Talking with a visitor about straying men (re: Tiger Woods, et al) I remembered a nurse aide who worked on my hospital floor years ago.
"Magnolia" was a black lady who worked hard and enjoyed her job. She had raised four kids by herself. Also working sometimes on the night shift was Mary, a little woman who often came to work with bruises on her arms and face.

Mary would always say she had "tripped" or "fallen" but it was sub rosa knowledge that she was beaten by her big galoot of a husband. One time she showed up to work with bruises around her neck. Magnolia's normally smiling face glowered. "That sob husband of hers, he need a attitude adjustment," Magnolia growled.

Magnolia told me about the brute she had been married to when she was young. She had been married seven years, had three tots, and was pregnant with another, and got tired of her husband Moses coming home drunk after being out all night chasing women. Or as Magnolia put it "He were a pussy hound, that's all he thought about." I said Oh, he was a philanderer and skirt chaser? Magnolia said "I don't know no Phil, and he wadn't innerested in no skirt, he were a pussy hound."

One night, fed up with her husband, she boiled a pot of water and threw back the sheets and doused his manhood with it. He woke screaming and hollering "CALL A AMBALANCE! FOR LORD'S SAKE CALL A AMBALANCE!" Magnolia said "I got three of yo chillun already and got another one on the way. When the ambalance come you better tell 'em you accidental scalded yo self. If I go to jail, who gonna raise these young'uns? An if you don't, when I gits outta jail, I'm gonna cut off whatever you got left." So Moses told the ambalance and police it was accidental, and from then on, he was respectful of Magnolia. Realllly respectful.

susil