Chapter 8 - Sad Conception
June, 1981
Unmentionable things refuse to lie silent forever. If they are not spoken, they will find another way to the surface, even if they must ooze from every pore.
Cil and her two youngest sisters lived together in their father’s home along with Cil’s husband of ten years, Joe.
Joe was a good man who left the place of his birth to follow Cil and her siblings back to Atlanta. In many ways, he helped Cil finish raising her siblings. While Rob may have been a surrogate father to them, Joe was more of a logistical daddy. He picked up the girls from school when they were younger, fixed their cars, and took out the trash.
Deborah was married to a man named William. Willy was his street name. Willy was the antithesis of Joe. Where Joe was dependable, Willy was not. Where Joe showed concern for others, Willy did not. Whatever Joe was, Willy always seemed to be the opposite. Willy was twenty-seven years old but acted like he was seventeen. Joe, who was pushing fifty at the time, possessed the wisdom of an older man. Willy was a short, light-skinned, pretty-boy, fake tough guy. Deborah always had a weakness for pretty boys. Joe was a dark brown-skinned man who stood six foot three and weighed about 230 pounds. Willy hated Joe. Joe paid Willy no mind.
One evening, Deborah and Willy stopped by the family home to make an announcement. A giddy Deborah barely allowed time for Cil to open the front door before she blurted out, “I’m pregnant!” Her sisters Ruth and Sarah rushed to the foyer to embrace their sister and share in her joy. Cil smiled at them and then back at Willy who was still on the front porch, “You can come in.” Sheepishly, Willy stepped in.
“Is your old man in?” Willy asked.
Cil answered, “No, he’s still at the shop.”
“Cool,” Willy replied.
Willy tried to hide it but he was a little afraid of Joe. Willy claimed he was from New York but he was actually born and raised mostly in Virginia. He did spend his seventh grade year in New York. That one year was enough for him to rewrite his life story.
After Willy entered the room, he stood off to the side. Ruth reached out to give him a quick hug. Sarah gave him a quick smile but refrained from hugging him. The two of them had argued on his last visit about his unwillingness to get a job. Deborah made decent money teaching English over at Spelman, but still it irked Sarah. Willy had been married to Deborah for almost two years and heaven help her if Sarah could recall him working more than a week or two anywhere in that time. Joe had offered him a job at his repair shop but Willy’s pride would not allow him to get his hands dirty. Now, with a baby on the way, Sarah was hopeful that he would now step up. But, she wasn’t holding her breath.
Willy could not stand Sarah. While he acknowledged to his friends that she was a very pretty woman, he felt like she was stuck up. It was his deepest desire to see her get her comeuppance.
Cil asked Willy, “How’s the job hunt coming?”
Willy shrugged his shoulders, “You know, it’s hard out here. Plus now, I gotta pay these student loans back. But, you know, I still get my hustle on.”
Cil knew that meant that he spent most of his would be productive hours hanging out with his boys, but she didn’t say anything.
“Would you like something to eat? There’s some chicken and sides on the table.”
Willy never turned down a meal. “Oh, good.”
As he made his way to the table to load up, he asked, “Hey, if y’all don’t mind, I’m gonna take this to the front porch and let you females talk about all this baby stuff.”
Before he and Deborah were married, planning for the wedding had made Willy anxious. All this baby preparation talk was no better. In his mind, it was just more stress on him. His folks were established black professionals in the Atlanta area. There were certain expectations on him with which he was never comfortable. His family had put him in the best schools. They’d gotten him into Morehouse, a historically black college. And, they’d gotten him interviews at their friends’ firms after he graduated. It was never enough.
Willy didn’t like the white high schools. He resented being at Morehouse. He had applied at USC, Harvard and Notre Dame, but none of them would have him. Neither would Morehouse, until his daddy had made a call; his daddy was a legacy after all. Even marrying Deborah was pushed on him by his family. Although Deborah’s family had no history in Atlanta, she and her sisters had excelled in their chosen professions. Despite Deborah being “a little dark” for his mother’s taste, the fact that she was a professor at Spelman afforded the mother of an underachieving son something to brag about at girlfriend luncheons.
Deborah, like her mother-in-law, was color-struck in her younger days. Willy was a good-looking, college-educated man with wavy hair from an established Atlanta family. Despite his height and the lack of steady income, he’d met all of Deborah’s qualifications for a husband. Most people who knew her thought that she could have done better than Willy.
