I had received a reliable tip from a close friend that my drug activity was about to be stopped abruptly. She was in the law enforcement program at the college I was beginning to attend, and part of training was an actual drug raid. She went out on a limb to save my dumb ass. She said, " I can't give you an address, all I can say is the street you live on is a target for a training drill for a raid." The street I lived on in Houghton Lake, was me, and a bunch of wealthy retirees. I was pretty sure I knew what door they would be knocking down. She also refused to tell me when, but simply, "less than two weeks." I will forever be thankful for her. I had this I'm invincible attitude, and it was about to cost me many years of my life. I packed my stuff, loaded my truck and drove back to Ludington.
I wouldn't be 18 until February, and it was September, so I had to stay with friends until I could get a job. I didn't have to wait. We had a local bean plant that was run by almost all illegal aliens, they didn't even look at an id or ss card. They just hired people and paid them. It worked for me, I was making $6.90 an hour in 1993 working ten to twelve hour shifts seven days a week. To me, it was mad money! I would walk to work and then to the bar where I would play pool and double my weekly pay. Made a lot of men mad back then. I totally did the shark thing. Play for a drink, lose.. Up it to a buck, lose.... five bucks, lose miserably, then some ass would get cocky and offer a twenty to one bet and I'd wipe the table clean in one shot.... just run em out... LOL... I played pool for six or more hours everyday. Even the worst pool player will get good doin that!
After a few months, I started seeing this guy around town. I was actually in Scottville, which is like eight miles east of Ludington. One stop light, two bars, a restaurant, a pharmacy, and a craft store. It was about two blocks long. Needless to say, when a new face appeared everyone noticed. I had seen him at the pay phone a couple times, then he started coming into the bar I spent all of my time in. We started talking, or trying to anyway. He was from Mexico, he could barely say my name. Something about him attracted me immediately. Who cares about the language, communication is far more than words, I could learn as we went.
We started seeing each other and I was completely twitterpated! I quit my job three times in one week so that I could spend time with him. They hired me back each time I quit....LOL... This particular factory was known for that kind of thing. I was working on buying a car, but got stopped with illegal tags and no insurance. Thank God the cop didn't search the car, I had two ounces of pot under my seat. He cut me a break because I was still in my hairnet, hardhat, and swamp boots. I told him I was headed home and he said get there and park it, but the tickets I did get cost more than the amount I owed on the car! Fortunately, I was buying the car from my cousin on payments, and he agreed to take the car back, no hard feelings... Of course, this meant I was back on foot. It was only two miles to work, no big deal. I was also only ten miles to Ludington beach, so when I wasn't hustlin pool, I would walk down to the beach and usually slept there in the sand. I actually enjoyed it. The walks were peaceful, the waves at the beach were gorgeous, and it was just a nice place to be.
The guy I was seeing was becoming very controlling, but I was sure I could handle him. I sure as hell wasn't afraid of him. He decided that he would rent an apartment in Ludington, at first it was so I could find a better paying job. I enjoyed factory work. Many people don't understand that, but at my age and in the time, two hundred dollars a week seemed like a butt load of money. I temped at a couple of the factories, one did Styrofoam craft supplies, the rest were foundry's and auto parts places. I worked for a little while, then Rick decided I should be home. This is where things started to get a little hairy.
I didn't like not working. I had worked most of my life already, and I enjoyed the satisfaction of making my own money. I worked hard at every job I held. When I stopped working, I lost my freedom. He paid the bills and bought me things, but I was not happy. On the weekends, there were always men in the house playing poker and drinking. Rick sucked at poker, but it was a "man's game". I had picked up enough Spanish to understand some of the more important stuff, like when he bet me as a part of the pot in a hand that he lost. I explained that it was only right that I be allowed to play once I was part of the pot. They let me in. I had started learning to play poker when I was about seven. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I knew not to let on about it. By the end of the game, I had won myself and his paycheck back and then some. That was the one and only time I ever got to play with the guys.
Things started getting stranger. One night, when Rick got home from work, my oldest brother was in the apartment. Rick flipped (after my brother left). He accused me of sleeping with my brother! He screamed and yelled and forbid me to have male company in the apartment when he was gone. Then, he forbid me to leave the house alone. This didn't work for me. I was an adult, I had a vehicle, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna tell my brother he couldn't come and visit me. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone what was going on.
I had decided I was going to pack my stuff while he was at work and leave. He came home early, and drunk. He apologized and begged me to stay. When he was standing there in front of me tears streaming down his face, I promised I would stay. I was raised to never make a promise you don't intend to keep, so there I was.
