Unbelievably, my mother called my father despite the late hour and their contentious relationship. I had no idea she even had his phone number. I stood in the hallway and did my best to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“Dell,” my mother said sternly, “she needs a place to go and you are her goddamn father for Christ sakes. For once, do something to help your daughter.”
Things moved very quickly from that point on. It was decided, without any input from me, I would go immediately to live with my father. Since I was only seventeen, baby or not, it seemed I had no choice in the matter.
Sweetheart Rapist - a Family Man
He was dubbed “The Sweetheart Rapist” by the media because the couples he attacked were in areas known for lover’s. The man secretly savored the name but he had a family now and was under a lot of pressure. He loved them, but his demon thumped and rubbed beneath the surface and he felt he had no control. He felt weak. He had to go and take back his power and he knew just how to do it.
The couple walked hand in hand in the dark toward their car. It was late but they’d wanted privacy and the caves were off the beaten track and known for lovers. They could fool around and be intimate there without being seen.
The boyfriend dug in his pocket and retrieved his keys, when a man came out of the dark. He was wearing a ski mask and wielding a gun. “Give me your keys,” The man said, holding the gun inches from his head. The man forced the boyfriend into the trunk of the car.
“Get in and shut the fuck up.”
The masked man secured the trunk’s latch so he couldn’t escape.
“Get in the backseat and lie face down.” He directed the woman. Shaking and numb, she followed directions. Warm, stretchy fabric was pulled over her head. “Oh no, please don’t,” she begged.
The boyfriend lay cramped and sweating in the trunk. Fumes of oily grit filled his airway and soiled his thin t-shirt. He fumbled in the dark, searching for a weapon. He ground his teeth and imagined killing the man with his bare hands, when he got out of this suffocating trunk. He kicked violently with all his might and screamed, “Let me out you cowardly mother fucker! I’m gonna kill you!”
He felt helpless as he heard the whimpers from the woman he loved, being raped with only sheet metal between them, Oh god, please, let me out so I can kill him. He prayed, as tears of helpless rage rained down his face.
The Sweetheart rapist took his time and raped the woman repeatedly in the backseat of the car. Afterwards he said, “Give me your driver’s license."
The woman was in shock and moved like a puppet on strings. She retrieved her purse with stone hands. She’d disappeared somewhere inside of herself and escaped from the man and his vile breath. The man studied her identification and handed it back.
“I’ll come and get you if you tell,” the man said. “I know your name and I know where you live.”
But the woman didn’t hear him. She listened in her mind as her mother held her and sang a lullaby.
The woman came home late and found the house completely dark and quiet. She struggled through the doorway, her arms full of groceries. Something felt wrong. Her eyes searched the darkened room. She fumbled with the light switch as unreasonable fear rushed through her. What’s the matter with me? “Hey, honey, are you home?” she called. She walked to the living room, shrouded in darkness. Her blood pounded in her temples. Dread forced a hard jolt in her chest, like an electric shock. “Are you here?” She called again, her voice quivering.
Something was in the middle of the room. Someone was there. Terror lodged itself like a swollen bean in her throat. She reached with quaking hands and turned the lamp on nearly knocking it to the floor.
“Oh Christ, oh my god,” she breathed. “What are you doing sitting here in the dark? What happened?”
Her body tingled and she felt the weight of something dark and putrid hang in the air. The man smiled and said, “Nothing. Where have you been?”
Chapter 8
I’d had no contact with my father since age twelve when he’d delivered me and Maggie on our mother’s doorstep. Anxiety settled in my stomach, and I looked for the light-body but could not detect its presence. I’d come to rely on it as a sign that things would be alright. I wondered if it had abandoned me.
We were running from Aaron and his hateful attempt to harm us. Raine needed to be protected.
Hot, slippery tears stormed down my cheeks as I packed our belongings in a shiny, silver, foot locker. Its tomb-like smell ballooned in the room as I threw back the lid releasing the decaying odor. I kept my head bowed while my mother talked.
