upon it, a revolving cast of police officers responding to break-ins, and violence. My stepfather’s adult children and grandchildren would continue to claim ownership over the property. An adult grand-daughter would spend a year in jail for stealing my mother’s checks. A grand-son would commit a heinous crime and then hide out on the property, SWAT team later, he was found and is serving a prison sentence for vehicular homicide.
This was my mother’s life from 2018 until present.
In the aftermath of The Incident, I would find out that well before that July afternoon, she had a go-bag packed and ready in case my stepfather became too angry, too violent when they argued. I would learn that when they were dating, a custodian at the school where they both worked would regularly check on her because the sound of my stepfather screaming at my mother would reverberate through the halls.
The Incident of 2018 did not happen in a vacuum.
According to the National Institute of Medicine, domestic violence will affect over 10 million women in the United States every year. 1 in 3 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Over 1500 will be killed in domestic violence incidents. The data gets fuzzy when you talk about older women. The research on elder abuse is shady. It tends to focus on nursing homes and institutions. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 6 elderly people, primarily women, will experience elder abuse in an institutional setting ranging from psychological to physical, to sexual. Outside of institutions, the data is difficult to find.
Early readers have identified ‘feminine rage’ as a leading theme in my upcoming The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey. I will admit that I did not have those exact words in my head as I was writing, but it is inevitable that rage is a part of this story of powerful women living in powerless times. One cannot tell a story of women surrounded by men who would control them without rage seeping through.
I have been rageful since that July day in 2018 when my mother calmly told me that she had a sprained knee and a gash on her head from falling as she fled her attempted murder. I spent a lot of time in the gym those first two years, over-exercising and blasting Nine Inch Nails while I tried to sweat away my anger. I started taking anti-anxiety medication to deal with the night terrors and pervasive fear that invaded my brain. I talked to a therapist. I wrote.
I wrote revenge fantasy nightmares, I wrote melancholy odes to loneliness, I wrote folk stories of women battling elements of nature and mankind. I wrote Nora Grey into existence. As my rage became more focused and less blinding, I started to see a path, a face, the story of a young woman, surrounded by those who would control her, who fought for the right to create her own story among the narratives that would be written for her.
Feminine Rage is altogether too easy to understand. United Nations Women states that a woman is killed by their intimate partner every ten minutes worldwide. Nearly every day, at least 3 women are killed by their husband, boyfriend, father, brother, friend, making the United States one of the deadliest places for women worldwide. And yet we respond by curtailing women’s rights, policing women’s bodies, making it increasingly difficult for women to seek help in domestic violence situations.
My stepfather served exactly one night in jail for his crimes.
One night.
I am rageful.
The argument would be that he was elderly, and in poor health. His stockpile of guns, taken from the house on the night of The Incident, would be given to his adult daughters freely with no oversight as to where they went afterward. He would continue to violate restraining orders, be charged with contempt of court for ongoing antics during the divorce proceedings and the ensuing attempted murder trial, and through it all, he remained free.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 75% of femicide cases occur after a woman has left or attempted to leave their abuser. The length of the relationship increases the risk to the woman. My mother had been married for ten years. She was never in more danger than she was in the years following 2018. It is often asked why women stay in abusive situations, or why they engaged with the abuser to begin with. Didn’t they see what sort of person he was? Weren’t there red flags?
On the surface, my stepfather was a school librarian, he and my mother had gone to high school together, their friend circles overlapped, he was a park ranger during the summer. There were no glaring red flags on his profile. It would only be much later, after The Incident that people started coming forward about his anger, his disconnect, his disjointed actions. All of whom had questioned themselves, not wanted to overreact, not wanted to cause trouble in the moment.
I am guilty of this too. I had seen troubling behavior soon after their wedding. I had distanced myself from him, and by default my mother. Soon after the wedding, he began isolating her. He would tell me that my visits were upsetting to her, they caused her stress. During one stay, I woke up to him pointing a shotgun at me as I slept. He gave a strange little smile and said he had heard a racoon outside, then walked away. I never visited the house again until the aftermath of The Incident.
I am rageful.
Nora Grey has little interest in romance throughout her story. She has been exploited by her father and as her fame and talent grow, the list of men who would benefit from her ability grows. Instead of dimming her light, Nora forges her own path, and writes her own story. This is a revenge fantasy of sorts. It is a warrior’s call to all women who feel as though they are confined by the expectations of others. It is the sum total of the rage that lives deep in all women, struggling to see the light.
I was often told as a little girl that ‘holding onto anger was like taking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person’. I do not agree. We have vilified rage and anger. We teach young girls to be forgiving, soft-spoken, cooperative. We are taught to be fearful, not assertive. Don’t upset the men around you, don’t start a fight, don’t be difficult. Whatever you do, don’t embarrass a man, that is the worst thing you could do.
I have never met a woman who did not identify with the ‘Hey Baby to F*ck You B!tch’ ratio. It is the time it takes for a stranger in a bar, a park, a coffee shop to go from ‘Hello, may I buy you drink?” to ‘F*ck You, you’re ugly anyway’ when the woman dares to reject the offer. It is something we feel in our souls, a fear that is so pervasive that even writing about it gives me chills. It is that moment when you know in your heart of hearts that this man could kill me.
I am rageful.
Anger has a place. It is not a poison we take, it is a sword we carry. It is my mother showing up in court time after time, testifying to the dismaying and horrific events that upended her later years. It is every woman who stands up to their attacker and holds them accountable. It is every woman who refuses to be polite for the sake of keeping the peace. It is Nora Grey and Dorothy Kellings taking charge of their talent and futures in a world dominated by the male existence.
My mother recently moved from the house that my grandparents built. I was charged with cleaning out the ancestral home. I found photographs from the 1800’s, greeting cards that my grandmother saved, holiday ornaments that were crafted in Scotland, a thousand reminders of the history that makes up the foundation of my family.
I expected to be sad, torn. I expected to grieve the loss of the house as I would a family member. Instead, I felt a lightness, a release. I realized that the very air of the house was heavy with fear. It was as though the walls themselves had absorbed The Incident and made it a part of its DNA. With every box carried away, with every room cleared, I felt that weight lift.
I walked through the empty space one last time. I stood in each room, memorizing the lines of the walls and windows. I cleaned the gore from my blade and sheathed my sword. I said goodbye.
My rage did not start in 2018, and my stepfather is not its only inciting point. We are born with it, it is sharpened every time we are taught to walk through the world in a default state of fear. It hones it edges every time we bite our tongue or ignore a certainty.
The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey is a call to women everywhere to own your rage. Write your story. Stop being polite and swallowing your doubts. We are more than what others would have us be. We are rageful, and we are proud.
Thank you to the National Institute of Medicine, United Nations Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the National Institute of Health for all facts and statistics.
__________________________________