Over the next two weeks, things were just up and down. One night, a few of the poker guys showed up. Rick said he had to go out for a bit, and not to worry, he wouldn't be long. Four hours later, he came home a bloody, almost unrecognizable mess. I didn't do the math quite yet. Later, I found out, I had gotten myself into an even rougher group of people than the drug dealers in Houghton Lake. These guys were from Chicago, and very organized!!! If you get my meaning. I had no idea that Rick was a drug dealer, evidently, he hadn't payed what he owed in cash, so they took it out of his ass! That was it, I knew I had to get out, but I also knew I would have to leave Ludington to do so. I had a plan. I just had to raise some money without him finding out about it. I had become a prisoner in just a few short months and I was planning my escape. I did things I am not proud of to raise the money..... No not prostitution, I would wait for him to pass out and take money from him. Not something I am proud of, even sixteen years later. We had a car, and a truck, I just had to bide my time. I needed about eight hundred dollars to move, and I was gonna get it.
Meanwhile, I had to be the subservient house wife type. If he wanted sex, food, laundry, whatever, I did it. The first time he assaulted me, he had come home from work, and because I was taking a nap, he accused me of cheating on him. Talk about insecure! He screamed and yelled, but never approached me from the front. He was telling me to pack my shit and go, so I grabbed a box and started packing my clothes. He would come toward me from behind, but as soon as I heard him and turned around, he would just start screaming at me and calling me names again.
I sat down on the floor and was folding and packing clothes when he came up behind me and grabbed me by the hair. This didn't hurt, I had two brothers, one was six years older, the other was eight years older. They had made sure my skull was invincible by the time I was ten. I looked up at him and calmly said, "If you don't unhand me, I'm gonna get up and beat the fuck outta you". With a look of surprise, he let go, then the begging started. "please don't go! I love you and I promise it'll get better". I still needed about three hundred dollars, so I let it go.
The next day, he came in trashed again. My dad had stopped over, so I felt pretty safe. Out of nowhere Rick started freakin out again. He threw a beer bottle at my head, and missed. My dad went to grab a hold of him, but I told him I could handle it. I hit the dick head with a lamp. You know, the old heavy hourglass shaped solid lamps. He slept for a few hours. When he woke up, I told him I had had it. I was leaving if things didn't change. Again with the crying and begging.
He went to work the next day and came home sober. He wanted to take me out for dinner to apologize. Ok, I'll go out to dinner. We went to a local bar and ordered food and played pool and had drinks. I ordered a cheeseburger with the works and a side of onion rings which I washed down with a double Jack n Coke. We were having a great time. Playing pool, dancing, laughing, all was great. Then, out of nowhere, I got this God Awful pain in my chest. I could hardly breath it hurt so bad. We rushed to the hospital, I thought sure I was gonna die! After about two hours, this bubbly little nurse came in and said, "Honey, you have nothing to worry about, you're fine, You have heartburn because you are pregnant" Oh Shit! Now what!!!
I asked the nurse to bring Ricardo back while they were preparing my release papers and told him. You would have thought he won the lottery, but all he said was, "Well, I guess we're gonna have to get a better car and a nicer apartment." In my head I felt defeated. I was happy that I was going to be a mother, just not happy about who the father was. My plan to leave suddenly had a major kink!
How could I leave the father of my child. He hadn't actually hit me, he had threatened me, but he was actually kind of afraid of me. So there it was. I don't believe in abortion, and didn't want anything to do with adoption, so I was having a baby. I really wanted to make a go of this for my child. As the product of divorce, I had to at least try to make it work. It didn't last long. I had only two rules: Do Not Beat On Me, and Do Not Cheat. I caught him with a fourteen year old girl in MY car in a Wesco parking lot! I told her that I would find her again when she was old enough for an ass whoopin, and I told him I was packing my shit.
He said, "You can go, but you will not take that baby with you" It was on! I had run back up to the apartment to grab my loot and a couple things, and he showed up behind me. He tried it all. He grabbed my prenatal vitamins and threatened to take the whole bottle, laughing, I got him a glass of water. Then he did the please don't go, then he hit me. I knocked him on his ass and ran down to the car. He was stupid enough to follow. I was already in the car with it started, he was headed around the front end of the car when I drove it into him. I hit him hard enough to pin him against the wall of the house! I jumped out of the car with the keys, and into the truck and drove across town to my girl friends house. I had just enough time to tell her what was going on, and then he showed up. He tried to punch me in the stomach, but my friend grabbed him and literally threw him down a flight of seventeen concrete stairs. He got in the car and left. I gassed up the truck and I headed back to Houghton Lake where my mother was.
