by Mark Anthony
My father’s girlfriend hugged me and rubbed my face.
“Baby, what happened?” my father asked me.
“Sir, I understand you’re concerned, but please just let us finish examining her and you’ll be able to talk to her,” the doctor said very compassionately but very firm.
My father and his girlfriend were asked to wait out in the hallway while the doctor and the nurses finished examining me.
The tears that I had mustered up for dramatic effect had ceased rolling from my eyes. I laid there and continued to be examined. While laying there I realized that I had to keep lying and that I couldn’t tell anyone what had really happened to me because how would I explain the fact that I was in a strip club tending bar at seventeen years old? I also knew that I would have to get in touch with Tara as soon as possible and have her play along with my Times Square story.
The media got ahold of this whole rape that had happened to me, and while the doctors and the cops had assured me that no one would be allowed to leak my name to the public, even with my anonymity I still wondered just how long I would be able to keep the lie going about what had really happened to me?
Since I was young I had been used to lying to cover up misdeeds and shit that I had no business being involved in. Even though I had been brutally raped and there was now this big spotlight that was gonna be shined on me, I didn’t care. I was gonna keep lying for as long as I had to in order to cover my ass.
The Times Square thing was the story that I had come up with and that was the story that I was gonna be sticking to ’till the end.
Chapter Sixteen
No Love Like A Father’s Love
As soon as I was discharged from the hospital I had two uniformed police officers waiting to escort me and my father down to the police precinct to look at mug shots. His girlfriend followed behind us in my father’s car.
I was feeling horrible and with three of my top front teeth missing I looked like a hot mess. The only thing I wanted to do was see a dentist as soon as possible so I could replace my lost teeth.
On the way to the precinct as we sat in the back of the patrol car, I couldn’t believe that my father had actually put his arm around me, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, stroked my hair, and told me that he loved me.
His signs of affection had shocked the hell out of me, but what was more shocking was that it really seemed genuine. It had taken a brutal rape for me to finally get that type of attention from him, but I was just glad to be getting it and it made me feel really good.
When we arrived at the precinct I was still wearing hospital-issued garb and slippers along with a thin jacket that my father’s girlfriend had let me borrow. My clothes had to be held as evidence and sent down to the police crime lab.
Anyway, at the precinct I was met by two different New York City detectives, both of whom were men. I was also met by a female prosecutor from the district attorney’s office as well as a male investigator from the district attorney’s office.
Along with my father and his girlfriend—who everyone took as my mom—we all went into a room. The new detectives, the investigator and the prosecutor all took turns asking me basically the same questions that the female detectives had asked me earlier when I was at the hospital.
I answered all of their questions and I made sure that I was consistent with what I had said earlier to the other detectives at the hospital. The only time that I appeared to get flustered was when they would press me on information about Tara. They couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a phone number for her or an address for her.
“I have her number programmed into my cordless phone at home. I just press one button and it dials her, so I never actually dial her number. That’s why I don’t know it off the top of my head,” I lied.
“But what about where she lives? A last name, maybe?” the detectives pressed me.
“She lives all the way in Queens and I live in Brooklyn. That’s too far to be traveling so usually what we do is we meet up at wherever we’re going out to. Like that night we met up at the movie theater on Forty-second Street in Times Square.”
Everyone in the room looked at each other without saying anything, then the prosecutor suggested that we look at some mug shots to see if I could see anyone who looked familiar.
“Mr. Coleman, I know it has been an extremely long and difficult day for both you and your daughter, but we just want her to look at these photos while things are still fresh in her mind. After this she is free to go and we’ll follow up tomorrow,” the prosecutor said as my father nodded his head.
For about a half an hour I looked through book after book of mug shots and none of the faces looked familiar. Finally when I was combing through what had to have been the tenth book of mug shots I did see a face that looked similar to the older guy that assaulted me.
“I think this is him,” I said out loud.
Everyone in the room scrambled and hovered over me and around me to get a better look at the photo.
“That motherfucker! I’ll kill his ass!” my father shouted in anger.
“Mr. Coleman,” the prosecutor said in a stern voice.
My father apologized but he kept a look on his face that said he wanted to kill.
“Now, Shayla, are you sure? Look again real closely,” the detectives said to me.
I studied the picture for another thirty seconds or so and I was certain that it was the guy.
“I can tell by his eyes and that same rough-looking, thin grayish beard,” I said.
“Beautiful,” the investigator from the district attorney’s office replied.
The detectives said that they would get to work on it right away.
At that point I was more than ready to get the hell out of there so I could make contact with Tara and also have my father make arrangements for me to see a damn dentist.
Everyone milled about for a few more minutes and the prosecutor made small talk with my father. Then thankfully we were ready to go.
“Shayla, it’s very important that you have Tara call us as soon as you make contact with her,” the investigator from the district attorney’s office said.
I assured him that I would.
“Try to get some rest and I promise you we’re gonna get the people who did this to you,” the prosecutor said to me as she hugged me.
