Water From My Eyes
by
Mona Gay
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Publish America, LLLP
Water From My Eyes
Copyright © 2010 by Mona Gay
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Water From My Eyes
I have read in the Bible “your sins shall fall upon your seed.” This passage has helped me recognize why others in my family and I have struggled with a variety of painful issues. Generations of hereditary seeds have caused us to travel down the path of self-destruction. Repeated trends of unaffectionate behavior and selfishness, sexual abuse and incest, and denial in the face of physical abuse, all began long before my mother and father were born.
These two young people came together as one; completely unaware of the evil inheritable seeds ignorantly endowed upon their own four beautiful children. .
With the help of Divine Intervention, I am the only child of my generation to sever this genetic chain. By understanding its influence and swaying from it, I am no longer a helpless victim of the “Generational Curse”. For all those who have endured some type of abuse while wondering why, and have yet to heal; may this story help to break the genetic chain of inheritable abuse!
Part I
Daisy
It’s December 23, 1948 Daisy makes her way along the wooded path home from church; relishing in the sound of dead leaves crunching under each step as she looks up at the clouds forming shapes in the sky. Her long black wavy hair dances in the wind as she strolls on knowing she will get into trouble for taking her braids out. Mama spent what seemed like hours to comb and put them in, yet it’s so gratifying to feel the cool breeze blowing freely thru her hair. As she continues the long walk home, she day dreams fondly about the young man that always makes her laugh during choir rehearsal; suddenly she has the uncanny sense of a presence behind her.
Turning around quickly; hair blows wildly across her face completely obscuring her vision. As she reaches up to pull the hair away, a hard thrust against her stomach forces her to the ground. “Mama is surely gonna get me now,’’ she thinks as the damp grass stains her dress. She is not yet alarmed by the forceful push; she’d been clowning around with Braxton in church and assumes he has followed her from choir rehearsal so she laughs a little.
Daisy tugs the hair from her face expecting to see Braxton standing there with that mischievous grin on his face when her eyes focus on a tall lanky white man. Fear sets in; “Run!” is her immediate unspoken thought. She tries to stand but he is already falling on top of her. The weight of him forces the air from her lungs and she gasps, instantly catching the odor of his breath. There is a subliminal memory of a time when her mother rubbed a soft cotton ball soaked in alcohol on her leg when she’d scraped her knee playing outside.
The horrifying sound of her panties being torn brings her swiftly back to reality and she savagely hits him in the face and anywhere her arms can reach. The attacker realizes this young half-black half-Cherokee girl is more competition than he had expected and his anger matches her struggle. Holding her arms down, he pushes more of his weight against her small body until she can barely move. Daisy closes her eyes tightly praying she is having a nightmare and will soon wake-up. As she feels her legs forcefully pulled apart, she can no longer fight back but instead concentrates on her struggle to breathe.A terrified scream of pain and agony escapes as he penetrates her virtuous womb. “Why is this happening to me?” repeats through her mind as she endures the torture. Her attacker ineffectively puts a dirty hand over her mouth to muffle the moans of pain and objection as Daisy weakly shifts from side to side avoiding the attempts to keep her quiet. Infuriated, he reaches down and gathers a hand full of dirt and rocks to plunge in her mouth. Daisy coughs and chokes trying desperately to spit out the blood and gravel. Exhausted from the unrelenting pain she can no longer fight; she can only watch the warm blood run down the side of her face.
Tears begin to flow but the man feels no compassion toward her as he is compelled to reach his climax, pushing deeper and deeper inside of her. In his drunken state he repeatedly kisses along the side of her neck and in his release of ecstasy he hears Daisy let out a faint sigh as she lays motionless and ready to die. He rests on top of her completely out of breath, unable to move for it feels as if he has just drained all of his energy. “Now is the time,” she realizes. With all of her might she pushes him off and scrambles to her feet; she runs as fast as her legs will go and never looks back to see if he follows. Daisy runs like the wind knowing that each step will bring her closer to home and far away from the perpetrator. Only when she reaches the old wooden porch does she look back, mercifully thanking God the attacker isn’t there; fallings to her knees she lets out a primal scream.
Her mother, in the kitchen cooking dinner, hears her cries and runs out to see what is wrong. She hesitates as she reaches the front door; Daisy is standing there bloodied and bruised from head to toe, her beautiful white dress ruined with dirt and grass stains. “Oh Mama!” she cries to her mother who stands frozen staring blankly into her daughter’s eyes. Daisy senses her mother’s hesitation and begins to feel ashamed about what she must be thinking at that moment. Overcome with grief Daisy limply drops her head in disgrace.