Some women, beautiful women, fall in love with the challenge of love rather than the nature of love. This understanding only comes with the living of one’s life. The understanding of what love should be, had puzzled young Deborah. It wasn’t until after she was married that she finally understood.
After Willy made his way to the front porch the sisters pulled Deborah to the parlor to ask about the baby. “So, do you know the sex yet?” Ruth asked.
“No!” Deborah stated emphatically. “But, we do know there’s more than one!” All the sisters squealed in delight.
After the screaming stopped and the tea was poured, the sisters sat around the kitchen table. After her first sip of tea, Deborah asked her two younger sisters, “So, what about you two? Anything happening? Any prospects? Just asking.”
Sarah who was an expert at hiding her cards said nothing. Ruth Ann, as was typically the case within the sisterhood, broke first. “Well, I finally heard from Jerome and…”
Impatiently, Deborah asked, “And what?”
Embarrassed, Ruth confessed, “He called me collect from the jail.”
At this point, Sarah broke her silence, “What? And, you accepted the call?”
“Yes. What else was I supposed to do? He’s in jail. I couldn’t say no,” Ruth replied strongly.
Cil who already knew each story the sisters would tell had an answer for Ruth, “The point is not to date guys who are in jail or are likely to go.”
Where Deborah had a weakness for pretty boys, Ruth seemed to attract bad boys. In truth, her compassion and desire to rescue these men was the real culprit as was the fact that she was a bit naïve.
Deborah shook her head at Ruth and then turned her chair completely around to face Sarah even as Ruth continued to mutter.
“So…?”
Sarah interrupted Deborah’s inquisition, “Ruth Ann, darling, please finish what you were saying.”
Ruth took a breath and then released, “I know I haven’t had the best success with men and they always seem to mistreat me. But, I really believe that they’d love me and treat me right, if they ever took the time to know me. They’d see how nice a person I am and they’d truly love me.”
Sarah reached out her right hand to touch Ruth, “Darling you’re full blown extraordinary. But, it’s still your responsibility to make sure that these guys do indeed take the time to get to know just how wonderful you are, regardless of how long that might take. And, if they can’t wait, then they weren’t right for you.”
Across the kitchen table, Deborah gave Ruth a forced smile that conveyed the lost cause she thought her to be. Then, she turned back towards Sarah and said again, “So?”
Sarah smiled. Deborah leaned in and Sarah just lifted one brow. Deborah sat back and stated, “I heard that you went to lunch with your branch manager again – your married branch manager – your white branch manager. What’s up with that?”
Sarah set down her half-full cup of tea, “I can’t go to lunch with my boss? Really? I didn’t know
that.”
Deborah continued her questioning, “No, you can’t. Not like y’all do. Anything more than once or twice a month is too much. See, now, if you were both married or even if you were both single, maybe you’d get a pass. But if the man is married and the woman is not, y’all can’t be lunch buddies. Aren’t there any other men around there who you can go to lunch with besides him?”
Sarah replied, “Gary is really just a very cool guy. I’ve never met a professional white man around here who is as open in public as he is. Besides, I go to lunch with the tellers just as much as or more than I do with Gary.”
Deborah rebutted, “But the question is, who else does Gary go to lunch with besides you?”
Sarah acknowledged, “When he does take a lunch, it’s pretty much just me. I really think that I’m the only one in the office that he feels he can have a conversation with.”
“Yeah, right, a conversation. Is that what they call it today? I don’t need to come down there, do I?” Deborah asked as she sat back in her chair. One of the most horrifying experiences of Sarah’s professional life, was the sight of Deborah marching into her branch to confront her previous manager regarding the inequity of Sarah’s pay. Through her own doings Sarah had arranged for a pay increase at the end of the year, but that wasn’t soon enough for Deborah.
Sarah replied with a very smooth “No.”
The two women sat in silence as Ruth Ann hid behind her cup of tea.
What Sarah didn’t share was that on their last lunch date, Gary had said something that made her uneasy and dared her to dream all at the same time.
After lamenting the challenges of a new baby and a young wife, Gary said, “Seattle is more open than here. I really wish I could take you there. You’d love it.”
“Now, just what the heck was that supposed to mean?” Sarah thought.
At the time he said it, she tried to ignore it. Was this man working his way up to ask for something more than a friendly cooperative relationship? The thought of such a complex relationship with a married man with a child – her boss no less – made Sarah uneasy. On the other hand, the thought of leaving the South, of running away from all it – including the family burden – was enticing. She’d started dreaming of easy lunches on the Pacific shore, with or without Gary.
