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Pt.6
Vince and I didn’t talk much after our “encounter.” Unsure whether it was me or him who felt the shift, we went about texting like it was an unspoken chore. We had gone from uninhibited, witty conversations to speaking on specific subjects. The care was gone, the connection was dying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I had begun to grieve the end of our relationship while trying my best to hold on—holding on to the person who had become my escape.
I had finally found someone.
Dreading every text, I began anticipating each one would be the last. The butterflies had turned into locusts in the pit of my stomach, which slowly ate away at every part of me until I had nothing left to feel. They ate away, stripping me until I was bare, raw. I had lost myself. Every thought that wasn’t about Seth was now muffled, smothered by the fear of losing.
I had lost at the game I created… a loser.
Everything between us felt forced, each interaction tinged with the sense that the end was near. I second-guessed myself constantly, trying not to say anything that would bring about the ending I already anticipated. But not yet—I couldn’t let go yet. Not until I was ready, not until I said so.
Mourning. Grief. Death. Mourning. Grief. Death.
An unsettling helplessness had overridden every rational feeling or thought I could have—the thoughts were locusts.
There was an unspoken responsibility to keep going until the connection was reestablished or until it inevitably fizzled into the abyss with all the other unspoken, unsuccessful relationships that people let go of in fear of the truth an honest conversation might bring.
I had a growing angst to ask Seth about the girl Gabby had mentioned. I couldn’t find the words to say; as we spoke, they ruminated in my mind, and when I attempted to summon them to my lips, they would retreat.
My voice was silenced my fear, my emotions repressed, and uncertainty about the truth grew. I hated myself. I hated the coward I had become. I hated how I couldn’t speak up for myself. I hated everything about me.
“Of course, he would choose her over me—look at me. I bet she’s beautiful.”
I would imagine what this other girl looked like, ruminating on what she could’ve looked like.
Maybe she was olive-toned with big, curly hair. She probably had clear skin and money to buy cool clothes that matched Seth’s aesthetic. Or perhaps she was Asian like him, with wavy, shiny black hair that flowed down the curves of her back. Maybe she was nothing like me and everything of someone else—someone prettier than me. I sat with these thoughts.
Used and a bit ashamed, I wanted so badly to take back the moment. In fact, I wanted to take back all the moments—the excitement, the giddy girl who smiled at the sound of the phone ringing, the moment I transitioned from a seemingly naïve girl to a used woman. A woman now scorned by a man who pretended to care about her until she was tricked out of the only thing she had control of—her body. Used and discarded, all because I had been deceived by a teenage con man.
I hated who I was, and over time, even my skin felt uncomfortable, and I wished to be anyone else.
Boil-like acne covered my chin, cheeks, and, gradually, my whole face. When my dad noticed, he nicknamed me “Lizard Girl” and would announce it loudly whenever he saw me, like he was introducing some supervillain in a cartoon. Though he enjoyed it, this started to affect my self-esteem. When I told him how his comments hurt me, he smugly replied, “It’s called self-esteem for a reason. You need to have it and build it yourself.”
Nauseated at the sight of food, I spent weeks just nibbling and gagging. What started as a few strands of hair in the sink turned into clumps.
When I finally looked in the mirror, I was not only unrecognizable but emaciated. Once my grandmother noticed, she took me to a doctor, who simply summarized it as puberty and put me on birth control to combat the symptoms. The birth control made it worse. What was once just nausea at the thought of food became projectile vomiting, irritability, more hair loss, and more boil-like acne.
My body was reacting to stress—an allergic reaction caused by emotional turmoil. The emotional turmoil that I created from a game I thought I’d win. From pills to patches, I had given it my best and was finally ready to stop feeling like I was slowly suffering.
The birth control didn’t come without endless bickering between my grandmother and my father. They both believed that birth control would give me “permission” to have sex, but only my grandmother understood that if it was a hormonal imbalance, birth control could be beneficial. In these intense arguments, they would debate how to parent me, and oddly enough, the arguments seemed to resemble those of a husband and wife. My dad started to leave—sometimes for a day, and then his absence stretched to months in these instances he would attempt to parent me over the phone. Inevitably, whatever decision he made would be overruled, and I was now at the mercy of my grandmother.
