FicWad

My head felt like it wanted to explode, but it didn't and all I wanted to do was crawl somewhere and die. I wanted to open my eyes, but it was so hard to. I wanted to know where I was because I could no longer feel the hard wooden floor of my house. I felt someone's hand on mine and I start to scream. All I can think of is that he's hurting me again and I don't want him to hurt me so I cry out, "Stop!" over and over again. My body shacks uncontrollably when I feel the pressure of hands on my shoulders. I start to scream louder and begin to kick and swing. I wonder if anyone hears me. I hope they do. Maybe they can get him to stop.
There's a voice in the distance. I can't tell who it is, but it gets stronger and louder and it sounds so familiar. I want to open my eyes and see who it is, but I can't. I give a soft cry when I no longer hear the voice. I feel a hand whipping hair off my face and when I hear the voice this time its singing. I know this song, my mom always use to sing it to me when I was younger. Now I can relax. "Momma?" I whisper.
"Sssshh", she says. "Go back to sleep". I didn't want to, but I did what she said. My headache was back and it was much worse.
I woke up to the sound of angry voices. My eyes were still closed and when I tried to open them the lights made my head ache. So, I just kept them closed and I listened more to the sound of the voices. One I the voices I hear is my dad's and he sound so angry. My dad is never angry. Being the pastor of our church his voice is usually sweet and kind sounding, but distanced when he spoke to me. Like when I disappoint him in a way. I could never please like am suppose to as a daughter. I what to know what is going on so I continue to listen. The other voice I hear sounds like my fiancé, Gabe. I wonder why they are arguing with each other. I can here pieces of them talking. First my dad then Gabe, going back and forth between, each other like they were in some kind of debate about me.
"You stay away from her. You hear!"
"I love your daughter and I'm staying. She needs me!"
"She doesn't need you! She has her mother and me!"
"I need to be here for her! What if she starts crying for me again! What are you going to do when she does that?"
"She never even registered that you were there. Now leave. Dating you is what go her in this mess."
"What does that mean?"
"You know...."
I dozed back to sleep before my father could finish what he was going to say. Why were they arguing like that? I have never heard them like this before.
It seems like forever since the last time I woke until now and I don't feel the urge to plunge back into that sweet darkness that surrounded me while I was sleeping. That darkness that hides me from the pain of the world and the pain of what happened to me was overwhelming. As that night came to me I wanted to slip back into that endless abyss, but my eyes opened slow to the world that surrounded me all in color. Colors that I yet wanted to face, but my mind made me face them. I had to face the world and the truth. The truth that I was betrayed by someone I knew someone who, as I was growing up, grew to love as a brother. Marcus is his name and we grew up together. Everywhere we went, we where always together. We were inseparable until I met Gabriel.
As I set in my bed my parents come in. I turned to look at my mother and saw that her once jet black hair seemed grayer and that her brown skin seemed to have aged over night. Her light brown eyes even seemed to have lost its shine of life. I looked deeper into her soul and I said, "Sorry momma". She looked at me for a while and then turned her head to cry.
While my mother cried I turned to my father. I tried to look into his eyes, but he kept avoiding me. He had a look of disappointment on his face again, like the time I got a C on my math test, like I could never amount to anything. He let his dark brown eyes settle on everything expect for me. His dark brown skin has lost so of its glow, like someone tried to whip it all away, but they couldn't. After awhile his eyes settled on a point somewhere over my head and he said to me, "In a few days you will be able to go home, but me and your mom thinks that it is better that you stay the rest of the summer with your grandmother before you go back to college. Hopefully by then you'll have forgotten what has happen."
As he said this I just stared at him not believing in what he just said. I felt tears run down my face as I said, "Forget?! Forget what?! That I was raped?! How can I forget that I was raped by my best friend?"
He looked at me then. "You have to forget," he said. "You have to because of who it is that did this to you. I won't allow him to go to jail for this." He had such a look of disappointment on his face that I couldn't handle it. He had this look on his face that he wasn't going to back down either.
