It was the summer of ‘89
when Leo and Jackie hired
workers to replace the tan carpet
with a mahogany floor.
It was a scorched earth
for three months.
Leo’s fair skin burned.
Jackie would slap him on the back.
He shrugged off the sting
she’d laugh, making him chuckle.
The newlyweds elected to lease
an apartment in the meantime.
There was a balcony overlooking
the Naches.
Jackie caught a tan reading in the sun.
Leo had just finished college,
and so did Jackie.
The couple married last year,
and she had dreams for the home
that their parents gifted them
for their wedding.
Their parents had deep pockets
and insisted on making the house a home.
They would leave the home
for six months and allow the crew to have at it.
They’d never stay in an apartment.
It was new hearing people upstairs
argue over football,
and listening to neighbors bounce
mattress box springs revealed more to life
than the prude existence that they’d lived.
A man full of heavy liquor
crashed dishes, and tossed his wife
around the kitchen.
Jackie squirmed, grabbed her chest,
and urged Leo to do something.
He was a conservative back then,
so he didn’t want to stick his nose
where it shouldn’t be.
But the summer of ‘89
changed him.
‘89 changed Jackie, too.
Leo crossed the hall,
knocked on the man’s door,
giving him the what for,
and telling him to cut it out before
his nose met Leo’s fist.
A day or two passed
and his wife would come out
in shades and slim jeans.
Back then, in ‘89,
the cops thought
the woman deserved it.
The police would settle
the evening only to leave
and return to her battered
with rug burns.
But that was in ‘89.
Today, if you swung
an inch of a woman’s
face, you’d end up
in a jail cell, divorce court,
and paying spousal support.
Leo learned a lot in ‘89.
Jackie did, too.
They thought bruises
turned up on those residing
on the other side of the hillside.
People of means had short tempers.
PRESENT DAY,
Leo and Jackie opened a shelter
for women and children.
Jackie focused her counseling practice
on group therapy, specifically for women
on hard times and women
who wanted for nothing
to see they’re the same inside.
And nothing good comes
from accepting the crumbs of ‘89.
Jackie told them they had 2025 reasons for hope.
But if they wanted to stay the same,
they had but 89 reasons to drown in sorrow.
Most women accepted the path to a better life.
Leo and Jackie lived out their advice.