where she wanted. Slowly, those
things got reined in. I could feel
that he was trying to rein in our
independence. He even got upset
about church. “You cannot be at
church the whole day,” he’d say.
“My wife is gone all day, and what
will people say? ‘Why is his wife not
around? Where is she? Who goes to
church for the whole day?’ No, no,
no. This brings disrespect to me.”
He tried to stop her from
spending so much time at church,
and one of the most effective tools
he used was to stop fixing my
mother’s car. It would break down,
and he’d purposefully let it sit. My