Chapter 30
Nikki
It took months of counseling for Corrie and Aliyah to get passed what happened last year in Alabama. For a while, I wasn’t sure if their nightmares and anxiety attacks would ever end. The horrible effects of that day haunted our entire family. It all happened so fast yet everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Those last words my father spoke instantly took me back to my childhood. I knew exactly what he meant by them. The fact that he said them about my daughter made me tremble with anger.
My mind flashed back to a scene in my parent’s bedroom.
I had fallen asleep on my parent’s bed one night after my mother said that I could watch television in her room. I woke up to the foul smell of gin on my father’s breath in my face. He pinned my hands to the bed with the strength of his own as he lay on top of my back.
“Daddy, don’t,” I pleaded.
“Daddy don’t what? Huh? You sound just like your stuck up mama. She always says don’t. Well, you are gonna do what I want you to do and what your mama won’t do.”
I cried as he lifted my nightgown and stuffed himself into my asshole, and humped me like I was a dog. I passed out from the pain and awakened the next morning soaked in blood and semen.
I was determined that no child of mine would ever go through the hell that I had to endure.
I knew what Ahmad was capable of when it came to protecting his girls. He fully intended to kill my father. I just couldn’t let that happen. I had to stop him. Corrie and Aliyah needed their father at home with them and not locked up in the pen for murdering a worthless son of a bitch like my father. He wasn’t worth it.
When I saw that Ahmad was about to pounce on my father, I jumped from the passenger side of the car. Before I could get to Ahmad, there was a loud noise and I saw my father fall to the ground. At first, no one knew what happened. I knew Ahmad didn’t have a gun. I turned to see where the shot came from and saw what appeared to be a homeless woman standing behind our car, still holding the gun in her trembling hand.
Who is that? I’ve seen her somewhere before.
One of the cemetery security guards ran up behind her and pushed her to the ground, extracting the weapon from her hand.
“Call the police! Get an ambulance!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“Oh my, God,” Jessica said, walking toward the woman.
“Jess, what is it?” I asked as I cautiously followed her.
“Shannon?” Jessica questioned.
It can’t be. Oh my, God, it is Shannon.
“I couldn’t let him do it again. I couldn’t let him do to Aliyah what he had done to me. I had to stop him,” Shannon tearfully confessed.
We were all shocked to see Shannon. She was a mess. Her clothes were torn and dirty and her face was terribly scarred and thin. Her eyes were void of life.
Where did you come from? What has happened to you?
Shannon had killed our father. Shot him down like the dog he was. Now, she would have to spend what was left of her life in prison.
Jessica and I were saddened when we learned what life had been like for Shannon these last few years. She’d been living on the streets and prostituting herself. It was harder to hear that she had contracted HIV.
“I had nothing to lose by killing that bastard. Prison can’t do anything to me that would be worse than what I’ve already been through. I’ll probably be dead long before they get around to executing me. At least in prison, I’ll have a soft place to sleep and food to eat and I won’t die on the streets,” Shannon explained. “Don’t worry about me. I’m at peace knowing that I finally did something good for Aliyah.”
Shannon insisted that Jessica and I forget about her but that was much easier said than done. Even though our relationship had been estranged for years, there was no way I could forget Shannon. I would remember her every time I looked into Aliyah’s face.
Shannon was in prison but something about my father’s death released me from mine. It was as if I had been washed with emancipation. I saw everything through new eyes and felt a peacefulness that was unfamiliar but welcomed.
Although the demons of my past still lurked in the darkness, I no longer felt the need to surrender to them.
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