Jack asked, “Is that your final answer? Is three chance a man, so I will ask you a third time. You sure that we DONE? You serious? You sure, sure, sure? Think it through thoroughly! How much time do you need to come back to your senses? You realize that this is a LIFE and DEATH decision. All right! Have it your way, since you want to play with your life! I know that you never used to take me serious, when I tell you that I make up my mind to take a jail for you! Take me serious now, when I say that you have just signed your death warrant! If I can not have you no one else will! What will it be?”
CASKET OR COFFIN?
Jill’s said, “I will not live MY LIFE in fear of you! I refuse to be JUST another statistic! My epitaph and my death certificate will not read BOLDLY in INVISIBLE print, ‘She died an untimely, senseless death! She died as a result of his EGO and his misguided interpretation of the word PRIDE!’ You didn’t give me life! You do not have the right to take it. I am a woman. I have rights. I am not a slave. I am not your possession. I will not sit back silently and allow YOU to play God with MY LIFE! Where do you get off, asking me CASKET OR COFFIN?”
By Mutryce A. Williams BBA CTM
“He isn’t God! Where the hell, does he get off threatening my life? Who the hell does he think he is anyway? I am sure that he was no where in sight when my mother was up at JNF screaming her lungs out, trying to push out a child called Jill, and I will be damned if he let that woman’s nine months and endless labour pains go in vain, simply because he is a selfish, egotistical, possessive bastard, who can not take NO for an answer! I am my own person. I am not the possession of another. I am a living thinking, breathing human being. I have rights and the right to life is first and foremost. No one has the authority to take my life, NO ONE! ” Jill blasted on the other end of the telephone line.
“I simply told the young man, like any mature consenting adult who made the CHOICE to be in a relationship, that the relationship no longer worked and it was over. Things as they were didn’t make sense. It isn’t as if he didn’t see it coming. I was not willing to wait around to see if he was ever going to grow out of his Peter Pan syndrome. I was not going to stay with him just to assuage his ego. Life is too short for keeping up appearances! I offered him my friendship. His response to me was ‘All or nothing, chose Casket or Coffin?’ I can’t believe Jack. He going let me to know with no water in his mouth whatsoever, that he make up his mind to take a jail for me and that the day I clear customs he intends to put a bullet right between my eyes, because no woman has ever ‘done’ he before, is he does do the ‘donning.’ I said to him well Jack hold up being that that is the case, I take back the ‘done.’ I will let you ‘done’ me then, if that is what you are concerned about, I will let you ‘done’ me. If you want you could tell people what you want. You have said countless times that you intend to destroy me. You have my permission. Go right ahead. There is no need to threaten my life. Just leave me alone! This wretch going to tell me NO. He kept saying over and over again, that if he can’t have me then nobody else will.”
Jill continued ranting. She was furious and understandably so. She said, “You see Tryce, I do not take his threats lightly. I am convinced that he is psychotic. I never thought that things would have gotten to this point. You see I blame myself. Thinking about it now the signs were all there. They were right before my eyes, staring me dead straight in the face. I ignored them. I saw him simply as a man who was ‘madly’ in love. I saw him as ‘devoted.’ I did not see him as possessive, controlling or capable of causing me grievous bodily harm or even death.” He has to be missing more than a few screws. I am convinced that he is crazy.
“I have no intentions of staying in any relationship with ANYONE because of his sick interpretation of the word PRIDE. I do not think that any woman or anyone as a matter of fact should be held hostage in a relationship that he or she doesn’t want to be in, because the other person REFUSES to let them go, because the other person has a huge EGO and is very much concerned about his PRIDE. Women are not possessions, ornaments or things. We are people. We have rights, the right to life, the right to chose who we want to be in a relationship with and the right to leave that relationship unharmed, with our lives in tact, if it comes down to that. No woman should have to live in fear. No woman should be held hostage by ANY man. We were created equal, as man’s companions, not as his possession. We are not mere things. Why would one want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be with him anyway? It makes NO sense. How could one live with oneself knowing that he has deprived another person of life and knowing that he has caused a family senseless grief? Tell me how?”
