I can’t exactly remember what age I was when I started planning my escape. I mean it’s not like at age ten I could write out an escape route, but somewhere in my mind I was waiting for an opportunity to get out of that house. My mother is dead, she died when I was fifteen and at the time I couldn’t think of a better place for her. My mother suffered through years of physical abuse. She use to be a Christian till my father tried to beat it out of her, then one day she just gave up. The beatings always seemed to happen late at night and usually in the kitchen. I guess this is as far as my mother could run from the bedroom before he’d catch her. He’d always catch her. I could hear it all from my bedroom. Who could sleep through slaps across the face so loud it sounded like symbols clanging together? Who could sleep through furniture being knocked over, the sound bouncing off the wall like thunder? Who could sleep through piercing screams?
As I’d lay there in my bed waiting for the time to come for me to go into the kitchen, pick my mother up off the floor and wipe the blood from her face, I’d always wonder if she’d still be breathing when I got there. Quiet. Did he stab her this time? Did he shoot her? Quiet. Is he still there? I can’t hear them fighting anymore. I have to wait for the sound of him slamming the door. POW! There it is. Now I rush out of bed and run to my mother’s side. If I go too soon and get in the way he’ll just beat me too. It’s dark in here. SSShhh. Where is she? Oh God I’m scared. What if she’s dead? Will he kill us too? Wait, I see her! Oh my God, she looks like a rag doll, like a crumpled rag doll laying on the floor in the fetal position. My thirty plus year old mother looks like a dead baby. I see blood. God I’m scared. Wait. I hear a faint whimper. Thank you God, he didn’t kill her this time. I slowly approach my mother. I kneel down beside her and extend my hand to her. I love her. We’ve switched roles now, at ten years old I’ve become the mother and she is the broken, battered child. I lead her to the couch and I sit down first so that she can lay her head in my lap. I stroke her hair. I tell her that its o.k. I wipe the blood from her face as she cries. We both cry. My mother cries because she is imprisoned by love, imprisoned by fear, because she is damaged and hurting, because she has been beaten yet again. Me, I cried then also but what I did not understand at the time is that I wasn’t only crying tears for my present; I was also crying tears for my future as well. I was crying tears for all of the damage that all of these traumatic episodes had done to my spirit. Damage done to the spirit on a ten-year-old that would soon grow into a woman, a very damaged woman.
You see, as I sat there time and time again, cleaning up the blood from my mother’s face, or trying to convince him not to beat my mother, me or my baby sister; I guess I took an oath. Not out loud but in my spirit. I never understood why my mother endured so much grief, so much pain at the hands of a man. But I know this, no man was going to do that to me! No man would hurt me like that! No man would control my life, my happiness, or my peace of mind! When I grow up, I’ll do whatever it takes to survive, by any means necessary. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it. No, not me! I will not live an unhappy life. My mother lived unhappy and she died unhappy.
When she could no longer take the beatings she began to drink to ease the pain. The drinking never eased her pain. Alcohol could not erase the pain that she felt, for a broken spirit who can bear? So she drank until her body ceased to breathe, until her hear ceased to pump, yet searching for a relief that only Jesus Christ could give her. That’s the legacy that I received from my mother. I learned to do whatever it took to ease my pain, not realizing that it would only be a temporary fix, just as the alcohol was for my mother. I learned to take whatever exit I had to take in order to not feel the pain, in order to not deal with the pain. Any pain! And this is how I lived my life until I met a man named Jesus who told me all about myself; a man who told me all the things that I ever did. And he gave me water, living water an I have not thirsted again. I shall not thirst again because this water that He has given me has become a fountain in me, springing up into everlasting life!
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