My grandmother enjoyed the newfound power she had over me. Her tolerance for me peaked at age thirteen – when I reached puberty. The older I got, the more she saw me as her competition and wanted my father to choose her over me. Often, she would say, “Don’t trust that girl; she’s not as innocent as she seems,” referring to me. Oddly enough, I’d heard her say this about almost all of my dad’s girlfriends. In her opinion, they were never good enough for him.
My father was terrible to women, and we all knew it. He was cunning and traditionally attractive – he shares the same qualities with Lucifer if you ask me.
Standing at 5’10” with a well-proportioned stature, my father is usually pale but, in the summer, has olive skin that glows like the golden moon on a fall night. Of all my grandmother’s sons, he was the only one born with green eyes that transition to blue in the winter and honey-brown hair. He was a dream-turned-nightmare for many women who crossed his path. His looks drew them in—these victims disguised as girlfriends— his humor entangled them. But once he had them, the demon within would infiltrate the relationship, becoming the downfall of many good women.
Him being a raging alcoholic. They never knew that liquor would always and forever be his first and only true love. The second love was cocaine. I’m not sure when he learned to mix the two, but when he did, he would rage. He would disappear for days, and when he didn’t, he would come home with a mangled dog from a dog fight or a dog he had stolen from God knows where. But when it was really bad, he would come home with a group of people and wake me up to berate me or physically assault me.
There were times when he would stumble in, and I would wake up to him in a drunken coma. Like a little helper, when I found him that way, I would quietly bring him ice water every few hours once his cup was empty. Careful not to wake him up because if I did – he would turn on me and make me a subject to verbal abuse.
Once, I had accidentally awakened him from one of my father’s drunken comas on the couch. I had come to refill his cup and accidentally made a noise. He jumped up, his face red, his lips swollen, and he stared at me. “You think you’re so fucking important, don’t you. Thinking you’re helping you poor drunk dad. You ain’t doing shit.”
I looked at him, walked away, and got him another cup of ice water. He took the cup, took a sip, and said, “Go make me a plate. I know it’s left over from your aunt’s cookout in there.” I went to the kitchen to fix him a plate and heated it repeatedly since we had a little run-down microwave to ensure it got hot. I took the plate to him and went back to the kitchen to fetch him utensils – as I pulled the utensils out the drawer, he said, “You think you’re going to be a chef. Your plating skills suck ass.” Suddenly, a sharp pain shot into my collarbone, and I dropped the utensils. He had thrown a lighter at me. As I cried, I picked up the utensils, fighting tears and stumbling back to hesitantly give them to him. He said, “Stop bitchin’ that didn’t even hurt.” Heading toward the stars to retreat to my room, he said, “No, sit the hell down”.
I sat. He stared at me and hysterically laughed. Then he started to hysterically cry. I sat and watched him cry. –how to kill a butterfly
They wanted to fix my father — and to be the one he desired. He had an uncanny ability to find wounded women and break them in new ways – ways they didn’t see coming after rebuilding themselves from past traumas. The suffering always caught them by surprise. As a child, I could see the light in their eyes, so happy to be with him; they believed they had seen the good in him.
Meeting me seemed significant to his women as if it were a step in the right direction. “Oh, he must really like me,” they probably thought when they met me. I could see the words behind their eyes, gleaming with joy—oh, so very happy.
In the beginning stages, they were always nice to me, tending to my every need, hoping I’d see them as a mother figure. But it wasn’t for me—it was for him, my father. “See me as this,” “Look at what I’m doing for her,” I could sense it behind their eyes and feel it in every “kind” act. They wanted to win. They wanted to be better than every other woman – to be a better mother than my mother. How foolish they were, I thought as a child. I relished the kindness and gifts directed at me. I learned early on how to enjoy the good because all hell would break loose when it was bad. I knew, and they were soon to find out.
