| EMMA JEAN |
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| The pain was still there. I could feel it. Didn’t think at that time and place it was ever going away. But I was wanting healing. Pains crawled me from my past and mistakes. Bad choices that’s all. Like you I had a few secrets. You know, something you hope nobody ever has to know. Secrets that everybody in this crazy ass family of mine didn’t have a clue about. They was too darn busy being work-aholics, evil and conniving, stupid and petty, especially the noisy ones, or just plain old naive to recognize it anyway. A bunch of walking pictures of their own cover-ups and lies to worry about me. Am I bitter now about my secret? Not anymore. Though it’s not something I’d ever do again. Still I like the edge, the having the inside scoop. Knowing something the smart ones don’t even know. And yet, it’s staring them right in their faces. Early that Saturday morning of Regal’s engagement luncheon, while everyone else was running around crazy trying to get ready and all gussied up to out-dress each other, hosing down them fancy cars and preparing for an event that I knew was never going to take place, I sat calmly peering out my bedroom window. Sometimes I’d experience my own private summer as I concentrated on the sounds that floated through this town. A town I’ve always called home, and a mere five minutes away from where I was born and raised and felt I would probably die in. It was on the day of June 12th, three days before my fifty-fifth birthday and moments away from the beginning of the rest of my life. That day I was heavy-hearted, but still happy and waiting. Waiting for the storm. The storm of emotions and questions, before things calmed down. Waiting for her. By the time the afternoon rolled around it was God awful hot, at least one hundred and fifteen degrees. The sweat from that sun-eaten day and from the task of achieving thirty long days of sobriety slid down from beneath my armpits and popped a plenty across my fat face. My scalp itched both from the moisture and anxiety of the will not to get that wanted stiff drink, Gin and Tonic, my soul’s pleaser. But I had to be strong. The day before I had had a talk with myself. I had told myself that this was the nineties and I wasn’t getting any younger and darn sure wasn’t getting any prettier. I didn’t like the ugly picture of me that starred back at me in the mirror for a lot of reasons. I told myself I was a woman who needed to get a grip. I told myself that problems grow older if you don’t abort them. From the TV I had ordered many tapes, books and videos trying to get it together. I’ve watched talk shows and seen black and white women get their life together and wanted to God for that to be me. Still I needed somebody to show me how. I knew unlike the olden days women wasn’t taking the back seat anymore. I told myself, neither will I. I was tired of being held up in my house alone until Winston came home. Friends with no one but a liquor bottle and a refrigerator of food. Yes I was tired. And tired of being tired. I decided it was time that I purged. Set the story straight. Not to everyone, just to the one that counted, Her. |
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| Thanks For Reading Let Me Know What You Think So Far |
| From The Heart, Sarah Rachel |
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| Chapter Seven |
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