Chapter Two

     Every dime I earned at my two jobs, my father collected. He said that he needed it for gas. I was only making about one hundred dollars because I was working part time. He expected one hundred dollars every paycheck and always left me penniless. How was I going to escape if I didn’t have any money? He took and cashed my brother and my social security checks and spent them. He wasn’t spending them on us and we lived in a section 8 housing with rent that was forty dollars a month, everything including except prorated electrictry. He was getting good money but we never saw any of it. I never got anything for my birthday (but my brother did) and when Christmas came, he always gave us the speech about him not being able to afford anything.

     Since, my father had been in a car accident (a blessing from God, I know), I was able to start taking the city bus to school and work. I was so happy! He could no longer follow me. I managed to get more hours at both jobs, lying to my father about increased classes. Every pay period, I gave him the one hundred dollars he expected and then stashed away the rest in a bank account I opened at a bank in downtown Providence where I caught the second bus to Rhode Island College.

      During this time, a love interest developed with someone on campus who seemed to be everywhere I was. I wasn’t aware of it until one day, a friend of mine and I were studying like we did every day before class in our special section in the campus library where we both worked. My friend had gone to the bathroom and upon returning, she whispered to me, “There’s a bunch of guys watching you from behind the bookshelves!” I had heard books being moved behind me but assumed it was one of my coworkers doing stacks as I often did as a first year worker. I was seated with my shoes off crossed legged, reading my textbook. My friend motioned for me to follow her. Suddenly, there was a lot of commotion as several guys poured from the bookshelves and raced downed the stairs of the balconey. All but one lingered behind, the one who had been interested in me. Placing my hands on my hips, I looked around for more of the guys and saw my admirer smile, lower his head, fix the strap of his backpack and slowly head down the stairs.

     I couldn’t believe this was happening! I never thought of myself as a beauty and having a pack of guys follow me around campus all the time was a bit more than flattering. My admirer was indeed handsome but couldn't he find someone else on campus  besides me? He had neatly cut  dark shouldner-length hair, dark eyes, thick eyebrows and a nice smile. He seemed very nice and he seemed to be everywhere I was. He was shy and so was I when it came to guys. I figured out who his friends were and they always ended up in my classes. I overheard him one time on campus say to a friend, “there she is…I think she’s cute.” I thought I looked horrible in my long blue skirt and white t-shirt. Because of my situation at home, I knew that it could never happen . I’d just be putting him at risk. The fact that he was white would only make my father hurt him more. My father told me once, “Don’t you ever bring some white guy home!” I couldn’t bring anyone home, for that matter, white or otherwise.

     One night, I overheard my father cussing someone out on the phone and, by the way my father was swearing, I assumed that someone had somehow gotten my home number and was asking for me. I wondered if it were my admirer who seemed to be great at detective work.

     One summer, I was in class with my admirer but I was too shy to talk to him . He’d sit next to me on the wall outside during our break from class and look at me. He even followed me after class and asked one of the guys who was friendly with me something about me, which until this very day that I am unaware of. I think it was a note that I never received. I was flattered about having an admirer, especially someone as handsome as he. His color made no difference to me since, having gone to Classical and private school, I was accustomed to those who didn’t look like me. I just thought that he would be in danger and could do a heck of a lot better than me. What was so special about me? How could anyone like or even love me?

     I always felt bad about the situation with my admirer but other things began to occupy my mind. I had saved six thousand dollars and began to plot my escape from home. I had managed to take a few days off from work, telling my supervisor the issue at hand. It was agreed that if my father came looking for me, my father would be told that I was busy in the stacks and they couldn’t reach me. After I managed to get an apartment down the hill from my college, some friends and colleagues of mine helped me trasport the furniture to my apartment. I had paid for my apartment four months in advance while I moved things in slowly.

      When it was getting close to my big escape, I confided in my brother. In disbelief, he said to me, “You’re never leaving!” I was shocked that he was so cruel to me. He wasn’t happy. Although he appeared angry, I think that there was a lot my brother didn’t understand and he was also afraid. I had to leave. I knew that if I didn’t my father would see to it that I never graduate from college and I needed to be sure that I succeed. For once, I had to think of myself. My brother was about sixteen years old and I thought he was old enough to take care of himself. I promised him that I’d be in touch, write him often and make a way for us to see each other without letting my father know my whereabouts.

     When my oldest half sister came over to pick up her daughter after work one day, I told her of my plans. She said to me, “How are you going to survive on your own? You’ll end up being a prostitute to take care of yourself!” Why was I being bombarded with negative comments? Was this a way of trying to prevent me from gaining my freedom? Despite her remarks, she wanted to see my apartment so she devised a plan.

     Everyone, it seemed, was always lying to my father. That’s the way we had to operate in order to live. My oldest sister told him on Saturday that she was taking my brother and me out. He liked that. It gave him freedom to have his women over and act nasty all over the house. We went to my new apartment and my brother was visibly upset. I reassured him that I would never forget about him and that I’d always be there for him. I kept my promise, but he shut me out.

     When my sister dropped off my brother and me at home, I tried my key in the lock and, for some, reason, it wouldn’t turn. Outside the house, was a yellow car, the car of one of the many women my father was seeing. At night, my father always put a wooden door block on the lock to prevent anyone from opening the door from the outside. I assumed he didn’t want us inside and I didn’t want to imagine the nastiness that was going on inside. My sister  yelled, “Come on!” and my brother and I returned to my sister’s car. 

“…and grace will lead me home”

PART TWO:

Chapter One

     College offered me a totally different world. There were people from all over the globe! There was so much eduation! I had a work-study position at the library which helped me get over my shyness. Best of all, because of the makeup of the college campus, my father couldn’t stalk me!

     I felt like I was someone important in college and I made a promise to myself that I would graduate and make something of myself.  I felt like I belonged there and that others there were also trying to make something of themselves. It was as if just by walking on the campus, I could feel the education surrounding me. There were people of all ages on the campus and they had an interest in what I had to say! Thanks to my education and hard work at Classical, writing papers and being involved in discussions came very easy to me. Sometimes, I was teased because I didn’t have to study as hard as others did. Oftentimes, I was so tired, that I just read my notes and was able to retain everything I had learned in class and read in my very small notebook.

     Unfortunately, my father tried to ruin my chances of doing well and I was aware of it. Just like in high school, he would demand that I drop my studies and scratch his extra dry scalp, cut his hard and very dirty toenails and pick the scabs off his feet and clean , cut and file his hard fingernails. It took so much of my time and, when I was finished, I was covered in dandruff from his very flakey scalp. For some reason, his scalp peeled and flaked so, when I scratched it with a comb, the flakes were Corn Flake size and they'd popped into my face or on my clothing. I always had to scrub my hands and take a shower afterwards. I was so very tired so many nights. He would go to bed and I’d sit up in my room late into the night working on school work. I was determined to do well and I prayed often for strength to get through these difficult times. Refusing to tend to my father’s demands had very bad consequences and I was filled with so much anger that if he ever touched me again, I’d put him in his grave. I swore to myself that I’d kill him if he ever touched me again.