Forrest quickly shuts out the unwholesome thoughts that first came to mind and moves to her daughter. “Ishmel! Oh, Ishmel please!” she shouts for her husband while grabbing hold of their daughter. “What’s wrong wit ya child?” she asks wiping away the blood and tears from Daisy’s face with her housedress. Daisy cannot look at her mother; she doesn’t know how to explain what she just experienced. The only words she can utter are, “Mama, mama he hurt me.” Forrest’s head shakes in disbelief at what her daughter is telling her. She holds tight to her child, rocking her back and forth as her mind is crowded with images of rape.
Ishmel hasn’t heard any of the screams; he is tending a sick horse. As he comes out of the barn, he catches sight of mother and daughter on the porch affectionately holding one another when the feeling hits him that something is wrong. He walks over slowly, not knowing what to expect. For all he knows Daisy could have fell and scraped her knee as she had done often.
He reaches the porch, putting one foot up on the bottom step then bending over to relax himself on his knee. Ishmel is a soft spoken man of few words, yet people always come to him with their problems because when he does speak, it is always of sound judgment. He is also a man whose features tell no lies about who he is; tall, black and strong. “What done happen to her Forrest?” his deep voice asks sternly. She can hardly find the right words to explain to her husband what has happened to their daughter. As she looks up at him with her deep dark eyes, a few strands of hair fall escaping from the two braids she wears and blow across her pie shaped face into her tears as she weeps looking back at him. “Ishmel, I thank she done...done... been raped!”
Ishmel can’t believe what he is hearing; so he refuses to believe. “Is ‘that right gal, ya let somebody rape ya?!” He asks calmly as he maneuvers himself to the other knee. Daisy knows her father’s temper; he would easily kill someone for hurting one of his own so she doesn’t know how to answer him. “Did ya hear me gal!?” he says now with the base in his voice rising and vibrating off the back of his neck, sending fear into Daisy’s heart. Daisy has no choice but to answer him, “Yes Sir Daddy, he hurt me,” is her trembling response. Ishmel stares deeply at her trying to decide if she is telling the truth or if she is protecting someone that she let go too far with her.
Daisy watches her father in deep thought and wonders if she should tell him who raped her or if she should not say a word in order to save her father from the horrible torments of jail. “Well Daisy, do ya know who it was!?” he demands in a tone that frightens her more than the attack. “I don’t know Daddy, I just don’t know!” escapes from her mouth before she can think more on it. Forrest embraces her daughter closer and looks up at Ishmel with eyes that could kill. Filled with her daughter’s pain, she murmurs “Okay, baby, okay; let’s get cha in the house now.” She pulls Daisy forward and propels her into the house leaving Ishmel on the porch. He does not say a word after the look his wife has given him.
Forrest places Daisy on the worn old sofa covered with fading wild flowers. She feels such empathy for her child. She realizes Daisy must truly fear telling her father the identity of the rapist because they both know he would go for his rifle to kill the man and neither could stand losing Ishmel. Around town people always talked about the men who went to prison and how when they were released, they never came back the same again. She cannot bear the thought of it happening to her husband. Forrest sits next to her daughter on the sofa, running her fingers threw her wild untamed hair pulling out dead leaves and twigs. She then gathers herself and walks into the kitchen for a cloth.
Reaching the sink, emotions overtake her small frail body and she begins to cry uncontrollably. Looking back to make sure Daisy hasn’t overheard her outburst, she kneels down and quietly prays “Oh Lord please, please keep Ishmel steady like a stream an’ not unruly like the river.” Wiping away her tears, she returns to the living room then remembers the cloth she had initially went in to get. Walking back down the long hallway with the warm cloth for her daughter, she sees Daisy staring intently out the window at her father, tears streaming down her face. Forrest eases down beside her. “Baby I can’t imagine what ya must’ be go in’ through an’ I can’t tell ya what ya should do but if ya tell yo daddy who did this to ya he gonna kill’ em and them folks gonna lock him up.” She whispers this softly, completely forgetting the cloth as it drips water on the scarred hardwood floor.
Daisy looks over at her mother and pushes away a tear as it falls from the corner of her eye, “I know Mama, and as much as I wanna see Boe dead I can’t let anything happen to Daddy.” Forrest gasps and quickly covers her mouth to keep herself from screaming out. She is shocked her daughter knows her attacker but is not shocked to hear his name. Boe Bedford is a well known young hoodlum, always harassing the young black girls when they come into town. Despite being known as a town drunk, he is a handsome young man, respected because of his status as “one of the good ole boys”, a man who still kept the Jim Crow laws in effect and fear in the hearts of black people. Forrest knew all too well who he was.
