House of Religion, pt 2

"We are all broken, that's how the light gets in." - Ernest Hemingway

There were many days of praying to Jesus in a line on the porch (their makeshift altar) for my cousins and I with the deacon for various reasons. Nothing major, but any childhood mischief we got into that was our punishment, but there began to be another form of punishment for me. It began as special treatment out of the eyesight of others, the candy, the special privileges’ the deacon would offer me that were never offered to the other kids. It then graduated to him being tucked away in a corner of the house or out in the back yard, where he would touch me. At first, I would cry. When I did this, he would make up a lie to my grandmother that would make her angry, this anger always ended up with me being the punching bag for a middle-aged woman with anger so foul, that she even looked different in those moments. That was how he was able to keep me from crying when he would corner me. No matter how careful I was, he seemed to always know when i was coming out of the bathroom, or he would be right there when grandma would send me to grab her purse from her hiding place in her room. At every turn, he seemed to be there, his hands touching me in places my stepfather told me was private and no one was to ever touch me, but he wasn’t there, I couldn’t call him to tell him. I didn’t know where my mom was, I was trapped. Trapped in a house where there was no one to tell that wouldn’t be angry, no one to tell that would make the monster stop. His breath smelled like Listerine, his saliva was ice cold, and his hands by this point always made it into my panties and the only thing that would stop him was her calling my name, “Rasheemia!!” Within a short time, a day I never imagined happened, she went off to another part of the house, with a friend of hers from the church. He cornered me in the bedroom as I tried to run towards the front of the house, this time I tried to get away, somehow knowing this was gonna get bad. He pushed me onto the bed using his upper body to hold me in place, using his hands he pulled my pants down and at that point, I think I went numb until she walked in. the door quickly opened and at that moment I begin to weep with relief. In a split second the monster was my savior, but she wasn’t. She looked at me with a look as if she was looking at the vilest person she ever saw and she simply closed the door, she was gone. She left me there. He jumped up, fixed his clothes, and walked away to the back room that they shared. I went into the bathroom and cried my heart out to God, not like when I was being punished, but for the first time, but not the last, I begged God to take my life. In that moment, I lost all hope for any and everything. I remember telling God to please take me away ….