My father would take me to his rendezvous with other women. I think he appreciated my silence around them; my silence earned his trust. I wasn’t his child; I was a chess piece in his game of love turned abuse.
But these women were not like deer in the headlights—deer are innocent.
Though I felt for them, I knew they weren’t innocent. Subtle interactions revealed their true character. In my father’s absence, the questions would come, always asked with a smile, cunning and sweet. But the flip side emerged when they realized I wasn’t a snitch.
They would cut their eyes at me, clearly annoyed by my presence when we were alone. That’s who they indeed were.
They had voids he could sense in the dark, blindfolded, like an animal. He always knew his prey—and a part of them must have known he was their demise… they had to know.
Due to his small stature as a child, my father was often picked on. At school, he was targeted by other boys, and at home, the torment continued as the runt amongst his brothers. According to him, my grandmother taught him how to fight. She permitted him to use any rock or bottle he could find on the ground and instructed him to defend himself by any means necessary. The rule was clear: never lose a fight. If he did, he had to keep fighting that person until he won.
Once he grew strong enough to defend himself, he sought out and defeated everyone who bullied him, including his brothers.
His father was absent throughout his childhood. When he was around, all my father witnessed was his father physically abusing my grandmother. After he had confronted and defeated all his childhood tormentors, he located his father and sought justice for my grandmother on a streetcar. He left his father unrecognizable after a brutal confrontation. From that moment on, he became my grandmother’s hero and protector, perhaps even in her eyes, a figure akin to a father. He was hers.
I had no autonomy in choosing my clothing. My grandmother would ensure my clothes were 3-4 sizes too big. I was never allowed to choose my own hairstyles until a certain age, so my aunt would braid my hair into a bun at my grandmother’s request to keep me “age appropriate.”
I hated the braids; they were unequal in size – and as she became exhausted braiding my hair, you could see with each braid, the effort became less and less. Some thin, some thick, and mostly unraveled. Each braid uneven, and the first braid being the best braid and the last resembling a loosely woven blanket – I began to resent them both. After my hair was finished, like catty mean girls who had found a girl they could enjoy bullying me together, they would look and laugh and sometimes shrug at the results – female bonding. They both knew it looked horrible, and both knew I didn’t have a choice in the matter – and just like my grandmother, my aunt enjoyed this power; she had over me too and abused it when she could.
My grandmother also ensured that I wouldn’t have padded bras because she acclaimed that she saw me walking in a manner that made my breast “bounce” for male attention; I was 14 when she said that. She would use this to justify criticizing me in my father’s presence.
“You should see how she looks at men; she stares at them. You should see how she walks around; she likes to have them watch her breasts bounce around. I tell you, that girl isn’t as innocent as you think she is”.
Sometimes, my dad would believe her and call himself reprimanding me by yelling at me as I tried to explain myself; the times he disagreed with my grandmother – she would claim that he was betraying her, or she would threaten him with the idea of having to take care of me on his own – then he would leave. My father’s only kryptonite is the responsibility of taking care of his children. Hours would turn into days and days into weeks, and eventually, he would be gone for months. Most times, he wouldn’t call, and if he did call, my grandmother would make sure that I was somehow unable to talk and make me aware that he had called days later. A little something for her to have over me – her man.
I had no autonomy, and that’s the way she liked it. I had become her punching bag for all of her insecurities, and her putting me down helped her play into her delusions of grandeur. Every year, there was always new but resurrecting drama that she would create. One year, I was jealous of her and wished I looked like her; another year, I was chronically masturbating, according to the story she shared with my father, then with the rest of the family; the following year, I was a liar who couldn’t be believed about anything, and eventually she claimed I was trying to kill her by walking down the stairs next to her in an attempt to knock her down the stairs – I can say that’s one only one of the stories she got correct. I actually wanted her dead; I wanted her out of my life. I wanted to be my own person, and I desired the freedom of actually being a child without abuse.