Deborah asked, “So, what about the football player? What’s his name?”
“James. He’s nice but he’s too young.”
Deborah smirked, “He’s of legal age, ain’t he?”
“Yes, but I think he’s just infatuated with me because I won’t go out with him. As his personal banker, I can’t. Besides, you know how professional athletes are? I don’t think I could even date one while he’s still playing.”
Deborah leaned in again, “So playing Russian roulette with a married man is a better option?”
Cil wasn’t a mind reader but she knew her little sister very well. She saw this flirtation with her boss as an emotional escape hatch from the burden they all bore.
Cil spoke softly to Sarah, “I know this life is not easy and that you want a normal life. I do too.
Cil felt for the cross hidden under her blouse. Sarah had given to her when they were children and it always hung around her neck.
“But, one day, you will have to pick up your own cross – be it here or wherever.”
While this conversation was going on inside, Willy ate his home-cooked meal, including the cornbread and sweet tea, out on the front porch. The little man sat out there salivating on his plot to get back at Sarah. If he had known that Sarah had prepared the food he was enjoying that day, would he have done what he did? No one will ever know. One thing is certain, once you set evil free, you have very little say about where it goes or how far.
When Sarah and her sisters returned to the front room, Willy stepped inside and mentioned the party a buddy of his was hosting nearby. He had already mentioned the party to Deborah on the pretext that he wanted Sarah and Ruth Ann to attend to meet some single men. He already knew that it was a school night and that Ruth could not attend. Sarah reluctantly agreed to attend. She would take a covered dish Deborah had agreed to contribute and, if she liked the party, she would stay. Sarah headed over just about dusk. By the time she reached the yellow and white house, she wished she had driven. She climbed the steps and found Willy sitting on a tall stool holding a glass of lemonade. Willy smiled as she reached the landing, “I saw you coming down the street so I poured you something cold and sweet.”
Sarah peeked in through one of the front windows and noted half a dozen men sitting around the dining room with beers in their hands. She set the dish down, took the frosty glass, and commented to Willy, “Not a lot of folks here yet.”
Willy smiled as Sarah took her first sip, “No, but you know how we do.”
My mother nodded and said before taking a second sip, “No ladies here yet, either. You know I don’t want to be the only woman at any party.”
Willy replied as he stood up, “Oh, that’s cool. Maybe you can come back later since it’s just down the street. At least step in for a second to say hello to the fellas.” He held the door for her.
In hindsight, Sarah said that she should have known something was up because he’d never held a door for her before. Standing on the hardwood floor of the dining room, she got a good look at the six men seated at the table each of whom lifted a bottle to her. She smiled that dazzling smile of hers then took a full gulp of the lemonade in her hand. The floor seemed to be shifting beneath her feet. She looked for a couch or something to lean on.
The next memory Sarah had was that of waking up in the backyard of the yellow and white house with a large black man kneeling over her telling her, “You’re gonna be alright.”
The man was one of the growing number of veterans from a war long since ended who found themselves living on the street. He recognized my mother as one of the sisters who lived in the community. He remembered how active she and her sisters had been in helping those in need. They fed the hungry and were always willing to share a smile and a word of encouragement. He tried to pull down what was left of her dress over her slip before he lifted her up into his arms. He knew the sisters’ house so he carried Sarah home and rang the bell.
Ruth and Cil were sitting in the front dining room from which they could see the front porch. Ruth was asking Cil why her eyes were moist. Cil convinced her it was allergies. In truth, it was because she knew that last night was the night that her sister had been raped. She also knew that it was the night that a child was conceived. The terrible burden weighed heavy on Cil and the consequences cascaded through the ages and generations to come
Ruth and Cil sprang to their feet and rushed to the door. The Good Samaritan carried Sarah across the doorway and laid her down on the living room sofa.
“She was laying in the back yard of that yellow and white house on Lawson,” he said before leaving.
Cil and Ruth kneeled down side by side to examine their sister. Cil directed Ruth to make some coffee.
Sarah was floating in out of consciousness. Later, she would only remember those early events in snapshots. She remembered a tearful Ruth holding the coffee cup to her lips while Cil held her. Her next memory was of a weeping Deborah holding her tightly and Cil covering her with a blanket. Eventually, just after three in the afternoon, Sarah awoke with some degree of clarity and, with that clarity, all innocence was lost. She realized what had happened to her. She pulled back the blanket to see her tattered, blood stained clothes. That, plus the pain between her legs, confirmed her violation. Sarah curled into a ball and wept.
