Wendy's story

I was reading a news article on CNN.com about three men in Milwaukee who beat a 14-year-old boy into a coma, and it reminded me of my friend Wendy. Wendy and I went to school together (and where I come from, school means K-12), but she was in the class below me. Despite being in different classes we played sports together, were both on the cheerleading squad, and hung out with the same group of friends - not that there were that many groups with only 120 kids in high school. Suffice it to say that I knew her from the time she entered kindergarten. We weren't the best of friends but we were friends none the less.

Wendy had a rough childhood. Her estranged father used to beat her mom until she finally left him when Wendy was in elementary school. I don't think Wendy was ever beaten herself because she was still young, but I don't know if Wendy's older sister was lucky enough to escape it. I do, however, vividly remember seeing Wendy's mom with her face bruised and cut up when I was a kid. When she was older Wendy used to say how her mom should have gotten out of the marriage sooner. Wendy's sister, who was about five years older than Wendy, ended up turning tricks to get out of her mom's house and began using drugs at an early age. Wendy was the wisest of the family. She was determined to do something with her life and not turn into her mom or her sister. She had good enough grades to go to college, but I'm not sure she ever did as I lost contact with her when I began college the year before.

My mom called me one day out of the blue while I was living with Karl in the 'Ville (I think it was in early 2000). Mom never calls me, especially during the week, so I know that when she calls it's because something has happened. She told me that Wendy had been found outside on her front lawn by a passer-by half-naked and frozen by the winter cold. She had been beaten so badly that she was unrecognizable and in a coma when they took her to the hospital where she died shortly thereafter. The police later charged her live-in boyfriend with murder and jailed him on $100,000 bond. I had heard gossip that some of Wendy's extended family had raised the money to bail him out and were going to kill him when they did. When he heard who was bailing him out of jail, he denied the bail and decided jail was the safest place for him to be.

Wendy's murder, who was also in the class below me, was what I would call a stoner in school. He had apparently gotten into the heavier stuff later on. He and Wendy had dated on and off after high school and were on again when this all happened. The story I heard was that he had refused to let Wendy leave the house or make any phone calls for any reason, not even for Christmas a few weeks earlier. Wendy's family was planning on forcibly taking Wendy from the house when she died. He was apparently screwed up on meth when he decided that he was going to beat Wendy that day. I guess he really wanted to kill her because the autopsy report revealed that he had poured Drano down her throat and she had been outside in the freezing cold for about 12 hours before she was found.

In the four years since Wendy's death I've always wondered why she put herself in that situation. Wendy knew better, she knew the signs, and she always swore that she was never going to let a man do that to her. I know that there's a cycle to "battered women's syndrome" and that she witnessed her mother go through the same thing, but I really and truly thought Wendy was going to end the cycle. I guess you just never know.