The Virgin Soul ©2007
Dorothea A. Manley
The Catharsis
“She had been touched everywhere but her soul,” The man on the street corner preached as I walked lackadaisically with my little hand in the tight grip of my crack-addicted mother.
They say the soul is the center of your mind, will, and your emotions. But they never tell you what that has to do with the cause of life. They never tell you that there is a special chemistry between the three that make up who you are in the earth. They never prepare you for the separate but equal experiences and the pains that pierce through one and explode into the other. They never tell you that one day you will find the peace, the love and the joy equilibrium in the soulish realm will bring when you submit your soul to God – and even if they did, I wouldn’t have listened because all of my soul’s parts clamoring for my attention, it seemed simultaneously. Damn! I wish I could just turn that stupid preachin’ off! But it is within me. A part of me. Like an appendage God put there and no one else can bear this one but me.
“Mama, make him stop!”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
Where were you when he touched me and made me touch him? Where were you when I cried out to you and why didn’t you say something that let me know you knew that I was being raped by that nasty bastard? Huh? What did you say?
“Baby, I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I was too busy working to notice that your little pink panties where filled with red blood and …”
“Your daddy wouldn’t get off of me long enough for me to see where…”
“Those bills kept piling up and my pipe was eeeemptee and I needed you to make the sac ri fice for your momma, Baby Girl. Just one more time so mommy can be free from this pain.”
What the hell?
You mean to tell me you knew? Naw. Surely, you had no clue. We were all in the same bed. He was there with the flashlight. I woke up every morning without panties on.
Oh. You knew it was wrong to leave me at home with him alone, but you had no choice?
I see. You thought you could ease your insane kind of pain with my strain as you vetoed my desire for Holy Ghost fire and elected me for the burning within that your John left between my precious 9 year old thighs. What?!!!!
All of this writing has got my mind going in all kinds of directions. A nice glass of my favorite Robert Mondavi Reisling will work out some of these kinks in my neck and in my head.
Standing over me is a looming shadow. Arms, that would have been the subject of Michelangelo’s next great work of art, consumed my size eight frame and took away all of the fear and pain that childhood memories where pushing me to expose. I could have melted in those bronze statues of Malcolm’s. He had a stellar record of coming along at just the right moment - just when I needed him most. It was almost as if he and God would have a conference call to talk about the way in which they would conspire to meet my needs that day.
Well, I knew he was praying for me. He always has since before we were married. That was 15 years ago and he has been unrelenting in his duties as my covering. All praises to God! This Black woman is most grateful.
“Dinner?” I responded to his quest for nourishment, “Ummmmm… Yeah! I’m open for whatever sounds good to you, Babe. Just point and click!” I smiled.
“Baby, you choose tonight. I’m too famished. We may end up at Po Boys in Louisville!” Malcolm chuckled. Po Boys was our old college hangout! The food was so good when you were a starving college student who couldn’t cook a lick and had no family or friends with family close to rescue you. But not today! One medical degree recipient and one best-selling novelist later, we are free from the college dining hall experience and the mom and pop restaurants that got us through those lean years. Don’t get me wrong. We go back when we WANT to now, not because we have to go back. This freedom that God has provided is not taken for granted one moment by either of us.
“Jaaaaponaise! How does that sound, Sweetheart?!” I exclaimed.
“You are trying to make me go into a coma, Woman! Just mentioning it makes me long for those succulent SCRIMPS and that steak and sushi! COM’ ON Woman! Getchyo’ shoes OwN, NAH… Loose here, girl!”
As we were running out of the house to the new, chocolate-covered drop top CLS500, we both laughed hysterically at our childlike exhilaration. While in college I had a glimpse that Malcolm would be the best man a woman could ever even dream of, I still couldn’t have told you that we would be where we are today. We’ve had 15 years of peace. Only God knew. The thing is, with all of the stuff – the creature comforts – we knew that none of it would mean anything to us if we didn’t keep God at the center of our lives and work to stay connected to one another. We knew that beneath the furs and the diamonds, the cars, houses and the land, there were two people who had been through mountainous struggles to achieve peace and balance that only a Christ-centered life could provide.
It was funny because most people were placing bets on us at the altar. “They ain’t gon’ last a year,” I heard. “Girl she’s so jacked up. That man ain’t gon’ put up with her crazy butt for too long.” Never could understand why my fellow Black brothas and sistahs – not to mention IN Christ - would pour out such negative venom into the atmosphere concerning someone else’s happiness. Malcolm and I never gave it a lot of thought, however. We both had decided to let Jesus be our guide and to seek peace in every opportunity that comes our way – good or bad. Our hearts were committed to this quest. There were days that we both struggle with our own personal demons, but we allow each other the space to process those feelings and emotions that attempt to overcome us or come between us. But you best believe that by the time night falls, we are coming together to say we are sorry and make up like married folks who are in love do. Most importantly, we are committed to praying one another through those times.
I can say this about Malcolm: He let me know when we first met that he was in this to win this. You see, at the age of nine I was being pimped by my mother for crack. At least three times a night, I was being violated by drunken crack heads who would share their ‘treasures’ with my mother in exchange. “She is such a lovely little girl,” I would hear them say as if they were about to take me shopping for school clothes or something innocent and precious was about to take place.
Unfortunately, I was not only left with the painful memories of two years of constant sexual abuse and maltreatment, but someone had given me the ‘gift’ of herpes. My medication and countless herbal treatments had helped the breakouts stop, but there always loomed the possibility of me passing it on to Malcolm. So far, so good. But he didn’t care. Not that he didn’t care about his own health. He loved me so much that the risk of contracting this awful thing from me was nothing to him. I know that most people would have run from me like I had the plague had they known. Not Malcolm. He said, “Babe, you didn’t ask for this and I am not going to deprive myself of the rest of you which is the best of you because of this. Besides, I’m a doctor. I know how common it is and I am not going to let you go because of something most of us have. End of story!”
Truthfully, I thought he was crazy at first. But every night he was there at my dorm room door knocking or calling me to make sure that I was okay and that I had everything that I needed. It took me a while to trust him because every man I had known intimately had somehow managed to drain life from me as our relationship progressed.
After a while, I made a personal declaration of the Black Woman’s National Anthem –I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF!” You laugh? I did too! But I was as serious as all get out. I was tired of letting myself be abused and thinking that somehow I deserved that kind of treatment.
“You will never find a man who will love you for you.”
“You are a whore. You will always be a whore just like your momma.”
“You will have a arm full of babies before you is 15.”
These voices in my head had prevailed long enough. It was time for me to speak into my own life and allow God to replace the goodness that had been drained from my almost corpse-like existence. The transformation that I would undergo didn’t happen overnight. There were many experiences with backsliding and short spurts of forward movements. Some days I felt like I was on the side of the Colorado Mountains and an avalanche of negative thoughts and old memories was just a breath away. When those moments came, I would run and write down my thoughts and put positive words at the end of each sentence to counter the attack in my mind. With every trial, my positive words became stronger and more heartfelt while my harmful words were being snuffed out and put into their proper place – under the blood of Jesus.
The Virgin Soul is my new book to be released in the summer of 2018! This is just a snippet. As I complete my work, I will post previews for your comments.
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