Every chance she got, she would try her best to make people hate me – family, friends of the family, doctors, therapists, teachers, neighbors…everyone. I don’t think these people grew to hate me; I think they were packed with so many terrible stories that they couldn’t fully fathom about a child who never really left the house. Some would look at me pitifully; they often looked like they wanted to help but were either too scared or without resources to do so; we knew many poor people. We relied on monthly food stamps and state welfare to supplement the lack of my grandmother’s income – she hadn’t worked since her early 30s due to a panic disorder. She received government funds for legally being my guardian; the money went toward her shopping habit and paying off debts from the multiple credit accounts she had been in collections before she received legal custody of me.
But my father wasn’t completely innocent in her drama with me. He liked seeing her upset and would use me as a pawn in another game with another woman – his mother. I would tell him about my experience with her while he was away, and though he would promise not to repeat our conversation, he would tell her, and then all hell would break loose. She would confront me in front of him, yelling and wagging her finger in my face – then sentencing me to punishment. I wasn’t allowed any personal freedom, and she knew that. So, she would take away the radio or simply hold on to the grudge until it was time for back-to-school shopping and refuse to buy me new clothes – by that time, I would forget, but she always remembered. For 2 years, I wore the same shoes to school as a punishment; according to her, I didn’t deserve new shoes. They were a pair of black converses etched with pink stars and a colorful spiraling line. I wore them all year round- hail, sleet, rain, sun, and snow. She didn’t care; in fact, she took me with her to get new shoes every season and made me hold her bags as she shopped for hours on end. Looking at the mannequins and imagining all the outfits and clothes I would one day have, I just stood there with her bags.
When I finally got my first job, she started charging me rent money. She said she would “put it away” for when I started college, but she never did.
Once, my dad’s girlfriend bought me clothes – when I arrived home, my grandmother emptied the bag of clothes onto her bed and inspected every item. As she went through the clothes, her face gradually formed a disgusted grimace – “Oh, look at this cheap shit. Nope, you’re not wearing this,” then she came across a sundress – it was my favorite item in the bag. It was blush pink adorned with purple and blue flowers in a gradient pattern from the waist to the hem. I loved it. As my grandmother inspected the dress, she suddenly became enraged. “Who the hell picked this shit out? There are no sleeves, and it’s v-cut, so your fucking tits can show.”
I let her know that I picked it out – “Oh, you want to dress like a fucking slut? There’s no sluts raised in this house. Actually, I’m going to call her and let her know”. Pacing back and forth as she dialed the phone – “You think you’re so fucking slick, don’t you. You’ll see, she’s taking this shit back. You won’t be a whore like her.”
My dad’s then-girlfriend, Crystal, answered the phone – my grandmother, at the sound of her picking up the phone, began to yell. “Who the hell told you she could dress like this; you are not her mother?!” – she went on and on for what seemed like a lifetime before rudely hanging up on her. I went to my room and waited for my dad to arrive back home. When he arrived, he brought Crystal with him – my grandmother packed all the clothes back into the bag except for the dress. With the bag of clothes in her left hand and the dress in her right, she marched down the stairs to confront her. I slowly crept behind, knowing eventually she would summon me, so I would have rather beat her to it.
She lifted her right hand and threw the dress in Crystal’s face, and screamed, “She will not be dressing like a whore”. Crystal began to stand up to defend herself but instantly sat back down, realizing that my father was no longer in the room. Listening, I heard him in the backyard with the garden hose, seemingly cleaning up after the dog.
Tears formed in my eyes, knowing that I couldn’t defend her – I wanted to go retrieve my dad from the backyard. Peering through the window to see which part of the yard he was in – there he was, laughing. His face was red, shoulders jerking from hysterically laughing – He positioned himself right by the open window, seemingly unable to tear himself away from the captivating drama, as he listened intently to every word. I wiped my face and ran out to the backyard. “Dad, come in the house; she’s yelling at Crystal.” – he continued to laugh, continuously spraying the same spot. “Shhhh,” he said. Over the water hose, we could faintly hear my grandmother yelling, and Crystal was now whimpering while trying to explain herself.