     One night, my brother was crying as I got out of the shower and he said to me , “Daddy is choking Keesh”. For some reason, my father got a Keeshond and we named him Keesh but when my father saw that we were paying too much attention to the dog, he became violent. I could hear Keesh struggling to breathe and I walked into the living room to see my father strangling Keesh with a leash. My father had no idea I was in the room and the rage he exhibited as he choked the dog was breaking my heart. No one, not even an animal should have to endure that. Holding back tears, I crossed my arms and firmly said to my father, “What did he do to get treated like that?” Taken aback, my father shouted, “What the fuck did you say?” I repeated my question undaunted. He said, “He wasn’t listening to me!” I told him that it was still not a good reason to choke the dog. “What the fuck did you say?” he shouted. I could hear my brother crying in the background. I felt bad because my brother was always afraid. He feared my father more than anyone I knew had.

     My father’s bloodshot eyes burned into mine but I remained unmoved. I was waiting for him to touch me so I could beat the shit out of him. I no longer feared him and he knew it. After I repeated what I had said, he rushed towards me with the blue leash he used to choke Keesh outstretched as if he were going to choke me. If he expected me to run or to be afraid, he was disappointed because I stood still, arms folded and dressed in a floor-length blue cotton nightgown waiting for him to put his hands on me. Our eyes locked as he raced towards me and suddenly he froze about an inch away from my face. I smirked. “Do it.” I said calmly. He stared at me for a moment, cowered and went outside to stand in the night air. I looked at Keesh who rushed into the comfort of my bedroom where he spent the rest of the night. Poor Keesh. I didn’t know what type of abuse he suffered when I wasn’t around.

     The abuse of Keesh didn’t end there. After a long day of classes and work, I came home to meet my brother who was again I tears. “He’s going to get rid of Keesh!” he wailed. Overhearing my brother’s exclamation, my father hotly said, “He’s been itching and bitting himself. The doctor said we have to put him to sleep.” Keesh hunkered behind me and I was shocked to see one long and even empty patch down the middle of his back. It looked as if someone had taken an electric hair clipper and just ran it down his back exposing his skin. How could Keesh do that to himself? I knew it was my father and I told him so. He insisted that Keesh did that to himself and was going to be put to sleep tomorrow. The one joy we had in our lives, my assine father was going to take away. He couldn’t stand to see us happy. My brother and I loved that dog and we hated our father. No one in their right minds would want to love my father. He was cruel, violent and abusive. He struck fear into the hearts of many just by glaring at them. I knew that once my brother and I left for school, that my father would kill Keesh. I felt it in my bones. Just like he had ran over the stray kittens we had found and befriended when we began to take in and feed the momma cat. My brother looked at me with pleading eyes and begged my father, “Please, don’t take away Keesh! Please!” My father said sternly, “He has to go. Tomorrow, he’ll be put to sleep.”

     That night, I cried. I pet Keesh who always slept in my bedroom. I remembered when we lived on Sumter Street before the divorce and how my father would keep our two dogs tethered to long, heavy chains. We had a big yard and neighbors who walked by would complain about my father dragging out our big dog Jesse from his dog house and beating him with a steel shovel. That poor dog would howl and people often stopped by the gate and stared in shock. It was so embarrassing. Where were the animal rights activists when you needed them? I knew poor Keesh didn’t stand a chance and I wondered why my father had to dominate and be brutal to animals. He always claimed to “have God on his side” but the God I prayed to every night didn’t approve of devils like my father.

     Sure enough, Keesh was gone by the time I came home and my father replaced Keesh with a hamster. He told us it was a girl. He had the whole tank and ball thing set up and he acted happy. He said, “Look, it’s a girl” and he rubbed her seductively. I was disgusted. Neither my brother nor I cared much for the hamster. My father would allow the hamster to roll around in the ball and delighted in everything about her. He always rubbed his finger in her private area and would smile when we’d stumble upon him doing it. I supposed he was trying to make us jealous because he pretended to love and dote upon the hamster so. To me, it was just an indoor rat and I really didn’t feel like petting a rat.  One day, the hamster bit him severly. She must have held on because his finger was profusely bleeding. He bandaged it. I was secretly happy. The hamster was suddenly very aggressive towards him and he stopped playing with her. Eventually, she disappeared as well.

After The Darkness: “…but now am found…”Chapter...

After The Darkness: <!--StartFragment-->
“…but now am found…”Chapter...: “…but now am found…” Chapter Three My mother did eventually return to rekindle a relationship with my brother, but not with me. I ...

“…but now am found…”

Chapter Three

     My mother did eventually return to rekindle a relationship with my brother,  but not with me. I felt so all alone. She’d take my brother out, buy him things and make empty promises to him. I wondered why she didn’t want me. I assumed I was too ruined for her to want anymore. I’d watched my brother excitedly tell me how she promised him the latest video game system after one of his evenings out with her. I became bitter and would be angry with him for being so foolish as to believe that her promises could erase the fact that she abandoned her own children. As I had suspected, she let him down and kept none of her promises. My brothers tears were ineveitable. My mother never came around anymore and life continued.

    Since my father couldn’t sexually abuse me anymore, he’d make me feel uncomfortable by glaring at me as I’d sit on the sofa watching television or as I did anything in his presence. He forced me to clean the entire apartment every Sunday morning and do all of laundry, all of this without any help. I hated touching his nasty underwear that were often caked with semen and had traces of poop. He taught me how to fold all his socks and stained underwear and T-shirts a certain way and told me in which of his bureau’s drawers each article belonged. I had to get up at four in the morning just to be able to have all the chores done by supper. I did all of this with no help while he sat and watched fishing all day on television and while my brother played video games in his bedroom. My father told me that females were supposed to do all the house work and I became a sort of Cinderella, scrubbing the feces-stained toilets (we had a bath and a half in our new section 8 apartment), floors and bathtub. He was not setting a good example for my brother who never offered to help me. My brother  began to act like my father's treatment of me all was normal.

     Since my father vomited often due to the various medications he was taking, he made a mess in what became his bathroom and he never cleaned up after himself. Every Sunday, I’d have to scrub and scrape the stiff bits of vomit that painted the sides of the toilet. My father further humiliated me by forcing me to clip his yellow-crusted toenails, scratch the dandruff from his scalp, clip and clean his fingernails, pick the scabs from the bottoms of his smelly damp feet and scrub his back. All this I did in silence for fear of the beating he always threatened to give me. I once was so tired that I didn’t put away his clothes. I left his clothes on his bed and, when he discovered what I had not done, he began swearing at me, calling me lazy, fresh, and grown. He told me to “put his shit away before he slapped the hell out of me”. Tiredly, I put away his clothes all the while enduring his verbal insults. After I had finished putting away his clothes, he followed me to my room hurling more vulgar insults at me. I wanted to cry but waited until he was gone before plopping down on my bed and crying into my pillow.

     The next day was Monday again and I was excited to be getting away from him and going to school. At this time, my father had gotten into car accident with his brown 1986 Fifth Avenue Chrysler Coach and didn’t have car insurance so it sat in the driveway from season to season.  I was in the car the day a pickup truck smashed into the vehicle, flinging me towards the windshield and causing my niece to roll onto the floor (she was asleep in the backseat and I had just removed my seatbelt). I saw the accident as a blessing. My father couldn’t drop me off at school anymore nor could he prowl the  school grounds in search of me.