I looked at my father with disbelief in my eyes. The words that he was saying tore at me like a jagged piece of metal and all I could say was, "What?"
"I can't allow Marcus to go to jail. I understand why he did it, I talked to him and I sort of agree with his reasoning. I know that he did you wrong, but Shamya you have to look past this. He's your friend you have to look past this."
My head started to spin and I put my hand to the side of my head thinking that it would help ease the pain. I could feel the coarse texture of my chin length, jet black hair and underneath my hair I could feel my damp brown skin. My world seemed to be coming to an end when I heard those words my father said. I couldn't believe that he wanted to help Marcus. My father, the pastor, the man that I grew up to respect and love was willing to stand by the man who raped me. Yet, of all the words I could say all I was able to say was, "Why? Why do you agree with him?" I felt like I dissatisfied him again.
My father looked at me and said, "Because you had to be with a white boy, that's why. Why couldn't you just have stayed with dating black buys? This wouldn't have happened if you just have been Marcus. You both grew up together and he loves you. You would've been happy together. But, no, you had to start dating that white boy and look what has happened. Look at what this has caused you. It may have great for your junior and senior year in high school and maybe your college to be with him, but you had to take it beyond that and then agreed to marry him." He took a breath, "What do you think was going to happen? Marcus couldn't deal with the pain of knowing that Gabe was taking you away. So he took the one thing that you could've given Gabe. The one thing that he thought should have been for a black man and not a white man. So by raping you he thought he was doing that right thing. I realize that he hurt you, but he is messed up and needs help. I want to give him that help. Try to understand."
When my father finished talking it felt like my heart was ripped apart and I could do nothing to stop it. My father was supposed to protect me and he's not. He never protected me, not in the way I wanted him too, but he's defending the man who dealt me the worse pain I could feel, just because he didn't want me to be with a white man for the first time or any other time in my life. I felt sick and weak and the one man who was supposed to save from harm me betrayed me beyond words. When I thought things couldn't get worse from the rape my father did the unbelievable. I looked my father in the eyes and said, "Get out. I never want to see you again. You are supposed to defend me not him, how could you do this? To your own daughter?!"
"I just want to get him help and going to jail is not going to help him."
"Help! You want to give him so help; then send him to jail!"
My mother yelled and I turned to face her and all she could say to me was, "Sorry baby, sorry baby", over and over again. I looked at her and I thought to myself, why couldn't she stand up for, stand up to him. This is the first time that I have ever talked back to him. I knew I was wrong, but I couldn't allow Marcus to get away with this.
After a while she got up and came to me and she kissed me on the check. She whispered softly in my ear, "Forgive me, baby. I didn't want this to happen, but remember this I love you."
I whispered back, "Stand up for me." She just looked a me and put her head down and walked to my father.
I watched as my parents made their way out the door. My father never said another word or looked back. It was my mother who turned to look at me and I saw that her soul died a little because that was the last time I saw her.
My grandmother, Nanna, came and got me a couple of days later from the hospital. I watched her silently has she packed my things and lead me to her car. When she started her it she took a deep breath and said, "Umm, it smells like rain. Hard rain too. And it's coming your way girl." At that moment I cried the hardest I have ever cried. I silently prayed to God to ease my pain, but He didn't.
I have been at Nanna's house for about two weeks now and my life seemed to have straightened a little. With Nanna around things seem to have been going fine until night comes. I would wake up in the middle of the night crying and Nanna would come to me. With her once black hair, now all silver, pulled into a braid and her light brown skin wrapped in her favorite all white nightgown. She looked like an angel to me, coming to rescue me for the evils of the world that would haunt me in my dreams. She would come and lay in the bed with me and when I awoke she would still be there, never leaving my side once during the night. Yet, this morning she was not in the bed with me. I panicked a little thinking that something had happened to her until I heard the voices out side my walkout window when I walked to it and that's when I saw him.
