John spent two weeks in the hospital. The doctors said the knife missed his heart by only an inch. When John was released from the hospital, he came looking for Rhonda. He stood outside their window and yelled up at her. He called her every filthy name he could think of, and he yelled it at the top of his lungs.
When you make up your mind to take a stand, forces from out of nowhere will appear to support you. On the second night of John’s verbal abuse, an angel appeared in the form of Mr. Johnson, Rhonda’s next-door neighbor. In all the time she’d lived there, she and Mr. Johnson had barely spoken two words, but he was always cordial when they passed in the hallway. Mr. Johnson left his apartment, went down the stairs and outside to the street, where John was standing beneath Rhonda’s window, screaming obscenities at her. Mr. Johnson pulled a gun from his coat and put the muzzle to John’s head.
“I don’t know your wife very well, but every time I see her, she’s pleasant. The children are always clean and well behaved, and she don’t seem to bother nobody.” John held perfectly still. “You, on the other hand, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, are a disgrace to the race. So I’ll tell you what—if I ever see you around here again bothering that woman or her children, I’m gonna blow your f———g head off.”
With that, Mr. Johnson put his gun back inside his coat and went inside, out of the cold.
CHAPTER TWELVE
What’s the Lesson When You Begin to Recognize Yourself as Who You Really Are?
Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you to look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind.
A Course in Miracles
SATURDAY AFTERNOON TEA with my husband is always nice. Today it was especially nurturing and comforting. I thanked him and told him what a blessing he is in my life, then let him get back to his television program. I headed for the showers.
The hot, pulsating water of the shower beating on my back was exquisite. Hot water and black-walnut soap will wash away the shadows that haunt you. I could feel the memories being washed away as I recited the lessons in my mind. If you stay too long in pain, you will get S.O.S. Stuck on Stupid. I chuckled to myself. Rhonda had been stuck on stupid for a long time. It wasn’t that she was stupid. But the dull ache from the constant pain of her life had rendered her senseless. She had no sense of herself or the power she had to move her life in another direction.
When you stay too long in a place where you do not belong, patterns of pain become etched in your mind. Rhonda had stayed much too long with John. And it had taken her much too long to find the strength, discipline, and courage she needed to get herself together. Discipline comes from doing the very thing you keep praying for the discipline to do. I stood still in the shower and let the soothing, cleansing water wash away the nine years Rhonda had spent in and out of stupidity with John. She had done it. Left him. Refused to speak to him. Refused to be abused or self-abusive. Her friend Ruth had taken her in. Her friend Roseanne helped her with the kids. Her friends Linda and Lorraine supported her and each other, held on to each other, and cried together as things got increasingly better. In the end, it was working two jobs that proved to Rhonda that she could take care of herself and her children.
Taking the soap in my hands, I gently massaged away the years of abuse and neglect Rhonda had experienced at the hands of so many people, including herself. I made a nice lather over the fear, avoidance, and denial. I turned the water up full blast and washed away the suds. Ugliness and unworthiness went down the drain. When I felt clean all over, I started dancing and singing in the shower. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child …” “Momma said there’d be days like this …” “I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me …” “You’ve got to give a little, take a little …” “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around …” “I am woman, hear me roar!”
“It sounds like you’re having a good time.” My husband peeked over the top of the shower door. “Are you taking calls?”
“Who’s that calling on my phone?” It was a jingle I had made up to the tune of “Who’s that knocking at my door.”
“It’s Karen.” Fear shot through my body like a torpedo.
“No. Tell her I’m in the shower,” I whispered.
“I told her that.”
“So tell her again. Tell her I’ll call her back.”
There are some things that black-walnut soap and hot water cannot wash away. With Karen, I had stayed too long in a relationship where I did not feel nurtured, comforted, or supported. It had reinforced the patterns of feeling worthless and helpless. Somehow, I had allowed myself to believe that I was a victim. I had told myself that I was powerless to stop people who overstepped their boundaries in my life. I thought about Rhonda’s next three years. Years of loneliness. Years of isolation. Years when she wasn’t sure, but she kept on moving. Years when she wore a hard shell to cover her bruised and battered soul. Years of working, not working, looking for work, not finding work. Three long years of insecurity and instability. I lathered myself up again and let the water wash those years away.
Then it hit me. Some people don’t know how, and others never think about going back and cleaning up their crap. Most people want to start today and feel better tomorrow. They want to take a yoga class, listen to a meditation tape, rub a crystal on their head, and believe they have fixed their lives and healed their souls. You cannot create a new way of being in one day. You must take your time remembering, cleaning up, and gaining strength. If you push yourself too fast, before gaining the strength you need to go in a new direction, you are going to fall and bump your head. I was not ready to talk to Karen. I had not yet figured out why I had stayed so long in a relationship that did not nurture me. And I still had to figure out why I was afraid to fire her. In order to do that, I needed to remember what happened to Rhonda when she got strong and moved forward into new challenges. How we deal with new challenges is always a reflection of how well we have healed.