    I attended Classical High School, a college prep school in Providence, Rhode Island. I was an excellent student and saw education as my way out and away from the life that was my hell. My father would walk my brother and me to the bus stop every morning, the whole while criticizing or reprimanding us for one thing or another. My brother was still in middle school due to having to repeat the third grade so, he took the yellow bus to school. I took the city bus to school. My father would walk me to the bus stop last, telling me that I was fat and that my butt was getting big. He would flirt with the young girls who were at the stop as well, so much so that I became embarrassed and concerned for their safety. One very attractive young Afro-American girl about my age was a regular at the bus stop. When she was not within ear shot, my father would say how she had “pretty legs” and how I should be more like her. He always found a way to put me down. When he’d talk to her, she’d blush and shyly smile, all of which my me sick to my stomach. I suppose she saw my father as a silly old man and not for the predator that he was. Even at home, he’d talk about that girl as if he were in love with her. He’d go on and on about how “pretty” she was and that I didn’t look like her. It wasn’t long before I never saw the girl again at the bus stop and my father suddenly stopped talking about her. I never found out what happened to her.

     At school, I was happy although I hurt deep inside every single day. I drowned myself in my studies in order to numb the pain I felt. I excelled in my classes because I dreamed that someday education would be my ticket out of my nightmarish life . Many said that I would fail out of Classical and some even joked that I’d be sent to the neighboring Central High School, a school whose reputation at the time was a school that was not academically challenging. May father told me horror stories of girls getting raped in high school and said that it would happen to me. I became afraid of every dark corner in the hall and locker rooms. I was afraid of making friends with boys because of all the stories my father told me.

     My father wouldn’t allow me to do my homework uninterrupted at home. I had to lie that school started at a certain time in order to get it done before class. Every night, he’d ask me to type something, to read something, to clip his nails and scratch his head or anything he could think of to distract me from my studies. I would complete whatever task it was that he wanted and then tiredly try to do as much of my homework as I could. It was as if he were trying to make me fail after I worked so hard to pass the school’s entrance exam so I could attend the school.

     I held my composure at school as long as I could until I broke down my last year of high school. I felt so all alone. My father would never stop harassing me and it had finally gotten to me. During every meal, he’d laugh and say that I had a “big butt”. My brother even began to join in on the ridiculing and that really hurt me because I never stopped being my brother’s biggest protector and supporter. I endured the terrible meals in silence, refusing to say anything as my father would tell me I was fat and that women were “stupid” and were “only good enough for one thing”. Despite my efforts to ignore him, I began to internalize all that he said to me resulting in me refusing to eat all of my meal. I lost weight rapidly but this only increased my father’s criticisms of me. He began saying that I was “ too skinny”, that I  “looked like a skeleton”, and that I “didn’t look cute”.

      One morning , as I boared the city bus while my father’s morning insults echoed behind me, I cried uncontrollably. I turned my face to the window in order to conceal my face from the other passengers on the bus. When I arrived at school, my math teacher who was my favorite teacher in the school, spotted my tears. I blurted out all of my pain to him, all of my secrets because I needed to and I had no one else to whom I could turn. My teacher listened and suggested that I see the school’s counselor.

   I was afraid the school counselor would try to take me away from home, making it impossible for me to protect my little brother. I begged for them not to do it and I didn’t want social services to come and split up my brother and me. I felt safe at school knowing that my teacher and counselor knew of my situation. While I was in the safety of the school walls, I could pretend that life at home did not exist. However, just as soon as I exited the city bus at the top of my street, my heart would begin to beat rapidly. I could see my father standing outside the house frowning as I walked with my other classmates who lived in my neighborhood and took the same bus home. My father would glare at me and I was instantly afraid. He didn’t like me talking to anyone at school, especially boys. Three of the four kids who got off he bus with me were boys and they were nice boys who always treated me with respect as did most of the boys at my high school. I wasn’t seen as one of the girls who guys wanted to date but rather, a little sister who was looked out for. I could never tell my father that I talked to boys.

     My father would wait until the last of the bus kids had walked to his house at the end of he street before he started yelling at me and accussing me of “fucking around” with boys. While his rants followe me into the house, I held back tears. I hated my father so damned much and I so wanted to get away from him. He called me all sorts of names while he accussed me of doing something that, thanks to him, I thought was absolutely disgusting. I would pray every night behind my closed bedroom door that God would deliver me from the nightmare I was living. Sometimes, I even begged God to kill me. I never saw any way out and my father would kill me if I  ever tried to leave.

     My father didn’t allow me to talk to friends on the phone. In the days before caller ID, I’d wait until he’d leave the house and then stand by the window while talking to a friend on the phone. My friends understood and never made fun of me for it. High school was completely different from the years I spent at Saint Matthew School, the parochial school I attended for grades kindergarten through eight in Cranston, Rhode Island. When I saw my father coming home, I’d hang up and then dial our home number so he couldn’t trace the call if he somehow found out I was using the telephone. My brother and I kept our calls our secret. My brother and I, through our experiences, became closer and I loved him more than anyone.

     I decided to bring to the light my abuse one evening while my father yet again ranted and raved as he stood over me at supper. My brother had developed a habit of pushing his face as far as he could into his food without actually touching it and, when my father would get angry, my brother’s hands would visibly and uncontrollably tremble. On this particular night, my father went on and on about my messing with boys and “don’t think just because I was going to college” that he “couldn’t slap the shit out of me”. I had grown so accustomed to his rantings and accusations that I didn’t cry about it anymore but, instead, I housed a fury so hot deep with my soul and I awaited the opportunity to unleash it upon him and make him pay for what he had done to me. This night would be the beginning of my standing up to him. I slammed my fork on the dining room table and stared into his bloodshot eyes, my body buring with rage. I asked him why would I “mess around” when he stuck his “nasty penis into me” and made me do nasty things and did nasty things to me. “Thanks to you, I hate that stuff!” I screamed and I saw tears stream from my brother’s face who had learned not to say anything and who continued to look into his bowl and shove food into his mouth. My father lowered his eyes and said, “I don’t remember” which only made me even hotter. He quickly walked outside and stayed on the porch in the dark well after we had finished supper and had gone to bed. Before going to his room, my brother whispered to me, “ You gotta get out of here! Why are you still here? I think you wanted it.” Even though his words hurt, I wasn’t angry with him because I knew he didn’t understand what happened. I said to him, “I’m still here for you, stupid.” I spun around on my heels and went into my room to try to get some sleep.

     The next morning, my father came to me while my brother wasn’t around and said that he had had nightmares about what I said to him and that he “shouldn’t have done that to me”. I said nothing because I knew he didn’t feel truly sorry for what he had done. Although the abuse had stopped, he continued to verbally bash me and grab and slap my behind whenever he was within reach and when my brother wasn’t around. I’d tell him to stop but he’d just laugh as though I really didn't want him to stop. I’d pray that he’d die so my brother and I could be at peace.

     Death was knocking on his door when, one day, he ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung while we were at school. It was May and I was a senior in high school. My father once bragged to everyone that I didn’t want to go to my Senior Prom when that was not the case. One of his fishing buddies who was a parent of four managed to convince him to buy me a dress to go.

      When my father landed in the hospital, I was hopping he’d stay in long enough for me to have fun with my friends. One of my friends asked me to the Prom and I had to tell him “no” because depiste his Portuguese heritage, he was too white for my father and my father always said that I “better not bring no white man to the house”. I really wanted to go with my friend and decided to go alone. No one asked me to the Prom until the very last minute. and then there was more interest in asking me than I could handle but none of them would fit my father's liking as I knew he was very racist. Since one of the boys was Black, I agreed to go with him. There were rumors that one of my Asian male friends wanted to ask me but I was glad he didn’t because I didn't want to have to explain to him my situation.

