He sat in the back of the closet in his bedroom, listening to the sounds of terror down the hall. His mother was crying and his father was crying, but for different reasons...reasons that would be visited again one day....

The Jensen apartment, Plainfield, New Jersey....

"No...He's still at work. I'll tell him when he gets home. Would you mind telling me what this is about?" She asked quietly and calmly, but the voice on the other end was anything but calm and quiet.

"Please, I don't deserve this...please..what? I can't...I don't know where he is right now if he's not at work...I'm sorry...I'll tell him you...hello? Hello?" Betty looked at the phone with dread, knowing what would come next. She thought about getting into her car, but remembered he'd taken both sets of keys with him. The walk to her mother's was not too far, but it was pouring outside. She returned her attention to dinner, hoping that the meal would please him.

Later that afternoon...

"Hi, honey, I'm home." Jack walked in and threw his jacket over the chair in the hall before kissing her on the cheek.

"What's for dinner?" He looked on the table and saw that the dishes hadn't been set. He glared at her.

"Your favorite. Roast beef and scalloped potatoes. They ran out of fresh asparagus the other day so I got the frozen. I'm sorry." She spent three hours preparing a meal fit for a king, but the king was not amused.

"Jeez, Betty...what the fuck? You know I can't stand frozen...can't you do anything right?" The meal would have made the finals in any food challenge, but it didn't matter.

"I'm sorry, Jackie...the produce guy said the truck got held up in Bayonne at an accident. He's going to have it in tomorrow, okay?"

"What about A&P...why didn't you get it there?" She would have reminded him about how he had taken the car keys, but that wasn't a very good idea.

"I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry Jackie. Here...have some roast beef and potatoes. Let me cook some carrots...you love fresh carrots." She put the food on a plate and set it in front of him, hoping he'd agree.

"Okay...I don't know why you can't just get one thing straight. You know how I hate frozen. Okay...carrots will have to do."

"Here...I made some biscuits to go along with the meat...you like them with gravy." She hoped the homemade biscuits would please him.

"Yeah...that's good. You got any margarine?" He stared at her as if she had offered to feed him dog food."

"No, honey...you used the rest of it up this morning for breakfast...you know how you like that with your waffles?"

"What does it take for you to get things straight around here? All I as is for dinner to be ready when I get home and you manage to fuck it up once again. Got any fucking butter?"

"Gabbie had some butter...I got some from her this afternoon."

"So she knows I used up the margarine? What the fuck are you spreading our business around the neighborhood for?"

"NO...no....I told her I dropped the margarine on the floor and that Rusty ate it." She lied; Gabbie had guessed that Jack had used up the margarine. She offered to take Betty to the store, but that would have made things worse.

"Well, okay." He blew out a breath and took a bite of the roast beef.

"Did I get any calls today?" The dreaded daily question made her cringe.

"Ye....yes." She poured him some juice.

"Who called."

"I...she..."

"Betty, who called."

"She...em...er...."

"Goddamit...what the fuck...who called." He snapped as he took a sip of juice.

"She wouldn't leave her name." As if that weren't bad enough, his face turned sour.

"What the fuck is this?"

"Pomegranate and Cranberry. You remember the doctor said it was good for your kidneys?"

"I'm not stupid; I know what the doctor said...why the fuck is it on the table. You know like tomato juice."

She cringed again. He drank the rest of the tomato juice that morning and had mentioned that he was going to pick some up on the way home.

"I...I ran out of it."

"Dammit...this shit tastes terrible." He put the tumbler down hard enough to splash juice on the table cloth. His mother always had a clean table cloth ready for dinner.

"Jackie...I'm sorry...I'll get some tomorrow." She hoped it wouldn't rain the next day; the walk to the store was nearly two miles, and even at that, they rarely had tomato juice.

"How about a glass of vegetable juice?" She cringed.

"Fuck, Betty...you know I hate that...you just can't fucking do anything right, can you?" He stood up.

"Jackie?"

"I'm going out." He grabbed his jacket.

"What about dinner?" She looked at the table. Apart from the juice stain on the tablecloth, the meal looked like it had been set for a layout in Gourmet Magazine.

"What about dinner? This shit? Fuck it, I'm going to get something at the diner. They can get things straight, and they don't fucking forget things...."

"Jackie, please sit down." She regretted her words even as they left her mouth.

"Listen...don't tell me what the fuck to do, okay? Get me the phone...I want to look up the calls." She ran and got the cordless off the cradle.

"What the fuck, Betty. Where's the call that you forgot to ask about?"

"I'm sorry, Jackie...she wouldn't tell me her name and she blocked caller ID."

"Why do you need to know her name? Are you checking up on me?"

"I thought you wanted to know..." He cut her off.

"That's your problem..you try to think...it just doesn't work because you are so fucking stupid. Stop trying to check up on me."

"Jackie...I'm not...." He cut her off again, but not with a rebuke. His open hand hit her face hard enough to send her backward against the sink.

"You just don't learn..." His voice was almost conciliatory, like a reluctant parent unwilling to discipline an unruly child. He shook his head and began pulling his belt off of his pants.

"Jackie...please..." She began to sob and she fell to the floor, covering her head with her hands.

"You just won't fucking learn, will you!" He said once again.

"Jackie...please....Jackie, don't..." She cried as she went to ward off his blows.

"Try to hit me??? You fucking bitch!!!" He said and his hand raised up and brought the belt down across her hands until she dropped them.

"I'll teach you, you fucking ungrateful whore. I'll teach you."

Two days later...

"I told you this would happen. You should never have done it... Your father told you what would happen, and there it is, right in front of you. See what happens..." Betty nodded as her mother once again stood up for Jack.

"I'm sorry, Mom." She wanted so bad to cry out, but her cries would have fallen on deaf ears; a heart that grew numb even as her mother had cried out in the same way years before.

"If you want to be a woman, you're going to have to give him what he wants...it's just the way things work.

She sat at the kitchen table and drank her tea, hoping her father wouldn't walk in. As she sipped her tea, her mother stared at her, a worried look on her face.

"Ben....your nose is bleeding." Her mother snapped at her, as if it were her fault.

"See...I told you. It's judgment it is..pure and simple... You didn't want to hear it, but you're in for it now. See.." Her mother pointed at her as if she had commited some heinous crime by bleeding onto her own blouse.

Betty got up and walked over to the phone on the pass-through into the dining room. She picked up the phonebook and thumbed through it, her left hand reaching up to squeeze her nose.

"Now what are you planning on doing. You don't want to upset him....Come sit down and finish your tea. Ben??"

Betty put her finger in the phonebook. Blood and tears dripped onto the page as she punched in the number.

"Hello? Is this the Resource Center of Somerset? Yes...I need help...."

Next: Petra's Story