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The call came late that Friday night after 11:30 p.m. I was in bed falling into a pleasant sleep when the phone rang and my favorite niece, Erin, was on the other end of the line. She was crying and scared. She asked me to come over right away – that she was in danger. Stephanie was angry and fighting with her again, and she was afraid of what might happen . . . I told her I’d be right over. She was living five minutes away in a small apartment complex in the sleepy village of Stockbridge, Michigan.
When I arrived, the door was ajar; there was blood on the stoop and along the woodwork around the door. The cat and dog were agitated and slinking around the apartment as I walked into the living room to the bedroom. I distinctively remember noticing this detail and wondering how much graver and fearful it must be when there are little children involved in domestic violence situations.
Erin had come out of the closet that same year, declaring she was a lesbian in love with a woman named Stephanie. I had been on my way back from Washington, D.C., interviewing for a job there and side-tripping through Wheeling to visit Erin, her husband Abe, and son Seth when she dropped the bomb on me that changed forever the way I thought about relationships.
The last year had been tumultuous for Erin and her family. She seemed restless and distracted, her weight soared, and she had buzz-cut her hair, but her face was still as pretty as I had remembered it when she was my tiny, beautiful black-haired, hazel-eyed, ivory skinned niece, my youngest sister’s first born. I had married at 18 and accompanied my husband to El Paso, TX and Giessen, West Germany while he served with the U.S. Army. We spent several years away from Wheeling and my family during those child-rearing days, finally ending up in southeast Michigan where the economic grass looked very much greener than the grass in the greater Ohio Valley during the recession of the early ‘80’s.
Erin’s coming out was like nothing that had happened to me before or since. It was late March. I had come back through Wheeling for a short visit following my D.C. job search. I’d picked up some Coleman’s fish sandwiches for lunch, expecting nothing unusual while passing through downtown Wheeling town. I remember Erin didn’t eat. She was nervous, but finally she told me what lay heavy on her mind -- she was gay – had always been gay – and that she needed me to help her tell Abe when he came home from work that evening! Still reeling from her admission, I hadn’t started to process how I felt, let alone how we would tell Abe. She explained some things about her being sexually molested as a child from the age of three until puberty by close family members. I had not had a clue. I was astounded and sickened at the same time. A wave of guilt came over me for leaving Wheeling and feeling somehow all this might not have happened to her had I just been there! So futile and helpless I felt at that moment.
I couldn’t imagine how Erin must have felt, having to tell the man she still loved about her circumstances and her desire to live freely and genuinely in the world as the person she truly was. Abe was soon to be tested beyond what any man or woman should have to endure, but as I suspected, he would rise to the task and make all of us proud to call him “Family.”
Everything after that day resulted in some of the greatest personal challenges Erin had ever experienced. She moved out of her beautiful Bethlehem home which she’d decorated and made with husband Abe and baby son Seth. She ultimately moved in with the woman who had forced her out of the closet. And then in late summer, as the relationship became co-dependent and less healthy for both of them, Erin and Stephanie packed up what little they had left and drove to Michigan where she found the apartment I had been called to that late Friday evening.
They both found work as cable TV installers with a local company. From sources unknown and in ways I did not comprehend, they both began selling drugs as a lucrative side job. Neither had ever made so much money. I knew they were headed for trouble, but my role was not to judge them; I was responding only as my feelings dictated – as Erin’s aunt and caregiver in the absence of her mother, my sister. Having only ever received a speeding ticket, I could not fathom how it must feel to be playing with fire within plain sight of the local police department. It was in this broil that the domestic violence had begun, where Stephanie as a drug user would pressure Erin to obtain more and more drugs for her use. I was way out of my league and comfort zone while observing all of it, and I felt unable to give more than advice and warning to my niece.
The domestic violence eventually turned ugly, with Stephanie physically pounding Erin and breaking open her pierced eyebrow before eventually trying to smother her with a couch cushion while high on dope that Friday night. I got Erin to come home with me, but the next morning, she went back to Stephanie and more violence. Finally, I was summoned again to the apartment after Erin had had the good sense to get the police involved before I got there and before behaviors got out of control. Not wanting to test fate a third time, I called my sister and put Erin on a plane bound for Wheeling. Not long after her return home, she moved into the Wheeling YWCA to begin to sort out her life and escape the violence that had shadowed her from the time she was a small innocent child.
I kept in touch with Erin over the next several months. Ever a leader, Erin quickly proved her worth at the Y’s domestic violence shelter, becoming a floor monitor during her stay there. Her days were spent in therapy, living closely with other women who, like her, had experienced domestic violence from whatever source. She moved closer to God during this period, remembering the gentleness of her grandfather, Shannon, who impressed upon her the wisdom of finding comfort in Jesus when the going gets tough in life. Slowly, with the deliberation of an inch-worm, Erin began the long climb back to something – anything – resembling normalcy. Her parents and siblings shunned her almost immediately after she moved out of her and Abe’s house. Her now ex-husband had custody of their son, and the separation from him and the life she had known was the greatest torment she had ever experienced. She went through a couple of relationships with younger women that lasted only a short time. And then, as God is fair, she met a woman more her age, with similar family interests and responsibilities, who eventually became her long-term partner.
The transformation of Erin spans a period of almost four years. She is now best friends with her ex-husband and closely present in all the parenting decisions regarding her son. Her relationship with her new partner, Stacey and her two young girls is fulfilling and peaceful, without most of the drama that characterized her first years after coming out of the closet. Her family still shuns her, but she’s carved out a stay-in-touch relationship with her mother.
Erin has found peace. With Jesus’ help, she has forgiven those needing forgiveness. And she has climbed that highest of mountains, the one of self-actualization, that enables her today to represent Hughes Xerographics in Bellaire, OH, as a successful sales account executive selling office copiers and other Xerox-specific products. She does well. She and her family live in a beautiful old house in Martins Ferry, OH, just a stone’s throw from the YWCA in Wheeling, where we still drive by to wave at friends there, every time I go to Wheeling to visit her. And every time we drive by, she tells me another story about the months she spent there, finding herself again, and reconnecting with that bond of family love and acceptance found mostly in places like the Y when the path chosen is unconventional and controversial.
Erin is the real McCoy. She is authentic, as we say. How many people do you know who are willing, ready, and able to live authentically? How many places do you know like the Wheeling YWCA where such women are welcomed with love, and sent back out the doors, their wounds bandaged, and their self-esteemed reinforced by the love freely given there? It is a model worth emulating and supporting. I hope the Wheeling community realizes the Treasure it has there in the staff, the bricks and mortar, and the numbers of lucky women who have found themselves again at the Y.
-- Sharon Ruth Brown Fernandez
1/26/2011
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