“You’re leaving in an hour. You’ll be taken to your father’s in Louisiana,” my mother said, as she folded Raine’s onesies and placed them in a neat, precise pile.
“Isla’s boyfriend has a stepfather who owns a small plane and is willing to fly you and Raine tonight. You can’t stay here, Nita. That scum bag will kill you and then I will have to have him put down, like the animal he is and spend the rest of my life in prison.”
“When did Dad move to Louisiana?” I asked in a voice heavy with gloom.
“I’m not sure, but he divorced Milda and is remarried to some other lucky woman. She has a couple of boys, just what your father has always wanted.”
I nodded. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but the new information snaked through my body with a buzz. What happened to Milda and her son Dickey and who was he married to now? The questions fired in my mind but I didn’t ask them. I would find out soon enough. Sucking in air, I continued to pack our things. Raine slept peacefully through the entire ordeal.
“Is she ready?” came a man’s voice from the living room.
I raised my forearm and wiped my snotty nose, grabbed an overstuffed diaper bag and slung it over my shoulder. I scooped up my sleeping son and walked numbly down the darkened hallway.
Stepping from the small plane, hot, putrid, air that was Louisiana rose up in greeting drenching my body in sweat. Oh great. Humidity, that’s just fantastic. In the distance, I saw my father next to a pickup truck near a small hangar where he’d parked. He hurried toward the small two engine plane and shouted, “Well h-e-l-l-o youngin.”
He reached out and laid his hand on my head and gently squeezed it. I held Raine protectively creating an instant barrier. “Go on and get in the truck,” he continued, “I’ll be there shortly.”
The truck sat idling, blasting cold air into the cab. I heard my father’s voice as he loaded our trunk onto its back bed, “I sure do thank y’all now. Y’all take care’n have a safe flight back on home,” he chuckled.
My father looked the same, stocky with blond hair and blue eyes his face clean shaven. He exuded a confident and a masculine air. I still believed he could do anything. Words escaped me so we drove in paralyzing silence for the first hour until my father finally spoke.
“So, you gone tell me what-in-the-hell-happened?” He glared, zapping me with laser-like reprimand. His lips were thin and tight, reminding me of a turtle.
Those are Maggie’s lips. I thought. “Mom thinks Aaron tried to set her house on fire.” I said.
“Well, did he? Is that the son bitch who’s this boy’s daddy? I ain’t heard nothing good ‘bout him from nobody.”
Fuck you. You think you know everything. Who have you been talking to? I thought to myself.
My father reached for his cigarette pack on the dashboard and lit a new one from the one he was smoking. Smoke hung like napalm around our heads. He threw the lit butt out the window with an angry flick of his fingers. Judgment glowed on his face like a hot ember.
“He’s not that bad, and we don’t know for sure if he did it or not,” I said defensively.
“Didn’t he just try to kill you, Nita? In a car the week
before last or was your mother ly-in to me? Ain’t that enough? When you gone believe?”
“Yeah.” I said exhausted, looking away and staring out the window as the road rushed by.What does he know? He hasn’t even met Aaron, I thought as I dozed off.
I awoke with a start to the sound of shells crunching loudly under the truck’s tires. A dingy white clapboard house, sat perched atop sturdy gray cinder blocks, unadorned and dismal. At some distance beyond it I saw a bright orange glow reflected off the water from the sunrise.
The tiny house looked desolate and isolated surrounded only by a chain link fence and tiny broken shells. The repugnant smell of rotting fish accosted my airway and disillusionment throbbed within me. This can’t be where he lives, I thought. Oh please, God, it can’t be.
“Go on in. The doors ain’t locked,” my father grunted lifting our trunk over the tailgate.
Yeah, because who would steal from this shit hole. How can you live here? I thought belligerently as I opened the door.