My father let his girlfriend drive home and he sat in the backseat with me. For the first time in my life I saw tears fall out of my father’s eyes. He hadn’t even cried at my mother’s funeral, yet he was crying as we drove home.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” I said as I couldn’t believe how it melted me to see my dad in tears.
“I just feel like I failed you,” my father said to me. “Shit like this ain’t supposed to happen. I’m supposed to be there to protect you,” my father screamed as he banged his fist against the headrest that was in front of him.
I hugged my father and I told him that it wasn’t his fault and that I would be okay.
There was this moment of eerie silence as I just held on to my father like I was holding on for dear life. I could actually feel his chest rising and falling as we hugged each other. I had never been that close to him and I didn’t want to let go. I actually felt like a little school-age girl at that moment.
“I’m not crying, so you don’t need to shed no tears,” I reassured my dad while his girlfriend kept quiet and maneuvered her way across the Brooklyn Bridge.
“You don’t understand, Shayla,” my father said as he shook his head and looked at me in the face with teary eyes. “I just feel like I failed you.”
I pulled back slightly from my father and I looked in his eyes. It was like I could see into his soul at that moment and I could see what his spirit was saying. I could just tell that he wished he had been there to protect me from the people that assaulted me, but I also knew that his words held much deeper meaning.
For the first time I felt like my father wasn’t completely clueless to how I had been livi
ng. Now there was no way in hell that he knew everything, but I think he had to know that I had some whorish tendencies. I think that at that moment he was admitting his responsibility and guilt for some of my promiscuity. Although he didn’t say it verbally I knew that he knew it was ultimately my promiscuity that had put me in the position that I was in.
Inside, I just wanted to let out the biggest sigh of relief because it felt so good that my father actually cared about me. He actually cared enough to cry.
Funny thing was that when I saw him crying it actually made me feel guilty. It’s hard to explain why, but I just felt guilty and so I decided to focus on something different.
“Daddy, the only thing you should be crying about is my teeth! Look at me. I look like Mike Tyson got ahold of me or something,” I said as I shook my head.
My father clenched his teeth with anger. He pulled me close to him and told me not to worry. He promised me that he would make sure that he hooked me up with a good dentist and that I would be looking as good as new in about a week.
“Okay,” I said as I nestled my head into my daddy’s chest and snuggled up next to him for the rest of the ride home.
Chapter Seventeen
Get Your Lies Straight
It had taken me all night to finally get ahold of Tara. From the moment that I walked in my house I had been repeatedly calling her crib trying to get ahold of her but her phone just kept ringing out to voice mail. Finally at around ten o’clock that Sunday night I managed to get ahold of her.
“Tara, where you been?”
“Excuse me?” Tara replied.
“I been calling you forever and you ain’t been picking up your phone.”
“Shayla? You sound different.”
“Yo listen, I sound like this because I got into a situation last night when I left the club,” I said, trying not to talk too loud so that my father wouldn’t overhear me.
“Yeah, what happened to you? I looked around one minute and saw you and the next minute you was gone. What kinda situation you talking about?”
I got up from off of my bed and closed my bedroom door to give myself some more privacy.
“Last night when I left the club these dudes that I had been flirting with, they see me as I’m getting ready to get into my car, and they snatched my ass up, beat the shit outta me, and raped me.”
“Shayla, I know you bullshitting, right?”
“No. I’m dead serious. The reason I sound different is because my front teeth got knocked the fuck out and all of that.”
“Oh my God! Shayla, why didn’t you wait for me last night and why are you just calling me now? I can’t believe what you telling me. Girl, don’t you know we don’t never leave the club alone? I don’t care if you was just bartending. You know the rules.”
“Tara, I know, I know. But listen, this is the thing, now I gotta talk low and I gotta talk quick because I don’t want my father to hear what I’m saying, so I’m gonna need you to just follow me. A’ight?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Now this is the thing. There was two dudes, and one of the dudes had already paid me three hundred dollars when we was in the club. I had told him that I would get with him and his boy. Then I just changed my mind—I mean, you know what I told you about how my moms had came to me in the dream and all of that. Well, that was playing in the back of my mind so I was like, nah, I can’t do this. So instead of giving the money back, I just bounced up outta the spot with their dough, and the thing was I wasn’t trying to get over on them or anything like that. It’s just that I got scared and my mind was bugging out so I just bounced.”
“Okay, I gotchu so far, keep going,” Tara said tome.
“So I make it to my car but before I could get in and pull off the same two dudes from the club pull up alongside of me and they heated because I just bounced on them. So before you know it I’m in they truck getting my ass beat and raped!” I blew out some air from my lungs and shook my head.
“Shayla, you ain’t bullshitting about this, are you?”
“Girl, I’m dead-ass serious! But now this is the thing. I told the cops a whole other story. Tara, you know I wasn’t suppose to be working up in the club that night so I couldn’t tell them about that. I gave them this story about how me and you went to the movies in Times Square and—”
“Me and you? Shayla, you put my name in this?”
