But when dad came home mad, we knew what came next. We got whipped, one by one. And when I say whipped, with the belt.

"Don't you cry, or I will give you something to cry about," as the belt came down on our backsides. We were always bent over his knee, nowhere to go. I always know I cried, and I peed my pants, too. I was probably 4 or 5 the first time I remember this happening.

There was always an excuse. We didn't pick up the post-storm sticks in the yard the way he thought it should be done. We didn't have the house clean enough. We went next door to play with kids there. Our rooms were messy. Really, something in dad's day went wrong and his way with dealing with it was to take it out on his wife and children.

I remember the bruises to mom's face and arms. I remember my brother getting whipped because he was mowing the yard and rock got thrown up and chipped a window. Or my sister getting welts over her legs and backside for doing something dad didn't like at the time.

I remember my black eye. I was maybe 11 years old and I accidentally dropped a corn dog at the fair in the process of handing it to dad. I got backhanded across the face and lied to everyone for the next couple of weeks about why I had a black eye. I remember dad pulling me one way and mom pulling me the other before dad got his way and locked everyone out of the house. I cowered in my room for hours.

Finally, and I don't remember why, mom had enough. I don't know if it was because my sister, now 14, and my brother, now 15, had had enough, too. My sister is the one who called the police. She'd also taken the family tape recorder and turned it on. She wanted evidence to show the torture that we kids, and mom, were getting. And for once, instead of just telling everyone to calm down and go their separate ways for awhile, the officer told us there was a crisis center for battered women about a half-hour away. In another state.

We went there and spent the next two weeks at the shelter as dad went through court and mom got some counseling. My sister and I lived with a family from our church for a few weeks, then with an aunt and uncle while things got worked through. Dad straightened up for awhile and mom went back to him.

There is a lot more to my story, but this is enough. Eventually mom left dad for a year while they worked on things. He realized for the first time that he could actually lose his family.

For my sister, brother and I, though, this experience of getting out and seeing our mother stand up for herself was probably one of the most important lessons of our childhoods. It gave us a strength from that one act of defiance.

If mom hadn't finally made the choice to leave, even for that short amount of time, I wonder what would have happened to my sister and I.
I wonder if my brother would have been an abuser, too.

Someone wrote recently on a newspaper's comment section that we can't afford in this state the "luxury" of social services like the Crisis Center.

Can we afford for women to get hospitalized regularly for the abuse they take? Can we afford for little girls to see their mothers get treated in this way, and expect that for themselves in the future? Can we afford for boys to grow up to be batterers themselves, hurting the wives and children they might one day have, and the cycle that goes on and on?

The state has GOT to fund its battered women shelters. The cost of not doing it is too great.

You can do your part, too. Come to the Frock Swap. Spend a little money to get a lot of new stuff. And protect another little girl.