Take Me to the Water

PART 2 // Power

I grew up knowing that my mother had power. 

She never tried to keep that from anyone. If you wanted her to lay her hands on you, she would, and Leah and I were no exception.

Whenever I laid in my mother's arms, I could feel that peace that everyone said they felt. For a long time, I thought that pleasant feeling I felt whenever she touched me was her power, but I was wrong. That was just her peace. The first time I really experienced my mother's power was in 1995. I was 9 years old and Leah was 13, and Leah hated everything about me.

When I was really little, Leah was nice to me. She helped me learn how to tie my shoes, and she'd beat up anyone that caused me trouble, but something changed when she became a teenager. Right after her birthday, she became mean, and she wasn't mean to everyone, just to me.

She no longer wanted me in her room and everything that I did was a problem. I chewed too loud. I laughed too much. I sat too close. No matter what I did, Leah found something wrong with it and would yell at me, and eventually we grew apart.

For a while, I tried to force her to like me, but that got old, quick. Then, I began to find joy in making her yell at me. If I knew something annoyed her, I did it ten times more. At dinner, I'd smack my food until she begged my mother to make me stop, and when we'd walk past each other in the house, I'd push her and run. But the week I felt my mother's power, I really wasn't trying to annoy Leah. I just wanted to feel like a teenager.

It was a Saturday afternoon. My father was out doing some maintenance work with Uncle Calvin and my mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Leah was out on the front porch reading a book, and I was dying of boredom inside of the house. I was looking for something to do when I walked past Leah's room and saw that her door was cracked open. Normally, Leah kept her door shut and locked, even though my parents said she couldn't. When I saw that her door was open, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go in. I pushed the door open gently and looked around. The coast was clear and I went further in.

Leah's room was like a dollhouse. Everything was so nice and neat, and all of her lotions and perfumes were organized so beautifully on her dresser. I picked up one of her bottles of perfume and sprayed myself. It smelled so good and I felt like a woman, so I picked up another and another and I sprayed myself with them all. I moved on to the lotions and was in the middle of rubbing myself down when the door swung open. I looked back quickly, and there was Leah with her book in her hand and a scowl on her face.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled.

I knew there was no way out of this situation, so I threw the bottle of lotion at Leah and darted out of the room past her. I screamed as Leah chased me through the entire house. My mother nonchalantly tried her best to calm Leah down as she washed the dishes.

"Leah! Stop chasing her," she said, preoccupied.

Leah didn't listen, and my mother continued her washing. This was an average day for her.

"Mama! Help me!" I yelled.

I darted out of the house and ran as fast as I could away from Leah, but she wouldn't give up. She chased me all the way into the woods behind our house, and when she got close enough, she pushed me with everything she had. I flung to the ground and I felt something pierce my stomach. I turned on my back, holding my stomach and crying out in pain. Leah just stood overtop of me with a scowl on her face. When I moved my hand from my stomach, her scowl turned to shock and her mouth hung wide open. I looked down at my hand and it was covered in blood. I had fallen on glass and there was a piece of it sticking out of my stomach.

Leah covered her mouth with her hand and I didn't know what else to do, so I pulled the glass out of my stomach and more blood came with it. The last thing I remember before passing out was Leah yelling.