Second Thoughts

by Kristofer Clarke

  “My only question is,” I said to my mother, “why didn’t you just call the police?”

  “And have them just send you to jail?” she said, laughing. “As far as I was concerned, even your own death would have been too soft of a punishment. No. I thought about it and then it finally came to me. Nothing would hurt you more than losing the two boys you cherished, neither of whom really belonged to you.”

  “How could you?” Chance asked

  “Are you really going to stand there believing anything she says?” I asked, looking at Chance.

  “Just admit it,” Chance continued. “Grandma is right. You’re selfish, and everything has to be a goddamn secret. Why didn’t you tell me I was adopted? Why was that such a big fucking secret?”

  “You told him?” I said, turning to Patrick.

  “After twenty-two years, don’t you think he deserved to know?”

  “I did it to protect you,” I said, turning back to Chance.

  “Excuse the disrespect, Mother, but damn you and your protection. Let me tell you what your so-called protection did to me.”

  Chapter 31

  Chance…

  I Guess I Should Say Thanks

  Since I’ve known myself and the woman who has been masquerading around as my mother, I have never been disrespectful to her⎯not even in jest. But I was tired of her lies. I was tired of her secrets. The woman who had promised to protect me had made it possible for Omar to hurt me. I didn’t want to hear her deny the truth, and I damn sure wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to fill my head with more of her lies.

  “I don’t remember having much of a life before you and Omar came into it; my saviors,” I mocked. “But that was the life I wanted to go back to. I’m sure it had to have been better than having my hands wrapped around some man’s dick.”

  I wiped the tears from both eyes with the back of my left hand.

  My mother flat-lined at the realization she had failed to protect the men in her life that she had claimed as her sons, though she only had legitimate claim to only one; me. I stood unable to shed a tear for my mother because the wicked act that was being spilled from my grandmother’s mouth had introduced me to the real Colleen Leslie Parker. My grandmother read Omar’s words, and the words of Nurse Rachel Hall, as if she had written them herself.

  I watched as my mother became defenseless. She concentrated less on my grandmother’s charges and everything else that was revealed in Omar’s letters and more on the hurt on Patrick’s face and mine.

  “I just wanted you to know that someone wanted you,” Colleen explained.

  “And what the hell made you think I felt unwanted?”

  “Chance, I love you and your brother, very much.”

  I laughed at my mother’s admission. I leaned against the wall and stared through her. I guess she’s never wondered why after hearing those exact words from her so many times before, I’ve never returned the sentiment. I would usually respond “Ditto”. For a long time, “I love you” meant nothing to me. Though my mother always said it, that admission had become known as the words that came from my father’s mouth just before or right after I had assisted him in pleasuring himself.

  “So all this time you’ve been lying to Patrick and me because you love us?”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” Colleen clarified.

  “But you lied to me,” Patrick exclaimed.

  He stood behind the chair where my grandmother sat, unobtrusively listening and watching the exchange between Colleen and me. My grandmother kept her gaze forward.

  “So you grew up believing I was your mother. Is that so wrong? Isn’t it better than knowing your real mother didn’t want you?” she answered, still looking at me. I figured that truth would hurt.

  “I would have survived,” I yelled, placing my hat back on my head.

  “I wasn’t the only one keeping this secret from you.”

  “No, Mother. You had help. But it wasn’t Patrick or Grandma’s position to tell me what you should have. You convinced them it was best to keep it from me, so don’t try to blame them.

  I walked over to my grandmother and kissed her in the middle of her forehead. I stood, staring at the moisture in her eyes. I hugged my grandmother and asked her to promise to call me the moment she was back in Houston. I did the same to Patrick and said I would call him when I was sure he was back in Atlanta. I walked past my mother who was standing in the doorway between the living room and the foyer. I headed towards the door without speaking.

  “Chance,” my mother called out.

  I stood in a momentary freeze with my hand on the doorknob. I pulled the door opened without looking back at her. I hesitated and then finally turned to face her.

  “Tell me something, Mother. In his letters, did Omar ever give an explanation or apologize for what he did to me or to Patrick, or did you not read long enough to find out?”

  She stood without words.

  “That’s what I thought. And I guess I shouldn’t expect an apology from you either?” I asked, looking at her.

  I watched the tears fall down the sides of her face.

