by Londyn Skye
Day after day, however, the pain Elizabeth endured did not ease; it became far worse, not only sexually, but emotionally and physically as well. With every month that passed, Jesse felt more comfortable letting his inner monster emerge, savagely tearing his new bride to shreds in every physical and emotional way possible. Hours after his cruelty, Jesse had the gall to act like a reborn saint, soothing his wife with kind words or gestures. It became a daily vicious cycle. But within two years, the kind gestures that followed Jesse’s eruptions disappeared, leaving Elizabeth with nothing but the emotional and physical scars of his monstrous attacks. To add insult to injury, Jesse demanded that his wife put on an act that portrayed them as a happy, loving couple whenever they were in the presence of other people. His demands for the facade were especially motivated by his top-level position as a Ghost Rider Grand Master. And Elizabeth knew to abide; her face was all too familiar with the consequences if ever she broke character in front of Jesse’s Ghost Rider brethren.
Two years into her marriage, Elizabeth Adams could no longer deny the painful fact that she had pledged before God to spend her entire life with a violent, alcoholic, racist, cult leader. Every day, she wondered how she had managed to fall in love with a man who drank himself into a rage and took pride in tormenting her from the crack of dawn until falling into a drunken slumber every night. She constantly questioned what she had done to deserve such treatment. It was a question she begged God to answer nightly, hoping His wisdom would help her change her ways enough to make Jesse halt the violence and resume treating her with love and tenderness. As she waited for God’s guidance, Elizabeth dealt with the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse without a word; she was just too embarrassed and ashamed to admit to her father the massive mistake she had made.
Giving birth to Jesse’s first two sons further added to the misery of Elizabeth’s life. Jacob and J.R. were born just barely nine months apart due to Jesse’s refusal to allow Elizabeth’s body time to heal after her first delivery. As the boys grew, Elizabeth soon learned that they were identical copies of their father, but not only in looks. Cursing, hitting, kicking, scratching, and spitting on their mother were the rewards she received from her sons after bringing them into the world and nurturing them with love. After all she had done to care for her boys, they often sided with their father whenever he was tearing her soul apart with words. Jesse did nothing to stop their torment either. He was proud that his sons took after him. The only time Jesse and the boys were decent to Elizabeth was in the presence of others. Outside of those sparse moments, she was treated more like a slave than a beloved mother and wife.
After the hell her first two boys had put her through, Elizabeth was content to never have another child. Six years later, though, she had to deal with the reality of an unwanted pregnancy. On the day of her delivery, she cried tears of misery after learning that her prayer for a little girl had gone unanswered. She feared that her new son would join his father and brothers’ conquest to destroy every ounce of her sanity, leaving her an empty shell of the happy, fun-loving woman she once was. Elizabeth was so distraught, she refused to even hold her newborn in the first hours of his life, leaving Auntie to care for him. Auntie occasionally tried to convince her to hold her son, but instead, Elizabeth chose to pray. She prayed that the child she had just delivered would be nothing like his father and brothers. She prayed hard, until she broke down into uncontrollable tears of misery again. Her tears this time, though, were due in part to the fact that her father had passed away just weeks before she gave birth, and Jesse had not allowed her to attend the funeral. Elizabeth was yearning for her father to comfort her in her moment of abysmal despair, but the only man who had shown her unconditional love was gone, and she never once got to say her goodbyes.
Hours after her prayers ended and her tears ceased, Elizabeth gathered the emotional strength to finally hold her new son. She sat down on the bed with him cradled in her arms. Tears welled in her eyes again when she looked at her baby’s precious face and she saw her father’s piercing, crystal blue eyes staring back at her. His blood red lips, the shape of his face, his dark-brown curly hair, everything about him was the spitting image of his maternal grandfather. It was the first sign that perhaps God had already answered her prayers. “James,” Elizabeth whispered as she continued to gaze into her baby’s sparkling eyes. To honor the only man who had ever shown her unconditional love, she named her third son Jameson Michael, after her beloved father.