I had the urge to take a nap. Don’t go to sleep on the job. Rest, do not sleep. I would rest in my prayer room. It was the only room in the house that the dog knew she was not allowed to enter. I dried off and wrapped a large bath towel around myself and went into the prayer room. I sat down in my favorite chair, pulling a blanket up to my chin. I began to pray so that I could remember just a little more. Delight thyself in the ways of the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart … Dear God, it is my desire to know You and serve You. It is my desire to acknowledge You in all that I do. It is my desire that Your will be done in my life and through my life. It is my desire to be a light, Your light unto the world. Please show me those things about myself that are no longer pleasing in Your sight. And when they are known to me, I ask You to please take them away so that I may be all that You have created me to be.
Rhonda had prayed for guidance. She had stopped working nights, because the children were getting into too much trouble when she was away. They would do their homework, but they also had friends over in their mother’s absence. Baby-sitters were often hard to come by. The good ones were always busy, and the not-so-good ones ate too much. She held onto her welfare benefits just for times like this when she needed to be home more. But that meant going to the welfare office.
It was a dismal, nasty place, where people got paid to find ways to treat other people like animals. Rhonda always showed up on time. She wore the same outfit she always wore when she went to be recertified for benefits: cheap jeans, a white sweatshirt, and sneakers. She always had the required papers with her, and that helped to make the trip a little more bearable. Not pleasant, but bearable.
There was a big commotion going on in the welfare office when Rhonda arrived. A client was cursing, a caseworker was screaming. Everyone was watching and waiting for someone to throw the first punch. Rhonda sat down next to the two women who were arguing. Several more people got inv
olved in the controversy, including the woman Rhonda was scheduled to see. As she watched, she vowed to herself that she would find a job, or perhaps go back to school. But she would not spend the rest of her life coming in and out of places like this.
A caseworker in the middle of the room began shouting at a client, “All of you welfare mothers are just alike. Someone should take you all, put you on your knees, blindfold you, and shoot you! What you do to your children is criminal. You should all be shot!”
“I wonder if she thinks she’s talking about me?” Rhonda thought aloud. “I am not a ‘welfare mother’! I’m outta here!” Rhonda didn’t wait to see her caseworker. She gathered her papers and left. She talked to herself all the way to the bus stop. “I’m outta here! That’s it. I’m done. When they start talking about shooting people, shooting poor people, I’m gone!” She boarded the bus. She was furious. “How dare she! She must be related to Grandma, talking to people like that!” Rhonda thought how tenuous the temporary-job market was, and fear crept into her voice. “How am I going to feed my children, pay my rent, buy shoes!” Realizing that she was talking out loud, Rhonda looked around the bus at the people who were now staring at her. That’s when she saw the advertisement: If you are ready to change your life, come to Medgar Evers College. Rhonda got off the bus at the next stop and transferred to the bus that would take her to the campus. Twenty minutes later she was standing in the admissions office of Medgar Evers College, filling out an application.
Rhonda discovered that she was not at all stupid. After taking the placement test, she was told that she did not need to take remedial classes. There was an angel in the financial aid office who told her how to fill out the applications in order to get the maximum benefits. There was another angel in the registration office who told her how many credits to take and how to fit all of her classes into four nights. Armed with piles of papers about returning to college, study habits, how to write term papers, and child-care services, Rhonda went home to wait for her acceptance letter. It came three weeks later, as did the financial aid approvals. Two months later, at the age of twenty-nine, Rhonda started college.
Daddy and his wife said she was crazy to give up her welfare benefits. Grandma agreed. Nett said she would help type her papers. The children wanted to know if they could come with her. Ruth invited her to come over and have a drink to celebrate. Linda and Lorraine volunteered to help with the children. John hung up on her. Rhonda was so excited she thought she would burst open. The week before classes started, she was offered a three-month temporary assignment. It all seemed so easy. Rhonda wondered why she had not done it before.
By the time she was a sophomore, Rhonda had learned how to use a thesaurus, how to footnote a term paper, how to make stew in a Crock-Pot, and she had a 4.0 grade point average. She discovered that she was a decent writer. So decent, in fact, that one of her professors had accused her of plagiarizing a paper. The professor told Rhonda that she couldn’t believe a freshman could produce that caliber of work. Rhonda was mothering by telephone, becoming involved in political activities, and having a good time in her life. She had made new friends, and for the first time, she was having wholesome, nonsexual relationships with men. She and her male schoolmates talked about things that did not involve money or sex. It was a new experience for her. Besides that, Rhonda had a new boyfriend. His name was Eddie.
Rhonda met Eddie on a boat. She and some friends had taken a cruise up the Hudson River. As they were leaving the boat, Rhonda tripped over his foot. When she turned to apologize, Eddie smiled and asked her where she was going. He followed her off the boat to a club in Brooklyn, where they danced for hours. The next morning, when Rhonda rolled over in his bed, she realized she had just had her first one-night stand. It was a one-night stand that lasted for five years.
