Don’t Ignore the Ashes by Alison Colwell

cw: intimate personal violence, domestic violence

My husband, John, worked hard to isolate me, but there were always others on the edges of my life: teachers, neighbours, and friends. These were the bystanders who looked the other way. The people who didn’t want to get involved.

Maybe it was too messy?

Maybe it was too uncomfortable?

Maybe they were afraid?

After three years, I grew used to the ways eyes slid off me, never acknowledging the cries heard through a connecting wall, or the occasional visible bruise.

What role do bystanders play in the lives of others?

Do we have a responsibility to reach out a hand and offer support even when it makes us uncomfortable? Or should we respect the life choices others have made? I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Showing up for others is hard. It means stepping out of our own places of safety. It’s difficult.

But every time someone looked away from me, it left space for John’s violence to continue unchecked.

***

In The Robber Bridegroom, when the girl reaches her betrothed’s house, at first it appears empty. Then in the cellar, she meets an old woman who shakes her head when she sees the girl.

“You poor child,” says the woman, “you’re in a murderer’s den. You think you’re about to be married, but it’s death that awaits you. Look, they made me put a large kettle of water on the fire. When they’ve captured you, they’ll chop you to pieces, cook you, and eat you. They’re cannibals.”

The girl hides.

She watches the robbers return with another young girl, who they murder and dismember. After the robbers fall asleep, the girl and the old woman escape.

We’re thrilled that our heroine gets out, but does the old woman ever answer for her silence, her complicity in the crimes? How many other girls had she watched chopped into pieces on that kitchen table? How many times had she turned away from their screams?

***

I was nineteen and John and I had been married for eight months when my drawing professor assigned us the theme of family for our next portrait. I drew a woman huddled on a bed, her bruised face clouded with anxiety. The shadowy figure of a man stood in the doorway behind her.

I thought I had found another way to speak. I couldn’t say the words I needed, but I could use my art to depict my life, and the place I was trapped. When I remember this drawing, it’s perfect, full of meaning and thick with emotion. I carried it to school in my black vinyl portfolio. After class and when most of the other students had already turned in their assignments, I slipped it into the middle of the pile.

“There are some problems with the perspective,” said Mr. Harrow when he handed the drawing back to me on Friday. “Fix them and turn it in again on Monday.”

I took my drawing in silence. Slid it quickly back into my case. I’m not sure what I hoped for, but I had hoped for something, some reaction, at the very least a question about the girl on the bed. Instead, I was crushed beneath the absence of his concern.

John and I lived in a trailer far from anywhere. He took the car to work, leaving me home alone for long hours, which is maybe how I’d kept the drawing hidden for so long, tucked away in my portfolio unless I was home by myself. I pulled it out on Saturday, while John was out picking up his son. I took a ruler to the angles, trying to work out where the perspective had failed, but I didn’t make any changes. I was afraid my disappointment would spill onto the page.

On Saturday nights, I cleaned the Baptist Church at the edge of town. I locked myself in once I entered the church. The night was long as I echoed around the vast building, dragging my vacuum cleaner between the rows of chairs and down the long hallways.

I returned home tired and sore early on Sunday morning. John was already awake and waiting for me in the living room. My portfolio was open on the table. Hundreds of tiny pieces of thick white drawing paper fell like petals over the orange shag carpet. Bruises blossomed on my arms before I could clean up what remained of my sketch.

Not that its destruction mattered. As a silent plea for help, my drawing had been sadly unanswered, my message unheard.

***

In August 2019, Ken Soederhuysen of Burlington, Ont., was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife, Laura Grant, who was found shot dead in their backyard. Even after Laura’s death, a neighbour described Ken as “a stand-up guy. He doesn’t seem like that type of person. This has just been a slap in the face for everyone.”

The takeaway? Even stand-up guys can murder their wives.

***

In The Crystal Casket, an old Italian version of Snow White, as soon as the king sees the girl in the casket, her beauty transfixes him. He orders the casket brought back to his castle.

The king’s mother looks on in horror as the casket is unloaded and carried past her to the king’s bedchamber.

“Mother, I found a wife,” he exclaims.

“But what is it?” she wonders aloud. “A doll? A dead woman?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” says the king. “I told you, it’s my wife.”

“But she’s dead!”

Nothing his mother says makes a difference. The king cannot be dissuaded. So his mother withdraws to her rooms, leaving her son with the unconscious woman. But what role should the queen mother have played? Was there really nothing she could do?

***

After the trailer in Nanoose, we moved to a basement suite in Sooke. We’d only been there six months when I handed in our notice. The mother from the family upstairs told me how glad she was that we were leaving. She told me how much her family hated listening to the fighting taking place beneath their feet. I was embarrassed, thinking of everything they would have heard. John yelling, calling me names, my tears, the sounds of breaking. I imagined how my shameful secret must have coloured their family life.