     When I returned home from the Prom before midnight, my father was standing in the dark waiting for me. All of my fun instantly vanished at the sight of him. He glared at me unmoving and when I gave him a kiss goodnight as he still made us do. He angrily wiped his cheek and said to me, “ I know you been kissing up on some boy!” I just continued into my room and closed the door, locking it (our old apartment didn’t have locks). He then shouted at me as he always did when I had my bedroom door closed, “I’ll take that door off the hinges!” I never budged because I knew that I had something over him and, that if he tried anything again, I’d make him pay with his life. I was getting stronger, feuled by anger and bitterness and if he ever touch me again, he’d wish he hadn’t.

      I used my newfound attitude to shield my brother even when he may have thought I didn’t. My brother was afraid to stand up to my father and, at times, would visibly tremble whenever someone got close to him. It seemed he was always afraid.

     Finally, it was high school graduation and I had made it through a very challenging school despite the obstacles. I had been accepted to Rhode Island College and looked forward to my freedom. Despite my enthusiasm, my father managed to spoil even this glorious day for me. When my name was called to receive my high school diploma, there were no cheers for me like there had been for the rest of my classmates. I was sad. My brother, father, older sister and niece were in the audience but no one applauded. After a pause that seemed eternal, one of my friends blurted out a cheer and was joined by some of my other fellow students. The thought was wonderful and I cried because not even my asshole father or brother could applaud my accomplishment. My father was even angry when I wanted to take pictures with some of my friends after graduation. When I was hugging some of my friends and bidding them farewell, my father hovered in the background, a scowl on his face. He then shouted at me, “Let’s go! I’m hot!” Embarrassed, I raced to the car not wanting anyone to see me crying.

     All the way home, my father cussed me out, again accussing me of “messing around” and saying that I shouldn’ t think that I was grown “just because I turned a little eighteen”. Some friends and I had conjured up a lie about a teacher and student celebratory dinner that night and my father fell for it. My friend’s family owned  a restaurant and she and her family invited a bunch of the graudates to a free meal at their restaurant. I wanted to see everyone one last time. My father dropped me off, again, cussing  me out throughout the entire car ride. Not once did he congratulate me. Not once, did he say he was proud of my especially since he wasn’t allowed to go to school and got not further than the third grade. For some reason, he continued to accuse me of sleeping around when, thanks to him, I had an aversion to sex and all that it entailed.

     Arriving at the restaurant, I jumped out of the car , angrily slamming the door. My father rolled down the window and hurled threats at me. He said that he was going to “knock the shit out of me” if I slammed the door again and that I shouldn’t “think I was grown”. I rushed into the restaurant, not wanting to listen to his foul mouth anymore.

     Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy myself at the restaurant. My friends noticed that I was upset and I briefly told them what had happened. We ate and then took some pictures outside. Returning to the restautant, I noticed my father’s car parked outside one of the large restaurant windows. “I have to go!” I said to my friends. “He’s outside!” I whispered. Trying desperately to conceal my tears, I rushed out the door, followed by some well-meaning “Good luck’s” and “We’ll miss you’s” from my friends. Before I even reached the car, I noticed the intense anger on my father’s face. I knew I was in for it once I got into the car. Why was he so angry? Wasn’t that bastard proud of me for being the first member of his countrified family to graduate from an elite high school, a college-prep school? I was going to college! Didn’t that mean anything?

     As I sat in the car, my father went on about how he was watching me and saw me kiss a boy. I did no such thing. I did think one of my male friends was handsome but I knew that it would have never been possible. It took the end of the school year, my last year of high school before some of my absolutely handsome male friends, “my big brothers” I called actually thought about asking me out. They had trememdous respect for me and treated me like a little sister. They let no one disrespect me. I think they felt sorry for me because of what I was going through. I even overheard a few of them one afternoon questioning my prom date as if he were on trial making sure he didn’t disrespect me. My father didn't allow me to have a boyfriend and, thus, I was only left to daydream. How I wanted someone to tell me I was pretty and to love me without the sex, to love me and cherish me. It seemed no one in my life did so I always felt that I were missing something. I thought all of this as my father insulted me, threatened me and cussed me out during the ride home from the restaurant.

     Every little girl dreams of her handsome Prince wisking her away from her present life and taking her away to a beautiful magical kingdom somewhere in fantasyland. For me, my imaginary prince was named Buck. I created Buck some time during my early high school years. Many of the men in my short romantic pieces were modeled after him. He was tall, had a very firm and mature voice. He had long, flowing dark hair, dark eyes and he could sing and play the guitar. He was handsome and he was madly in love with me. He treated me like his queen and no one could ever love me more than he. I spent many hours thinking of Buck when things at home caused me to want to just give up. I thought of him when I was trying to sleep and block out the disgusting sexual noises of my father either masturbating in the bathroom or having sex with some woman he brought home in the living room. How I wanted to leave! I cried many nights because I didn’t know what to do and no imaginary Buck could or would ever save me. I had to pray and take actions to save myself. Not knowing what I’d encounter in the real world, I had to finish college so I’d have a leg to stand on.

      I thought that I would get away from him somehow. College would offer me a new life and new opportunities. It was my only way out. God was going to finally set me free.

“I once was lost…”

Chapter Two: “  Muddy Waters”

     Two days after Christmas while I was in either fifth or sixth grade, my father loaded up the personal belongings of my little brother and me into a moving truck and we were taken to a grimy, roach and rat infested apartment on Houston Street, on Providence’s South Side. This would be our new home without our mother. There were a buch of kids in the neighborhood  with whom we would eventually become friends . The landlord lived on the third floor of our three family apartment building. He had a heavy Jamican accent and hardly ever spoke to us, except to yell at us for running in the backyard. Since we weren’t allowed in the backyard, we played in the streets along with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.

     I didn’t like our apartment nor was I happy living there. I had to sleep with the lights on because I was afraid of the roaches. At night, I would watch them crawl over the wires on the floor of my bedroom and across the top of my bureau. In my brother’s room, the roaches seemed to take comfort in crawling into his bed sheets. My brother would laugh when he’d find one squashed beneath the bedcovers the next morning after he had rolled over on it. The roaches came in all shapes, sizes and colors. I even spotted that I thought was an albino cockroach as it that slipped beneath the door of my brother’s  bedroom closet. These roaches didn’t discriminate in regards to where they chsose to hide out, either. They sought refuge beneath the telephone, beneath the bathtub, in my underwear drawer and even in my schoolbag. The apartment was exterminated every so often and we’d have to empty our drawers and cover up everything in order for that to happen. The roaches always returned, usually within a day or two.

     In addition to having the roach problem in our apartment, we also had a mouse problem and my father took joy in catching them. He would hide glue traps around the apartment and, at night, I would hear a desperate mouse screeching and struggling to get free only to be met with my father’s deadly hammer and nail. Once my father grew tired of setting the glue traps, he graduated to the standard mouse traps. He would lace the trap with fresh peanut butter smeared on a peanut and, each time, the mice would fall for it. In the middle of the night a loud “snap”  would awaken me. Sometimes he’d show off his catch much to my dislike.