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  Chapter 32

  Patrick…

  December Feels Like March

  Jerry Sandusky has been arrested and arraigned amid additional child sex abuse charges, related to two new accusers, bringing the total to ten alleged victims and more than 50 charges in the case. If Sandusky makes bail, he’ll be subjected to house arrest and…

  “What the hell? I can’t listen to anymore of this crap.” The system shouldn’t be fair and just for everyone. This is not the pregnancy pact. I’m quite sure all these boys didn’t sit around and decide to accuse this man, one after the next. They were coming out of the woodworks. But that was just my opinion, and who the hell cares about what I think?

  How long is this damn rain supposed to last? I thought, although this downpour hadn’t altered any plans I made. That question was a needed distraction from this disturbing broadcast. I looked through the bedroom window, trying to decide on appropriate attire to meet a potential client. Although winter didn’t officially start for another couple weeks, it should have been cold already. We were seven days into December, exactly one month before my thirty-first birthday, and there had only been about two cold days. A threat of snow was forecast for early the next day, but only to the West and North of D.C., which meant drivers in the DMV won’t have winter to contend with in the morning. For now, the rain was already becoming a nuisance, and I hadn’t stepped foot in it yet. I still had to shower and dress for bed, but I was sitting there staring at the television as if I didn’t have a long day ahead.

  The shower was quick. I had time to think about the conversation I had earlier with Taylor. She said she had been trying to call me since July but couldn’t bring herself to tell me what she told me over dinner.

  Taylor and I sat at a corner table at 901 Restaurant and Bar. She was always beautiful. Her hair was short cut, and tapered in the back. It was a light brown color, and swept across her face. I saw hints of the young Taylor I knew, as she would brush her hair from her face whenever she was nervous. This was my first time back since Chance and I last visited. That visit made me look at the woman I’d called my mother differently, and of the names I wanted to call her now, Mother wasn’t one of them.

  Taylor did more crying than she did talking. She told me about the son we had. P.J., as she called him before the nurses took him away, would be fourteen years old now, but unfortunately, Taylor’s mother died without telling her where my son was living. In that moment, I hated her. Would it have been so bad hearing the word “grandma’ coming from a child’s mouth? I thought about how my life would have been if P.J. were around. I imagined myself protecting him from the Omars and Colleens of this cruel world, and I hoped, wherever he was, he was still being protected from the likes of them. I hoped whomever had him hadn’t kept the truth about his parents from him, like Collen had done to me. A
s Taylor spoke, I created my own image of him in my mind. I imagined him to be as tall as I was, if not taller, or smart and calculating as Taylor. I imagined him having those same penetrating eyes as Taylor did, and even the smile that made me fall for her when I first saw her in elementary school. I was falling in love with this little boy I’ve never met.

  I met Taylor’s son Quinton from the folder of pictures captured on her cell phone. I asked her who his father was. She promised to tell me that story another time, but that the complicated situation would have her moving back to D.C. at the beginning of the year. She admitted that she and her sister Vanessa decided to slowly work on their relationship since they only had each other. I was happy to have my best friend in my life, and I couldn’t wait to meet the handsome Quinton.

  When Taylor finished giving me an update on her life, I filled her in on Dexter and Devaan. I told her about my on and off relationship with Jacoby that was now on again. She congratulated me when I told her I would be spending more time in Atlanta, since that was where Jacoby lived. She wanted to meet him, and I told her she was welcome to visit as soon as Atlanta was warm again. Our night ended with a walk around the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial that ended just before the rain began. In between reading Dr. King’s famous quotes, I told Taylor about Colleen, the woman she’s known as my mother, and how she’d killed my parents. I hadn’t spoken to Colleen in almost five months. I couldn’t think of anything I needed to say to the woman who had lied to me for thirty years. Although the truth hurts, she was still the only mother I knew. I couldn’t bring myself to say I hated her, but she wasn’t on my list of favorite people. I was sure I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life avoiding my mother, but the fact that she allowed me to think my own father hated me so much that he could stare into my eyes as he raped me was something I could never forgive her for. Chance hadn’t spoken to her since, either, and has been trying to find his birth mother. His psychologist Khoury Zeller, the same one who helped him come to terms with Omar and his molestation, was helping him. When I revealed Khoury’s true identity to Chance, he laughed when I presented her as the woman he was dating. He laughed and then corrected me, telling me that Khoury was his psychologist with whom he’d developed a great friendship.