But even months after Elizabeth gave birth to her father’s namesake, she was still afraid to form a bond with her new baby. She remained distant and detached from him and only tended to his basic needs. She rarely held him, caressed him, or whispered that she loved him. She had done those things with her older two boys, and it made their betrayal far too great to handle. With James, she attempted to spare herself the heartbreak of the day he turned on her. That day, however, never came.
Not only did James look eerily identical to his grandfather, but he was just as intelligent, compassionate, and loving toward his mother. Despite Elizabeth’s conscious effort to keep the emotional distance between her and her youngest son, little Jameson Michael proved to be the only person in her home brave enough to show her any warmth. He naturally rejected his father’s ways and began to comfort his mother when he was old enough to understand the meaning of her emotions. As a toddler, he would crawl into his mother’s lap and cuddle with her whenever he saw her tears. “Don’ cwy mah-mah. Iz okay,” were the only mangled sentences he knew how to say as he lay with his little head against her chest. He never once failed to sit quietly with her for as long as it took for her tears to subside. Despite not yet knowing how to form all the words necessary to comfort his mother, he knew instinctively that she needed somebody to just be there for her. And little Jameson Michael was always that somebody.
It was not until James literally began to embrace his mother in her times of need that she finally found the strength to emotionally embrace him in return. She finally accepted that her son unconditionally loved her… just like his namesake. Her little boy was the miniature reminder of her father that she desperately needed in an environment where she felt totally alone. James became her only reason to smile and to be happy, and she soon regarded him as the most amazing thing that had come of her relationship with Jesse. Jesse, however, considered James weak for being a “mama’s boy.” Elizabeth starkly disagreed and felt that James was the only male in the house who was the true definition of a real man, even at the age of two.
At age thirteen, the compassion that his grandfather had passed on to him was still alive within James. On what would be Elizabeth’s last day of life, James was right there by his mother’s side as she lay ailing from a flu that had developed into pneumonia. Elizabeth had not been feeling well the entire week, but she found the strength to push through and do her usual household duties anyway. This particular Sunday, though, she simply could not handle the bug that had taken over her body, and she was unable to get out of bed. This day, however, was an important one. Joseph Parker and his daughter, Mary Jo, were due for a dinner meeting. As always, Jesse expected everything to be perfect prior to their arrival. Being a Sunday, the slaves were legally unable to work unless he paid them, which was something Jesse hated to do. Instead, he expected his wife to handle what the slaves had not taken care of the day before. He expected not one stain on the kitchen floor, not one dirty dish in the sink, not a single speck of dust on any furniture, and for dinner to be laid out immaculately on the table. But three hours before Mary Jo and Joseph were due to arrive, not one of Jesse’s expectations had been met. He got back from picking up some items in town, walked in the house, saw the lack of progress, and completely lost it. “Elizabeth!” he shouted while standing at the bottom of the stairs.
No response.
“ELIZABETH!” he yelled again. “Get y’ur ass down here!”
This time James emerged from their bedroom. He stood meekly at the top of the
stairs and looked down on his father. He could tell by the tone in Jesse’s voice and by the look on his face that an eruption was brewing. He knew to cower in his room during one of his father’s tirades, but this time, James felt he needed to be brave enough to speak up on his mother’s behalf. “M-mama ain’t feelin’ too good, pa. M-maybe I-I should ride ova’ to get Dr. Whitfield.”
Jesse stormed up the stairs and took hold of James’s shirt collar. “You always feelin’ sorry for y’ur damn mama! Ain’t nothin’ so wrong with her that she can’t get ’er ass downstairs and cook dinna’!” He then shoved James so hard that he bumped into the wall. “You must done lost y’ur wits about ya’ if you think I’m ’bout to waste my goddamn money on a doctor just ’cause she’s got the fuckin’ sniffles!”
“B-but Pa…”
Before James could explain that her condition was far worse than a normal cold, Jesse gave him a quick pop shot to the mouth with the back of his hand. It was something he regularly did to keep his boys in line. “Don’t you fuckin’ sass me boy! Now get y’ur ass out to the barn and get some goddamn eggs!”