My boyfriend and Nanna were talking just outside my window. I went out to walk out onto the wraparound porch, which was on the second floor, to see what was going on. I wanted to see his face. I finally saw Gabe for the first time since the rape his brownish curly hair was longer than it use to be and it was as unruly as ever. His head was bent while he was talking to Nanna and when he looked up to see me his blue, as blue as the ocean, connected with my brown eyes. I wanted to look into his eyes and swim in them forever, but then I remembered that I was ruined. Ruined for the life that we were going to share so I broke eye contact and he heard him yell my name, "Sha-mya!" I couldn't deal with the pain so I shut the doors that led to the porch and I crawled back into bed and I shut myself off from the outside world. I prayed that God would let me die, but he wouldn't.
Every sunrise and every sunset for the past couple of weeks Gabe has been standing outside of my window. He would call my name and I would block him out and Nanna would be outside my room looking at me and shaking her head and saying things like, "Go talk to him, girl" or "Just go see the boy". When I wouldn't she would leave and go offer something for Gabe to eat or drink before he came back the next time.
I wanted to go to him so much, but I couldn't face him yet. Not while I am still damaged and empty inside. I want to run to him and let him wrap his arms around me like he use to when ever I was sick or sad. I want him to make me laugh when ever he did something funny even when it's not funny to everyone else. I want to see his face when ever he smiles so that I could see the twinkle in his eyes when he looks my way, but I will never have any of those things. My life is ruined and neither I nor he can do anything about it. I kept asking God to step in, but He hasn't yet. I wondered if He abandoned me.
Nanna was setting in her favorite old worn green chair when the phone rang. I watched her pick it up from my spot on the cream carpeted floor. I had been watching TV when she asked me to turn it off. I looked at her when her expression started to change and she said, "Why don't you tell her? She has a right to know and for you to do this. If Will..." Nanna's voice faded and she hung up the phone. She looked me dead in the eye and said, "The thunderstorm is here and it's got heavy rain for you."
I looked at Nanna for a while and asked, "What do you mean Nanna? You keep telling me about rain and storms and it's sunny outside. What rain are you talking about? What rain is coming?"
"The storm of your life girl", she got up and went to her room and she was right the storm had come, just soon then what she had thought.
Later that night my grandmother called me down to eat. While at the table she told me that she had to tell me some things. "Baby, now I know that you want to forget about the rape and everything else, but I need to talk to you." She paused for a second and took a deep breath before she continued. "That boy Marcus got off today from them charges of rape. Your father went down there said that he would give Marcus the helped that he needed if they just let him go and since your father is a pastor they believed him. Oh, child and they believed that your father just because he's a pastor. No one can helped that boy, he's just to sick" She stopped then and looked at me hard and I felt my hope in God fade more. I dropped my head for a minute and when I looked up at her I tried to give her a small smile while thinking how God could let this happen. I felt hot tears start to run down my face as I realized that my father had really done the unthinkable. He supported the man that made me feel less than human and who had ruined my life in way that can not be fixed. After all of the disappointments that my father did in the past never amounted to the pain he just had dealt me.
The next morning as I was about to make my way down stairs I heard Nanna and Gabe talking in the kitchen. I was on my way back to my room when I heard Nanna say, "Shamya's father is not her real father."
"What?" I heard Gabe asked her.
"Frank is not her real father, but her uncle. Before she was born her father, William, was killed in a car accident. Being alone, afraid, and pregnant her mother, my daughter, went to stay with William's brother Frank. Frank always couldn't stand his brother, but he loved him and the fact that wanted her mother, but couldn't have her because she belonged to his brother. So, when William died he took his chance to be with her. At first I was going to raise Shamya because he wanted to start a new life with Mary, but her mother wouldn't marry him unless she had her baby with her. He didn't like it because he couldn't deal with Shamya looking so much like her father, but to have Mary he accepted. As the years went by and Mary was unable to have children and little ol' Frank couldn't handle the fact that his only child was that of his dead brother's. So, that's why he is always disappointed with her."