    My mother began visiting us usually on Sundays. Since my father forbade my little brother and me to attend church, we were always at home on Sundays. Early on Sunday mornings, my father could be found listening to Gospel music on WBRU on the radio in the kitchen, puffing cigarettes with the window closed. His Gospel radio station was our only exposure to church music for many years since we had stopped attending church with my mother years before my parents were divorced. My father would record the Gospel songs on radio religiously every Sunday and my brother and I began to learn the songs.

     My mother would stop by in the afternoon after she has finished with services at the church she attended. She became a member of a large church in neighboring Massachusetts called Faith Chritisan Center. My sister Chole and my mother's new husband also attended this church with her. My mother would come to our apartment, give me some maxi pads that looked more like Depends, bathe my brother and do my hair. I didn’t really know much about menstrual cycles just that it happened before we were forced out of her house and, in that instance all she told me was “Get a pad and always wear one. You never know when it can come on.” I wore one all the time. She told me to wear these underwear that looked like fish nets and they hurt my thighs. Since I wore the underwear along with the pads all the time, I began to develop broken veins in my legs, something that remains with me until this very day.

     I didn’t really fully understand why my mother and father weren’t living together. I also didn’t understand the consequences of divorce and the impact it can have on families. My mother was quiet when she came over, only speaking when necessary. She would give my father money to take care of us but for some reason, we were still poor and still lack many things. Even our private school tuition was not fully paid which lead to many arguments between the education staff and my father.

     Sometimes, when my mother would leave on those anxiously anticipated Sundays, my parents would argue. My father would demand more money. In fact, my mother was the one who was granted custody of us but, for some reason, she surrendered her rights to my father who became even more of a tyrant. My mother was afraid of my father who threatened to kill her on numerous occasions. She could have gone to the police . Even now, as a wife and mother, I still don’t understand how she could have left us with him. Why didn’t she fight harder for us?

     My mother’s visits became increasingly less. One evening, my mother came to the house with a pie for us. I remember that the pie was very dark colored, almost black. I wasn’t familiar with a pie of that color. Through the living room window, I watched my mother extend her arm out to him with the pie and my father refused to take it. “Get the hell out of here with that voodoo shit!” he screamed at her. He shover her down the concrete steps, continuing to yell at her. He told her to never return and they continued to publicly yell at each other until my mother sped away in her car. Many years would pass  before I saw her again. When she finally did returned, I was in high school and she only came back for my brother, enticing him with gifts and money. She never came back for me. By then, the nightmare that was my life had already been in full swing for some time. I had assumed that I was too far ruined for her to even love or want me.

    

     During the years following my mother’s absence, were the years of my abuse and rape. I had just turned thirteen. It all began one afternoon, when my father told my brother and me to take a nap on his bed. We obeyed because we were afraid of him. I had always been a light sleeper but, for some reason, I drifted quickly into a very deep sleep.

      I was the furthest from my father but when I awakened, I found myself right next him. I felt him rubbing his penis on my butt and he then he stuck his hand into my panties and reached up into my vagina with his index finger. I struggled to get away from him but he would not let go and my brother would not awaken.

     I did not like the way my body tingled and I tried to get away. Finally, crying, I rushed to my bedroom screaming “No!” He followed me. I hunkered down on the other side of my bed on the floor. I felt gross. I tore off the blue sweatshirt he had given me months ago revealing a T-shirt. He bent down in front of me and said, “What?” I  hysterically cried and screamed and pushed him away from me. All throughout this, my broher remained in a deep sleep. “ I was asleep.” my father said. My response was more screaming. How could he do that to me? How could he make me feel disgusting?

     “God will punish you if you don’t forgive me.” I continued to cry and became suddenly afraid of being punished because I would not forgive him. I hated him for what he had done to me.

     For days, I felt awful remembering what he had done to me. I thought about the times when he would grab my brother’s penis in public and say, “I got that hot sausage!” much to my mother’s horror. My brother would defend himself by crossing his arms in front of his private area. I knew something was wrong with my father and I was afraid. I hated myself. Things began to get worse.

     Since my mother left us, my father said that it was his duty to see to it that we bathed propely. He would not allow us to lock the door when we took baths. We were only allowed to take one bath per week.  All other days we had to wash up in the sink. I would bathe first. He would come in while I was still naked in the tub. I was thirteen, for Goodness’ sake! I knew how to wash myself! My brother was just turning ten, he was old enough also. My brother would bathe second , my father would only be there for a few minutes with him. I could hear him yell, “Make sure you wash under your arms!” and then he would leave to rape me in my room.

     I remember the first time he started raping me during baths. He came into the bathroom while I still had on clothes. He filled up the tub and demanded that I strip. I did. He grabbed me by the waiste and pulled me towards him to kiss my stomach. I slapped his hands hard. He slapped me across the face so hard it stung. Tears poured from my eyes. He said that I was "getting too fresh" and  was "acting too grown". I was so very afraid. He said he needed to “open up my hole”. He demanded that I pull down my pants and painties and made me straddle the clothes hamper in the bathroom. He stuck his uncircumcised penis into me and I screamed. He pulled out. I whimpered, “Stop.” He left the bathroom. After I had bathed, I ran into my bedroom with clothes on. When my brother was in the bathroom bathing, he opened the door of my bedroom and announced that he needed to see if I were clean. He ordered me to take off my clothes, panties and all and he made me lie on the bed. He spread my legs and began playing with my vagina with his finger. It tingled and I didn’t like it. This procedure would continue for some time until he decided to progress unto the next level.

     One afternoon while doing his usual intimate checking procedure of me, he bent down and kissed my vagina saying that it “tasted like sugar”. I was afraid when he did it and instantly made a protest but he left my room. I had no idea why he had to do that to me. He later said that he needed to see if I were “fresh”. This was just the beginning of something that was very horrible. I didn’t like the way my body felt and I was too ashamed to tell anyone although there was no one I could tell. I felt so alone and I knew fighting back was just not the answer. 

     My father’s “checking procedures” became ever more uncomfortable. I despised Sundays, the only day we were allowed to bathe. I wondered if my brother knew what was going on as he splashed around in the bathtub waiting for my father to go and check in on him. I wonder if he ever abused my brother like he abused me. My father began to menacingly lick my vaginal area claiming he had to do it in order to “get me clean”. I hated it. I braced myself for the unpleasant tingling my body was enduring, willing myself to not feel it. I hated it so very much and I hated him for what he continued to do to me.

     Not only did my father rob me of future adult sexual pleasure but he also stole my innocence. He would repeatedly stick his uncircumcised penis into me night after night saying he was trying to “widen me for the boys” in the future. Finally, he tore me and I bled. He said that if I got pregnant, he would tell the doctors that I had been messing with some boys but I still had to have his baby! God must have been on my side because it didn’t happen.

     It was also during my years of abuse that a classmate whose mother was friends with mine began spreading rumors about my abuse around school. I didn’t know that my mother knew how my father was since he had a history of trying to mess with young girls. I was in eighth grade when my mother called claiming that I was walking around with see-through clothes on, enticing my father. It was also during this time when all the students in my class somehow found out about my abuse.

    As usual, I was sitting alone in the school cafeteria when a crowd of students assembled in a corner of the cafeteria. I could feel eyes upon me but that was a constant feeling as my classmates were always poking fun at me and ridiculing me for some reason or another. The girl whose mother was friends with mine, called me over to the group and I foolishly went over there. I asked what they wanted.