Oddly enough, Jesse rarely whipped or beat his slaves. He did not have to. His reputation preceded him. He had made an example out of a few in the past and the legacy of his brutality was enough to keep every one of his slaves in line while in his presence … and out of it for that matter. Jesse viewed his slaves as money machines. He needed them healthy and strong. Besides, he felt slaves were too easy a target. They legally had to abide by his rules, and he had the right to punish them however he saw fit for their disobedience. For those reasons, beating and controlling slaves was not enough to give Jesse the high that he craved after such abuse. He much preferred the challenge of gaining mental control over those he had manipulated into loving him.
For twenty years, Jesse had used his wife to exercise his unrelenting need to dominate. He was notorious for his infamous backhand to Elizabeth’s face. He knew to hit her in the thickest part of her cheek, so that it never left a bruise, but always struck her hard enough to stun her into tears. All three boys were often witnesses to the many times their mother’s face had kissed the back of their father’s hand. They were also usually in earshot whenever Jesse was cursing at her. Jacob and J.R. found it amusing. James, however, always felt that he had been slapped or cursed at too. The sight and sound of it was just too painful for a young man as sensitive as he was, especially considering that the target was his beloved mother.
Jesse’s cursing, however, was petty to James compared to the thumping and bumping and heart-wrenching screams coming from his parents’ bedroom late at night. James was often awakened by the sound of his father brutalizing parts of Elizabeth’s body that could be covered by clothing. James covered his ears during the nightly assaults and shut his eyes tight, but it was never enough to drown out the sounds or to stop his tears from escaping. After a while there would be silence. James would be relieved that the brutality was finally over. Unfortunately, he did not know that his father was likely in the midst of choking his mother to near unconsciousness.
Jesse took a great amount of pleasure in having true control over whether his wife lived or died in those moments. He literally had her life in his hands and got a high from watching her teeter on the edge of death. In his sadistic mind, the sight of his wife’s bloodshot eyes and her purple lips were a sexual turn-on for him. It always led him to assault her in the most horrific way any man could ever assault a woman, especially one who was his wife. After turning her neck and his pants loose, Jesse would flip Elizabeth over and drive his erection into an orifice on her body that was never truly meant for entry. Listening to her cry out in utter agony made the experience of stroking inside of his wife even more sexually gratifying to Jesse. His sick, twisted, preferred method of satisfaction answered why they had so few children compared to many other farming families in the south.
Throughout the years of abuse, though, Elizabeth had every bit of freedom to walk away from her horrific circumstances … unlike a slave. That fact was the key element that made all the difference in the rise that Jesse got while he sought to dominate and torture his wife into a submissive shell of a woman. He loved knowing that he did not technically own her, but that he had toyed with her mind, her body, and her emotions enough to make her believe that he did.
On what was to be Elizabeth’s last day alive, her sickly state was not enough to prevent Jesse from treating her like the submissive nobody he had turned her into. After sending James out to the barn for eggs, he flung their bedroom door open and stomped over to where she had lain suffering for nearly a week. “Get y’ur ass outta that goddamn bed! We got company comin’, and you ain’t done shit to get this place ready!” he said, looming over his wife’s weakened body.
Elizabeth was pale, her eyes were sunk in, her lips were dry, and she could not get a word out in response. She preserved that energy and used it to slowly stand up. The moment she made it to her feet, Jesse took the wind out of her with a brutal, closed-fist blow to her stomach. As every bit of oxygen escaped her, she fell back on the bed. While she struggled to catch her breath, her husband straddled her, and proceeded to pound away on her face, like she was a man twice his size.
The business dinner meeting with Joseph Parker that day was about whether their contract would be renewed. When it came to the matter of someone messing with his money, Jesse Adams was like a rabid, hungry beast biting the heads off everyone in his path. Even his sickly wife proved not to be exempt from his predatory attack that fateful day. The thought of a potential loss of money drove Jesse far beyond his typical threshold of violence, causing him to beat his very own wife like he was a man possessed by the devil. Elizabeth had long since stopped moving, yet there Jesse was, straddled on top of her, swinging like he was fending off a pack of wolves. By the time he stopped, he was covered in sweat, and Elizabeth’s face was covered in welts and bruises. She lay there clinging to life, with two eyes that had already swollen shut, and blood seeping from her nose and mouth. Jesse stood up and callously tossed his battered wife back up on her pillow like a rag doll. The sight of her unrecognizable face did not faze him at all. He simply covered her up with a blanket, as if she were a baby he had just lulled back to sleep.