The floor was covered in shabby, faded, linoleum tiles, the distinct odor of fried fish saturated the humid air inside. My heart sank at the squalor. The living area opened to a drab kitchen. The sink was filled with dirty dishes and on the counter sat a deep-fat-fryer with an abandoned wire mesh basket, lying on its side over grease-soaked paper towels. In the hallway stood a tall woman with strawberry, blonde hair and on the couch, two boys sat at opposite ends.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi there. Y’all must be tired.” She replied slowly. “I’m Della’ Rae and this here is Harry and Neil, my boys.”
She talked like she was on vacation with no reason to string her words together quickly. Della’Rae was pretty. She was tall and lean with blue eyes and an easy smile. Harry, the oldest boy, had longish, dirty blond hair, blue eyes with sculpted, masculine features. He was very handsome and only slightly younger than me. Neil, the younger, brother, had the same color hair as his mom and was two years younger than his brother. Neither boy spoke. I felt an instant connection with Harry, which helped me relax and not feel so out of place. The new sleeping quarters for Raine and I would be on the fold-out couch in the front room. The first few days were awkward for me and my hostile, adolescent attitude was in full bloom.
I was told that my father owned a tug boat business. I couldn’t understand why he would live in a shabby, little house on cinder blocks at what felt like poverty central, at the edge of the earth. It was depressing and bleak. My mother had no money and we frequently were on welfare, but we never lived like this.
Harry and I bonded right away. We sat on the steps in front of the house later that day, commiserating.
“Want a cigarette?” he offered.
“Definitely, thanks,” I said. “Harry, what is that disgusting smell?” I asked wrinkling my nose.
“Oh, it’s the Pouge plant next door. Little fuckin fish made into cat food and shit. Fuckin, stinks don’t it?”
“It is the most disgusting smell ever. I don’t know how you live here.”
“Yeah, well neither do I. It sure ain’t my choice. So, yurr Dell’s daughter huh? He don’t never talk about y’all. He’s just an asshole most of the time.”
“Really? What’s he do? I asked blowing smoke.
“Oh, he’s just on my ass, day and night. I work with him on the boat. Bout the only thing I can say is, he works hard, he ain’t no slouch. But that’s it. That’s all he’s good for.” He chuckled then and glanced at me and smiled, lighting his handsome face and said, “Otherwise he’s an asshole.”
“Wow, that’s too bad,” I replied. I’m not sure why, but hearing that about my father, surprised and disturbed me.
I liked Della’Rae, who was easy-going and kind. She helped me with Raine, and genuinely enjoyed having him there. That first day, she’d reached out her arms and wiggled her fingers cooing, “Can I take ‘im? Oh he’s so precious, aren’t you, sweet boy.”
She snuggled in close breathing in the scent of my son, placed him on her hip and said, “You wanna come with Della’Rae and see sumthin fun? C’mon. I’ll show you sumthin.” And she sashayed down the hall disappearing into her bedroom.
I turned eighteen the month after I’d arrived, the legal drinking age so, I got a job as a cocktail waitress. I didn’t consume alcohol - I hated it – but serving it was lucrative. My father knew the owners of an upscale restaurant in town and arranged an interview for me. I was hired and started working most nights.
Della’Rae babysat temporarily, but my father pressured me to make other permanent childcare arrangements. It was tense between us. He didn’t know how to be a father and I didn’t know how to be a daughter.
I didn’t cook or clean what I considered to be a “shit hole.” I rarely made my bed on the fold- out couch and I only added to Della’Rae’s laundry. I never offered to help and I was oblivious to anyone’s needs except my own.
I had a bad attitude and no respect. I didn’t know that I should wrap soiled diapers in a plastic bag, before discarding them. I simply threw them in the trash, which I didn’t empty. No one said a word to me about my habits until my father got fed up and exploded one morning out of nowhere.
“This house smells like baby shit!” He screamed. “It’s a stinking outhouse in here! You just throw them dirty diapers in the trash for all of us to smell! Are you a goddamned pig?”