      “It’s about you and your father” another girl said. I could feel my face turn hot from shame.

       “You’ve been sleeping with your father!” the first girl screamed. My eyes welled up with tears and, although I tried to deny it, I knew that the truth showed on my face. Embarrassed, I ran back to my table and cried. From then on, I was treated like dirt. The girls laughed at me, wrote fake letters to the principal pretending to be my father verbally bashing the school. The boys called me names such as “slut” and “whore”, to name a few. One boy whom I had always been fond of and who later became a big brother to me in high school, said that I was disgusting. I never felt so alone. I hated myself and the fact that I didn’t always smell fresh due to the fact that my father forbade us to bathe more than once a week added to my shame and increased the ridicule from the girls.

     I tried numerous times to kill myself, even attempting to swallow an entire bottle of Bufferin. Needless to say, all of my suicidal attempts failed. I would pray, begging God to take me from this world. I cried a lot, especially when I heard my father entering my room late at night. He didn’t care that I had school the next day, all he cared about was getting off on his own daughter. My sadness turned into rage and I pondered ways to kill him. I thought of slicing his throat one night as he sat on the sofa with the machete that was in the kitchen drawer.

    My father seemed to have an unbridaled sexual desire because I’d hear him bring women into the apartment late at night and have loud sex with them as my brother and I were supposedly asleep in our rooms. He’d also talk dirty and make sexual noises to women on the telephone seemingly uncaring about his children who were in the same building. Sometimes, I would hear him jerking off in the bathroom, making gross panting noises as he did. I hated living there and I wondered why my mother didn’t come to get us.

    In ninth grade, I put a stop to my father’s abuse. We had moved into a section 8 apartment on the city’s West End. I had a lock on my bedroom door. One night, he pushed me on the bed and said he hadn’t “checked me” in a long time. I was so full of rage that I snapped and pounded him in my chest with the heels of my feet, flailing my arms and screaming, “NO!” He seemed afraid and quickly hustled out of my room. He never tried it again. I had become angry and was waiting for the chance to kill him. He would never—NEVER—hurt me again.

PART ONE, Chapter One: "Still Waters Run Deep"

PART ONE:

"Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me..."

Chapter One: "Still Waters Run Deep"

     What a frigid day it was on February 27, 2001, the day of my father's wake. I choked back tears as I sang, "Amazing Grace" in font of my father's coffin. How pale and non threatening he looked. The fiery eyes were now closed and gone forever. I was suddenly lost in memories of childhood. I could see him ranting and raving, beating my little brother until he cried or was scarred. I recalled the many nights my father would creep into my bedroom and would force me to have sex with hm. I remember the time I slapped him because I was tired of being "nasty". How I used to hate him. Yes, hate. Lying there in his coffin, he was helpless. Never again would he hurt anyone. NEVER. I didn't even know why I was shedding tears for the man who helped to mentally destroy my adulthood. It was because of him that I had low self-esteem and had trouble with men. It was because of him that I was filled with enough rage to cause five world wars. Why was I crying for that bastard? I was crying because I felt sorry for him, really. I felt sorry because he was a person who spent his enitre life hurting other people because he had been hurt. I cried because he had hurt so many people who had to live with the pain and large therapy bills because of the pain and heartache he had inflicted. My tears were real. As a child, I used to fantasize rejoicing over his death but on this particular day that was not the case at all. Years later, I learned from reading a Joyce Meyer book that "hurting people hurt other people". Never had it occurred to me that my father was a man who suffered numerous years of pain and was angry at the world for his situation. In order to discover that, I had to do a little researching of my own.

     My father was born on October 1, 1935 in Choctaw County, Alabama. From an early age, he was forced by his father to farm the land in order to help support the family. My father resented the fact that he was the only sibling who wasn't allowed to finish school. At one point, he mentioned that he was thirteen and still in the third grade. The third grade was the highest level of education my father had and he was always bitter about it. Numerous times, he attempted to run away, using his bike as an escape method but he was always found by his father and returned home. Still without an education, my father once tried to sign up for the military but, just as he was having his physical, his father found him and demanded that he return home.

     From this point on, the story about my father's life isn't clear until he reached Rhode Island.  He spent years running from the law, being incarcerated and hurting other people. He had been married three times (to my knowledge) before his death in 2001. He met my mother while working at a medical institution in Rhode Island. Prior to his relationship with my mother, he had been married to a woman form Alabama and had two sons with her. He beat her, drove her into the woods and held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if he discovered she was "messing around" while he always had plenty of women on the side. This woman layered herself and her children in several pairs of clothing, took the next bus out of town while my father was out of the house and, eventually, ended up in New York.

     When my father met my mother,  my mother was already married but she was somehow convinced by my father's lies that he had a  lot of money and houses so, she left her husband and ran away to Alabama with my father. My mother had two daughters with her husband and had gotten pregnant with another girl, a pregnancy that had ended in a miscarriage due to physical violence from my father. Her second pregnancy in Alabama resulted in another girl and I am that girl. My mother somehow ended up back in Rhode Island and tried to convince everyone that I was her husband's child. Even though her husband knew I was not his, he moved back in with my mother and helped her raise me as if I were his. He was such a wonderful and caring man and treated me well. I really believed that he was my father until, one day, my real father showed up at our doorstep. He had been in jail in Alabama and was somehow free. He told everyone that he escaped from prison and that "no jail could hold him" and for some time he was wanted in Alabama. Great hostility existed between my father and my mother's husband. My father did not move in but, instead, got an apartment on the other side of town. Soon afterwards, my mother and her husband were divorced and my parents did not marry until it was time for the birth of my youngest brother who is three years younger than I. When my father moved in, he was always moody, never home and always had negative things to say about women for some reason. I didn't understand nor did I like this stranger who had taken the place of my mother's husband, whom I thought was my real father.

     My father was a truck driver and later a crane operator for a  local ship building company. He stayed away days at a time and, when he'd come home, he'd stink of alcohol and would argue with and beat my mother. My half-sisters lived with us and they, too, were subjected to my father's violent rages. Much of his anger and resentment stemmed from his own childhood experiences, things he had never dealth with properly.

    

     I was told that as a child, my father was molested and raped by his own mother. When her husband wasn't around, she would force my father to have sex with her, performing various sexual favors for her. He hardly ever spoke of his mother but would tell us that his grandmother was beautiful with long, black hair that cascaded down her back. He would tell us how tall, beautiful and thin she was. I used to try to imagine what she looked like and how soft her hair may have felt.

     My father was proud of his Choctaw Indian heritage. He was also Afro-American and there were some traces of Irish in previous generations. He would tell us stories about his life on a reservation that was not federally recognized and all the challenges he faced. It was during those storytelling times that my father appeared to be happy. Gone would be the bitterness in his voice that resulted from years of suppressed anger. From those talks we learned so much about ourselves and our history. When I grew older and was surpassing my father's third grade eduation, things began to change.

     My mother divorced my father when I was still in the third grade. I remember reading the divorce papers to him because he couldn't read. At the sound of the word "divorce", he hung his head. He was visibly sad. Although my parents were divorced, my father remained in my mother's house for about two more years.

