Journey To Redemption

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

We came home from church that day to find my stepdad waiting at the door. He was a big man, standing over six feet tall. He towered above us all. His presence was intimidating. He had light brown skin with a mini afro that he hadn’t let go from the 70’s. He was a hard man, hardened from his father and his childhood. He didn’t finish high school, so he was put to work at an early age. The calluses on his hands were from years of working in his father’s cotton and tobacco fields. He was an angry man, angry at the way the world had unjustly s**t on him. It had cheated him, toyed with him. He never had enough education, but he had the skill. He was strong but not young enough. He was the perfect fit but didn’t read well. He could count but couldn’t write. His life was filled with buts and almost’s or close but not quite’s. And that was the source of his rage. It was a quiet rage, one that he controlled until that rage built up and he exploded in uncontrollable violence. He loved the fear of others and we were all afraid of him.

We entered the apartment, and he immediately and quietly asked,

“Who stays at church this late?”

The softness in his voice was unnerving. We had all experienced the quiet buildup of his

uncontrollable violence. Momma looked at him and said,

“We didn’t have a ride, Harry.”

“So, you expect me to cook my own dinner?” he asked.

She paused before she answered him. She knew that the wrong tone

would be construed as disrespect in front of the children.

“No, Harry. I took something out and it won’t take long to make,” she said.

My stepdad sat down in his favorite chair, flipping the channels between football games. No one said anything. We knew better. Our place was in our room, quiet. And that’s where we went. All five of us tip toed up those stairs and piled into our bedroom. We sat on the floor with our legs crossed, Indian style, playing Connect Four. My stepdad was quiet too, silent while he drank beer after beer. Soundless while his imagination mixed with the alcohol, pushing him into a delusional state.

“You must got a new man at that church!” he yelled.

My mother started to hum her prayer song, Myrna Summers’ We're Gonna Make It. Her melodious voice drowned out the mad scoffs of my stepfather. She called us down to dinner and we saw the tears in her eyes. The tears of expectation. The tears of foreknowing that this night would be like so many other nights.

I looked at her and asked, “What’s wrong, Ma?”

Her response was in song. “With Jesus on our side, things will work out fine, we’re gonna make it.”

She leaned down and kissed my dimples. Her tears dampened my face. I sat down at the table and ate my dinner in silence.

Later that night, I awoke to the sound of shattered glass and an angry scream.

“Who stays in church that long?” he yelled.

It was the drunken rage of my stepdad. Quickly, I jumped out of bed and blindly ran towards the light pouring out from the cracks of their bedroom door.

“Stop!” I screamed.

I was now standing witness to a horrible scene, a nightmare that wasn't a dream but too often a fixture of my reality. There stood my stepdad, holding his hand in a threatening grip around momma’s neck as she grasped for air and cringed in pain.

“Let her go! You’re hurting her!” I screamed.

“I’m just showing your mother something. Go back to bed,” he asserted.

Did he think I was an i***t? Did he think I was stupid? I could see shards of broken glass in the room. I ran towards him and tried to pry his fastened fingers from her neck. I was a child. Small and scared. He batted me away with ease and flung her to the floor. I ran back to her side as he straddled her. I felt helpless knowing that he would just swat me away again. I jumped on his back, trying desperately to pull him backwards as my mother struggled to get out from under him. He released his grip as I bit down on his shoulder. He threw me off his back and stormed out of the room, and for an instant I thought the nightmare was over. Within seconds, he came back into the room with his thick leather black belt wrapped around his fist, swinging it wildly in anger and screaming that he would teach me a lesson. Momma did her best to shield me from the blows, absorbing most of the abuse. When he had exhausted himself, he left. Momma was hurt but she tended to my wounds first. I wanted to ask her why, I wanted to ask her “How could he?”

She saw the questions in my eyes and answered them simply.

“He’s your daddy and you have to love him. God wants you to love him.”

I laid in my bed that night thinking that the Pastor had lied. Nothing had changed.