I felt like a failure. I had slept around for years. Thrown away good men and always found the "bad boys". They were more fun. Now, I was pregnant and single. I had no idea what to do. He called daily, begging me to come back, but all I could think of was my dad and the promise I had made. I knew that being from a divorced family was better than a violent family, so, that was literally the last night I ever saw him.
Sometimes, he would call and ask me to come home, other times he would offer to western union me money to help me buy things I needed before the baby came. He sent me a total of four hundred dollars. When the money didn't bring me home, he swore that once my son was born, he would find us and take him and go back to Mexico. I did a little research and found that if he did manage to pull it off, the chances that I would ever see my son again were slim to none.
I refused to put his name on my son's birth certificate so that he couldn't claim him at all. I sent him a few pictures, I felt it was only right. Then, I decided that it wasn't safe. I didn't want him to know what my son looked like. I would go to the ends of the earth for my son. No way was he going to be under the influence of that man!
When I was six months pregnant, I was introduced to my younger sister's soon to be brother in law. My sister and I had a thing for brothers. Not on purpose, but, it just seemed to work out that way often.
He was different than any other man in my life up to that point. He was a military man. He had served in Desert Storm, worked a legitimate full time job, and although he smoked a little pot, he didn't drink or anything like that! I felt the need to tell him that my son was half Mexican, for some, that is still a problem. He assured me that was no issue and that we would be fine. He was refreshing. I could set a clock by his routine. I was a house wife, but not under his thumb. I had dinner ready and on the table when he came home from work. Washed his back in the tub, I was really starting to enjoy this domestic house wife thing.
Then, about three weeks before my son was born, DJ was an hour late coming home from work. Evidently, it was car trouble. I believed him, he had never given me a reason not to. When my son was born, he was there. I don't think he even knew that he would have a problem with a Mexican child, but he did. It took a while for me to catch on, but I did. I should have known earlier, one of the first things his mother had said to me was, "You know, People that have mixed children go to hell. And so do their kids." She also told me I was too good for her son, that I needed to get away from him. I was dumbfounded.
Even though I had a rough childhood, my mom's mom was a very religious woman. She read the Bible a few times, never missed a day of church. I knew DJ's mom didn't know what she was talking about, but I was pissed! Especially since she was raising a child born to her husband and DJ's x wife while DJ was married to him. And they lied to the boy and pretended that he was her son. I think she was in a little more trouble than me in God's eyes. I was taught judgement was left to God, not man!
Things started changing more and more as Steven grew. He had jet black hair and chocolate eyes and light brown skin. DJ did nothing to help with him. I left Steven home with him while I went shopping for groceries in a snowstorm, and he left my son in a shitty diaper for two hours!!! Then he started coming home later and later. We went to his company Christmas party, and a hotel. I woke up around three am and found that he wasn't in our room. I waited until I heard him come to the room, then pretended to sleep when he entered. He went directly to the shower. I'm not stupid, I knew where he had been.
Still, I wanted to have a stable place for my son. I figured that it was just a stage and would pass, but over the next six months, it just got worse.
When I left DJ, Steve was about a year old. Again, I went home to Ludington. My Grandmother had asked my mom to come home and help with her house. She was 64, and working to pay two mortgages that she had drawn to help two of my aunt's that just left her hangin. My mom moved, and the following week, Grandma didn't get up for church. She was a Nurse, and had worked the night before, but it was very odd for Grandma to miss church. Mom went to her room to see if she was ok, and ultimately, she was better, just not here. She had passed away in the night. I came down for the funeral, and never went back.
I found a job almost immediately at a very good paying factory. I started as a temp making seven fifty an hour, that was almost a dollar over minimum wage! I was happy. My mom and my sister watched Steven while I worked, and I worked up to sixty hours a week. I was hired in full time after eight months, and my wage shot up to nine dollars an hour. I had a feeling that I couldn't be stopped.
I started buying a house about eight months later. I was drinking a lot back then, but there were rules. Steven could stay at mom's at night as long as I put him to bed and was back before breakfast. Second, no men around him. These were rules I agreed with whole hearted.
I met a man that worked at the same shop. He was a nice guy. He worked everyday, but never went out anywhere. He had never been married, no kids to pay support on, no criminal background except for loss of driver's license for OUIL. Even though he had lost his license, he did not drink much at all. I ran into him at my favorite bar (I was only 20) and took him home with me one night. We really didn't know each other. Had never even said hello before that night. He was such a gentleman that he slept on my couch. He never tried anything. I was absolutely different than any other man I had ever met! Imagine, a man that would be willing to sleep on the couch instead of take advantage of my drunken promiscuity! I had never met anyone like him.