Only later would I feel anger.

We lived in their basement for six months and she never once asked if I needed help. She never called the police or checked to see if I was okay. Turning away was the easiest thing she could do.

***

In 2009, a Californian high school girl was beaten and gang-raped in her school courtyard while the homecoming dance was happening in the school gym. At least two dozen bystanders watched the assault without intervening. It was two hours before anyone called the police.

There’s a term for this: The Bystander Effect.

***

In Rumpelstiltskin, after the miller’s daughter turns straw into gold on the first night, the king leads her into a much larger room with a much larger pile of straw.

“Spin it all into gold, or I will kill you,” the king tells her. Everyone hears him, the guards, the courtiers, and no one objects to his threats. It’s clear who’s the victim in this story. The king has the power, and the miller’s daughter has none. No one questions the king. No one steps in to save her. They all look away. The girl is on her own.

***

John and I had been fighting when I ran to the bathroom and tried to lock myself in, but he followed me and shoved me backwards and I fell hard on the edge of the sink.

Two days had passed since that afternoon, and it still hurt to breathe. My ribs were black, and impossible to touch.

“I think I need to go see a doctor,” I said after supper.

John studied me carefully, looking for any sign that I was planning something. Finally, he nodded. I could go on my own.

I changed doctors every time we moved house, which had been often in the past two years. It never took long for John to fall out with the neighbours or landlord. I called and made an appointment with a new doctor, then stopped on the way home the following afternoon.

His office was in the basement of his house. It was November and already dark as I knocked at the side door. The doctor was a small man, with glasses riding on the end of his nose. He led me to a dim treatment room. The walls were lined with books and there were stacks of papers on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I fell,” I said, my eyes drifting over his messy desk, not actually looking at him. “I was in the bathtub and I slipped. It was a few days ago, but it still hurts to touch. It hurts when I breathe.”

The doctor came around his desk, and I lifted up my shirt to show him the bruise. Gently, he touched my skin, and I winced.

“Bathtub?” he asked.

Does he believe me? What would happen if he didn’t? I tugged on the sleeves to cover the bruises on my arms. I nodded.

“I wasn’t paying attention. It was stupid of me.”

He went back behind the desk.

“You’ve cracked a rib,” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do about that. Are you taking Tylenol for the pain?”

I nodded.

“Then just be careful.”

I drove myself home, wondering what I’d have done if he’d questioned my story. But this was the second time I’d cracked my ribs and neither doctor ever asked me any uncomfortable questions. Since being married, I’d learned to lie. And learned that while people might guess the truth, they wanted to believe my lies.

I resolved to follow the doctor’s advice and try harder to be more careful, try harder not to make John angry.

It’s not like there was anything else I could do. I promised John for better or worse and I was trying to keep that promise. It’s not like I had anywhere else to go. I didn’t have any friends left, and rarely talked to my family.

***

When Cinderella’s father marries again, her life changes utterly. Her stepmother hates her new daughter and puts Cinderella to work scouring the dishes, wiping the tables, and cleaning their bedchambers. Cinderella sleeps in the ashes before the fire.

She doesn’t tell her father. She’s afraid to cause trouble. But her father isn’t blind. He can see the state of his daughter; he must realize where she’s sleeping. But he pretends not to notice. He never lifts a finger to help her.

***

In 2021, a woman was sexually harassed and raped on a train in Philadelphia. She wasn’t alone in the carriage. There were other people on the train who witnessed the attack. It took thirty minutes before a new passenger called 911.

Why didn’t those bystanders feel any responsibility to intervene?

Do they ever look in the mirror and ask themselves why they did nothing?

No one expects a white knight, not really, but how hard is it to pull out your phone and dial 911?

***

After almost three years of marriage, John and I were in our final year at university. I was majoring in printmaking and John had decided to focus on painting, so I had a couple of hours without him every day. I’d made friends with two of the women in my class. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have friends of my own. We went out for tea and groaned about our professors. I pretended my life was no different from theirs. It felt like freedom.

One day after class, while John was at work, I went over to Karen‘s apartment. It was only a block from mine, but hers was bright and cheerful. Sheer curtains covered the big windows and her thrift store furniture looked like family heirlooms. I decided to tell her the truth. I curled up on the couch while she went into the kitchen to make tea. My stomach churned. I took a breath. I needed to be brave. She was my friend, I reminded myself. I could do this. It didn’t occur to me that I’d only known her a few months. It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t actually know her that well. We had so much in common, was all I thought. She was my friend.

“What’s up?” she asked, carrying in the tray with the tea things on it. I took my mug and cradled it in my hands, seeking reassurance from its warmth.