Jill sighed heavily. It was evident that she was distressed. She said, “Girl, I am so vexed with myself right now because I thought I did everything right. This is the last thing that I expected from him. I am an independent woman. I always paid my way, so I knew that he couldn’t come with any crap bout he invest anything. What vex me is that he going let me to know that he put me up on a pedestal and now I want to make people laugh after he. It is nothing but his ego and his pride. Jack going let me to know, that he could have had countless woman but he forsake all of them for me. Now am I getting something wrong somewhere isn’t that what a NORMAL relationship should be like? I knew that he was twisted but to that extent, honestly NO. He going let me to know with his forwardness that I should be honoured that he chose me, and for me to talk bout I ‘done’ he is a grave insult to him, because you see he is Adonis eh. Where do these men get off? Tryce do you really think that Jack is capable of murder?”
I paused long and hard before I answered. I was so happy when she told me that she was no longer involved with Jack, because the young man was nothing but a joke. I said, “Well, Jill, as you said Jack showed many signs of being possessive. You can never tell with a possessive man. When a man regards a woman as his possession he is capable of anything! The signs were in neon green, that is. I guess it is understandable how you would say that he was “madly in love” and “simply devoted,” but sister I would tell you that in my opinion his behaviour went way past the ‘madly in love’ and the ‘simply devoted’ mark. It was off the charts. He couldn’t be working with a full deck. There was no way.
When a man guards you like a hawk or like when a cat catches a mouse something is definitely wrong! When he insists on dropping you everywhere you have to go, I mean girl if you going from Walls to City Drug Store he dropping you! You mean to tell me that you didn’t realize something was wrong? When he realized that you were different from the ‘others’ and that ‘taming’ you was going to be a challenge, he tried to make all of your friends disappear, so he that he could have you all to himself, within his power, making you an easy target to control. Jill, you saw nothing wrong with this? When he made constant use of your *69, honey that was definitely a sign. When he insisted on having the password to your email, you telling me, an alarm didn’t go off. Yes, Jill I know you, you are going to say that you weren’t exactly a pushover and that you were a lot more ‘gangsta,’ than he anticipated, but still, yet here you are in this situation.! You let down your guard with this young man and allowed him to go too far. He is threatening your life!
He became territorial whenever other men were around. He also thought nothing of openly threatening and intimidating them, so that they knew that you were off limits. Jill, you saw that as love, eh? Whenever you went to meetings or conventions he would sit for hours in his car and wait for you. Jill, you telling me that you didn’t realize that you had a psychopath on your hands, a man who was obviously obsessed with you and capable of taking you out, should you cross him as I have often heard him say?
Jill, are you forgetting the countless times that your boss had to reprimand you because when Jack went on ‘vacation’ instead of finding something constructive to do with his time, he thought nothing of camping out at your workplace so that he could keep an eye on you. Don’t tell me not to go there, you know that it is true. Jill, are you telling me that the writing wasn’t on the wall then? Are you forgetting the time when he became so enraged and dragged you down a flight of steps in a public place because according to him you were openly flirting with another man; sister wasn’t that a red flag? How could you forget that time when he totally shattered the windshield of his car, with one punch. He then proceeded to run the car off the road with the two of you in it, because you said that you were leaving him; then he had the heart to let you know that the damages to the car were EC$5, 748.42. This is how much you had cost him and he was adding up, so therefore you couldn’t leave him, nothing rang a bell then right Jill? I see! What about those times when he had just taken you heaven and back, instead of whispering sweet little nothings into your ear, he turned over, looked you in the eyes and said ‘the day you leave me mark my words I will kill you because you are mine, if I can not have you no one else will!’ He was in madly in love then, right? You’ve told me of times that you would be discussing the weather or eating and out of nowhere, he says, “Just a question, do you think that I would allow you to leave me? I can’t stand the thought of you with another man. I love you too much. I won’t let you go, so don’t even try to leave. You would be as good as dead. Don’t take me for a joke when I tell you this. I am DEAD serious,” without any warning he switches the conversation back to the weather.
