TeasasTips

(This is an excerpt from my upcoming book "Out of Bondage.") I don’t know what I said during the interim of me trying to get him off me and to even stop him from hitting me. I’m quite sure I was vocalizing something, I just can’t remember what it was. After he slapped and I somehow wrestled my arms out of his grip because at that point he was hitting me with his fists. He was real crafty with how he would beat me. He would never beat me where I would have a black eye, or busted nose or busted lip. He would always hit me with his fists about my body. He would hit me with his fists all in my head—and God is great because I could have been killed at any point with the blow to the right part of my head. If he had hit me in my temple I would have died probably. Like I said about my body, where I would be bruised up and all that kind of thing. And just so you know, I used to be an athlete. I used to play softball, volleyball, tennis, I swam. I was pretty athleti...

I remember the day we set our neighbor’s tires on fire.  Before you start thinking we were bad kids or even worse heathens, let me set the scene for you. We were on summer vacation and as usual I felt free as a bird knowing I didn’t have to go to school, no homework, it was freedom! My grandmother had made breakfast. Granny always made a full breakfast for my grandfather and me. My mother was gone to work so my grandparents watched me while Mama was at work . This day the bacon and smell of just perked coffee filled the house. I had my favorite a bacon and egg sandwich while granddaddy and grandma had grits, eggs, bacon and toast. As a kid I didn’t like grits, they reminded me of slop and it just looked too messy to go into my stomach. As usual I hurried and ate my breakfast because I didn’t want to miss one minute of playtime. If I had my way I would have played with my friends from sun up to sun down. Only stopping to come into the house to use the...

I was almost kidnapped when I was five.  It was a cloudy day, not wintertime, but fall season in Detroit. I had a jacket on I know but as I recall that day it was eerily vacant on our street. You see we lived with my grandparents in Delray, a small community inside of Detroit. Everyone knew each other and people were neighborly in a friendly sometimes-nosy way. But that was a good thing because neighbors looked out for one another. I was in our front yard playing with my dolls. My grandfather and mother were at work. I had been given instructions from my Granny not to leave out of our fenced in yard. I remember that fence as being gray. Maybe I thought it was gray because of what almost happened to me.  I also remembered the sky as being cloudy and gray so maybe that’s why I thought the fence was gray so they could match. In actuality our fence was a green wooden fence. As a child I had been taught not to talk to strangers and of course never to leave...