Solae
As Kahlani took the bottle of bleach from me, she asked, “What the hell happened to Essence? You kept saying Rah didn’t care. What happened to her? What didn’t he care about?”
“She...” I couldn’t even say it. The words burned my throat like rubbing alcohol. “She...Oh God...” I began to sob. “When DCFS took her to that home, some boy raped her.”
Kahlani heaved, “Oh God–”
Just then, faint moans could be heard behind us, and we lost it!
“Oh shit!” I cursed in a frightened whisper as Kahlani and I jumped out of our skin.
Clutching my chest with a shaky hand, I reluctantly looked over to where Rah was lying.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Kahlani in a panicked murmur.
Her eyes were wide with fear as she stared at Rah’s body. “Yeah,” barely left her voice above a whisper.
We stood there like frozen zombies, staring at him with bulging eyes.
Then, it happened again. “Mmmm...”
“Fuck!” I squealed as I jumped and held on to Kahlani’s arm. “He’s alive! Shit!”
Kahlani told me, “Calm down,” despite me feeling her shivering just as much as I was.
I couldn’t be calm. How was I supposed to be fucking calm?
I had completely spazzed and stabbed this son of a bitch three times.
It felt good feeling the knife pierce his thick skin.
It felt good seeing him cringe with pain.
I loved seeing the same hurt in his eyes that he inflicted on me and my children.
But when his body hit that floor, my heart stopped beating, knowing that I had just made sure I would never see my kids again. After what Essence had gone through, I had put her right back in the hands of the state because they would surely take my kids away from me when I was in prison for murder.
As I stood there frozen, not knowing what the hell to do next, Kahlani rushed out of my grasp towards a drawer. She quickly swung it open and then slammed it shut. She did the next drawer the same way, and another, and another, until she found what she was looking for.
My heart sank when she pulled out a butcher knife.
“No, Kahlani!” I ran towards her, taking the knife out of her hand.
“We have to kill him,” she insisted.
She tried to take the knife from me, but I snatched it away and put it behind my back. “No!”
“You’re going to get in trouble if he lives to tell about this shit.”
“I don’t care.” I had given up. Tears were streaming down my face.
At that moment, I had no energy left to give.
I had allowed Rah to send me down a destructive path yet again.
All I had wanted was to talk to him, to tell him how his evil games had led to our child being raped and possibly scarred for the rest of her life.
But when that son of a bitch was so evil and heartless that he blamed me, I couldn’t take his arrogance anymore.
I grabbed the first thing in my reach and just started to swing.
I wanted to hurt him...bad. I wanted him to feel pain.
But now, only my children would suffer...again.
“I have to call the police.”
Kahlani gasped. “You wanna go to prison, bitch?!”
“I’d rather go to jail for stabbing him than killing him.” I went towards my cell phone on the counter. Rah’s blood smeared onto the phone from my trembling hands when I picked it up to dial 9-1-1. “Leave, Kahlani.”
“No!” She rushed towards me and tried to snatch the phone from my hand, but I pulled it away before she could get a grip on it.
“Just go home, Kahlani,” I insisted. “You can’t be here. You can’t be involved in this. I need you to be free so that you can take care of my kids–”
Tears began to well in her eyes as she kept pleading with me. “Solae–”
“I can’t kill him,” I pressed. “I thought I had, but now that I haven’t, I am actually relieved.
I don’t want to be in a position where I never see my babies again.
Please...” I stared at her with my pleading, tired eyes, begging her to please listen to me.
She just looked back at me with eyes filled with unwillingness.
Just as the seconds crept by slowly, Rah moaned again.
“Mmmm... Urgh.”
I didn’t even turn to look at him. I kept looking at Kahlani, waiting for her to realize that this was the right thing to do. “Kahlani, go.”
“This is crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re going to go to jail for a long time.”
“I made a mistake. I snapped. Now, I have to face the consequences.”
As I brought the phone in front of me to press call, she wrapped her arms around me.
I wanted to fall into her arms and cry, but I couldn’t.
I had to do this. I tapped her arm lightly, silently telling her to let me go.
She did with a deep sigh and finally, slowly and regretfully, walked out of the kitchen.
As I dialed 9-1-1, I used the bleach to start getting rid of any trace of Kahlani being there.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I...Uh...I need an ambulance.”
“Ma’am, are you hurt?”
“No...no, it’s...it’s my boyfriend...ex-boyfriend. He’s been stabbed.”
“Can you tell us what happened, ma’am?”
I was standing outside of my house leaning against a squad car with two officers standing in front of me, watching me sternly. They were eyeing the blood all over me. They had just arrived, right after the ambulance had arrived and the techs had rushed inside.
“I ...Uh...” I was stuttering. I was still trembling. Tears were still flowing. My heart was beating so fast that I could barely breathe. I took a slow, deep breath trying to calm down and think clearly. “Me and my ex-boyfriend got into an argument.”
“And?”
“And he....Um...” My voice wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Uh...He started to hit me.” Suddenly, I felt like I should lie, that I should make this seem like I was defending myself.
Good thing for me, I was crying already, so I felt like I sounded believable.
“He’s always been mentally and physically abusive, so I.
..I got scared. He was hitting me, grabbing me.
And he’s so much bigger than me. I didn’t know what else to do.
I picked up the first thing that I saw and just started to swing.
Oh my God...” I clutched my chest, staring off into nothing as the tears rolled.
“So, you stabbed him?” the other officer clarified.
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do...”
Just then, the techs rushed out of the front door with Rah on a stretcher. I was both relieved and disappointed that they weren’t carrying him out of that house in a body bag.
I began to walk away, to rush towards the stretcher. I don’t know why specifically. There was so much that I wanted to do, so much on my mind, so much that I was feeling.
“Ma’am.” A stern hand clutching my elbow stopped me.
I looked back, still stuttering, “I...I need to go to the hospital with him. I need to make sure he’s okay.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but you have to come with us.” Just then, his partner started to approach me as well. When he started to reach for his cuffs, my heart sank. “You’re under arrest for attempted murder.”