     During the years prior to the divorce, there were constant fights. My father would come home usually drunk and we would hear my parents yelling and screaming. One time my older sister Linda had a friend sleeping over when my ftaher began yelling at my mother. I ran into the kitchen to see my mother sobbing at the kitchen table begging my father not to hurt her. He had pulled out the knife drawer and displayed a variety of knives on the table. He picked up one knife and flasehed it before her throat, threatening her. My sisters and I began to cry. My sister's friend became angry and picked up our telephone to call the police. When the police came, most of the neighborhood was already listening to the cries that echoed from within our home. It was a hot summer day and many of our neighbors on Sumter Street on Providence's South Side were outside doing various activities. They could always count on a show from our house. This day was no different. The police officers grabbed my father who pretended to wrestle from their grip shouting various profanities at them. Years later, these same police officers would become friends with my father, making any accusation against him difficult to prove.

     Staring out  the porch window of our large Victorian home, I cried as they dragged my father away. I remember saying, "Don't take Daddy! Is he coming back?" My sisters, crying, mumbled something to the effect that they hoped he didn't return. I was young and didn't understand why my father was always so angry and why he frequently beat up my mother. After he would beat her up, he would buy her nice things and be sweet to her. I didn't understand why my mother didn't appreciate any of his acts until I became an adult.

     Shortly aftr the arrest, my father was back in the house and nothing seemed to be any different. One evening, while my father was at work, my mother was looking in his pants pocket. She called my sisters into the room and showed them a hotel business card with a name and phone number on the back. She called the number and asked if the person knew a "Rivers Cunningham". I supposed the person responded in the affirmative and asked her about her identity because my mother said, "This is his wife!" and hung up the phone. I never saw my mother confront my father about that matter or about any other infidelity matters.I suppose my mother was afraid of what he might he might do to her if she had confronted him. She knew he cheated and would even drive to the houses of the women he saw, noticing his car in the driveway. Aware of all this, she would act like nothing happened and continue on. I suppose that her way of dealing with it.

     Both my parents began to spend a lot of time out of the house separately working. My father was on the road and my mother was an RN and was, thus, often not at home. Once she got the courage to file for a divorce, she began to spend nights away from home. My little brother had already been born but he was still too young to understand anything that was going on. We became "Latch Key Kids" and stayed home alone for hours after school. We'd go to sleep and neither one of our parents would be home. My sisters would cook and make sure we did our homework. Since we all went to the same parochial school which included kindergarten throug grade eight, it was easy for all the siblings to get home at the same time. When my sisters entered high school, we would have to wait a little longer for them to come home and watch my little brother and me. "He-Man" and "Thundercats" became our comforting television shows as we huddled in my bedroom at the foot of my bed doing homework.

     The atmosphere in the house was constant chaos. My sister Linda ran away a few times, causing my mother to worry. During one of Linda's disappearing acts, my mother even put out a MISSING ad because she had no idea where she was. Many times, Linda would be found at one of her friend's places. Finally, Linda left and never returned. She began to live her life the way she wanted to do. Chole, my oldest sister, became pregnant when she was fifteen. My parents were upset with both of my sisters but what could they do since, they, themselves lacked responsibility for the four of us? No wonder there was so much chaos! No one being taught and no one was being cared for. We weren't being raised because may parents spent so much time doing their own things and being angry with each other. Eventually, my sisters left home and only my brother and I remained. At times, my sister Chole would leave her baby Rachel with us while she worked and went back to school at night. It didn’t upset me until years later when I discovered that my father raped my sister before she had her baby and, knowing this, she still left my neice alone in the care of my father. It really hurt me to think that he may have harmed my neice also. What was my sister thinking?

     When I was a student in the fiifth grade, my grades began to slip. A lot was going on at home and I had a difficult time concentrating. I was always a bright student but no longer did I care about getting good grades. After my father was injured in a crane accident at General Dynamics, the company he had worked for, my mother began  going out a lot and supposedly working double shifts.   Since my father was on disability due to his accident, he was around a lot. He never worked again. He had more time to see the women he saw behind my mother’s back and still managed to follow my mother around. I recall one night, my father made us stay up late to witness my mother stroll out of the house, nose in the air, dressed to kill in a fancy cocktail dress. We hadn’t eaten supper and, although my father could cook, he chose not to on this particular night. I wondered where my mother could possibly be going so late at night. I also wondered why my little brother and I were forced to witness this event and then sent to bed hungry. It was as though my father were getting even with my mother by allowing us to go to bed without any food.

   

     My aunt Sheryl, my mother’s younger sister would allow my little brother and me to sleep over her house on weekends. My cousin Cassandra and I became as close as sisters, she being younger than I. We had many adventures and would wrestle and play outside for hours. I couldn’t wait for the weekend to come in order to be away from the dark cloud of depression that loomed over our home.  Sometimes, my cousin Cassandra would call and we would spend hours on the phone laughing. Those moments made life so worthwhile. I thought my aunt Sheryl was the coolest woman alive. She always had something to eat for us and treated us like we were her own children. She and her then husband would always provide more than enough food for all of us. Her house was always filled with noise and people having a good time. She would go relax in her basement which had been transformed into a lavish entertainment room which sported a bar and recessed lighting.

     My cousin Cassandra had an older sister named Nicole. Nicole would usually take over when my aunt went into the basement after a long day or working to relax and have a drink or two. We’d watch television or play around upstairs with their numerous toys. My aunt’s home was so beautiful and we always seemed to feel right at home there. It was a refreshing getaway that both my little brother and I would eagerly anticipate during the entire week.

     It was during a late night arugument that my father decided that we could no longer go to my aunt’s house. My aunt’s husband had confessed that he had always been a homosexual and had been secretly seeing men. My father despised gays and wouldn’t allow us to go over there anymore. I didn't understand and, years later, both female and male homosexuals would become my friends. He made me call my cousin Cassandra and tell her that we would no longer be going over her house. Sobbing, I told my cousin the news and then my parents argued, my father jerking the phone out of my hand. The little fun that was allowed in my little life was gone forever.

     My close relationship with my cousin dwindled down to nothing until we were at odds with each other. She began to put on a lot of weight. Both of us had been very skinny girls who would romp, play and climb trees just like boys. It was odd for me to see her gainig weight. I had mentioned it to my mother one day and she told my aunt and my aunt told my cousin. Cassandra called our house angry and argued with me on the phone. I don’t know what my mother had said to my aunt but I was really hurt that my cousin and I were no longer best friends. It wouldn’t be until we were adults and Cassandra would be married and had several children and I, a young public school teacher that we would reconcile but our relationship had been ruined forever.

     For some time, my parents weren’t around each other enough to argue and figth. Many times, when my mother was home, my father wasn’t and that provided for less argument. It was good when my father wasn’t around because he was always drunk and would then beat on my mother or us. One time he hit me across the face so hard, that my Mickey Mouse sunglasses fell off. Another time he smacked my little brother on the leg hard enough to leave his handprint. My mother did nothing about either one of those incidents.

     Once my parents’ divorce was final, my father no longer hid his affairs. He took many trips to Alabama for numerous reasons. Once he took my little brother and me on one of these trips. My mother didn’t go. He left us with some relatives and didn’t come back to get us for several weeks. We spent almost an entire summer in Alabama at my great aunt’s house. I didn’t really understand why he left us there and  why he didn’t come back for some time but he’d call my great aunt’s every so often to check up on us. I remember one time when he called, I asked him where he was and he said that he was back home in Rhode Island. I was upset. Why were we in Alabama alone then? The fact that my father spent three days driving down to Alabama to drop us off only to drive back didn’t make any sense to me. I was too young to fully comprehend the lies that my father told in order to cover up his unfavorable actions.

