Member-only story
I drove 300 miles
But I couldn’t save her
Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I got a call from a friend.
Her husband had beat her up and she was crying.
“You’ve got to get out of there,” I told her. “You’ve got to save yourself.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “But you don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
“He’s trying. He loves me. He wants to do better. You don’t understand.”
We’d talk for 20 minutes, half an hour. Nothing would be resolved. A few weeks would pass, a month. Then I’d get another call.
Each time I’d spend time with her on the phone. Each time I’d be upset, myself. It affected my studies, because I was worried about my friend. I felt helpless. She lived 150 miles away, you see. It’s not like I could just get in my car and go over. But I wanted to.
“You need to leave him,” I told her over and over. It was like a mantra. Maybe if I said it often enough, it would sink in, and she would leave.
Then it became, “Where would I go?”
She conceded she needed to leave. But how could she?
“I have nowhere to go,” she said. “I don’t have any money. He controls it all.”