Jack made no bones about telling you that his family had more money than God could count and that he didn’t even have to touch you, there were other means whereby he could get the job done; Jill you telling me, nothing there again? When he befriended and became chummy with a criminal defense lawyer and with a smirk on his face he tells you that he will get off because money would be no object and that if the steroid defense did not work in a famous convicted killer’s case, it would definitely work for him because he had studied that particular case well and knew where the defense had gone wrong, you telling me that there was no cause for concern then? He loved you then, right Jill?
Jill darling, finally when you went to Bermuda and told him that you were through with him and by the time you got back to home, he tells you that you were as good as dead if you hadn’t changed your mind and take him back, Jill, what were you smoking girl? This man told you that on the day you told him that it was over, he had already started doing public relations. He had started working on his defense. He even visited your best friend’s house at 5:00 in the morning in a demented state because according to him he couldn’t take the done. He went around town like a fowl with its head chopped off, telling everybody what he did for you from what he hadn’t done for you. He told you that he was looking sympathy. He admitted to you that it was all ground work for his planned defense. He made no bones about telling you this, honey and you are going to tell me that at that time there was no need for concern? You went back to him! You stayed with him! You thought that he was all talk! You admitted then, that he might have been a BIT possessive. You told your best friend when he told you that you needed to watch yourself with Jack, ‘Oh Jack, he is a bit crazy yes, possessive maybe, he wouldn’t hurt me, he would never go as far as to kill me. He loves me!’ Well sister I hope you wake up now, because this is your life and this isn’t something that you should take lightly. It is evident that this young man has issues. I wouldn’t take his threat lightly, if I were you!”
We enter relationships for love, security, companionship and stability. Some women even enter relationships for other things like money or other material things. We don’t go into these relationships thinking that we would be trapped in a situation that we can’t get out of. We don’t go into these relationships thinking that there is the possibility that we could lose our lives. The thing that bothers me most about these happenings is the way in which society sympathizes with these selfish psychopaths who deprives our women of their lives. We shake our heads and say, “Lord, he shouldn’t have done it, you know! Look how he throw away he life over a woman!” We say this as if; it is just a pig or dog, just a woman, nothing but a woman, as if the woman’s life is insignificant. He threw away his life, what about hers? We switch into what I call the Adam and Eve defense. We BLAME the woman, because SOMEHOW like Eve, she drove the man to commit this heinous act. It just had to be her fault. The rumor mill starts; ‘She had another man with him! She used him! She ain’t had no call with him in the first place, so what she get she take! Lord, he invest so much money in her!”
To hell with this all this nonsense, somebody need to tell these men that the “hairy bank” isn’t a real bank. Scotia, Royal and National are banks, that is where they should invest their money. What returns are there to be had from investing in woman? Any thing that a man gives a woman while they in a relationship is a gift and a sign of love, not an anchor to keep the woman. Relationships are risky business, so men are fools, if they call investing in the “hairy bank” an investment. I don’t care how much money a man spends on a woman. It does not justify his taking her life, should she decide to leave him. Society, we say, “Lord I understand because if I had spend all that money on she I would have feel it, the woman is ungrateful.’ So because we think that she is ungrateful, should she have to pay with her life? We say ‘Oh, he used to treat she good for real she ain’t had no call to leave him.’ Society who are we, to dictate who this woman should be with. As a living, breathing, human being, she has the right to make choices and if she chooses to leave then so be it. She doesn’t even need a reason to leave. It is her life.
