11. Delilah #2
“Now, as for what happened, the Lord never gives us more than we can bear, and while it’s unfortunate, we must use this moment to understand what He might be trying to teach us.
In the event that you fall pregnant, we will look at it as a welcome blessing.
A child is always a welcome gift from The Lord. ”
A baby?
I hadn’t even thought about a baby until now. I’d been so consumed with the ‘ordeal’ itself that I hadn’t gotten there yet in my brain. And the thought stole my fucking breath from my lungs.
No. No way am I having my rapist’s baby.
My mom must have registered my expression because she set down her cup and walked over to me, sitting next to me on my bed. Her weight made the mattress dip down. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.
She wanted me to think of this as a blessing. A blessing?
“Delilah, we must remember that this is all a part of God’s plan.”
I lost my shit and stood up with my fists balled, my towel barely hanging onto my body.
“You have the audacity to sit here and tell me that I was raped because it was all apart of God’s plan? I didn’t ask for this to happen to me!” I was shaking and could feel my heart beating hard against my chest.
My mother just sighed. She sighed, like my emotions and what I went through were a major disappointment for her.
“Alright, Delilah. Get some sleep. Say your prayers, it’ll make everything better,” she said, pushing off my bed and leaving the teacup she brought behind.
I closed the door— hard. My hands pressed down on the wood as I willed my heart rate to calm.
Tears that I didn’t realize I’d shed had leaked from my eyes, falling freely from my cheeks.
Disgust and rage became twin flames in my chest, begging for me to let them out. My nails scraped down the wood leaving ten claw marks in the door as a primal scream ripped out of my throat.
I knew it was a mistake the moment I did it, but I had no fucks left to give.
Within seconds, my father was barreling through the door, making me back up and had me nearly tripping over my own feet.
“What is the meaning of this?” He demanded, looking down his nose at me.
He was a tall man. Well over six feet, and he worked out regularly.
Where I got my features from my mother, I got my rage from my father.
He was quick to anger and a firm believer in corporal punishment.
When I was younger, he made me my own paddle for when I misbehaved.
He carved my name into it and hung it on the wall of our kitchen.
An ever-present threat looming over me should I even think about misbehaving.
The look in his storm gray eyes was one I’d seen many times.
It was the look he got when he was about to unleash that anger on anyone close, and my muscles reacted before my brain even caught onto the danger I’d just put myself in.
He hated screaming and loud noises and being back here in my childhood room made me feel like that scared five-year-old girl all over again.
“I—I’m sorry,” I spat out, trying to manage the situation. But it seemed my father was out of patience, because he raised his hand and backhanded me across the face. My parents were two for two today.
I went down hard, towel spilling out around me. My knees scraped against the carpet, burning my skin.
“Look at you.” I heard him spit and felt the wad hit the skin on my back. “You probably brought what happened today on yourself. You should know better than to tempt men, Delilah.”
I grabbed my towel and hid my body, too scared to look up at my father, but his words pelted me, sinking deep into my soul.
Was it really my fault for what happened?
Pastor John had said as much.
Now my father.
My mother said it was a part of God’s plan.
But really, it felt like the actions of one evil piece of shit, deciding that he could take what he wanted, and get away with it.
“You’ll be going back to school tomorrow, and I don’t want any more incidents, you hear me?”
Defensively, I curled up on the ground, not looking up at him, too scared to move or even breathe. His footsteps groaned against the floor and then I heard the telltale snick of the door closing.
I rushed over to it once he was gone and locked the door. It wouldn’t keep him out if he really wanted to get in, but the action of doing it made me feel safer somehow.
It was only natural that I wanted to love my parents, but deep down I knew that they would never change.
They saw me as clay to be molded in their image.
They never anticipated that the clay they were molding would harden and resist their attempts.
Deep down, a part of me wanted to believe they were doing their best. But their best, wasn’t what was best for me.
My plan had always been to leave this place once I graduated, and that dream was the only thing that kept me going.
I was going to pack up my things, get on a train, and get a job in the city.
Even if I had to stay in a shoebox apartment that was infested with roaches, it would be better than the existence I’d been saddled with since birth. I just had to make it one more year.