“I’m going to leave John,” I blurted out without any warning.

She set her own mug back down on the table.

“What? Why? I thought you were happy.”

There’s irony here that I’d done such a good job of constructing the perfect fantasy of a marriage.

“He doesn’t know yet. You can’t say anything,” I told her, already starting to regret my honesty.

“Why are you telling me?” Her fists were clenched on her knees. She stared at me intently.

“Because I might need help.”

“Why? Why are you leaving him?” she asked again. Her anxiety was feeding mine. I didn’t understand what was going on.

“Because he gets angry and hurts me sometimes. I’m scared. This isn’t what marriage is supposed to be like.”

“You mean he’s violent? He hits you?” Her voice rose.

It was so much harder to say “yes” than I expected, to admit that I’d failed at marriage. Pretending was easier. I took a breath.

And nodded.

Karen looked horrified. When I’d rehearsed this conversation in my head, I thought Karen would be sitting beside me by now, her arm draped reassuringly around my shoulders, telling me everything was going to be okay.

She stood up.

“No,” she said. “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” I asked. I was confused. “I just wanted you to know what’s going on,” I told her.

“I can’t have anything more to do with you. I can’t be your friend anymore.”

She moved into the corridor. I set my mug down on the table and trailed after her. By the time I caught up, she’d opened the front door.

“I’m sorry, I really am,” she said. “But I can’t have this in my life. You need to leave. Now. Don’t ever call me again.”

I’d hoped for sympathy. I wanted to tell someone the truth of my life. I thought that’s what friends did.

I stepped into the hallway and she closed the door in my face. I heard the sound of the chain rattling in the lock and stood there, staring at the closed door in shock. What just happened? But part of me already knew. I was a failure. I couldn’t make my marriage work. No wonder she didn’t want to be my friend anymore.

***

In the last scene of Red Riding Hood, after Little Red’s been devoured by the wolf. A huntsman is walking past Grandma’s cottage and he hears surprisingly loud snores coming from inside.

Really, it’s none of his business. He could have kept walking, carried on with his day. He has no responsibility to Grandma or Little Red. Whatever is going on has nothing to do with him. But he doesn’t keep walking. He stops. He investigates. And the tale changes utterly because of his intervention.

***

John punched me in the face for the first time.

I ran away. I always ran. I hid in an underground parking garage, where I tucked myself into a corner. I wrapped my arms around my knees and settled down to wait. John wouldn’t be able to find me, and I had nowhere else to go.

I ran away a lot. But every time, I went back.

Twenty minutes later, a car pulled in, catching me in its headlights. My muscles tensed, ready to run. A man got out and approached slowly. He crouched down, keeping a wide distance between us. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his police ID card.

“I’m a cop,” he said. “I’m not working. I just stopped to use the bank machine. Do you need help?” he asked.

He was the first person to ask me that question.

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know where to begin.

“I want to go to a friend’s,” I said at last.

The constable drove me to the community centre and gave me money for the phone. He didn’t comment on my rain-soaked clothes, or lack of coat and socks.

Later that night, I returned to John. But the question from the constable shifted my world. Just a little. He was the first person to acknowledge my distress. In three years, he was the first person to see my hurt and not turn away.

***

It was hard for me to talk, to tell the truth about my life. And when the people around me didn’t give me the opportunity to try to find my voice, or acknowledge what was happening, they only reinforced the silence imposed on me by John.

When I look back, I wonder if my teachers, friends and neighbours didn’t want to put themselves in a place where they might be expected to offer help. They didn’t want to open up their lives to the messiness of violence. Instead, they chose the easier path. They looked away and convinced themselves I had chosen the life I was living.

The people around me taught me that battered women didn’t deserve any help.

I didn’t deserve help.

Can you imagine Cinderella’s life if her dad had stepped in just once and said, “No more”? Or if the mother in the Crystal Casket had said “No” to her son, and taken care of the unconscious girl herself? How different those girls’ stories would have been.

What that constable did that night in the parking lot was so small. And also earth shatteringly huge. He reached out a hand, offered me a ride. He saw me, my messy, rain-soaked clothes, my puffy, tear-stained face. He saw me and he didn’t turn away.

What might have happened if my drawing professor had suggested I speak to student counselling? Or if my landlord had called the police? Or if a doctor had looked at my bruises and handed me a flyer for a women’s shelter? Maybe nothing would have changed. Or maybe I might have realised I was worthy of help. Maybe I’d have gotten out sooner. Small gestures can change the course of another’s life.

We share a responsibility towards each other. It’s not easy. I’ve also looked away, telling myself that saying something would be intrusive. And I regret my cowardice. I know how hard it is to speak, to offer help. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we can’t act.

Image: Public Domain illustration from The Robber Baron