She wraps her daughter in her arms, “Oh baby, oh my poor baby, we just can’t tell yo Daddy, we jus cant,” she insists. Daisy knows deep down she is doing the right thing for she loves her father more than anything and doesn’t want to see harm come his way. Looking her mother in her eyes she nods, “I know Mama, I know.”
Ishmel is still on the porch, sitting down now on the cement blocks he put there as steps. He thinks about going into the house and demanding she tell him who did this but the thought of actually knowing frightens him. He stands up and strides back to the barn thinking, “Maybe she let him just go too far an’ come run-in’ up here like she done been hurt!” He tries to convince himself as he yanks open the barn door, “Time will tell, I know that!” he muses as he returns to his sick horse.
Back inside, Forrest boils water on the stove for Daisy to bathe. She knows hot water and a little Epsom Salt will ease the pain and swelling of her torn womb. Pouring the boiling water into the tub she remembers there was food cooking as she smells the beans burning on the stove. Swiftly moving to the kitchen, she salvages them before retrieving Daisy from the living room.
“Daisy honey, your water’s ready,” she wipes her hands with her house dress. Daisy is still staring out the window when she hears her mother and stands to walk but it is as if her legs have fallen asleep and she falls back toward the sofa. Forrest catches her before she falls and carries her to the bath. She sits Daisy gently on the toilet seat asking, “Ya think ya can get ya’ self in the tub baby?” Daisy, wanting to be alone, softly answers, “Yes, Ma’am Mama I can do it.” Forrest walks to the door and turns back to her daughter, who now looks as though shame has built a home for itself upon her young shoulders. “You sho, Daisy?” she asks before leaving out. “I’m sho Mama,” Daisy glances up at her mother hoping to convince her to leave the room. Forrest closes the door behind her. Daisy waits a few minutes to make sure she is alone before taking off her clothes. As she unbuttons her dress flashbacks of the man kissing her neck begin to crowd her mind and she falls softly to her knees tightly clenching her mouth shut so Mama will not hear her cry. Forrest, still standing outside the door, hears her daughter’s muffled cries but is helpless to do anything for she knows Daisy must let it all out before she can truly heal. Daisy drags herself up and removes the rest of her clothes; as she pulls away her torn panties she sees the blood and his slimy semen and lets them fall to the floor.
She steps into the tub and registers surprise to find the water too hot. She forces herself to sit, continuing to punish her injured body. She watches the blood from her womb mix into the water and tries not to cry out from the agony she feels. Laying her head against the edge of the tub she thinks about the man who raped her and how she has seen him around town harassing the young blacks as they went about their daily lives. She remembers a day he came up to her drunk, barely able to keep himself from falling. She had been with her cousins to get ice cream.
“I see ya Fla. at me little girl,” he had said as she tried to navigate around his six feet five inch disorderly frame. He was handsome with sky blue eyes and brown hair so dark it looked black, which he kept neatly styled backed with Murray’s Hair Pressing Pomade. The girls all remained quiet and kept moving because there was no need to acknowledge his bad behavior. Back home they spoke briefly about him. Daisy, who had hidden feelings about the white man said, “I thank he kinda cute for a white boy don’t cha ya think?” All the girls laughed at her remark, protesting the fact. Dolly, her first cousin and the oldest of them all asked, “How could ya thank he cute when he always pick'n’ on us?” Daisy knew she had overstepped her bounds with the statement and in a flash retorted, “Well it was just a thought, it’s not like I want to marry the man or anythang!” Just thinking about what she had said that day made her swell up anew with tears and feel foolish.
Daisy sits in the tub until the water begins to get cold. She quickly washes herself and calls out, “Mama, I need you!” Opening the door Forrest asks, “What is it baby?” Daisy is out of the tub and sitting on the toilet seat, “I need something to put on Mama.” Forrest goes into her room and finds her long terrycloth gown. Leaving Daisy with the gown, Forrest walks out onto the front porch looking over at the barn where Ishmel is still tending his sick horse. “Only God knows what that man could be think in’,” she worries, feeling somewhat at ease that he hasn’t yet overreacted to the horrible situation.
That night Ishmel stays in the barn until he knows everyone is in bed. Daisy is still awake when she hears his heavy footsteps entering the house, walking past her bedroom and into the bathroom where she can hear him wash up. Forrest is also still awake and waiting for him to come to bed so they can talk about what to do next. When he enters the room, he slowly gets into bed making sure not wake his wife. Forrest knows he’s not ready to talk about what happened to his baby girl so she gently wraps her arm around him and tries to sleep.
Conceived by violence, and nurtured in an
Undesirable womb, then delivered into the arms of hate.