Eddie was kind and gentle, unlike any man Rhonda had ever known. He was three years younger than she was, but he was far more responsible and attentive than John could ever hope to be. Eddie helped out with the children when Rhonda was in school; he came over on weekends to take them out while she studied. He made Rhonda happy. Not just sexually satisfied, but happy to the bone. Theirs was a quiet, loving, and fulfilling relationship. This, too, was a new experience. There were just two little problems: Rhonda wanted to marry Eddie; and Eddie did not want to marry Rhonda. He stated quite clearly that he did not want a ready-made family.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he’d say, “I love you and I love the children. But this is not what I want for myself.”
Rhonda heard him, but she was sure she could change his mind. Every now and then, the subject would come up again, and Eddie would say the same thing. She would listen, get mad, cry, and then try to figure out what she needed to do to help him change his mind. Eddie never did change his position, and Rhonda began to suspect that Eddie was seeing other women. He was.
By the time she was a junior in college, Rhonda had learned some very important lessons at Medgar Evers and from Eddie. She had learned that when you are smart, attractive, and hardworking, some people will like you, others will despise you. She had learned that you cannot make people do something they are not willing or inclined to do. She had learned that if you make yourself available for people to use you, they will use you. She learned that if you work hard, stay focused, and put your mind to it, most of the time, things will work out for the best. She also learned that sometimes, no matter how hard you work, things just don’t work out the way you think they should.
There were also some things that Rhonda had not learned. You cannot make people like you no matter how hard you try. She didn’t know why she was so into people-pleasing. She had not learned that what you think about yourself is more important than what others think about you. Rhonda did not know why she still felt bad about herself. She still had not learned that people will lie to get what they want from you, and when they get it, they will lie on you. Why did she allow people to lie to her? And when she knew they were lying, why couldn’t she tell them so? She had not learned how her relationship with her father was impacting her relationships with men, and she had not learned that she could live without a man in her life. Rhonda still yearned for her father’s approval. She thought if she had a college degree, her father would be proud of her. Rhonda needed to belong, and she was completely unaware of how that need motivated her behavior. She had not learned that, in her life, she mattered the most. Rhonda had not learned that when you do the right things for the wrong reasons, it never works out.
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Father, forgive me, because I didn’t know what I was doing. It had gotten hot in the prayer room. I got up to open the window and stared at the lovely trees in my front yard, reflecting on how hard Rhonda had worked to get through college. She was so caught up in working, raising her children, and going to college, that she had never stopped to celebrate herself or her accomplishments. But Rhonda had not done all that work because she wanted it for herself. She had done it to prove something to other people.
She had done the work to protest the caseworker’s comments about welfare mothers. She had done it to prove Grandma wrong. She had done it so her father would tell her she was smart and that she’d done a good job. Rhonda had worked herself into a frenzy trying to prove to the world that all teenage mothers are not destined to fail. And she had done it all so that she could provide a better life for her children. At no time did she sit down and say: This is what I want to do for myself; this is what I want to do because I matter.
Looking back, I realized how unfulfilling Rhonda’s college experience had been. Most of the time, it was fun. But it did not fill the void Rhonda felt in her life. Neither did Eddie. Perhaps that is why she never felt successful. She had not learned that success means having the desire to accomplish something, then doing it to your own satisfaction. Rhonda was not even focused on material success. She was struggling to achieve what she thought would be some measure of personal success. For Rhonda that meant hav
ing someone say to her, “You did good.” The truth is, she didn’t want just anybody to say it, she wanted her family to say it. Unfortunately, she was so busy trying to elicit those three little words from them, she never said them to herself. When her family didn’t offer their approval, it reinforced Rhonda’s belief that she was neither worthy nor valuable. It reinforced her belief that she just wasn’t good enough. She handled it by working even harder to get the desired effect.
Oh my God! I thought, that’s what I want. I want Karen’s approval. I want her to tell me that I am doing a good job. I believe that if I do what Karen wants me to do, she will approve of me. Is that what this is all about? It can’t be! Surely I’ve grown more than this. Do I still care that much what other people think about me? Layer upon layer. Each time you peel back one layer, you discover a new level of healing that needs to be done. Sadly, I had to admit to myself that I still needed and wanted external approval and acceptance. I, like Rhonda, was willing to put up with anything to get it. It was something that Rhonda had lived with all of her life. If you don’t do what people want you to do, they will disapprove of you. They will get mad at you. They will hurt you and leave you. Karen had rescued me. I was behaving like a victim. People are out to get me. I need somebody to rescue me. To protect me the way my father and brother never did.
I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I doubled over and fell back onto my chair. I realized that it was about more than just seeking approval. I was doing what I thought I needed to do to make someone like me. Because Karen had rescued me, I wanted her to like me. It felt like being six years old again, feeling ugly and unwanted, and trying to get someone to like me. I also realized that I felt indebted to her for all she had done for me. I wanted to prove to her that I was grateful. When you are grateful to someone, you must show it. One way to show it is to let them do whatever they want to you. You let them beat you and don’t fight back; you lie there and let them rape you.
Yesterday, I Cried Page 19