My Father's Demons

My earliest memory takes place around the age of five or so. I can see myself clearly as I disembark the canary yellow school bus. I am wearing a mid-thigh length, vivid, blue polyester dress with the kind of straps you find on overalls, secured by big red buttons. The straps are set against the contrast of a white shirt with bright yellow, red and orange flowers that peek out amongst the puffed, creased sleeves. Adorning my feet are the very first pair of saddle oxford shoes I owned. My hair is tied back in a ponytail with a red velvet bow and in my hand is a Wonder Woman lunchbox that contains a half-eaten peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and an empty thermos that once held sweet tea, truly southern sweet tea at that! As I watch this scene unfold, I remember feeling the excitement that day in anticipation of telling my Mama and Daddy all about my first day of Kindergarten. As I run to the house I start to hear their voices. He is angry! I can hear him calling her names, "Slut, Whore, Bitch", what do those names mean. She is crying and begging him to stop so this cannot be good. My excitement is staunched by the horror I feel as her cries get softer and more strained. What is happening? Why is my mama crying? Why is my daddy so mad? Where is my baby sister?  They don't realize I am home until I open the door and fear grips every part of me. I start screaming and he turns to see me standing in the doorway. Immediately, he drops the belt that he had been using to choke her and the rage in his eyes turns to shame as he realizes the fright in mine. I run to my mama as he runs outside. My baby sister is trying to climb up my mama’s legs whilst crying uncontrollably. In that moment the man who was my world became the man I would resent and hate for most of my life. This was My Mama! What had he done to My Mama?! She was naked, tied to a kitchen dining chair, crying and covered in bruises and blood. I see the pain in her eyes that comes with the recognition that I, her five year old daughter, have been exposed to the monster that is my Daddy... to be continued.

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Papa just didn't have anything left to help with after a while so, tired of living on flour gravy and hoe bread, my mama had started calling around to try and find my daddy in hopes that he would send money so that she could feed us all and keep a roof over our heads. After weeks of searching and dozens of unreturned calls, she was finally given an international number for a residence in Costa Rica. When she called a woman answered. My mama asked for "Skip". The woman responded with the expected "Who's calling?", to which my mama replied "This is his wife, Judy." The woman on the other end said, " Excuse me, but that is not possible. This is his wife, Abbie.". My mama hung up the phone in shock! His wife?!..

I guess I have known pretty much my entire life that I have what they call an "Old Soul". I never really thought about it much until now, but looking back, I can see how I was always older than my years. I was drawn into adult conversations. I enjoyed being with adults more so than kids my own age, save a very few. I knew how to blend into the surroundings so the grown-ups wouldn't notice while they were interacting. I guess being more mature than my age is why I remember these events so vividly, and for as long as I live I will remember that car ride home. I won't remember it for the airplanes taking off so close to me that I could feel the rumble of their engines or the fact that I could almost reach out and touch them. I won't remember it for the blue sky with it's cotton clouds that were made up of familiar shapes if I squinted my eyes just right. I won't remember it for the sounds of the radio blaring those southern gospel quartets singing songs that made my skin turn into shriveled up goose bumps. No, I will forever remember this day for the beginning of a bond being built with my mama that would last a lifetime. This was the day that she entrusted me with the the knowledge of what she, now we, were fighting and she began to teach me how to fight it. I'm not exactly sure how long my Father was gone, but to me it seemed like a lifetime, and I LOVED IT! So many good things happened while he was gone and I began to believe we were starting a new life without him. We moved from that little white house where I first learned that the "Daddy" I knew, didn't exist. We moved into a small, one bedroom apartment where we had neighbors above us and beside us. It wasn't anything fancy. Heck, it wasn't even in the greatest of neighborhoods. That didn't bother me at all. It had everything I needed, a place to ride my bicycle, kids next door to play with, a pool and, best of all, NO DADDY! My mama would work everyday and my cousins would stay with my sister and I while she worked. We had so much fun! This is where I learned to ride my bicycle, where I learned to swim and even jump off of the diving board into the deep end of the pool. We played in the mudholes and made gourmet mud pie meals. We drank from the water hose and weaved bracelets, necklaces and crowns out of grass and weeds. We played Hide - And - Go - Seek and Red Rover, Red Rover well after dusk. I was loving my life as a carefree little girl, but what I loved most were the evenings at bedtime. Every night my mama would put my sister and I in bed with her and she would read us stories from the bible and teach us about Jesus. She never failed to make sure that we knew how to put on the "Whole Armor Of God" and that we knew how to pray. This became our routine. Day in and day out, until the day the phone rang and when my mother answered I watched as she turned white as a ghost. She hung up the phone and told me to help get my sister in the car. We were going to the airport to pick my father up. WHAT?! This could not be happening! Surely, he wasn't coming back now! He had been gone for so long. I was now six or seven, my sister was two or three. She wouldn't even know him and I didn't want to know him. Life had been perfect without him. What would this mean for us?...