  “I know everything about him,” Chance admitted, smiling.

  So Khoury was right. Not everyone was keeping secrets.

  After my shower I lay in bed propped up by all four pillows.

  I waited for Omar to show up at some point between my grandmother’s heart-wrenching revelation and my return to Atlanta. For whatever reason, he managed to do damage from a distant, using my grandmother to do his dirty work. He wanted Colleen to lose what she valued most, and though I was certain his victory would be short-lived, for now, he’d won. But soon, Colleen would be in Chance’s good grace again. He had already been a motherless child. Although Chance blamed Colleen for not protecting him, for the lies she’s told, and the secrets she kept, she was still the only mother he knew.

  Deep down, I wanted the opportunity to confront Omar. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know how he could have ignored that I was his son; his flesh and blood. But his letters, his disclosures, had answered every question I had. I wanted a heartfelt apology, the same one I wished for as I sat in the Florida courtroom, in the oversized chair, with tears down my face and Judge Zachary Fisher hanging on to my every word. That apology didn’t come then. Maybe this letter to my grandmother and the letters that were sent to my mother earlier⎯the ones she destroyed⎯were his way of saying, “Contrary to what you were led to believe, it wasn’t your father that raped you.” I’m sorry, Omar. You not being my father was no consolation. It was clear Omar’s only purpose for writing those letters was to expose Colleen. It was obvious he never had second thoughts about how he had violated Chance and me. Everything revealed in those letters had only hurt the people involved. Omar had managed to hurt my family once again. Mission accomplished.

  I lay in bed and in my silent prayer, I asked God to grant me this power to forgive. I hated how my brain works. As much as I tried to forget, I held on to the memories of Omar. Knowing that it wasn’t my father that raped me softened the pain felt. Or, maybe it was just that time had done a little healing of my emotional wounds.

  I pulled the sheet and comforter up over my shoulder, turned onto my right side, and buried my face in the fold of my right arm. I listened to the silence of the night. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come.

  Tonight, I slept in the corner of the closet, hoping I could hide behind the extra long winter coat that hung from the rod. I might as well have been hiding behind a broomstick. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but smelled as if he had taken a long bath in a potent mixture of vodka on the rocks and days-old cranberry juice. Wednesday night services at church usually lasted longer than all others, and I wondered why I never bothered to attend with my grandmother─at least, even among the pretenders, I would have been safe. I probably would have avoided so much.

  “Where’s my pretty little man?” he yelled as he flung the bedroom door open.

  I guess not calling me his son in these moments gave him the detachment he needed. I sat there in the corner of the closet─my little safe haven─with my head hidden between my legs, like a little boy afraid of the same monster I often told my little brother lived in the closet. This time the monster wasn’t something that depended heavily on my imagination. The monster was my father, who was on the opposite side of these four walls, searching for his sexual prey. I held my breath afraid that my breathing, in the silence, would be too loud, and would lead him to my hideout.

  “I know you’re in here, somewhere,” he said with certainty.

  I hoped his frantic search under the bed and behind the curtains led to a massive heart attack, but that wish never came true.

  “I see you,” he warned, as he slowly opened the closet door, allowing the faint nightlight to break the darkness.

  I felt his hand clench tightly around my ankles, and the tears began to flow. To avoid any further damage, I convinced him to let me walk, and like convicts walking in chains to the penitentiary, he led me to the bed. When my mother found me, like I often prayed she would, I was lying on the floor in the fetal position. She picked me up and stumbled along with me to her bedroom, and waited.

  I woke from my nightmare and frantically searched for my cell phone in the dark. It was still in bed next to me. I pressed the phone icon and waited for her to answer.

  “Patrick, is everything okay?” she asked.

  She sounded as if she had been awakened from deep sleep.

  “Doc, I’m still dreaming about him.”

  “And by him you mean, Omar?” Dr. Kendrick asked.

  I didn’t even apologize for calling so late.

  “Yes. My dreams always end with my mother coming to my rescue. Her face was always hidden in the dark, like bad lighting on a dance stage.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “She isn’t my mother, Doc.”

  Dr. Kendrick sat on the phone in silence.

  I finished my conversation with Doc, but not before telling her about the decision to try things out with Jacoby again. I told her about the heated discussion with Devaan, and that I was elated everything was now on the table. It felt better to have lost her to the truth, even though I’d already lost her to the lies.