A Love Story            

            DeMeris Atherton* hooked her grocery sacks over two curled fingers and hurried inside.  The fingers wouldn’t straighten after her untreated hand injury in 1978.  She was getting arthritis in them, but they only ached occasionally.  She was bothered more by the lack of sight in her left eye, from an attack in late ’79 for which she blamed herself.  Heavy pale lines marked the damage her eye socket had suffered; her appearance haunted her.  She avoided mirrors.  She was glad that her long hair covered the bare spot on the other side of her scalp where it had scarred over and would never fill in.  She thought that was in 1982—couldn’t remember.  Her right arm ached all the time and changes in the weather made it worse.  It had been bearable for twenty years, but now she was taking pain pills. 

            She married Cal Atherton* in 1975, and he had always been so attentive.  Hard worker, but he had some trouble keeping jobs.  True, he had a temper on him—he had choked her that time in 2011—but she knew he loved her despite all his physical outbursts and the constant put downs.  Now she was worried.  Cal had ordered a gun, and it would arrive soon. DeMeris thought she might need to leave.  You know, find a place where nobody knew her.  Far away.

138 House legislators failed to support the 2013 Violence Against Women Act.  Maybe you should discover how YOUR Representative voted.  And remember.

*DeMeris and Cal Atherton are fictitious names.  Any resemblance to any persons, living or deceased, is coincidental and unintended.