“What do you want me to do with the fucking diapers?!” I screamed back.
He slapped me across my face, knocking me backwards and jumped on me pinning me to the unmade bed of the fold-out couch.
“You better clean up your filthy mouth, little girl. You don’t swear in my house, you hear me?”
“Fuck you!” I yelled, “This house is a pigsty, a shit hole. How can I possibly make it worse?”
He held me down and we struggled until Della’Rae yelled, “Stop it, Dell, that’s enough now. Get off her!”
“You better pack your shit and find somewhere else to go! We have had enough of your ungrateful attitude!” he roared.
My father watched me gather our few meager belongings, pushed a wad of cash in my hands and dropped Raine and I in the back of the restaurant where I worked. It wasn’t even noon, as I stood defiant and full of anger, flipping my father the bird, as he drove off leaving us in an empty parking lot with nowhere to go.
We moved in that afternoon with Lana, a waitress who worked with me. She’d lost her mother only months before, leaving her alone with two siblings. I never found out where her father was. The three siblings lived together in the family home but their lives were in turmoil. Lana’s younger brother was in middle school, her older sister, in her first year of college and Lana, had just graduated from high school. The house was only two blocks from the restaurant so we could walk to and from work.
I felt their mother’s presence in the house constantly and occasionally, she talked to me. I heard her in the same manner that I heard the voice.
“Things are a struggle for them, I know. I know they’re sad and lonely. Lana is the strong one though, and she’ll see to her brother and sister, she was always the most level headed.” she told me.
Lana told me her mom died of breast cancer and I felt the struggle of their lives before her death.
A picture in my mind showed me a woman, frail and bony lying in bed. I could smell her death as she lay helpless, slipping away. Sadness and disbelief floated in the air between her children as they waited for the inevitable.
I would catch glimpses of her standing in the kitchen, watching, or walking through a room. It seemed she was everywhere.
I knew Lana’s older sister would drop out of college and her little brother would lose his way too, drowning in grief with nowhere to turn. Loss was a living thing in their house, which wei
ghed heavily on me. I had no idea what to do when I heard or saw their mother, so I told myself I was imagining things and stayed silent.
Out of the blue, my father called me at work a month later. “I got y’all a trailer down on the Bayou across from the Les Bonton Roulet. It has furniture and some food to get y’all started. The keys for it are at the bar. Ask for Annie, she’ll give um to ya. You can pay me the rent next month.”
“Ok, Dad, thanks.” I said surprised. “I’ll check it out after work.”
Neither of us apologized or mentioned our fight.
Though I was grateful for Lana’s kindness, I couldn’t breathe in a house filled with so much pain. I moved into the trailer alone with Raine. My father and I had little contact except at the end of the month when I paid him my rent. We never engaged in conversation.
I was lonely and isolated with no phone, TV or neighbors. Across the street from our trailer was a bar and literally nothing else for miles. Harry was my only visitor, but being sixteen, he had little time to come and see me. We’d become friends and allies and genuinely liked one another.
“When you go back to California, I’m comin too. Soon as I turn eighteen, we’ll go together. We can share an apartment. I always wanted to see California,” Harry said.
“Okay,” I agreed. “When you turn eighteen. The girls will love you there. You look like a surfer boy.”
After a few months, plagued with loneliness, I moved again, this time into a small apartment in town. I spent two years in Louisiana spiraling out of control. I didn’t know how to take care of myself let alone my son.
I quickly discovered that I could earn more money bartending than cocktailing. Although I had no experience, I was determined to secure a bartending job. I lied about my past experience and landed a job at Pat O’ Brien’s, in New Orleans, a popular nightspot and home of the famous, “Hurricane.” The head bartender knew in minutes that I had no experience but instead of ratting me out, she took me under her wing and trained me.
The Knowing: Awake in the Dark Page 11