A non drinking, hardworking, attractive, gentle, loving, attentive..........PEDOPHILE! Unfortunately, I was already married to him when I found out the pedophile part.
It was a whirlwind romance, he was smooth. I had an accident at work, and shattered my wrist. He moved in with me to help me while I was injured. We had only been together for about two months when he asked me to marry him. I said yes! At that point, I had no reason not to. We were married just four short months later. I was 21, he was 38. I told people, "age is just a number". That is pure bullshit! It's much more than that. He was a chameleon, he blended in with everyone. No one that met him didn't like him. We spent 99 percent of our time together. He treated me like we lived in a fairy tale and I was the princess. I hate that I never don't think about it. He gave me the world and put me on a pedestal and then, in one fail swoop ripped it all out from under me.
I found out later that he had been molesting children since he was about twelve years old. Rather than get him help, his family bounced him around from town to town, state to state, and relative to relative. When someone caught him molesting children, and I mean toddlers and younger usually, they would simply move him again.
I went into complete shock. I couldn't eat a single bite of food for a month, the smell made me vomit. I was in such shock, I didn't even function. I visited him in jail a couple of times, trying to make sense of what had happened to my perfect world. He had molested my cousin's daughter, she was seven. Then he confessed to me that he had been molesting a friend of his' daughter since she was two years old, she was about to turn ten.
He confessed to me all of his illness for one reason. In Michigan, a conversation between a husband and wife falls under a confidentiality clause. I could do nothing with the information he had given me. They would not grant me an annulment, I had to do a divorce. I even had to wait for the six month cooling period. He plead no contest to second degree csc, and served four years in a prison that is pedophiles only. They won't put them in a regular prison because even a murderer won't let a pedophile live. Yes, Michigan protects them! He did his four years and then did five years probation. Now he works in an ice cream factory of all places. He has a profile on face book, and has been to Romania as a missionary with a local church. You will find this story in different parts of my blog, because I don't know what else to do. His name is Arnold Hector Guzman. I don't care if I get in trouble for that, it's all true and he's registered..... The local police consider me to be a scorned ex wife, when in reality, I know that he will offend again, I'm sure he has already.
I had a very hard time of things for a while. I started drinking harder, and began doing cocaine. I did what ever it took to not think of what he had done. People don't understand what the wife (providing she's oblivious like I was) goes through in a situation like this.
There are many feelings.
1. How did I not see it? 2. Why didn't I notice this or that, it was actually right in front of me??! 3. The disgust that this man I loved touched little kids and then had sex with me. 4. The child(which is part of every thought you have) 5. What happened when he was alone with my child?
In hindsight, I should have noticed, but who thinks like that?
Then, why didn't the police investigate my house? I have a child, why didn't child protective services step in and ask questions?
Finally, I wish I had known before the police arrived. I would have killed him!!! Literally. My mother could raise my son. I took him to the doctor. No one offered me any kind of counselling or advocation, I had my mom and my dad. My son had no Physical signs of abuse, but I wonder if Arnold has something to do with the fact that my son has many phobias and is mildly autistic. I don't think the autism was caused by these events, but the fears...yes. Although, he was so young, I don't believe he remembers, and I pray he never does. Arnold had no gender preference. He simply preferred the younger the better. Easier to scare a seven year old, easier to train a two year old. I wish I could have testified against him, my testimony would have proven that the events that occurred were absolutely premeditated.
My mom and my dad and my sister helped me through this. Without them, I may not have survived it. I also clinged to an old boyfriend that I ran into just a month after Arnold's arrest. He was someone I had know most of my life, and he happened to be in the right place at the right time.
He is his own kind of asshole, but I can deal with his shit. He's just an alcoholic. He's got quite the mouth on him sometimes, but that is the extent of it. After 13 years, we are still going strong. Arnold lives in the same town that we do, and believe me, I keep an eye out for anything that looks suspicious. He is a sociopath, he has no remorse or guilt. In the last year, he has started showing up in places that he shouldn't. Like, where my mom works, passing my sisters house on a dead end road, following me around from time to time. Unfortunately, just knowing what he is isn't enough. He has to molest another child that can and will tell on him before anyone will do anything about him.
I suppose, that's enough for this one, but.... I assure you I have at least one more post to write in this blog. This is who I am and what made me who I am. It's not complete yet.
There is still some personal triumph to brag up! Thank you for reading!!
