For six years Delia Medina, like many other young mothers, cared for her two sons and kept house for her boyfriend Jerry. But during that time Medina rarely left her Uptown Chicago apartment for fear of enraging Jerry, the father of her younger son. She became still more isolated when her family and friends stopped visiting because she would not leave the man who was physically abusing her.
“I had black eyes and stitches, but each time when it was over with, I’d tell myself, `He’ll change,’ ” says Medina, 32. “I didn’t think of myself as abused, I loved him so much. I told myself it wasn’t constant, just a slap here, grabbing my hair, kicking my head. I thought he was a good man when he wasn’t doing drugs. I was afraid to have him arrested. I was afraid to do anything to set him off.”
In addition to the fear of physical abuse, the lack of child care kept Medina close to home and out of the job market. She noticed a child-care center in her neighborhood but was too fearful to inquire at first.
“I was scared, but finally one day I walked in to Prologue and I hit the jackpot,” she recalls.
Prologue Inc., a not-for-profit community-based operation, offers alternative education for high school dropouts and a career-development center for people in the neighborhood.
It has been more than a year since Medina stepped through that door. She is now working part time and taking classes at Truman College. And Jerry is no longer in her life; she is living on her own with her two sons, 8 and 4.
Medina credits these dramatic changes to the help of staff and friends at Prologue.
“They told me what to do, got me child care. They told me things can get better. I went every day and started working on the computer.” Three months later, Medina completed Prologue’s pre-employment training program.
“I got encouragement from (the Prologue staff) to go back to school even though I’d been out for 14 years,” Medina says. “They helped me get into classes at Truman and got me a part-time job as a clerk there. It felt good to do something, to get out of the house and not get hit.”
Medina soon joined a support group for women in the Prologue program.
“At the beginning no one talked to me,” she says. “I was nervous. They were all black girls, and I was the only white Latino. I was the oldest. Now they are some of my best friends. They’ve seen me cry; they’ve cried with me.
“We still get together. They take me grocery shopping. We watch videos. They’re good to me, help me with whatever I need, and if they need me, they know I’ll help. They’re like me, single mothers coming out of the same kind of situations, and now every one of us is doing something.”
“At first, Delia was in denial” about the abuse, recalls Sheila Vincent, Prologue’s career services director, “but the women in her support group said, `You’ve got to look at this.’ They stuck by her and helped her to find courage.”
One evening during this period of her life, Medina was dozing on the sofa when Jerry came home.
“It was like slow motion. I saw him coming at me, and when I put my arm out to protect myself, he punched me so hard it broke. He wouldn’t take me to emergency but gave me painkillers and beer. I cried and cried. In the morning my girlfriend took me to the hospital, where I had X-rays and surgery.”
When Jerry broke Medina’s arm, something within her changed.
“That’s when I knew. I thought, if he can break my arm, he can kill me. I got a restraining order on him. I didn’t want to, but he had a handgun, was on dope. I took the phone in the bedroom and pretended I was talking to my brother. I called the police, and they busted him, took the gun.”
Medina had to find a new place to live.
“A secretary at Prologue circled apartments in the paper, told me to make phone calls. She drove me around. I couldn’t pay for gas so I helped in the office. Finally, I stood in this empty apartment, and we held hands and said a prayer. That’s something I never did with anyone — stood around holding hands and praying. It gave me hope that maybe God will protect me.”
Though relieved to have a place to live with her sons, Adam and Jeremy, Medina was still frightened and depressed.
“I looked awful, felt awful, going to school and work with my broken arm. The women at Prologue told me, `You can’t have a nervous breakdown; you don’t have time.’ I learned a lot from them about what I can and can’t do. They’re still there for me, still hug me a lot.”
Medina’s goal is to earn an associate degree so she can qualify for a job to support her children, but going to school and to work are more than a means to an end for her.
“They’re the best things that ever happened to me,” she says. “Sometimes I’m ready for class by 6 a.m. Sometimes I wait outside for the secretary to open the office. I can’t wait to get to school and to work because I’m doing something. I feel like I’m somebody, not famous, but I’m going somewhere and it makes me feel good.
“I want my kids to be proud of me. It feels good when they say, `Are you going to work, Mom?’ and `When do you get out of school, Mom?’ It feels good to be going someplace. My job keeps me going. For a while I didn’t even know what it paid.”
But many days are still hard.
“Every day I dress, put on makeup, do my hair, but when I get to work I feel so ugly. I guess it’s the bright lights. They remind me of the hospital whenever I’d go there for stitches. I’d be crying and looking up at these bright lights, and I could see all the scars on me, the mark on my throat where he grabbed me, on my leg when he threw a bike at me, my black eye, the stitches. I hate the bright lights.”
Violence has been a part of Medina’s life for many years.