     My younger brother and I spent a lot of time at our great aunt's house with two of our cousins who stayed there. We had another cousin, the daughter of my father's half-sister, whom I wasn’t very fond of. I disliked the way my father would tickle her and act unusually affectionate towards her. I wouldn’t realize until years later that my father’s actions towards my cousin were very inappropriate and hinted at his immoral behavior towards young girls. I cried once because I thought my cousin was trying to steal my father away from me. In the family store owned by my grandfather, I spotted my father making a suggestive grab at my cousin  who laughed and made an attempt to push his hand away. It seemed as though my father’s actions were acceptable to the rest of the family in the store because no one said anything or even looked in his direction.

     On the night of our final stay in Alabama as children, my father had come to pick us up from one of our relatives’ houses. We had been moved from our stay at our great aunt’s to a stay at our first cousin’s beautiful home near some train tracks. In the passenger seat of my father’s car was a heavy-set woman who had milky brown skin and dark hair streaked the color of ash. From her fingertips dangled a cigarette and she smiled at us. As my brother and I were hurriedly rushed in the back seat, my father introduced us. The car smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke. Both my father and the woman were high on liquor but the woman seemed to be more affected by the alcohol because her voice was unsteady and her words drawled from her large red lips.

     At the time I didn’t know why my father as in such a hurry to leave Alabama on this particular night. I was told years later that my grandfather  had pulled out a shotgun and  pointed it at my father one day saying, “You take those bastard kids of yours and get out of here!” I don’t know what happened to bring this about but my father was always involved in something that was immoral. I don’t know if something happened between my father and my father's niece, who was my grandfather’s favorite. The next thing I remember is that we were back in Rhode Island and the drunk woman with the ash-streaked hair was gone. I remember seeing my mother at home when we returned. As my father unloaded the car, I told my mother all about the trip including the details about the drunk woman. Once all the bags were brought in, almost immediately afterwards, an argument followed between my parents. My mother questioned my father about the woman and my father, as was his custom, denied it.

     My father left for Alabama yet another time and, this time, my little brother and I were left behind. The house was quieet, unusually quiet. There was no fighting and my mother seemed to be in a better mood. A strange man entered our house one night while my father was away. My brother and I were at the top of the staircase where we usually were, playing with toys. I put aside my paper dolls I had created from my mother’s various fashion magazines and followed my mother’s voice to the double parlor. Noticicng me, my mother smiled as she introduced me to her male friend. I was angry because he was sitting on the couch, something my mother forbade us to do. We had to sit on the floor. The strange man’s skin was very dark and he had a heavy accent, an accent I had never heard before. He was from Ghana and was a very well-educated and wealthy man, at least according to my mother. He seemed friendly. When he smiled at me, I angrily stormed out of the room.

     The strange man had a niece who always seemed to be around. My father was gone for a long time, so my mother seemed more free to allow these people into our home. I didn’t like the man's niece because she was allowed to sit on the plastic-covered furniture that we were not allowed to sit on. Even dogs in some houses are allowed to sit on the couch. My mother always seemed to be taking her somewhere and doing fun things with her. I suppose she had to make an impression upon this man so that he would marry her and take her away from the life of pain that she lived with my father, the only consequence would be us. I thought the girl's hair smelled funny and that her hair was too greasy. When she rode in the back seat of my mother’s car with us, her Jeri Curl juice would be smeared on the window she was sitting next to. I didn’t like the fact that she was always around and that my mother seemd to treat her better than she treated us.

     My father has returned from his trip to Alabama and, yet again, my parents argued. My father soon found out about my mother’s new man and the man's niece. My mother did not stop her actions, however, as her new life with her new man was becoming a reality. She continued to disappear on weekends. Occasionally, she would take my younger brother and me along to one of their outings.

      One night, my mother took my younger brother and me to a function held in the basement of a church. There were games and pizza. A young man gave me a piece of pizza and sat with us. I had no idea he was the much younger brother of my mother's new man. I felt very uncomfortable. I could see my mother looking at me from across the room, a smug smile danced upon her face. I was no more than ten years old at the time and I wasn’t enjoying this time at the function. I felt odd around the unfamiliar people who seemed to be nice to my brother and me. At the end of the evening, my mother took us home without offering a word of explanation as to why she had taken us to the event. Upon entering the house, we encountered my father who sat at the table, awaiting our arrival. Glaring at my mother, he began to yell. Afraid, my little brother and I raced upstairs away from their developing fight. We heard our father accuse her of having voodoo in the house. Later, she would accuse him of the very same thing. Voodoo was also the culprit, according to my father, of the marital destruction of my aunt and her husband. There always seemed to be something evil lurking around in the dark corridors of our old Victorian house. Years later, I would discover that, as a young man, my father had played around with black magis, unleashing spirits he had no business messing with. It was said that these spirits followed him around and he was forever running from and fighting them. Once, he even said some kind of prayer in order to loosen a tooth from my mouth while I was half asleep. The tooth fell out and into the palm of my hand which seemed to act upon its own, clasping around the fallen tooth. There were all sorts of weird voodoo-like objects that my mother found around the house. She even found a blackened bone that looked like a chicken bone to me. My father would always accuse someone else of practicing voodoo when he was the one deeply rooted in it all along.

     The night we returned from the event at the church with my mother, the house seemed hauntingly dark despite most of the lights being on. We hid upstairs in our rooms crying. I had a small nightlight in my room because I was afraid of the dark and shadows frightened me. Since my sisters had moved out, my little brother no longer shared my bedroom but had his own room at the head of the staris on the other side of the house. My room was at the back of the house, across from the larger apartment-like attic (which actually had more rooms with closets compartments that we would crawl into and investigate) and my parents’ bedroom. Later, I sneaked downstiars and saw my father sitting in a chair and my mother behind him with her hands wrapped around his throat. Afraid, I screamed, “No” and rushed in, throwing my arms about my father. I was so afraid and I wanted everything to be ok and for my parents to get along. Rolling her eyes, my mother stepped back and muttered something inaudible. “Nothing is gonna happen.” My father said to me. I went back to bed.

     Upstairs, I huddled in the bedcovers, shielding my eyes from the possibility of witnessing a shadow moving across the walls of my bedroom like I had done on various occasions. Leaning over my bed , I strained to hear sounds form downstairs but herd nothing. My eyes fell upon two blood-red marbles on the wooden floor beneath my study desk. I covered my face and then uncovered my face to take a second look. I bent to look at the two blood red marbles and noticed that they were not actual marbles on the floor at all. I became afraid , so afraid that I grabbed a large book from my study desk and slammed it on the eyes that threatened me from beneath the floor's surface. Nothing happened. Shortly afterwards, my faather entered my room holding back tears. I told him that I was afraid of the eyes I saw on the floor. He said that it was just the devil and that I should go to sleep. 

     The next morning, my mother called me into their bedroom and said to me, “I don’t love you anymore.” I was stunned. She also said, “Don’t let anyone ever touch you.” I didn’t understand what she was saying. How could she not love me anymore? What about my brother? I was her daughter. Those words would remain a painful wound for many years to come.