Defeated, I walked away. When I entered the house, Crystal was now standing with her purse, looking to see if it was my father who had entered back into the house so she could leave. But realizing it was just me – she unintendedly made eye contact with me. Her eyes – I could see she was defeated and wanted to run. But it was more profound than that. She felt saddened for me – she mouthed, “I’m sorry.” The tears rolled down her cheeks and rested on her lips. Then, a loud screech from my dad yanking the backdoor open behind me. He lackadaisically walked past me – he walked up to Crystal, seemingly ignoring her tears. “You ready,” he said in a very monotone voice. She looked at him, and before she could respond, my grandmother pointed her finger at the dress Crytal was now holding – “Did you see that whore shit she got for your daughter? She wants her to dress, just like her, with her fucking tits all out”. My father responded, “Chill El,” short for Eleanor; this was his nickname for her.
Crystal, now confident in my dad being present, began yelling instead of crying. “YOU’RE GONNA STOP FUCKING TALKING TO ME LIKE THAT. I KNOW I’M IN YOUR HOUSE, BUT YOU DON’T TALK TO PEOPLE THAT WAY!”, my grandmother combusted in fury.
My dad began yelling, “ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, WE’RE OUTTA HERE!”
He whisked her away, and out the door they went. As we stood in the living room, I noticed my grandmother’s frustration as she aggressively fiddled about with her phone. It was amusing to me, knowing that she never really knew what she was doing with her phone anyway. I was confident that whatever she was attempting to do wasn’t being accomplished. In a moment of irritation, she groaned softly under her breath. Upon realizing that I was in the room with her, she looked up, shot a disapproving glance in my direction, turned away, and then proceeded to make her way up the stairs. Left in the silence, I sat where Crystal had been seated and stared at the ceiling. I just sat because I would start another commotion if I turned the television on. I noticed Crystal’s tears as my hands glided over the intricate Navajo print blanket that draped the seat. Gently, I rubbed the tears into the fabric until they vanished, leaving no trace.
It was 9am, and I woke up to pain slashing through my abdomen – hunched over. I ran to the bathroom, where I began to vomit excessively. After the third time, I had nothing left in my stomach. The acid started to tear through the flesh of my throat, and I now began to dry and heave to the point of tears. The pain was unbearable, and I began to hallucinate; the walls were moving, my ears were ringing, and I began to pinch myself to feel pain somewhere else.
I contorted my body in every position possible, but the pain would contort me in several other positions. I always had horrible menstrual cycles, but this felt different; I actually felt like I was dying. I used the sink to pull myself up from the bathroom floor and stood to see myself in the mirror. I was unrecognizable; the blood vessels in my eyes had burst, my face was pale, and purple blotches were under each eye. After a few moments of glaring at myself, the pain pulled me back to the floor. As the pain persisted, I cried and prayed. Praying that I would just suddenly die in an effort to alleviate the pain. I held myself as I rocked in a fetal position while suddenly drifting off.
The rush of pain returned, but this time with an urge to push. I jumped up and climbed onto the toilet, and I began to bear down and push; between each push were moments of mind-numbing pain. Panting and pushing, panting and pushing, there was a rhythm that formed.
Breathe in pain – push out pain. I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t died – I was begging God to end it. Suddenly, I felt something like an egg leave my body, and it made a splash as it hit the water.
I quickly turned around to investigate. It was a ball of veins unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Wobbling back and forth my attention was now grabbed by the trickling blood cascading down my legs. The pain was gone, but now I was bleeding uncontrollably. The energy drained from my body like someone had pulled it out of me by a string.
I crawled toward the bathroom door, and from the floor, I grabbed a low-hanging bath towel; I loosely wrapped it around my waist with the last iota of strength I had left and, in one swift motion, fell back and lay motionless on the bathroom floor. Gazing up at the ceiling, I saw a black dot, and as I stared, it grew in size. I blinked a few times and with every blink, it grew even faster. Eventually, what started as a tiny black dot took over the whole ceiling, and in an instant, everything was black – I had lost consciousness.
I am not sure how long I was out, but I had assumed that I was dying and had finally died. I had found peace.