Moments later, Sarah’s face hardened and her eyes blazed with the red-hot fire of retribution.
She angrily shouted, “Where’s Willy? Where is Willy?”
A weeping Deborah answered, “I’ve been calling him since I got here, but he’s either not at home or isn’t picking up.”
Sarah suggested, “We need to call the police. They’
ll find him.”
Cil nodded and Ruth agreed.
Deborah objected, “I want to talk to Willy to find out what happened before we call the police.”
“What?” Sarah sat straight up. “What is there to know? I passed out after he gave me a drink. I woke up the next morning half-naked in some stranger’s backyard after being sexually assaulted. What can he say to change that?”
Deborah argued, “He has a hard enough time finding a job now. The last thing he needs is to get caught up in something like this if he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Ruth, who was still crying commented softly but loud enough for all to hear, “Your husband doesn’t have a job because he doesn’t want to work.”
“Well, we should call the police, for sure,” Cil added, “but if we call the police then we have to let the judicial system handle it. But if we don’t…”
Cil gave her sisters a knowing look.
Through her tears, Ruth gave a firm, “Yes.”
Sarah began nodding her head in agreement as vigorously as she dared, “Yeah, we can get him and all his boys.”
“Hold up now! Y’all are talking about my husband! Not some demon from Hell. Y’all know the rules,” Deborah protested loudly. “If you’ve forgotten the cost of personal vendettas, ask Aunt Elisa.”
Elisa was cast into The Pit for avenging a personal wrong while she was being groomed to be an Elder. Since her return from The Pit over twenty years earlier she’d seldom spoken of it.
Sarah began to glow a fiery red and yelled, “I can’t believe you’re saying this! Look at me! Look at what they did!”
Deborah, never one to back down, shouted back as the room trembled, “I see you but you were unconscious. So you really don’t know what really happened.”
Sarah fired back, “I know what happened! I was raped by a bunch of cowardly men. What else do we need to know besides their addresses?”
Deborah paused for a moment and then reached for the phone to make one more call.
“Hello, may I speak to Willy? What? Look, I know he’s there. Really? Look, heifer, you can either put him on the phone or I can come over there and drag his butt out of there.”
Moments passed as the sisters watched Deborah in amazement, not quite believing what they were hearing. Even Cil, who knew the future, sat in real astonishment. Finally, Willy came to the phone.
“Willy, what happened last night at the party? Just tell me the truth.” Deborah was silent as Willy spoke. She ended her conversation with a simple, “Okay.”
She took a deep breath before sharing with her sisters. “He says that you got drunk and were hanging all over the guys but, when he left, you were fine.”
Exasperated, Sarah asked, “And you believe that crap?”
Sarah’s doubts were warranted since this would be just the first version of what happened to which Willy would swear. His second story was that he got drunk and passed out only to find out what happened later. His third story, after Uncle Joe encouraged him a bit, was that the special drink he gave Sarah was only supposed to loosen her up. He said that he fought to keep his boys off of her but they kicked him out of the house and he was too ashamed to go home afterwards. Since I don’t have a connection with Willy, I really can’t tell you which version, if any, is the truth. Liars lie.
Deborah said as calmly as she knew how, “Hey, that’s my husband. And, if that’s what he says, I have to go with that until I know differently.”
In one movement, Sarah burst into flames and tears as she sprung from the sofa. The house shook as Deborah glared at her little sister. Between Deborah and Sarah there was a bright blue glow. At the center of that radiance stood Ruth. Using her force fields, she kept the two sisters separated from one another.
“Enough!” Cil declared, “We will call the police. There is too much at stake in the coming days for us to deal with this right now. We will stay out of it while the police do their investigation. But, if they do not press charges, as I suspect they won’t, we will deal with this one way or another. I can’t tell you what that looks like right now but, as hard as it sounds, we need to handle our business first and deal with this later. Too much is at stake. I’ll call Miss Elizabeth and let her know what’s going on.”
Three minutes later Miss Elizabeth arrived and took over as was her way.
Just before five that evening, the police arrived to take Sarah’s statement. By all accounts, she held up very well but she lost it when they brought out the rape kit. Seeing the kit and having Elizabeth and the female officer escort her to the restroom, opened the wound for her once more. Deborah tried to comfort her as well but Sarah pushed her away. Dejected and troubled, Deborah picked up her purse and exited alone into the darkness of night.
