Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Dark as the color of my skin
No one would ever know what happens behind the close doors, no one. Everyone is different and so is their life. Some experience spring first when nature comes to life and the weather is not harsh to your body. Others have to deal with fall before they even know how spring feels like, when you look around and experience nothing but pain and wonder why and when all the problems will fade away. I try to see more in people than what they present to the public audiences to judge. I had to practice that in life in order to live with myself. A girl in school, who happened to share the same skin tone as me, ended sharing her tears also on my shoulder. I made her remember about her past and lead her to open the closed doors that she thought she had locked them up and threw the key away. She remembered about the little girl she knew, who was always crying, wishing she was never born. She said, “I remember seeing my mother getting hit by her boyfriend, who is also happened to be my father. He punched my mother as a punching bag, throwing fists on her face”. I looked at her with a strong face, which was getting swollen because of sadness inside me. She continued,
“After a while, mother left me alone with Dad, I wished she took me with her but my wishes were not strong as how I felt. Life with my father was hell. He hit me all the time just because he wanted to. I was very ashamed. I joined gangs to be tough. I gave to boys what they wanted, it was hard but at least for once, I had a control over a situation. To myself, I was a whore; I am not sure what others thought”.
The girl was telling her story but in another way, she was telling my story, the tears that were inside my eyes where my tears of my past. After my mother, father and my three siblings died, so was the right of me to have a good childhood and grow up in normal environment. My body became the magnet of people’s hands to places that I never knew the purpose of it rather than as they were there for getting waist off our body. After the tragic part of my life, I went to live with my Grand mother. I loved her dearly. I had my first sexual abuse in her house at age of six years old. A girl, who was supposed to be baby-sitting me, ended exploring her sexual desires on me. She made me touch her and put my tongue to places I never wanted to see. It was scary, and I did not know to say, “No leave me alone”. If I refused, she would make me drink spiced water that was very spicy and hot that I would vomit from it, which will only make things worse than they could have been. I wished to vanish, but I never did, I wish Grammar would save me, but she had no idea of what was going on when she is at work. Years past and she was gone. In that moment I felt light and felt how wonderful the feeling of a joyful smile. Then I moved to my Aunt, were I began first grade. It was a new life with new experience. She register me in a school bus so she wouldn’t be worried to come and get me after school every afternoon. In the school bus, I was sexual abused. I was the last kid to be dropped off my bus stop, the two drivers took turns. One will be driving and another one will be at the back seat with me pulling his pants down and forcing my mouth to his sexual organ. It will be like this for every single day I take the bus. Each day will be either him or his friend. I still did not tell anyone. In my mind, it was too late to tell. I felt I was a part of the deed, and I had nothing to complain about. The days went just like that and no one noticed anything or bothered to ask. I could not wait to be in fourth grade and learn to take public transportation by my own. I begged Aunty to allow me to be independent and not take bus any more for an excuse that public transportation was fun. Well it was not fun or easy. It was very hard for a student like me to get a sit in the public bus. I hard to struggle, pull people out of my way, bite people and do whatever physical movement I could do in order to be in the bus. It was not a fun job but since I was not touching someone’s private parts and having them in my mouth, I was cool with the what I had to put up for public transportations. At home, we had a housemaid; she was about 17yrs old. She was a young beautiful girl. She was my best friend; I laughed with her a lot. Years went by, I moved to sixth grade. Although she laughed with me around daytime, she cried alone at night. When my Aunt travels, my Uncle would use her as his second wife. He would wake her up at night when his kids and I will be sleeping in order to have sex with her. Some nights she would try to wake me up as well so I can be her witness, but I was very afraid and I pretended I was in deep sleep and felt her helpless. This time I witnessed someones’ innocent being stolen away from her. Before she quit her job, she reminded me to be careful but it did not mean much to me. Time went by and so was life.
I always hear about the stories that fathers sleep with their daughters but they were very fiction through my ears but this all changed when I turned 11 years old. My Uncle turned me into his second wife when Aunty was not around which was the majority of time. He said “I am preparing you to be a strong woman” and that was his excuse. It was a nightmare that I had to live with. I hated the feeling of his hands on my body and to my private parts, which I lost custardy of them since I was six years old. I wished to have my period very soon so he would not torch me. I wished to vanish or sleep in someones’ house at night so he will not open my room door in the middle of night and rape in, but my wishes were not strong enough as I felt. This went on year after year. I could not face my Aunty; she was very strict and deserved more than what she had, so I was in no position to ruin her life. When I turned thirteen, I started seventh grade. It was my last year in middle school and I was very happy to be an upper classmen in middle school. Before I got more and more comfortable being in seventh grade, my history teacher sexually abused me as if physically abuse that I get everyday was not enough. To me, I was a cheap low life hoe. I was used to be abused and it was apart of my life and I lived that life. I started hating school. I could not wait to graduate seventh grade and start high school. I ended falling for a boy who got pregnant and I ended having an abortion since I knew nothing about being a mother. It was scary but not so much. I valued the fact that for once in a long time I participated in sexual intercourse without crying.
After middle school, I though it was going to be a great idea if I go to boarding school. I thought, there I will start fresh, no more abuses from home or in school and I was wrong. My history high school teacher ends up sexually abuse me. He laid his hands anywhere on my body as he pleased. My theory of that “everything that is happening to me is because I am cheap and it is what I deserved” I proved it true. This went on until I turned fourteen years old. For then, I could not think of where I would go and start fresh rather than put up with everything until I turn twenty-one and move out form the house and live by myself. However, even that I was not sure if it would ever happen, since I have being saying “one day everything will be fine” and that day did not come.
Now I am living the life of my dreams. I am a person who I wished to be. However, I sometimes cannot see it. I thought I was done with the past and locked all the doors and threw away the key. Not knowing that I only lost the key to the dark doors in my life for only a short period of time and once a while I will always find it and it will remind me of the first me I once knew and who still lives inside a knew me. Sometimes I wonder, why was I born black, and the only answer I would think of is because God wanted me to be one. However, now I have another answer, I guess some times your skin tone can define the colors of your past. My past is full of darkness, too dark that I cannot even see myself clearly, even though this time I have light on my hand.