Then came rapid knocking…
“Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock”
I didn’t move – everything was still black. I ignored it.
Suddenly, I felt a thud at the top of my head, the corner of the bathroom door digging into my scalp. I heard my grandmother’s voice: “Taisja, what are you doing in there? Get up and come on out. Your sister is here and has to use the bathroom; come on.”
Slowly, I despairingly began to pick myself up from the bathroom floor. I sat up against the bathroom door. I thought I had died; I wished I had died; why hadn’t I died?
My vision was hazy, my mouth was so parched that my tongue had stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my throat was so raw that I could taste the blood from the tearing due to the repetitive vomiting. I hadn’t died, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had just dropped dead right then and there.
Sitting there stripped, legs sprawled here and there, and the bathroom towel the same; my legs were striped with dried blood, and the bathroom rugs were displaced. I studied myself lying there; I felt detached from my body.
Pulling myself up with the rim of the toilet – finally coming to my feet. When I looked down to flush – there it was. This lime-sized thing that I had ejected from my body was a sprouting red lump. I had thought it was a hallucination. The lump was covered in little translucent veins and with peeks of blue and purple.
I had a miscarriage.
I stood there paralyzed by shock.
-suddenly, another knock on the door, followed by my grandmother barging in. I hurried and flushed the toilet, watching “it” spin around the bowl until it was gone and the toilet filled with clear water. I hadn’t gotten a chance to grasp the moment—my grandmother came in, “Are you done in here? I said your sister needs to use the bathroom.”
I wrapped the towel around my waist and maneuvered around her, standing in the doorway.
Laying in my bed – my thoughts took me. Imagining the future with Seth, he told me once if he ever had a son, he would want to name him Gio. Imagining Seth and our son Gio and getting married – I was too young to get married, so I started to freak out. Shaking that unrealistic thought from my head – I pictured reality. The reality would have been my father kicking me out once he found out, shame that would’ve been enforced by the whole family, even though not a single person in my immediate family was married when they conceived. Seth most likely would’ve abandoned me. The reality hurt, but, in a sense, I was happy – happy that I wouldn’t have to suffer the reality of being a teenage mother living in poverty. Perpetuating the reality, my parents selfishly forced on me. Happy but disappointed, unsure but content, afraid but relieved.
Sometime later, I had a routine checkup with my doctor – normally, these visits were accompanied by my grandmother, who sat in the room no matter how much privacy the doctor and I would insist I needed. She needed control. But this time was different – she wanted to make a point to my father and me that she was needed. So, she instructed me to schedule and navigate public transportation to my doctor’s appointment independently. To her embarrassment, I had successfully done both without her “assistance.”
I disclosed to my physician that I had a miscarriage. Revealing this information came with a series of events I wasn’t quite anticipating- my first pap smear.
Stripped under a hospital gown with my genitals on the edge of a stiff hospital bed, waiting for my doctor to come probe me with medical instruments. Looking over at the table she had prepared with exactness and intention with an assortment of instruments, I thought, “Where the hell is all of that going?”.
Interrupting my thoughts was the doctor walking into the room. Her casual demeanor disturbed me, but then I thought about how frightening it would be to have a nervous doctor performing such an invasive procedure; that cured my disturbance almost immediately.
Upon inspection, she informed me that everything was seemingly healthy and inquired about what type of sexual intercourse I had. As If having a 70-year-old lady with bifocals stare into my vagina with an overhead light wasn’t enough, I now had to explain the logistics of the kind of sex I had. I was under the impression that both people had to orgasm to get pregnant – her debunking my theory gave me no hope for the future. Oh, how terrible sex was, and to know I didn’t have to enjoy it to get pregnant was sobering and mortifying. Nonetheless, I was happy that there was no permanent damage but disappointed that sex could be a lifetime of disappointment; what a morbid life. After a swab for STIs – she sent me on my way to a probed, prodded, and new jaded perspective of human existence.
My doctor retired after my visit.
One year later, I was assigned a new doctor. Without my input, my grandmother placed me with the same doctor as my aunt.
