'Go ahead and kill me'

Her husband said he was going to kill her.

That's what Dawn Nicole Smith writes when she fills out a request for an emergency protective order after a fight with her husband, Tony. She claims that he threw her on the bed, choking her, and told her this was her end.

She doesn't write that she felt so used up and worthless, at 22, that at the moment she could no longer breathe, she wasn't even afraid.

Instead, when he took his hand away, she taunted him, gasping: "Go ahead and kill me."

The screaming fight in late July 2004 began because, Dawn says, Tony had been drinking at least a couple of 40-ounce beers a day, eating up the little money they had. He says he can't stay with her because she keeps going to jail.

Tony, 29, is 6-foot-2 and 200-plus pounds; he towers over his 5-foot-6 wife. When he said he was going to visit his girlfriend, Dawn exploded. Dawn says she knew a fight was coming, so she figured she'd get the ruckus started and get it over with. She chucked a metal spatula at his head.

At the emergency room, she's treated for pain. She doesn't tell the doctor that she is in drug court. She doesn't say that she is pregnant again. She needs relief, and she gets it. Later, she admits to getting one Lortab — which in the secretive language of addicts probably means she got several more.

She files an emergency protective order against Tony, but she misses her court date. Tony shows up, and the case is dismissed. Tony later says Dawn got hurt, but only because he was defending himself against her.

The previous month, the Lord and baptism were the answer, a lightning-bolt solution that required a sincere change of heart.

That didn't stick. Dawn never went back to church.

But after this fight, for today, it seems that maybe the lessons of all those self-help meetings and drug court counseling sessions have begun to get through.

Dawn says she just knows that the fight crossed some emotional line.

Tony hit her in the face with his fist, like he'd hit another man, she says.

She felt her jaw unhinge.

She'd always said that if any man hit her, she'd leave. But she says the first time he hit her was before the boys were born, and she stayed. She'd seen her mom smacked around a few times. She figured that's how couples are.

But now, she describes her marriage as "an unhealthy relationship." She doesn't want her kids to be raised thinking that this is how life should be. And something else occurs to her — things will get worse unless she takes action to change them.

"I can't let him destroy me," she says.

She moves to a trailer in Jessamine County with her mother and stepfather, Brenda and Larry Raines, taking the kids with her.

An old faded silver rectangle with equally faded blue trim, it isn't fancy, but it's clean. There's a room for the boys and one for her, although her whole little family always, somehow, ends up in bed together. The boys have a television and a PlayStation, and Larry always manages to fix up some junk car long enough to get her where she needs to go.

Her mom has hung up a gold-colored metal rendering of the Last Supper, a few pictures of Jesus and one of Elvis, some of the few things that make it from house to house as the family moves, as it often does. There is a table where they can have meals together. And a big corner lot where the boys can play. It seems like a good place to land.

It's never enough

To help spread out the workload at drug court, Dawn is assigned to a new caseworker. Roberta Daugherty, with dark-rimmed glasses and a chin-length bob, tries to help Dawn get better. Dawn responds to Daugherty's quiet way and frequent hugs and pats on the back. Daugherty pushes Dawn to sign up for food stamps and a medical card for her kids. She pushes Dawn to sign up for General Educational Development classes and to find a pro-bono attorney to get a divorce and set up child-support payments.

But while Daugherty pushes, it's up to Dawn to act.

And action comes in spurts, whether it's because Dawn is held back by fear or lack of education or because she's simply overwhelmed by the many systems she must navigate food stamps, Section 8 housing applications, paperwork for GED-prep classes.

Daugherty cites the same problems again and again in her weekly updates about Dawn's progress: She lacks parenting skills, a steady job and the emotional tools to cope with the breakup of her marriage and her struggle for recovery.

So Dawn's busy drug court schedule — which includes three random drug tests and a visit to the judge each week, homework and studying for her GED — gets busier.