I watched Momma endure abuse both physically and mentally, all the while telling her five boys to love and respect their dad. I didn’t want to love him, but I did. I didn’t want to respect him, but I had to. Doing the right thing vindicated my mom. With each beating, I discovered that my fear of him gradually slipped away. With each beating came a promise of change. Each beating ended with him asking for repentance and a second chance. My stepdad’s empty promises along with Pastor Rudders’ manipulation through scriptures was partially why she stayed.

The other reason she stayed was for her boys. Her boys, her five boys. She thought she was doing what was best for us. A day would barely pass before the sound of forceful strikes and gut-wrenching cries echoed throughout the house. Sunday after Sunday, she would gather herself, get dressed, and take us to church. Some days when it was just my mom and us in the house, she would become so overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, and loneliness that she would suddenly burst into tears. We watched her. We saw her pain. We knew why she hurt. We saw her in the prayer line every Sunday, waiting for the Pastor to tell her to leave, but all she got was

“And unto the married I command, [yet] not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from [her] husband,” (1 Corinthians 7:10-17) or “And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery,” (Mark 10:12).

Looking back, all she got from Pastor Prangles was scripture and a bunch of sob stories about needing another vehicle or a new suit or a new riding lawn mower. It hurt to know that she was suffering and that all this “Man of God” could offer was a forehead wet from cheap olive oil, a chance to shout on sore bruised legs, and an opportunity to buy his wife a new hat. It hurt to know that every time she spoke to the Pastor, the only advice he could give was one of his many tired clichés.

“Hold on and don’t let go.”

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

“He may not come when you want him, but he’s always on time.”

He never told her to leave. He never told her to protect herself. He never told her to take her family and run. All he did was yell and give us his cliché’s. Who needs a f*****g cliché when your eyes are swollen and your lip is busted?

My stepdad beat us the same way he did Momma. I preferred the beatings to hearing the hurtful sounds of him using my mother as his punching bag. Sometimes I stood at the bedroom door when he came home. Usually I just shook like a leaf trying to hold onto its branch during a brisk fall breeze. It seemed like every Saturday night before church and Sunday after church, my stepdad was in that crazy-ass way, blaming Momma for everything. Everything was Momma’s fault. She couldn’t do anything right. When he started, she took things to the bedroom and closed the door to spare us from seeing her battered.

I hated my stepdad as much as I loved him. The contradiction was painful. The hardest part was trying to understand Momma. I didn’t understand why she let my stepdad treat her like that. Why was she always praying? Why did she keep saying to trust in God? If she couldn’t stand up for herself, how would she protect us? What happens to us when he kills her? I didn’t want to believe he would kill my brothers and me, but I couldn’t be sure. We couldn’t possibly defend ourselves against a strong man like my stepdad, especially not when he was in one of his rages. But mom stayed, trusting, hoping and waiting for a change, believing that each prayer she received was the one that would make all her hurt go away.

We stayed in that church for years. Each Sunday was a buildup of emotions. High spirited praise, shouting, jumping and dancing. Nothing changed. We were told each Sunday that life would be different if we danced long enough or cried hard enough. We sat there each week believing every word that was uttered from the mouth of this pastor. Momma gave everything, hoping that the beatings would stop, that the lies would cease, and that the pain would end. Because of her faith, she sacrificed money for bills and even gave portions of her income tax returns. Years of putting more and more money into Pastor Prangles pocket. And whenever we failed at anything, it wasn’t because of his advice. It was because of our shortcomings and our lack of faith. Pastor Prangles twisted the Bible and the image of God into something ugly and frightening. Most of the time, he just wanted to step on us, to grind his Christian truth into us with the heel of his $400 Wing-Tip Oxford Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. It was years before I became so disgusted by the hate radiating from this pastor that I would leave. He made me sick. And I thought to myself if that’s what being a Christian is, then I wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it. That was also the beginning of the turning point for Momma.