Inaya stood up and began to pace the
bedroom floor. “Like I said before, I pretended to go along with him, even
letting him touch me in a few places so he would let his guard down.” She suddenly
paused, snapped her mouth shut and choked back the nausea that threatened to
overtake her.
After another deep breath in and long
breath out, she returned to her pacing and to her recollection. “When Duncan
removed his pants and prepared to get on top of me, I stabbed him in the neck
with the long fingernail file that I had secretly eased off my nightstand. Then
while his hands clenched at his neck, I kicked him hard in the groin, grabbed a
sheet to wrap myself in, and escaped to a neighbor’s house where I then called
the police.”
Chandler exhaled loudly. “Thank God!
For a second there, I thought you were about to tell me that he raped you.”
Inaya stopped in her tracks and looked
at him. “Don’t rejoice too soon. Although Duncan never got to do what he
intended and although the police took him to jail, it wasn’t for long. Soon it
became a matter of my word against his. You see, he was a slickster in more
ways than one. While I was at the neighbor’s house, Duncan got on the phone and
called my mother at work, telling her all about how he caught me having sex in
the house with a white boy. Then he lied and told her that I threatened to cry
rape against him if he told my secret. That when he refused to back down, I stabbed
him and ran out the house.”
“So your mother believed him over you,
huh?” Chandler already knew the answer to his question based on what he’d learned
about Uzuri through other dysfunctional situations.
“Yep.” Inaya nodded. Sadness and
bitterness took turns roaming across her face. “Mama was madly in love with
Duncan. To this day she still claims that he was the best man she ever had
simply because he owned his own janitorial business and because they’d already
been together a whole year without any problems. She blamed me for making it
impossible for her to be with him with the trial and all that bad publicity.”
She shook her head. “It’s still hard for me to digest that bitter pill after
all these years. That my own mother would side with a lying boyfriend against
me.” Her countenance became even more forlorn. She began to pace the floor
again.
“What happened afterwards?” Chandler
prompted just as gently as before.
“Well, you already know what it cost
me with Joe. His abandonment was my rude awakening about the frailty of teenage
love. It completely turned me off from dating of any kind, especially
interracial dating. As for the situation at home, child services got involved
during and after the trial. They began to monitor my mother’s activities based
on things that I disclosed in the case.”
“Did their involvement lead to
positive results?” Chandler hoped that her experiences with the child welfare
system was better than his had been.
“Yes.” Inaya nodded. “Although my
mother hated being accountable to the system, I loved it. I was glad that somebody was finally making her
accountable for her actions. The people at church knew how she’d been living
for years, but all they did was pray and give Kali and me temporary places to
sleep and hang out at times. For some reason, none of them or even our
neighbors ever took the extra step to report Mama to the authorities. Since our
father was a no-show for most of our lives, he couldn’t be relied upon to step
in and take us out of the situation permanently. Thus going to the authorities
was the best thing I could’ve ever done for us.”
“Did your mother become more
accountable back then? If only for a little while? Because she doesn’t seem all
that accountable or responsible now.”
“She’s neither now. Back then she did just
enough to please the system. There was no lasting change. More boyfriends came
and went. Some nights Kali and I took turns staying up just to make sure none
of the men accidentally ventured into our room while trying to find the ‘bathroom’
in the middle of the night. Duncan had pulled that trick too many times to
count, which means he’d been watching me and probably Kali, too, a lot longer
than any of us actually knew.”
“Duncan was a straight up punk!”
Chandler raged, standing to his feet as well.
“I concur. Since I didn’t trust Mama
to protect me from any more such punks, I found a higher paying job, and moved
out as soon as I turned eighteen.”
“What about Kali? Surely you didn’t
leave her in that situation.”
Inaya smiled. “That’s the best part.
Because my mother wanted her freedom back, she readily allowed my sister to
move in with me. Then she went back to her old ways in full force. It’s been
that way ever since. Yet to Mama’s credit, no man lives with her these days. Though
her house is still a revolving door for men, she stopped shacking up after
Duncan.”
With a much better understanding of
Inaya, Chandler became even more determined to help her get through, over, and
past the rest of her issues. “Have you forgiven all parties for what happened
back then? Duncan, Joe, and your mother? Maybe even yourself?” he asked,
sitting down on the side of the bed again.
“I forgave everyone but God.”
Chandler frowned. “Why does He get blamed for what happened?”
“I didn’t start out blaming God. No,
at first I blamed everyone but Him. In
fact, I placed most of the blame on myself. I felt that I deserved to be
punished for willfully fornicating. As a Christian, I knew better and I was
definitely taught better than that in church. But I was young, foolish, and had
all these hormones raging out of control. Plus being kissed and touched by a
man that I cared about felt good. So good that I wanted to feel and do it all.”
Chandler simply nodded. He didn’t
trust himself to say anything as the thought of her being kissed and touched by
Joe caused jealousy to wash over him again. He fought to keep his head above the
deep green waters of envy. He also silently prayed…for himself, but mostly for his
wife.
“As time went on, I started to place
more blame upon God. I was mad with Him because it seemed like He was too quick
to punish me for wrongdoing and too slow to show mercy when I needed it. You
see, a few of my mother’s other boyfriends had acted inappropriately toward me
and Kali for years, way before the Duncan incident.”
“Inappropriately like how?”
“Like putting us in the wrong place upon their laps, kissing us on
the mouth when we clearly had two cheeks each, and smacking us on the bottom
every time we walked by them. We never gave them permission to do those things
to us and we certainly hadn’t done anything wrong to deserve that kind of treatment.
Neither have most of the kids that we represent today in the CASA program.”
“No wonder you went into social work.”
“Yes, I wanted to be a reliable adult
that hurting children could count on. I wanted them to know that there was at
least one person in the world that genuinely
cared what happened to them and would be one of their greatest advocates, one
adult that wouldn’t touch them inappropriately and disappoint them for their own
selfish reasons. My greatest hope is that they will one day learn to rely on
themselves like I had to and then become reliable adults, too.”
While his wife continued to pace the
floor, Chandler grew very peaceful as a passage from Psalm 46:1 revisited his
mind – ‘God is our refuge and strength, a
very present help in trouble’. He’d gotten a lot of good teaching, insight,
and encouragement from that passage during last Wednesday’s Bible study. That
passage helped him to finally come to grips with his abandonment issues
concerning his own past. Now he was ready to share what he learned with Inaya.
© 2014 by Suprina Frazier
Photo Credit:
https://www.getv.org/Videos/Watch/7a9602ce-520c-432f-af98-e2b7779a9375
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