20 Kramden

            Twice I struck my wife.

"A man never hits a woman no matter what."

Never.

I heard my father say that more than once as I was growing up.

It made sense to me.

As a teenager I accepted without question the prevailing double standard of the time and I considered any woman by definition and by nature both a biological inferior and a second-class citizen—indeed I related to my girlfriend that way as did many if not all of my friends—yet I would have been both shocked and disgusted to learn that one of my friends or that any man had physically abused a woman.

"One average man can whip two average women," my father declared as if it were a fact of biology.

That belief, too, I shared.

Nevertheless—

The first time was in our tiny basement apartment in Ames only a month or so after our daughter Donna was born. At seven in the morning I walked the two blocks to the bus stop in Ames and waited to ride the city bus to campus where—with one hour off for lunch—I attended classes back to back from 8:00 a.m. till 6:00 p.m. and then caught the city bus back home. Cold and wet from my short walk in the snow and discouraged and depressed by my lack of success in my courses in math and science, I walked into our apartment one night totally oblivious to what the lives of my wife and newborn daughter might be like and demanded my dinner. Standing in the kitchen Leigh cradled in her arms our baby Donna just six weeks old and fast asleep and swaddled in a baby blanket like a papoose.

"It's not ready."

"Why not?" I wanted to know.

My wife did not respond to my question and for some reason her silence seemed defiant and this annoyed me. I made a look of disgust, took two steps forward, and extended my right arm and hand to her face. Then with the tips of my three middle fingers I tapped my wife lightly once across the mouth. Never before had I been physically violent with Leigh nor had I ever even threatened her with physical violence. In the two and a half years of our relationship—first as girlfriend and boyfriend and then as newlyweds and as teen parents—the idea of using force or violence against Leigh had never entered my head. To this day I do not know the origin of the impulse to slap her. I think perhaps I was imitating something I had seen in the movies or maybe on television—that is my best guess. I did not hit Leigh hard. I didn't swing my arm or hand. It was no more than a little wave of my three fingers—they moved no more than an inch—and I'd not intended to cause her any physical pain. But still it was, I know, an unambiguous gesture of arrogance and contempt, a gratuitous insult, and Leigh knew it. First her eyes widened in surprise and then Leigh took two quick steps backward until she stood five feet from me perhaps to prevent me from slapping her again. Enraged, Leigh set her jaw, clamped her lips together so tightly they turned white, I remember, and then from across the room in an underhand motion totally without warning she tossed our baby at me.

Wha—!

I caught Donna in the crook of my elbows. I could hardly believe what had just happened. I trembled in astonishment and alarm. My knees felt so wobbly and weak I thought they might buckle.

"What are you doing!" I exclaimed.

Leigh said nothing.

She just glared at me with hate in her eyes.

Unrepentant.

Defiant.

It scared me.

Leigh had shown me of what she was capable and it was a lesson I needed.

I was stupid.

Vain.

Mean.

It was twelve years before I made the same mistake again. On this second occasion I had stopped at the tavern on my way home from work and drunk a couple of beers. When I got home I kicked off my sandals just inside the door. In summer shorts, her legs crossed, her arms folded across her chest, Leigh was sitting on the couch, sullen and pissed that as usual I had again walked in with a beer buzz.

"So what's for dinner?" I asked.

I stepped over to where she sat and with the ball of my bare foot I kicked her slightly—no more than a nudge really or so I imagined at the time—in the calf of her bare leg.

Leigh acted as if it had been a jolt.

"Ow."

I laughed—scoffed.

Without a word Leigh stood up from the couch and walked to the kitchen where she busied herself until she called me to dinner. The next morning I slept late and when I finally came down the stairs to fix my coffee Leigh was sitting on the couch right where she had been when I walked in the door the previous evening.

"Good morning," I said on my way to the kitchen.

Nothing.

Hm.

From my point of view the minor incident the night before had been so insignificant that I had no memory of it. Leigh let me prepare my coffee before she called to me from the living room and asked me to join her there.

"I want to show you something," she said.

I walked over.

I waited.

"What?" I asked.

"Look."

Leigh pointed to her calf.

From just below her knee to just above her ankle it was black and blue.

"That's what you did to me," Leigh said calmly.

I was stunned.

"Oh my god!" I said.

I tell this story often in my classes and, when I do, I act it out.

I select a woman in the front row and warn her that I am going to nudge her in the calf, softly, only as hard as I imagined I had nudged my wife that afternoon. I want to demonstrate for my students just how warped and unreliable our perceptions of our own conduct can be and just how grossly distorted had been my own estimation of the force of my kick. I had kicked my wife hard, of course, much harder than I had intended and remembered. No mere nudge could have caused the white and blue bruising I watched turn purple, yellow, and green over the next several days.

"One of these days, Alice!" Kramden warns his wife.

He makes a fist.

"Pow!" he shouts. "Right in the kisser!"

Again—

"One of these days, Alice!" he warns.

He shakes it.

"Straight to the moon!"