Jesse then stomped out of the room. When he opened his bedroom door, James was standing in the hallway. Jesse just stared at him in silence. The pool of tears waiting in James’s eyes told Jesse that his son had likely heard what had gone on. James tried to look over his father’s shoulder to see his mother, but Jesse quickly closed the door. The waiting tears in James’s eyes careened down his cheek as soon as it slammed shut.
“I-I can cook dinna’ if m-mama ain’t feelin’ well enough to do it,” James bravely told his father.
“Cookin’ and cleanin’ is woman’s work! I ain’t raisin’ you to be no goddamn sissy! Now quit cryin’ like a fuckin’ pussy and get y’ur ass out to the quarta’s and get Lily!”
“B-but today’s Sunday. I thought the slaves weren’t s’pposed to work today.”
Jesse grabbed James by the shirt collar again. “I don’t give a shit what day it is! Now get y’ur ass out there and get ’er ’fore I put my foot up y’ur ass for sassin’ me!”
James trotted down the stairs and quickly went to get Lily. Seeing how red and swollen James’s eyes were, Lily knew immediately that something was horribly wrong. She felt the need to comfort him, but with the matter seeming so urgent, she did not question him for the time being. She just quickly made her way into the house to begin preparing dinner.
While Lily got started cooking, James tried to sneak upstairs to check on his mother, but Jesse snatched him by the hair near the bottom of the steps. “Where the fuck you think you goin’?”
“T-to check on m-mama.”
“I told you ain’t nothin’ wrong with her! She’s always feignin’ sick when she don’t feel like doin’ shit! No go on out to that coop and fetch Lily some more goddamn eggs! We got work to do �
�round here before Joseph and Mary Jo get here! You ain’t got time to be worryin’ ’bout y’ur damn mama!”
James did nothing but worry about his mother that evening, especially after what he thought he had heard through his parents’ bedroom door. All throughout dinner, he stared at the staircase, fighting the urge to go up and check on her. Hours later, when Mary Jo and her father were on the porch saying their goodbyes to Jesse, James finally took the opportunity to make his mother a plate of food. He peeked around the corner to be sure his father was still out on the porch speaking to Joseph. Seeing that he was still distracted, James quickly trotted up the stairs with his mother’s food in hand.
James reached the top of the stairs, stopped, and stared at the doorknob to his parents’ room. The last sounds he had heard from inside of it had been hours earlier, while he stood in that exact same spot listening to his father pound away at his mother. Since then, he had not heard a single creak in the floorboards, footsteps, or the sound of his mother’s deep-chested coughing, like the few days before that. As he stood outside the door listening now, he still heard nothing.
With an erratic heartbeat and quivering hands, James turned the knob and nervously entered his mother’s room. “Mama?” he called out as he lingered in the doorway.
Silence.
“Mama, I brought you some food,” he said, taking slow steps toward where she was lying.
No response.
“Mama?”
Silence.
James finally reached the side of her bed, looked down at his mother, and immediately dropped the plate he was holding, shattering it next to his feet.
In the hours before her son stood there looking at her, Elizabeth regained consciousness surrounded by darkness. She could not open her eyes and had no recollection of why they were swollen shut. She was afraid, alone, and helplessly locked in the dark. She needed her light. She needed the one male in the house she had deemed as a true man. She needed James. She needed him to cuddle up with her in her final hours. She needed him to help her forget about her pain and her fears. She wanted to feel courageous and brave, the way she always did when he was around. She needed the one person left in her life who gave her a reason to live. She needed her little man to lie there beside her, just as he always did when she was suffering. For the sake of her beloved son, she did not want to die. Worst yet, she did not want to die alone, afraid, and helplessly locked in the dark.