“My mom is a hero in my life, a survivor. She took abuse from my dad for 24 years, and I couldn’t take it for six. I guess I did find someone like my dad. I didn’t want to. I don’t like to be hit.”
When she graduated from high school, her parents separated.
“I was partying, living with my girlfriend so I could stay out late. My dad wasn’t around so I figured I could do whatever I wanted. I got involved with the first abusive man after graduation. In the next few years I was serious with three guys, and there was always violence, alcohol.”
Medina worries about her sons.
“I put my kids through a lot, especially my oldest son, Adam. He’s a little old man. When I was getting hit, he’d take Jeremy’s hand and put him to sleep. They were never hit, but I did a lot of yelling at them. I feel I broke my kids’ hearts: They’ve seen a lot.
“I don’t want to believe in patterns. It’s not true. Violence and drinking don’t have to go from generation to generation. I don’t want my boys to grow up like the men they saw abusing me. I don’t want my boys to sit around drinking and doing nothing. Who wants to come home and look at a man sitting there doing nothing?”
Sitting in her small, immaculate apartment surrounded by photographs of her children, Medina shakes her head.
“I hung in there because I didn’t want to be alone. But the one I thought would protect me was the one hurting me, beating me in my own home. What I feared wasn’t outside. In the house with him was where the fear was. I never realized that until recently.
“Most of the people I’ve loved most in the world, I’ve been the most scared of,” she says. “I thought I had security with a man around, that no one would break in or hurt the kids, but I was living in terror. Sometimes I’d put the furniture against the door to keep him out. He ripped the phone off the wall, broke the highchair, the front door, threw ashtrays. One time he threw the Bible at me and hit my head. I thought, `How low can you go?’
“When I started telling about my broken arm, he said, `Why did you open your mouth? Didn’t I train you well enough?’
“I was stupid. Who wants to live like that, with someone you love who’s hurting you? One day he’d smother me with a pillow. Another day he’d put my head in the refrigerator. I got hurt so much I couldn’t see it. I told myself it wasn’t major and I didn’t tell anyone.
“One Mother’s Day he banged my head against the light switch and I couldn’t get out of bed afterwards. When my brother came by, I told him I was hung over. I was always lying. Another time my sister saw my bruises, and I said I fell taking out the garbage.”
Medina also suffered emotional abuse.
“Jerry hurt my feelings a lot, put me down, said things like, `You’ve got two different colored kids. No one would want you. You’re ugly.’ You get used to hearing you’re ugly and it’s what you think.
“I told myself it was the drugs. I took care of him, made him homemade dinners. `Just come home to me,’ I’d say. Our idea of fun in the summer was to drink a six-pack in the park with the kids. I was happy to do it to keep him in my life.
“When he hit me so hard my eye was shut, he said, `Go get some muscle relaxers and I’ll watch the kids.’ I did it, walked to the store. Who was sicker, me or him?”
Despite all she went through, Medina stayed in touch with Jerry for several months after she moved to her own apartment. But whenever he begged her to take him back, she would remember her broken arm and refuse.
“I haven’t seen him at all now for four months,” Medina says. “So many times in past years I took him back because he said, `If you leave me, I’ll die, commit suicide, do more drugs.’ Now I think, `What about all the years he hurt me? I can’t take care of him anymore.’ “
Firm as Medina is in her commitment, there is a fragility to her hold on an independent future.
“When I’m frustrated, I still yell at my boys. Then I feel bad, tell them I’m sorry, but it’s hard to stop. Sometimes I feel all alone and think, `Why can’t their dads help me?’ “
Weekends are the hardest, she says.
“I don’t like weekends because they make me think. I have to be in an environment with lots going on so I don’t have to think. When I’m at work, I’m doing what I have to do and I know my kids are safe, in school. At home it’s lonely. I think that’s why I cook and clean a lot.
“I’m a fraidy-cat,” she says. “You won’t catch me out after 6 at night. I don’t know my way around the city except for my own neighborhood and the kids’ schools. At night my heart pounds every time I hear a noise. I’ve always wanted to work in criminal justice, with the police, in a police station. I would feel protected there.
“I think life is scary. And I think, `What does God want out of all of us?’ I guess that’s why there’s Prologue, to give me a chance to do something, to get me started. I can cry and get mad and someone will listen to me there.”
Vincent says Medina stops by the Prologue office nearly every day after her job and classes to do her homework and volunteer her time helping in the office, answering phones, running errands.
“Now I’m proud of myself, but not satisfied,” Medina says. “I want to know more, go places, do more for my kids. I’m 32, but I feel old. The last few years all I learned was to cry a lot and take abuse.
“Sometimes it’s not hard because I don’t miss the arguing,” she says. “The thing is, there’s not a shadow hanging over me anymore. I like starting my life over. The best thing is to start over. I still get scared being alone, but I don’t miss the pain.”
