Fairy tale scholars have traced the linguistic roots of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, dating it at three thousand years old. It’s a tale that’s been enacted over hundreds of generations, with multiple variations, but the underlying principle remains the same. The bridegroom can be transformed from an animal to a prince, if only they are loved enough.

I was eighteen years old when I met my Beast, slipping into a tale that was hard wired into my genetic code. I was eighteen and wanted a family of my own. So I traded the remains of childhood for marriage and belonging. I thought John was my Prince Charming, but I’d stumbled into the wrong fairy tale.

********

In the beginning the palace is magical. Beauty’s every needs are met. There are rooms filled with songbirds, a library stocked with every book she’d ever dreamed of reading. She’d see the Beast after dinner, and his visits were brief. He was considerate. She talked. He listened. When she said “no” he left. The honeymoon phase is a normal part of the story.

********

I packed my belongings into my yellow Honda Civic and moved into his cabin on the shores of Long Lake. I dropped out of college and for the first time in my life I had no classes, no homework, and no expectations to fulfill. I called in sick to work and burrowed deeper into the nest I was building. John would light the oil stove first thing in the morning for coffee, and keep it going till late at night. The cabin was snug even as snow piled against the windows. He blasted Ravi Shankar on the stereo and the music took me back to my childhood before my family fell apart.

John tucked me in bed before he went off to college and he cooked us dinner at the end of the day. He sat beside me on the worn couch, cigarette in hand, ashtray balanced on the arm and he let me talk. I told him everything; about the childhood abuse and the men that waited outside the back door of the restaurant where I worked late at night. I told him about my loneliness and how I’d always felt like an outsider. Then John described his failed marriage, how his wife neglected him, his heartache at not being with his young son, Ryan. He told me about serving in Vietnam and how he still struggled with PTSD.

At the end of the second week he asked me to marry him.

"I love you more than I have ever loved another woman before," he said. "I want to spend the rest of my life taking care of you. Tell me you feel this too?"

He made me feel safe and I’d fallen in love with his honesty. I'd never felt like I belonged so completely before.

Of course I said yes.

********

In the stories Beauty gets lonely. Her Prince is gone all day and she tires of the palace’s amusements. Beauty begs to go visit her family. The Prince is afraid she won’t come back. He’s afraid her family will turn her against him, and he will die alone, but still he lets her go.

********

I met my mom at Denny’s for coffee. We sat in the booth and I picked at my Styrofoam cup. I'd watched her lips tighten the few times she’d met John. But she’d always been polite. Now, as our wedding date approached, her fears spilled out.

"You can’t marry him. It's a mistake," she said. "He's too old for you. You're too young to be married."

I didn’t bother to argue, didn't bother to point out that my stepfather was also twenty years older than her. She couldn’t understand how special John made me feel.

When I returned to the cabin, John asked if she tried to convince me to leave him.

"Yes," I admitted, knowing he’d been right about her all along.

He pulled me into his arms, stroked my hair, while I rested my head on his chest.

"I warned you," he said. "She’s jealous of your happiness. You need to stay away from her.” And I did. John unplugged the phone, to protect us from the outside world.

********

Mostly he still behaved like my Prince, but once the wedding presents were tidied away the cracks deepened in our married life. At times the cabin shook with the violence of smashing crockery and the slap of his hand on my skin, but after his rage was spent, the Prince would emerge shedding tear-filled apologies.

"I don't know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “I love you more than my life.”

Beasts are not born, they are made. John went to fight in Vietnam and came home broken. It wasn't his fault. My love would heal him.

********

In one of the oldest versions of Beauty and the Beast, Psyche is unknowingly married to the god Cupid, except she’s never seen him and she has no idea who her husband is. Her sisters convince her that he’s a monster intent on devouring her once she’s pregnant. She grows desperate to discover the truth and while he’s sleeping she risks a glimpse. She drops burning oil from her lamp on his skin. The honeymoon phase is abruptly over. Psyche is cast out. Things take a darker turn.

********

We never stayed anywhere more than six months before arguments erupted between John and our neighbours and I'd be forced to pack our belongings again. Our third home was a trailer, an hour's drive to anywhere.

John had gone to get his son Ryan and I was home alone. I had returned to school and had an Art History paper due but every time I sat down to write I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was anxious, confused that my life had gone so wrong.