The drive home from the airport was a stark difference in comparison to the drive there. The silence that had dared us to defy it had boarded that airplane with my father. Now, my mother, baby sister and I were on our way home. WITHOUT HIM! Silence no longer ruled in our realm. The windows were down, the radio was blaring southern gospel music and my mama was singing along. She let me sit up front and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was so beautiful. I can close my eyes to this day and see her as though there is a polaroid in the forefront of my mind. Her hair with its rich Cherokee heritage was untamed by the wind’s embrace. Her dark, freckle sprayed complexion could make the mythical Aphrodite mad with envy. And those eyes, so warm with love and affection for her children, for my sister, for me. She would look over at me from time to time as though every word she was singing was just for me and I knew that it was. When she turned the radio down my stomach twisted inside me. I knew she wanted to talk about events that I had been witness to over the past few weeks. Things I had tried so hard to erase from my mind. She started with an apology. An APOLOGY! Why is she apologizing for what my father did to her? For what HE did to the man in the car? I tried to tell her, “Mama, it wasn’t your fault.” but, she wouldn’t listen. She was ashamed that she hadn’t left him, but she was afraid of what he might do if she tried to. It was at that moment, at five and a half years old that she first told me why she was too scared to leave my father. Over the years I have heard the story many times, but I only really needed to hear it once for it to be branded onto the fabric of who I am. Before I tell you that story let me give you a little background on my upbringing in the Pentecostal Faith. My paternal grandparents, James W. Wilkins Sr. and Darlene Wilkins(yes, my father’s parents)were Pentecostal. My Papa Wilkins was an evangelist, pastor, preacher and a teacher until the day he died. My Nana Wilkins was the organist for his ministry. They had two biological sons and in addition they raised two of my half-brothers. They were both beautiful, warm and loving people who dedicated their lives to the ministry. My maternal grandparents, Bunnie and Nellie Lee, were poor sharecroppers who worked the cotton fields of Dothan Alabama along with their eight children, two boys and six girls(of which my mother was the second youngest). Papa and Granny Lee moved to Florida when their children were young and they settled in an area known as Plant City. There they attended a small church known as Southside Pentecostal Church of God. It is this church that I grew up in as my family attended this church until I married at seventeen. As far back as I can remember it was normal to have a deliverance during a church service. Our pastor, Sister Edna Mae Royster, was truly a woman of God and she was gifted with many gifts one of which being discernment. If someone came to church and they were possessed by an evil spirit she and the elders of the church would pray and cast it out of the person. There would always be one elder who would come around to the children and anoint our heads with oil while praying that the blood of Jesus would cover and keep us lest the evil spirit try to possess one of us. I have seen so many things as a Pentecostal that would be hard for anyone who is not Pentecostal to believe. I recall one instance where a woman, who could not have weighed more than one hundred and ten pounds, physically threw four grown men who were not so small, across the room before the spirits were cast out and she expelled the evidence of them into a garbage can in the form of vomit. I feel that it is imperative as I tell my story that you know I have never been sheltered from the reality that evil exists and that we are in a constant battle with it regardless of age, race, religion, gender or relation. With that in mind, please understand that my mother was attempting to prepare me for battle that day by equipping me with the knowledge of what we were really fighting. It was not my father, but an evil that had such a stronghold on him it would eventually take him to his grave. My mama started by telling me that she loved me and that she knew my daddy did too. Then I watched as she gathered her composure and prayed for God to help me understand what she was about to tell me. This story took place shortly after I was born. My mother had not long been filled with the Holy Ghost during one of my Papa Wilkins’ tent revivals. She was excited and full of joy as a result of a renewed relationship with God after falling away from her faith for a while. While my mother was finding her way back to God, my father was reconnecting with a friend of his who was a minister himself and the two of them had become inseparable. Little did my mother know that they were two scheming con-men who were preying on unsuspecting people who attended this “Minister’s” revival services. This man was holding a tent revival in the heart of Tampa every night and, after very lively and exciting performances, he would instruct my father to take up an offering. The offering was portrayed as a way to help feed and clothe the poor and homeless in the area so people would give even when they really couldn’t afford to give. On the last night of the revival my father insisted that they all stay in a suite at the motel across the street from the tent and “celebrate their success”. My mama said that she had gone to the room as soon as the service was over so that she could