I saw Gabe put his head down at the end of what Nanna said and I wanted to scream my heart out. I never knew that Frank was not my real father and that the man I always knew as Uncle William was my real father. I felt like God was pulling a real bad prank on me. For me to know that the man I had always wished to be alive was actually my father made the ground that I was standing on seem like quicksand and I was sinking fast. Now knowing that the stories that my mother and grandmother told me about him was so that I could learn and love my real father. I felt so betrayed. Why didn't they tell me? Just when I thought that I could cry no more tears came down my face once again. It felt like I was crying an ocean and the tears wouldn't stop. I wish that God would step in now. That He would stop His cruel joke, but he didn't. Where is He when I need Him the most?
While I was turning to go back to my room I saw Gabe and Nanna enter the room. Before he could land his eyes on me I had my back turned away from him and when I was about to walk away I heard him say, "Sha-mya, don't." I couldn't turn around and I couldn't say anything so I quickly walked away. I shut myself in my room and savored how he always said my name, Sha-mya.
Later that evening he came back to see me again at sunset. He always came to see me at sunrise and sunset. I could remember the first time that we stayed up all night one day studying for our med terms in college our freshmen year two years ago. We were outside lying on a blanket on the grass and he had asked me what my favorite time of the day was. I had told him sunrise and sunset because I would have the chance to see the sun as it's waking up and as it's going to sleep. He had looked at me in right in the eyes and told me that he loved me and that I was the only woman in his life for now and eternity. My heart swelled at that memory, but I squashed it because it was not meant to be. God had made sure of that.
Nanna had her house in the country and it faced the west so before we went to bed we would be able to watch the sunset on the front porch. Her house was the only house for some miles and we stayed about a half an hour away from the city. Gabe would come everyday, twice a day just to stand in the back yard to watch the sunrise and in the front to watch the sunset.
He was standing there now in the front yard and I watched him as he faced the setting sun. I walked closer to him and I saw him strengthen as I approached. We always had that connection when we can sense each other without looking or hearing each other. He was about to turn around when I whispered, "Don't. Just keep looking at the sunset." He did as I said and I walked to the back of him and I wrapped my arms around him. I pressed my face into the space that was between his shoulder blades and inhaled his scent. He smelled the same way he always smelled, like old spices and the outdoors. He started to turn around again, but I held him still and said, "I don't want you to see me not like this."
He took a deep breath and he grabbed my arms and pulled me closer into his back. "I miss you so much" he said.
"I miss you too, but I can't have you in my life anymore."
"You can have me in your life again. I want to be in your life again."
"You can't", I cried.
"I love you Shamya and if you love me like you said you do let me back into your life, back into heart."
I sobbed into his back harder, "I do love you, but I can't let you back into my life." I hugged him tighter and whispered, "I'm ruined Gabe, ruined beyond repair. I can't let you be with me while I 'm like this. I refuse to let you be with me while I 'm dead inside."
Standing on tiptoe kissing his neck and holding him closer I said, "Goodbye Gabe. I'll always love" releasing him I ran back into the house in up to my room and I let my soul pour out of me and I looked to my beige colored ceiling and asked God where was he when I needed him.
It's been almost a week since that day in the yard and he still comes around. Every time he comes he brings me a small present and Nanna would bring them in to me so that I could open them and she would say things as she was leaving like, "Let him love you" or "Go to him". Today as he was bring me another present a car had pulled out in front just as he was coming up the walk. I was standing near my window when I saw who it was. My eyes widened and I knew that there was going to be trouble. Before Gabe could get to the porch I heard Marcus call out Nanna's name, "Grandma Cornwall! Is Shamya here?" I saw Gabe tense and turn around and when I saw the two stare at each other I rushed down the stairs and out the door.
Before I opened the door Gabe was already walking towards Marcus and I yelled, "Gabe! No!" Gabe stopped and his tracts to look back at me and I could see the hatred that he had Marcus in his deep blue eyes. I shucked my head and whispered, "He's not worth it; he's not worth it." I watched him ball up his hand in a tight fist and then he looked at the ground thinking about what he should do.
After taking a few breaths he looked at Marcus and said, "I think you better get the hell out of here and never come back."