My restlessness led me to the bedroom where John kept a box of papers tucked on his side of the wardrobe. I’d once had a similar box, filled with old birthday cards and unsent love letters. John had destroyed mine in a jealous rage. I knew he’d be angry if I looked inside his but I thought I might find a clue as to how to repair our marriage.

I reached into the wardrobe and dragged the box across the shag carpet and though I was alone in the house I was careful not to make a sound. I started excavating the papers one at a time, placed them deliberately so that I could repack them in the same order. John’s old British passport sat on top. Then a copy of his immigration papers, much older than my own. There was a copy of our marriage certificate. Then a thick bundle of divorce papers from Ryan’s mum. I leaned back against the bed and started to read the legal wording. My curiosity turned to horror as I read page after page of detailed descriptions of abuse she experienced at his hands. Once, in a jealous rage, he took a sledgehammer and smashed her piano while she stood helplessly holding their baby. This was why she had sole custody of Ryan. John was dangerous. It was all recorded. Submitted to the court. He only spent time with his son when she gave him permission. It explained why John was so careful around Ryan. Why I’d never seen him raise a hand against his son.

I was stunned to find her experience was not so different from mine.

I refolded the papers and continued deeper into the box. A copy of Ryan’s birth certificate. Letters from John’s late mum.

Near the bottom was another set of divorce papers. I knew he’d married early; they were both in their teens. She was pregnant with their daughter and he was doing the honorable thing. He was a teenager suddenly responsible for a wife and kid, and he couldn’t find work in Manchester, so they immigrated to Australia. Military service was a condition of immigration, which was how he’d ended up in Vietnam. The baby died, and their short marriage ended right after. It’s another of those deep wounds he’d told me about early on: the sacrifice he made for his new family, then the unimaginable sorrow of losing a child.

I unfolded the thick ream of brittle documents typed more than twenty years earlier, unprepared for the descriptions of cruelty they contained. It was terrifying. I read it all the way though, then folded the papers carefully.

I repacked the box with shaking hands. He couldn’t know I’d trespassed.

I wondered if I was crying for them or myself. They both got out. I only just got in. I didn’t find the clue to fixing our life that I’d hoped for. Instead I learned that wives were interchangeable.

But I needed to believe he could change, learn how to control his rage. I had to believe I was different from those first two wives. Deep within was the fear that he hadn’t changed, and that my terror had only just started.

********

Escalation is the nature of domestic violence. What begins as a slap morphs into a punch, or a broken bone. I grew increasingly desperate to save John, to release him from the Beast's control and free us both from this downward spiral. I counted days obsessively, tallying good days against bad. My Prince was in there, and I was determined to save him.

********

It was a Friday, early in December. John couldn’t get away from college so I had to pick up Ryan from his mom two hours away in the small town of Cedar. Coming home it rained steadily, my wipers smeared dirty streaks across the windshield. Ryan chatted about his friends in second grade, and the problems he had with his stepfather, and everything else that had happened during the last week. I grew steadily more anxious. When the lights of oncoming cars hit the windshield, I couldn’t see the road.

By the time we reached the city of Duncan, halfway home, it was completely dark. Once we got away from the streetlights it was obvious I only had one working headlight on my car.

The highway climbed higher up the mountain and the relentless rain changed to wet snow. My hands ached from gripping the steering wheel. I couldn’t see the road at all. Instead I followed the brake lights of the car in front of me, my face close to the glass, praying they wouldn’t drive off the road with me following blindly behind. The muscles in my neck throbbed with the strain.

Eventually we reached the summit of the pass, and began to make our way down. As we approached the edge of Victoria the snow turned back into rain. I could breathe.

Once we were home Ryan dumped his Legos and started building. John was watching TV and ignored our arrival. The dishes were stacked in the sink, and nothing was made for dinner. I opened the freezer, pulled out a couple of frozen chicken pies.

“You’re late,” said John five minutes later when he joined me in the kitchen.

“There was snow on the mountain,” I explained.

“You’re really late,” he said.

“One of the headlights was burned out on the car. The wipers aren’t working properly. I thought we weren’t going to make it back,” I explained. “I was scared. How was your exam?”

“Fine. I finished early. I should’ve gotten Ryan myself. I would’ve had plenty of time. Did you get my smokes?”

“In my purse.”

In seconds he was back in the kitchen holding up the blue packet, the wrong packet, the packet I’d bought with shaking hands once we were off the mountain.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” he snarled.