nurse me and put me to bed. Shortly after putting me down on a pallet beside the bed she heard my father, the “minister” and a woman come in the door. They were laughing and carrying on and she immediately knew they were all intoxicated. She was shocked to see that the minister was with a woman she recognized as his piano player and not his wife, whom she had met on several other occasions. My mother was in shock that this man, who presented himself as a minister of God, would be so irreverent and cruel, not to mention evil. He had fleeced God’s people for profit and she wanted no part of it. My father, on the other hand, insisted that she join them in their jubilation and libations. She refused. Her refusal was more than a dark cloud raining on their triumphant celebration, it was an embarrassment to him that she had disobeyed his order in front of these people. He punched her in the face, knocking her to the floor. He then excused himself to his friends and pulled her to the bedroom by the hair on her head. Once there he proceeded with her punishment, blow after blow until he could no longer stand. At that point he undressed and passed out on the bed. With me still asleep on the pallet by the bed, my mother tried to muffle her cries as she crawled over me and eased onto her side of the bed. She reached into the bedside table and took out the Gideon’s Bible that had been placed there and she started to read. She took turns reading, then praying both in silence for fear she might wake him. She didn’t understand why this was her lot in life. She didn’t understand why this man couldn’t be the charming, charismatic man that she loved all of the time. Mostly she didn’t understand how she could not have seen this side of him before she tied her life to him forever by having his child. No, that is not right. This is her child. I am her child. As she sat there making that silent declaration in her spirit, he sat up instantly, eyes wide and head turned toward her. He started speaking, but the voices coming from him were none his. She recalled a child’s voice, a woman’s voice and a malevolent voice as he asked her, “Who am I?”. With all of the strength she could muster she replied, “You are Skip.”. Again and again he asked “Who am I?” and each time she would reply “You are Skip.” Then all of the voices faded with the exception of the malevolent one and he looked in her eye and demanded, “I said, WHO AM I?”. At that moment she knew to who it was she was speaking and it was not my father so she answered, “You are Satan!”. He replied, “That’s right. I have got him and I will soon have you.”. My mama defied him as though she was standing on the shoulders of a giant facing down a measly ant when, in all actuality, she felt it was the other way around. With the backbone of Samson she told that demon, “You will NEVER have me. I belong to God”. The demon replied, “Oh yeah? Watch this. I can make him do anything I want him to.”. That is when my father got up from the bed and walked around to the side where I lay sleeping on the floor. He picked his foot up and put it on my head and said to my mama, “I can make him do anything I want him to do. I can make him crush her head with his foot if I want to.” That is when my beautiful, beaten, skinny little mama told the demon that she and I were covered by the blood of Jesus and “Satan, you can’t cross the bloodline!”. Immediately he removed his foot from my head and walked back to his side of the bed and laid down without another word. Mama said that when he woke up the next morning he did not remember any of what had happened, but she did....

The day after my father beat the man, he packed his suitcases and we drove him to the airport. He claimed to be leaving on a business trip and I can’t remember where he was supposed to be going, but it didn’t matter. All I knew was that he was leaving my mama, my sister and me. He would be out of our lives. I didn’t know for how long but, I knew that my mother would be okay at least for the time he was away. As we pulled into the airport none of us dared to speak. As a matter of fact, we had ridden in silence from the time my father closed the trunk on his beloved car until now. I watched as my father got out of the driver’s seat and walked to the back of the car. He opened the trunk and I could see out of the rear window through the crack the opening had made. He had packed three suitcases. THREE! That meant that this would be an extended trip. On previous trips he would only take one large case. When he took one case it was an indication that he would return within a week. Surely, three suitcases meant he was leaving forever, didn’t it? I loved my daddy, but I hated him too! I hated when he was angry. When he was angry, which was becoming more and more often, he took it out on my mother. He would beat her so badly she would wear her winter clothes in the hot Florida summers just to hide the bruises and scars left behind by his adult tantrums. As I recalled the marks I had seen just this morning, I found myself praying. not the bedtime prayer that I had been taught, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep....”, no, this was the first real, sincere, unrehearsed prayer that my five year old self had ever prayed. As I stared at those puke green, metal suitcases which I hoped were full of everything that he needed to anchor and sustain him somewhere far far away, I pleaded with Jesus that He would cause my daddy to forget about us. I prayed that He would find a new family and that he would stay with them.....He did! Well sort of.....