Sitting on the hospital bed, I waited for her for over an hour. Checking the time and becoming more frustrated at the passing of every minute.
In she came strutting about.
A petite Italian woman in her early 40s with wavy, long, brown, shiny hair and enough Botox to hold her face in one position for the rest of her life.
She came stomping in like a woman twice her size in 6-inch heels, her white coat open, showing her floral ruffled sun dress. Never shutting the door upon her entrance, she looked in the mirror over the stainless-steel sink, tossed her hair side to side, and fluffed it vigorously with her hands.
“Okay, Tasha, we’re gonna treat you for Chlamydia today.” Going through the range of emotions, the main one being anxiety, I said, “Um, no, you have the wrong person.”
She halted fluffing her hair and looked at me like I was a moron.
“No, I have the right person. I checked your chart before I came in” she said.
“Yeah, you said, Tasha. I’m Taisja, I got an STI test over a year ago, and my doctor never called me and told me anything.”
Peering at me in irritability, “Your doctor retired and probably just forgot to follow up with her patients. Look, I’ll show you.”
She walked over to her computer, sliding the rotating stool further under the desk, stood over the computer, and input her credentials. She asked me for the spelling of my first and last name and confirmed my birthday.
Still facing the computer, she said, “Okay, come look at this.” She clicked the mouse around the screen.
I hesitantly slid off the hospital bed, the paper bedding sliding off with me, and walked over to the computer. I looked at the screen, trying to figure out where to look first, and only saw codes.
“Look right here.” The doctor moved the curser rapidly under my name “Okay, now look here.” She then clicked and highlighted where the results confirmed the positive STI.
I backed away from the computer slowly and eased back onto the bed. I began to panic.
It felt like the blood had drained from my body. I couldn’t help but think about what would happen next and how to hide it. With a few quick motions, the doctor logged out of the computer and walked back toward the door, staring at me with a blank gaze for several minutes. “Okay, I’m going to send your script to your pharmacy on file, and they’ll call you when it’s ready.” I responded in angst, “No, they can’t call. I’ll just go pick it up”. She seemingly rolled her eyes at me and left the room, leaving the door cracked behind her.
Going home felt like an out-of-body experience. Overwhelmed and with no one to talk to, I knew I needed to get my mood in order before I went home.
Arriving home, I opened the front door. Immediately, my grandmother yelled from upstairs,
“Taisja, is that you?”
“Yeah” I yelled back.
“Come here” she said
Going up the stairs I had to gather my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t know what she knew or didn’t know so I needed to play it cool. I walked into her room she was watching the 6pm news in bed as usual. I sat in her desk chair. Once the weather segment came on, she turned the TV down to talk, she never cared to watch the weather segment.
“How’d it go.”
“Fine. She was insulting and was late.”
She laughed. “Rude, how?”
“She left the door open and was playing in her hair. I don’t like her too much.”
“Yeah, your aunt keeps talking about how nice she is. I’ll see for myself. If I don’t like her, we can switch doctors.”
“Okay… I’m about to go take a nap.”
“Don’t forget about cleaning the kitchen; the dog needs to be let out in an hour. I’ll wake you up.”
I lay in my bed, and as I drifted off, I thought about how I never had symptoms, and maybe that’s why I had a miscarriage. Either way, I knew it could never come out.
What felt like 2 hours later, I heard my grandmother screaming,
“TAISJA, WAKE THE HELL UP AND GET IN HERE!”
Groggy, I walked down the hall into her bedroom. She lay on her bed smoking a cigarette, her cell phone to one ear and the house phone in her hand.
“Your dad is on the phone. Who is the boy calling the house?”
Genuinely confused, I asked, “What, boy?”
My dad yelled from her cell phone, muffled but still audible,
“DON’T PLAY STUPID WHO THE FUCK IS THE BOY CALLING THE HOUSE?!”
“I’m serious; I don’t know who is calling the house.”
*The number called back*
“Answer the phone and put it on speaker” my grandmother said
“Hello, who is this?”