“They didn’t have your brand.”

He was enraged. From zero to hundred with no pause for breath. “Then you go someplace else,” he yelled.

“I did. I tried the next gas station. But they didn’t have your brand either.”

“And that’s it? You tried twice? You’re such a selfish bitch. You can’t even buy the right kind of cigarettes!”

“I wanted to come home. I was scared.”

I heard myself pleading with him.

I never saw his fist coming. My body still ached from the drive, was still hyped on adrenaline. I wasn’t expecting anything more.

My head snapped back, and I fell to the floor.

Face pressed against the carpet. I didn’t get up. After three years I’d learned that there was no way to avoid his rage; the only way to finish a fight was to go through the pain to the tears and apology on the other side. In three years I’d tried everything. Appeasement, placating, standing up for myself, fighting back, running away, and threatening to leave but nothing worked.

He called me stupid, but I was smart enough to realize the floor was the safest place. Ryan watched me from the living room. Our eyes met. He turned back to his Legos.

John was still yelling at me, calling me names, then he swung his foot and kicked me in the back. As quickly as it started he was done. He went to the living room to watch TV.

I picked myself up, shut myself in the bathroom and washed my face. The locked door was an illusion of safety. In three years he’d broken plenty of bathroom doors. But right then I needed to pretend. I ran water to cover the sound of my sobs.

What happened to the man I married? Was he still in there? Had he ever been in there?

Then I peeled potatoes to make French fries, boiled peas, baked the chicken pies. We ate dinner in silence. After supper John ran Ryan a bath.

Without thought, I fled out the patio door. My feet pounded on the sidewalk as I ran. Passing cars illuminated the puddles on the road. I took the first turn off Cadboro Bay road before I slowed down and started to pay attention. It was only just after eight, though the cold and rain meant the streets were empty.

I had shoes, but no jacket and no money.

I’d run away from John so many times, and gone back every time. I was wet and cold but right then I couldn’t think about what would come later. Halfway down the block I found an office building with a dry underground parking garage. It was almost empty. I tucked myself into a corner and sat with my back to the wall.

That night was the first time he’d punched me in the face. He was usually more careful. But I still couldn’t see any other way forward except going back. I couldn’t admit to anyone what was happening. I couldn’t handle my mom’s pity. The whispered “I told you so.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and settled down to wait. John wouldn’t risk leaving Ryan alone to come find me, but I had nowhere to go.

********

In the stories, Beauty rescues her Prince. When all the tests and trials are over they live happily ever after. But maybe the Beasts write the stories, not the Beauties? They want us to believe they can be rescued, they need us to keep trying, but they have no desire to change.

In the stories it's the Prince’s beastliness that is the illusion. Beauty must discover the gentle man trapped inside. The reality was that the Prince was the facade. The Beast was the truth.

********

I’d been sitting there twenty minutes when a car pulled in, catching me in its high beams. The car rolled to a stop and a man got out. The wind whipped his overcoat against his legs. My muscles tensed, ready to run again. The man approached slowly, rocked down onto his heels, kept a wide distance between us. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Carefully, he let it fall open, and held it so I could see the police ID card behind the plastic cover.

"I'm a cop," he said. "I'm not working, I just stopped to use the bank machine." His voice was low and steady as if he were speaking to a skittish horse that might bolt if he moved too fast.

"Do you need help?" he asked.

He was the first person to ask me that question.

I didn't know how to answer. I didn't know where to begin. My life was out of control. I dropped my head to my knees. Would I lose myself trying to save John?

"I want to go to a friend's," I said. “But I have no money.”

"I can drive you to the community center. There are pay phones there. I’ll give you a quarter."

I pushed up from the wall. Stepped towards his car. If he noticed I had no coat, no socks, he said nothing.

********

I wished my story ended there. I wish I could say I spent the night on Karen's couch, and took a bus home to my mom in the morning. But life isn't as tidy as a fairy tale. Curses aren’t broken with simple tasks. Happy ever afters are rare. Battered women leave many times before the last time. And I was no exception.

Karen’s husband phoned John, who came to collect me.

But while that night wasn't the end, it was the beginning of the end. The stranger’s question had cracked open a window into my narrow world. I needed help. And I began to look for it. I reached out again, trying to find a way out. Telling the truth was hard. I wasn't always believed. Things got worse for a while.

But eventually I’d rewrite my story.

In the end, I’d rescue myself.