The next morning, Cil and Elizabeth headed out for work. They left Ruth Ann to care for Sarah. About eleven o’clock, Willy called.
“Ruth Ann, is my wife there? The folks at Spelman called and they said that she didn’t come in to work this morning. She never misses a class. She loves those students more than she loves me. So, for her to just not show up without calling anyone, something must be wrong.”
Ruth asked Willy, “So, she didn’t come home last night either?”
“No, it doesn’t look like it,” Willy replied.
Ruth realized that Willy didn’t go home last night either and paused for a moment. She knew she wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him. “Okay,” she replied before hanging up the phone.
Ruth’s thoughts immediately went back to the times in her life when Deborah had gone missing. It was never a good thing. It had been several years since her last episode but each one was an all hands on deck event. Each time it happened, the sisters were reminded of the worst days of their collective lives.
The real concern wasn’t Deborah’s personal safety. On her medication or not, she was more than capable of defending herself from the locals. The biggest threat to Deborah was, and always had always been, Deborah. As a teen in the jungles of Central America, Deborah had tried to take her own life during one of her down times while Cil and her other sisters were away. A stranger found her and took her to the hospital. Deborah, in her delusionary state, always claimed that it was Cil who had found her and rescued her. A secondary reason for Ruth’s concern regarded the Council’s constant recruitment efforts of Deborah. It seemed that over the years Matasis had seen something within Deborah that made him believe that he could turn her into a force of darkness.
Ruth called Elizabeth, Cil, and Joe to let them know that Deborah was AWOL. She tried not to wake Sarah but Sarah sensed something was wrong wandered into the living room as Ruth was finishing her calls. Sarah forced Ruth to tell her what was going on. Not wanting to wait on the others to arrive, Sarah threw on her house robe and sneakers and the two of them began to comb the neighborhood for Deborah.
Because of her gift, Sarah’s vision was better than an eagle’s. But she dared not take to the air anywhere near the house. She couldn’t risk being seen. Sarah sent Ruth one way and she went the other. Sarah had little doubt that they’d find Deborah. Still she felt a sense of dread knowing that her sister’s mood swings had no bottom.
Sarah sensed that her sister was reaching a point of no return. It was more than just a feeling; she could see the dark clouds gathering and felt a chill in the mid-morning June air. Deborah’s emotions affected the weather. Somewhere, Deborah was teetering on the abyss. Perhaps, she could go airborne for just a bit? The years since they returned to Atlanta had been good years but, if she took to air, they’d have to move again. They’d done that before, when warranted, and this would certainly be such an occasion.
Before she took to the air, Sarah decided to check one more alley. As her teary eyes began to turn to fire, she caught a glimpse of two women in the alley seated on the landing of a side door. She rubbed the tears from her eyes to see clearly. Deborah sat quietly while the other woman spoke lovingly into her ear.
The other woman was Aunt Elisa.
Sarah ran down the alleyway. Kneeling down to hug her sister, Sarah whispered into her ear, “Deborah…” After a long embrace she pulled back a bit to examine Deborah. “Are you okay?”
The disheveled Deborah answered back, “Yes, I’m fine. And, yes, I’m taking my meds.”
“Oh, sister…” Sarah cried as she embraced Deborah again.
Sarah’s gaze turned to Elisa who knew her question already, “Yes, I could hear her thoughts and I knew she was out here on that roof up there.”
Then Elisa turned to Deborah before continuing, “Deb just needed some time to figure things out.”
A tearful Deborah elaborated, “I’m leaving Willy. I just can’t go on with him, not after this. I’m so sorry that I brought this curse of a man into the family.” Deborah looked into her sister’s eyes. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course, but, there is nothing to forgive. He made his own choices.”
Just then Ruth Ann turned the corner and came scurrying down the alleyway calling out, “Deborah!”
“I’m fine. But, I do need to check myself in for a few days.”
Deborah laughed through her tears acknowledging that she needed help, “I’m going to need to make some changes.” She smiled knowingly to Sarah.
Elisa stood up, “I need to get going before I’m missed. Cil and Elizabeth are pulling up to the house right now.” Elisa was well aware that she was on borrowed time. As long as the Council of Nob needed her, she would be okay. Elisa had played nice over the years and even sought to convince them that she was on their side. But with Elisa’s project coming to an end, she knew the knives would be out soon. Before she disappeared around the corner, Elisa turned and said to the three sisters, “The hardest thing to do in life is to let go of pain, but you get through it and you’re better on the other side.”