Chapter One
Now
Wednesday Morning
Day after the Tennessee primary election.
There were countless days and nights while I was growing up when I wished to die. That I would close my eyes and hopefully never see the next morning, like in the prayer I used to recite every night before going to bed.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
If that happened, I figured I’d go to Heaven, because I believed in Jesus and I prayed every night.
That’s what they told me would happen.
Right?
It’s what my mother and my pastor said good girls did.
Every morning, however, I’d wake up to find myself still stuck in Hell.
Did that mean I wasn’t a good girl?
My father said I wasn’t.
I later learned good or bad was irrelevant.Luckwas the main determining factor.
I also learned that luck was something you could sometimes swing heavily in or against your favor, depending on how hard you worked for it, the precautions you took.
If I was lucky, in the morning I found my father was passed out and sleeping off a drunk. If I was really lucky, Momma was already home from working the night shift at the auto parts plant.
If I was unlucky, my father was awake, but Momma was home.
If I was really unlucky, she wasn’t home, and he was wide awake and waiting for me when I got up.
Or he woke me up.
I didn’t understand until I was an adult out of college and practicing law that the reason I startle awake so easily is because of what I endured and survived. PTSD.
I didn’t know back then there were other people—other kids—who suffered the way I did. I didn’t know it wasn’t my fault. I thought I’d done something wrong.
That if I prayed harder, maybe it’d get better.
If I woke up earlier every morning.
I believed my father when he said it was my fault.
I believed him when he said I was bad, and that if I said anything, “they” would take me “away.”
That I’d never see Momma again.
I believed all of that, and more.