“Tara, I had to.”
“Yo, Shayla, that is some serious shit. What the hell?”
“Tara, just listen.”
I went on to tell Tara exactly what I had told the detectives and I begged for her to go along with my story. She was very reluctant because she feared that she would get locked up if it were ever proven that she was lying.
“Tara, trust me on this.”
“Shayla, you my girl and all, but I ain’t trying to go to jail for yo ass.”
I sighed into the phone and tried to figure out just what the hell to say in order to convince Tara to go along with my story.
“Tara, the cops is pressing me for your info. Girl, you gotta back me on this.”
Tara blew a lot of air into the phone but she didn’t say anything.
“Okay, look. Remember the money that I told you I was gonna be getting when I turned eighteen? Listen, if you back me on this I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll give you fifteen thousand dollars cash straight up no chaser.”
“What?”
“Yes, fifteen thousand dollars cash. Tara, come on! I need you to do this for me.”
Tara was silent for about a minute or so. I also kept silent, waiting for her response.
She finally broke the silence and said, “Shayla, word is bond, I’ll do this but if you don’t come through with that bread I’m fucking snitching on you to save my ass. I’m just being straight real and upfront witchu. I mean, I love you and all but I ain’t trying to risk going to jail for you and not get nothing out of it in the process.”
“No. Tara, I got you, don’t worry about that. As soon as I get my money I’ll hit you off. You got my word on that.”
Tara continued to have some reservations, but I made sure that she was straight on every aspect of the story and what we would say so not to contradict one another. I even gave her detailed descriptions of the two men who had raped me and we repeatedly went over their descriptions. The main thing that we had to get down was what had happened to her that allowed her to not be accosted when I was and if she had managed to get away, then why didn’t she call the cops on my behalf?
“All you gotta say is that we both were trying to fight them off and get them to stop harassing us. You managed to break free and you ran and just kept running until you were able to get into a yellow cab. You didn’t call the cops because you were safe at that point and you weren’t sure as to what had happened to me. You assumed that I had managed to break free and run to safety as well.”
Tara sighed into the phone after I had finished talking.
“And just tell them you repeatedly called my crib and you didn’t reach me, but you didn’t go to the cops because you continued to assume that I was okay.”
“Shayla, I don’t know if that’s gonna cut it. They’re gonna see right through that shit. What if I don’t pick the guy out in the mug shots like you did? Then what?”
“That’s the thing, you don’t have to pick anybody out. Look through all of the books and just say that you don’t recognize anybody from the photos.”
Tara was still reluctant but she was my girl so she decided to go through with it. When I hung up the phone with her I immediately went to my father and told him that I had just spoken to her and that she was okay and had not been hurt. I then suggested that he call the precinct and relay the info about Tara as far as her phone number, address, and all of that.
I was doing the best I could to cover my tracks and hoping like hell that me and Tara had our lies straight because if we didn’t, I would surely be exposed as just some lying-ass underage ho who had tri
ed to get over on some dude only to have my scam backfire on me.
Chapter Eighteen
Reasonable Doubt
A little more than a week had passed since I had been raped. During that time a whole lot had taken place. For starters, I had made it to a cosmetic dentist and got my teeth fixed, so my appearance was tight and back up to par. I had also turned eighteen years old. Three days after I’d turned eighteen I received a check for 250,000 dollars which was due to me from my mom’s life insurance policy.
As for my rape case, the detectives and the district attorney had repeatedly questioned Tara as to what had happened that night. Although Tara and I had rehearsed our story as well as we could, a whole lot of doubts were being raised and cast upon the credibility of my allegations.
Behind the scenes, the cops and the district attorney were putting all kinds of pressure on me and Tara. Thankfully, my father was there ridin’ with me the whole time and because of his presence he didn’t allow the cops and their questioning to spook me. At the same time I could sense that even my father was starting to doubt what I had alleged.
On one particular occasion they had separated Tara and myself. They questioned us and had us recount for them everything that had transpired on the night of the rape. Then they brought us into a room together and questioned us some more to see if our stories were still lining up.
“Shayla and Tara, here’s the deal. We want to believe everything that you two are telling us but at the same time you two have got to be straight-up with us. We have a man that we are ready to move on and bring into this station for questioning but before we do that you two gotta tell us what really went down that night,” the female detective who had originally taken my story at the hospital said to me as she paced back and forth in a small closed-door room that we were in.
“Detective Pelonis, we told you what went down. Why would we lie about that? You seen how messed-up my face looked. The doctors confirmed that I was raped. So what else is there to say?” I vented to her.
The detective sat down and pulled her chair next to Tara and me. “Look. I’m not trying to come across harsh or anything like that and I sympathize with what happened to you two that night. But what I’m saying is that there are a few holes in what you two have been telling me and we need to clear them up.”