The day I found my mother tied to the chair while my father beat and choked her must have been as liberating for him as it was life shattering for me because he no longer tried to conceal his rage when I was present. It was a mere two weeks from that day, when I remember climbing into the backseat of his prized 1965 Ford Mustang. It was metal flaked, midnight blue with black leather seats that seemed to always be scorching hot from the Florida sun. I always positioned myself right in the middle of the bench seat so that I could peek through the opening in the front two seats and see my daddy shift the gears each time the engine roared for his attention. It amazed me that he could control such a creature with a mere touch from his hands and a shift of his feet, but then again he was a god to me at that age. In the days that had passed I had tried to reconcile my young mind as to how he could have done such a thing as I had walked in on. That was not my daddy. No, my daddy was a protector. He was the one who doted on me. He made sure that I knew how much he wanted and cherished me everyday. He would watch me play and tell me how much he loved me. He made sure that I had nice things even if we really couldn’t afford them. He would brush my hair with his hand and sing to me. I can still hear him singing, “Don’t know much about history, don’t know biology, but I do know that I love you and I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world it would be...”. He had an amazing voice and it was mesmerizing. Anyone who heard him sing would tell him how much he sounded like Elvis and he LOVED that. What those people didn’t know about him was the side I had witnessed. I can’t help but wonder if he would have killed my mama if I hadn’t walked in. He was no longer a god to me. No, now I knew that he never had been. I was just blind to his evil, but not anymore. The images of that day are bombarding my mind as we embark on our trip. A day that should have been one of the happiest days of my young life because it was my first day of Kindergarten and I had done so well. That milestone was replaced by a terror that no one should have to witness, much less a five year old girl. I am lost in my thoughts as I hear a commotion break out in the front seat. We are stopped at a four way stop-sign and I hear my father in a rage , ranting that the man driving the car at the stop-sign to our right is staring at my mother in a way that he feels is flirtatious. The man proceeds through his stop-sign and my father slams his foot down on the gas peddle, causing the tires to scream in anticipation of what was about to take place. My mama is crying and begging him not to do anything as she clings to my sister who had been sitting in her lap. It is to no avail as I can see the demons have already awoken to control their vessel like a puppeteer moving the strings of his puppets to garner maximum impact on his audience. We are now inches from the man’s car and my daddy is laying on the horn while leaning out the window and screaming for the man to pull over. HE DOES! I was pleading with him in my mind not to get out of the car. Just take off, PLEASE! He isn’t listening. He is out of the car so is my daddy, followed by my mama as she sets the baby down in the seat she has just vacated. Thinking back to that day I can see it clearly. The man couldn’t have been more than twenty to twenty-five years old. He was handsome with his blonde hair that fell around his face and just barely dared to dip and touch his shoulders. He wasn’t too small or too big, but he looked as though he could hold his own if need be. Through the years I have imagined him as a surfer with the beauty that comes from being kissed by the sun. He is wearing a t-shirt with white, yellow and brown stripes and a pair of tight-fitting faded blue jeans that flare at the bottom just barely revealing white sneakers. The look of confusion on the young man’s face told me that he had no clue as to who we were or what was going on. Without any explanation my father slams the man against the trunk of his car and starts punching him in the face. My mama is hanging onto his arm, begging him to stop and trying to pull him away, but she can’t. She is so tiny and he is so big. It is like watching a single raindrop try to extinguish a blazing fire. Her efforts do not phase him. This poor man is now covered in blood and I start screaming. In that moment, when my daddy hears me, the demons falter. I see the recognition on my father’s face. The realization of what he had just subjected his prized possession to. He had knowingly allowed his puppet-master to take over in the presence of his daughters, and for what? Because he thought this man was looking at his wife? The man could have been admiring the beautiful car or simply been looking both ways to insure he wouldn’t be pulling out into oncoming traffic. Who knows? Regardless, the man certainly did nothing to deserve the beating he took. With that realization, he picked the man up onto his feet and in stark silence he helped him into his car, gave him a hundred dollar bill and waited for the man to drive off. I can’t remember where we were on our way to that day, but I know that we never made it. My father and mother returned to the car and we drove home in a deafening silence. My father never spoke about what he had done that day, but then again, he never spoke about any of the evil within him. But I will...