Marcus had a smirk on his face and said, "I don't think that you can tell me what to do white boy."
Gabe rubbed his face and said, "I think I can tell you what to do when it comes to Shamya and right now I telling you to leave."
Marcus' face hardened when Gabe told him that and he said, "Make me!"
I watched Gabe take a tempted step forward, but then he stopped. I rushed forward and put my hand on his on his upper arm to try to stop him from doing anything to Marcus. I then looked at Marcus and asked, "Why are you here and what do you want?"
He looked at me with a bittersweet in his eyes and said, "I just came to see how you were doing. Your father told me where you were so I thought that I should come by. You know to finish the little talk that we started but never finished", with the same smirk on his face.
My mind went back to the night of the rape, somewhere that I did not what my mind to go. My mind playing over every thing that happened that night like someone pushed the repeat button in my head. Marcus ringing the door bell, me answering it. Us setting on the couch and talking about the things that happened since the last time we hung out together. Him asking if Gabe was coming over tonight since my parents where go for the weekend. Me saying yes and that I was expecting him to come over in an hour to stay the weekend. Marcus asking if we were still engaged to be married in August and me nodding my head yes saying that we could wait. Then everything was happening so fast. Him leaning over to kiss me and me pushing him off and saying that wasn't cool. That he shouldn't have done that and him hitting me and me falling to the floor. Then him saying that this was for my own good and that next time I would think twice about dating outside my race. That I should have stayed with my own people and that I should have chosen him and not Gabe. Me saying that he was sick and crazy and that he needed help. That was in May, two months ago. I had to be strong. I had to stand up to him like I did my father or he was going to look at this as if he had power over me. He did once, but not anymore. I was my own person and I had my faith and two people who loved me by my side. I prayed that God would give me strength.
I shuck my head to clear it and I looked at Marcus and said, "No matter what you did to me I will always continue to love Gabe." I took a deep breath, "You may have ruined me psychically, but not emotionally. My love will always belong to Gabe. Something that I'll never will give to you; so, do what you want. Just remember, I belong to Gabe. Mind, heart, body, and soul they all belong to him. Something that you tried to take, but couldn't reach because it was beyond you. Now we are finished with our talk. I never want to see you again. So, leave." I walked back into Nanna's house with my head held high. Nanna held her arms open to me and I walked into them. For once since that night I didn't cry, but felt that I had finally found peace with the situation and with God. He had finally heard my cry in the distance and came to rescue me. I'll never doubt Him again.
The next day I sat on the living floor and waited for Gabe to come to see me. Nanna came in the room with her hand on her stomach and said, "Um, it smells like rain. Can you feel it?" I shuck my head yes. Smelling rain before it came was refreshing. It made you aware of the things that are around you and made you ache to see it wash away all the old and dirty things that built up since the last time it rained.
I heard Gabe drive up the gravel drive way that was on the side of Nanna's house. I hurried to meet him before he came to the front porch. He stopped at the middle of the yard and just looked at me. Before going to him I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of the coming rain that was in the air. Noticing how the flowers smelled, how the wind blew, and how the grass whispered, "Go to him". Then I walked slowly towards him. He didn't move at all as I made my way to him. He just kept his eyes on mine and looked into my soul and saw the person that he loved and not the broken girl that I was after the rape, though I still have cracks. Once I got to him he enfolded me in his strong arms. I whispered to him, "I've changed Gabe; I'm not the girl that I once was." For it was true, I was not the same young girl who was weak and quite. Who couldn't stand up for herself when things got to much to bare. I was now a strong woman and I could do anything. Just like my Nanna.
He gave me a small smile and said, "I know. I'm glad that you did change."
"Why?"
"Because you changed for the better and I love more for it. I wouldn't have you in any other way."
My heart swelled with more love for the man who captured my spirit and my heart. "I love you", I said.
He placed his forehead on mine and whispered, "I love you, too."
He drew me closer and placed the sweetest kiss I have ever received from him on my trembling lips. My eyes closed slowly and I felt the first drops of the cleansing rain fall on my face. My storm was finally over.