Dawn loves Daugherty, who week after week says it's just a matter of time before Dawn can move up from the first phase of drug court. That stabilization phase can end in 30 days. It's stretching into seven months for Dawn. And what's available to her out in the community doesn't seem to be enough.

'Don't make me go'

Finally, after her fifth positive drug test in as many months, in August 2004, Judge Tim Philpot, who has started to oversee her case, sends Dawn to inpatient treatment. As a pregnant woman headed for a state funded-program, her name goes to the top of the waiting list, and she gets into a 30-day intensive program, at the Schwartz Center in Lexington, within days. Most people without insurance wait weeks or even months to get into an inpatient program.

Treatment can be like a jolt of electricity cutting through the haze of a drug-filled life. Physically, a few weeks of decent food and real — not drug-induced — sleep fortify the body. Exposure to recovery and lots of people who are managing to live clean and sober fortifies the soul.

But Dawn is simply miserable, worrying obsessively about her kids, crying often at the mention of them, wanting nothing more than to go back to them.

Near the end of her treatment stay, Dawn's counselor, Mary Lamm, sits with her in an office to discuss what happens next. Lamm is composed, professional. Dawn is practically folded in half on a chair, a T-shirt stretched over her growing belly, her head hanging down, chin touching her chest.

In a measured, even tone, Lamm says Dawn needs to show she is serious about staying clean. That means a lot of changes in her life. First, she needs to stay away from Tony and get a divorce. Dawn agrees to this easily. As soon as she gets the money together, that's her plan. She says she knows she and the kids deserve better.

Lamm and Dawn's drug court workers want her to go to a residential treatment program. There, she'll spend weekdays focusing on getting better, taking classes, attending group sessions and meetings. And on weekends, the boys can come for overnight visits.

This comment sparks something in Dawn that is soon in full flame.

She sobs, a full-bodied spasm of despair.

"You can't tell me I can't be with my kids. I have to be with them," she says between ragged gasps. "They'll think I don't love them. Don't make me go."

They make her go.

Breaking the rules

At Chrysalis House in downtown Lexington, Dawn is surrounded by other women in recovery and a staff willing to help. But she doesn't easily turn to people outside her family.

Tony moves in with his girlfriend, seeing the boys occasionally, giving money here and there when he can. Child care falls to Brenda and Larry. Brenda, especially, is angry when she hears counselors are encouraging Dawn not to be so dependent on her.

"How can someone love their mother too much? How can somebody say something like that?" Brenda asks.

Brenda, who has become a certified caregiver and can work in nursing homes, finds keeping a job difficult when she has to care for the boys. In the best of times, they can be wild. They are worse when their mother is gone.

So, strained herself, Brenda frequently tells her daughter that she needs to come home. She even asks the court for child support from Dawn while she is in treatment and unemployed.

The program offers not only counseling but also computer classes and help in studying for the GED. But Dawn stays in bed in her room as much as possible.

After a little more than two months, she breaks the rules.

She decides she needs to see her kids and her mother more than she needs to attend recovery meetings. So instead of going to a meeting, she goes home.

Breaking the rules ultimately gets her kicked out of Chrysalis House.

Dawn can't see that she's spending more energy trying to figure out ways around the system than figuring out how to get through it. Later, when she breaks other drug court rules, she serves several jail stints, missing both Thanksgiving and Christmas. She'll tell herself she was there for the boys, technically, because she got passes to go home on the holidays.

Near the end of her stay at Chrysalis House, she wonders how she'll ever get over this thing that everybody keeps calling a disease. Jesus didn't solve it. Meetings haven't helped. Chrysalis House house isn't working. She is pregnant and exhausted and afraid she's beyond fixing.

As she sits outside on the porch at Chrysalis House smoking, on a chilly fall night when the other women are in their rooms or at a recovery meeting, the ember of her cigarette provides the only dim light.

"Do people really do this?" she says. "It feels like I am just nothing, and I ain't ever going to have nothing."

Nothing is going to change, it seems, at least not today.