“It’s Vince; Beth gave me your number”, followed by *chuckles*.”
“Okay, but like, you can’t call my house.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. My bad”
Vince hung up.
“So, who is Vince?” my grandmother asked.
“A guy that goes to my school. He got my number from someone.”
I could hear my dad yelling from the phone to my grandmother’s ear again.
“DON’T HAVE PEOPLE PLAYING ON THE FUCKING PHONE AGAIN. THINK I’M PLAYING IF YOU WANT TO!”
I staggered back to my room, exhausted and overwhelmed, looking forward to getting a few minutes of rest before I had to muster up the energy to do chores. I crawled back into bed, and to my surprise, the spot I had been in had still been warm, heaven in my own little hell. My mattress was old and had been passed down for several generations; my grandmother was the only person who had ever gotten a new one. She always made sure her needs were met, and only her needs were met.
As I lay in my indented warm spot in bed, the worn springs in the matters screeched; I had wished that I could sleep forever. Oh, how nice it would’ve been to not have to face the world for an eternity, I thought; I drifted to sleep. A few seconds later, cutting the peace with an axe, was my grandmother yet again screaming my name, this time more intense and far angrier than the first time.
“TAISJA GET YOUR FUCKING ASS IN HERE!”
I lay there, eyes still closed and hoping it was a nightmare. The screaming had dissipated momentarily – Suddenly, again.
“TAISJA GET YOUR ASS IN HERE. I KNOW YOU HEAR ME CALLING YOU!”
My eyes shot open. I snatched the covers off, jumped from the bed, and headed down the hall yet again, disoriented and anxious.
There again was my grandmother on her bed, still on the phone with my father. The look in her eyes frightened me. She glowered at me –
“STAND RIGHT THERE!” she said pointing her finger toward the end of her bed.
Standing at the foot of her bed, I couldn’t fathom what I was in trouble for, but I knew it was something I wouldn’t be able to recover from. She fumbled around with the house phone until she got to the voicemail box.
Putting in the code to the voicemail, she pressed every number with force while taking moments to look at me with disappointment. She then played a voicemail.
The voicemail was from the doctor, letting me know that the prescription for my chlamydia treatment was sent to the pharmacy and should be ready within a day or so.
My grandmother played the voicemail twice, and both times, she glared at me like she could spit on me.
“GIVE HER THE PHONE!” I heard my father say on her cell phone.
I took the phone and hesitantly placed it to my ear.
“he-hello” my voice shook.
My father began yelling for what seemed like an eternity. I stood still at the foot of my grandmother’s bed crying while my grandmother glared at me. Every few minutes she would yell out to my father something negative about me to keep his anger heightened.
“I TOLD TO YOU SHE WAS SNEAKY, I ALWAYS TOLD YOU SHE WASN’T AS INNOCENT AS YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS” and other comments equally as hurtful.
I never told the truth. I kept telling my father the doctor was wrong, and she probably had the wrong person. Telling the truth didn’t seem like an option, but we all knew I was lying. No matter what was said and the number of threats they both threw my way, I wasn’t going to break or budge. My dad demanded that I give my phone to my grandmother. To their chagrin, there was nothing on my phone to find. I would factory reset my phone every night, anticipating the day they decided to invade my privacy. My grandmother didn’t want me to have peace for too long, so anything that brought me happiness would become a target. She needed to find a way to take things away from me.
When they realized there was nothing on my phone, they were both simultaneously enraged. My father yelled, and my grandmother threw out punishment ideas as if she were playing Family Feud. After a few hours of interrogation and belittling comments, I was sent back to my room.
The next day, my grandmother had gone to the pharmacy to retrieve my prescription. For the next seven days, my grandmother decided, since I couldn’t be trusted, that I needed to come to her room in order to get my daily pill. Every day for seven days, she would shake the pill from the bottle into her palm, press the pill into my palm where her nails would leave an indentation in my palm, tell me how disgusting I was, and watch me take the pill and require that open my mouth and lift my tongue to ensure that I was actually taking the medication. On the last day, she called me a little slut and laughed.
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