Sometimes we say, ‘Well, he met her with a man,’ for my part he could have met her with ten. People will talk, that’s life! He wouldn’t be the first or last man to get horn. We are all human. We hurt and we feel that’s understandable, but this hurt doesn’t give us the right to deprive another of her life. We say that in this case our animalistic instinct comes into play, so the man being hurt by the woman, kills her, ‘in the heat of the moment they say’ to any defense lawyer I would say, rubbish. Humans were created superior to the other animals. We have a certain deliberative element. We know right from wrong. We can reason. Murder is wrong. This isn’t a situation of self defense. It is matter of selfishness. In these situations our deliberative faculties should come into play. These men know what they are doing. Ask them they would tell you. They have it in them. The machete and knife don’t take on a life of their own. The bullets don’t automatically fly out of the gun. These women just don’t drown. If the dead could talk, I would tell you to ask each one of these women. They would tell you their stories. I am sure all similar to Jill’s. You want to tell me that out of no where, according to this crime of passion theory, we lose ALL reason. There is nothing there to pull us back? Nothing? Nothing whatsoever? Then we talk about temporary insanity or irrationality! Irrationality my backside! Ask the families of these women about these men and they would tell you that the signs were all there. They know first hand. These men could just leave the woman alone. What she has is hers. She is not his possession, partner maybe, but not possession. He didn’t give her life. He was no where in sight when her mother was feeling pain, so why should he cause the woman unnecessary pain by killing her child, because according to him, if he can’t have her then no one else will. This is the height of selfishness. Society we tolerate it.
I don’t consider these happenings crimes of passion. These men know what they are doing. They do not deserve our sympathy or compassion. They are cold hearted, cold blooded, selfish murderers, who do not think about the families that they are hurting. They do not love these women; if they did then they would leave them alone and let them be. It is about their ego and pride. They just can’t stand the thought of somebody going with or having their “possession” and sometimes they themselves have 10 and 20 women. These men are not the victims. They are savages with inflated egos. They are simply selfish. No woman should have to die like this. Why can’t these men just walk away? What or who gives them the right to play God with another person’s life.
We flock to these funerals not only to sympathize with the families but because we just have to see for ourselves who this woman was. We just have to see this woman’s face. I mean we wonder, ‘How bad she could be so,’ for a man to decide that she did not deserve another breath. This woman, the VICTIM, who had suffered such an undignified and senseless death still goes through hell, after she is gone because you see, is her fault. Her actions, not his, lead, to her demise. She isn’t the victim, of course not! We blame her for not leaving the man. I mean realistically, do you think it is that easy. Leaving an irrational, egotistical and possessive man isn’t easy, because once he has made up his mind that he is going to kill you once you leave, what is there to stop him? These women should be applauded for being warriors because they finally mustered up the courage to stand up for themselves and leave. Their courage came too late and it cost them their lives. I sympathize with all the families who have lost a loved in this way.
Life is precious! If a woman decides she doesn’t want to be with you, destroy her character or her if you must, but leave her with the one thing that God gave her. Leave her with her LIFE. Respect her enough to leave her with her LIFE. It isn’t as if as my dear friend Luis says, ‘she is your oxygen tank so the minute she leaves you, you can’t breathe, and you are bound to die.’ Get real! If you really have no respect for life, why don’t you do the world a favour and take your own life, if you must. I was impartial to the death penalty but I am no longer undecided. I support it. As a member of society if you commit a crime against society, you have forfeited all your rights and you are subject to every penalty under the law. The death penalty is one of them. I understand why in some societies “mob justice” is allowed because these men deserve it.
“I will not live MY LIFE in fear of you! I refuse to be JUST another statistic! My epitaph and my death certificate will not read BOLDLY in INVISIBLE print, ‘She died an untimely, senseless death! She died as a result of his EGO and his misguided interpretation of the word PRIDE!’ You didn’t give me life! You do not have the right to take it. I am a woman. I have rights. I am not a slave. I am not your possession. I will not sit back silently and allow YOU to play God with MY LIFE! Where do you get off, asking me CASKET OR COFFIN?”
