“Aye, don’t call my fucking brother a pedophile. My brother ain’t no pedophile ass nigga. You got me and him fucked up, Pam!” my daddy yelled.
My heart broke with every word that he said because it proved more that he didn’t believe me. “Daddy, you don’t believe me?”
Like he just remembered that I was in the room, he turned to face me with wide eyes. “Baby girl, no. It’s not that I don’t believe you. Maybe you just misunderstood what happened.”
My head bucked back. “I’m not a five-year-old. I’m fourteen years old, thirteen then. I know that it’s not right for a grown man to lay on me and put his fingers?—”
“Nah! Nah! Nah! I’m not trying to hear that shit!” My daddy put his hands over his ears like he was a little kid or something.
My mama pushed him hard. “Get the fuck out of my house. I promise you won’t see my baby again until she wants to see you, bitch.” She started raining blows over him. “Get the fuck out, fuck ass nigga!”
My tears fell as I watched my mama beat the hell out of my daddy as he ran out of my room. He didn’t believe me. I couldn’t believe my daddy didn’t believe me. I kicked my shoes off and climbed into my bed.My entire body felt like it was on fire from the hurt that radiated through it. My daddy didn’t believe me.
Back To the Present . . .
It had been eight long months since I’d moved to Clover, South Carolina. I never thought that I would be here ever again in my life after my grandma died when I was twenty years old. Her death and funeral was the first time that I had been back in Clover since the summer I was thirteen years old.
The day that my daddy doubted what I said his brother did to me changed everything. The first man that broke my heart was my father. He reached out for a few months after he left my mama’s house, but I wanted nothing to do with him. All reach outs halted after my grandma found out what happened and took it upon herself to confront my daddy and his brother.
I thought my mama told her mother about what happened immediately, but I found out later that she didn’t. Apparently, she lied and told my mother that she had won a mother-daughter summer trip. It was half a lie because she didn’t win a trip, but we did go on one. I wasn’t sure where she got the money from, but we went on a two-week trip to Jamaica. It was the best time that I had in my life, even with the dark overcast of what happened.
My grandma found out when my mother was forced to tell her when she planned for the next summer. After Margie Anderson found out what happened, the story was told that she rolled up on my daddy and uncle at a cookout function and shot them both. They didn’t die, but she still shot them. After that, my father wanted nothing to do with any of the Anderson women.
My grandma passed her house down to my mother. There was no way that my mother would move back to Clover, so she rented it out. She used a property management company to make sure the house was maintained and a lawn care company to make sure the lawn was taken care of. It was a good source of passive income for my mother.
I followed my mother’s footsteps and got my degrees in education. I took it a step further and attained my doctoratedegree in Educational Innovation. Teaching the young minds of tomorrow was a passion of mine that I got honestly. My first teaching job was at the high school that my mother was the principal of. Three years before I left, I was promoted to vice principal.
My mother passed four years ago from breast cancer. Devastation wasn’t strong enough of a word to describe my feelings. I felt abandoned, like an orphaned child. My school family was there and supportive, but it wasn’t the same as having my mother. Last year, I finally decided that I needed to take a sabbatical.
My mother’s life insurance was healthy enough and allowed me to take some time off and be alright. Her home, which she left to me, had been paid off for years. I made the smart decision to break my lease and move into my mother’s house. It made the most sense to do that since I was on a sabbatical. I didn’t want to use unnecessary money when I could save it. At that point, rent was an unnecessary bill since I had a paid for house that I could live in.
Last year, I reached out to a career agency to help me find a new job. When I told them that I was willing to relocate, that widened the net considerably. Teachers were needed everywhere, but what I wanted was an administrative position. I figured if I got a job that was outside of Augusta, Georgia, that I could just rent my home like my mother did her mother’s.
It was like God had a sense of humor that only he found funny. When Carlie, my agent, presented the open principal position atHeritage of Excellence High School, I knew exactly where it was. The high school was one of the top private high schools in South Carolina. The fact that the student demographic was comprised of minorities made the school more popular.
The high school was established in 2000 by a group of teachers who felt there was a gap in the educational system for our brown babies. They worked hard to make sure they could address the gap in the educational system while teaching the students to embrace their culture and heritage. Carlie told me that the school was interested in hiring me off my résumé alone, without an interview.
The pay they offered was not bad at seventy-nine thousand a year. In my mind, I told myself that I would just tell Carlie that the pay wasn’t enough for me to relocate. I thought that would be the end of it. Seventy-nine thousand dollars a year in Clover was good money. There was no way that they would offer more, or so I thought. When she came back to let me know that they offered me a cool eighty-seven thousand a year and a five thousand dollar moving stipend, I was outdone. They offered me all of that off a résumé alone.
Carlie told me that this was one of the best offers she had ever received for a client and that I would be a fool to pass it up. I took a week to pray on it. I asked God to give me a sign that this was the move for me. I went onto the school’s website, which I had been on multiple times at this point. This time, their vision statement stood out to me.
Heritage of Excellence High School envisions a future where every student of every background has access to revolutionary education, cultural attestation, and shattered ceiling opportunities. We strive to be a model of inclusive learning that authorizes young leaders to achieve academic excellence, uplift the communities around them, and create societal legacy.
For some reason, on that day, it resonated with everything that I was. I knew then that I would make the move. After that week, I accepted the position and called the property management company to square things away with my grandma’s house, because I would officially move in there.
It had been a little over eight months since I moved back to Clover. I had done so well with staying low-key so that I didn’t run into anyone that might recognize me. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, because I left Clover at such a young age and only came back for the summers until I was thirteen.
I knew it was going too good to be true when I got the notification that two of my tenth graders got into a physical altercation. When I saw the last name of one of the students, my brow rose.Abloy.Everyone knew the Abloy family in Clover. When I pulled Benji’s file to see who his parents were, I felt a weird sense of relief to see that his father wasn’t Bolt.
“Principal Anderson, Benji and his uncle are already in your office at the conference table,” Katie, my assistant, announced when I walked out of the conference room on the other side of the table after talking to the other student’s parents. “This is Bethany Abloy, Benji’s mother.”
She stood from her seat when I came closer. I extended my hand. “Miss Abloy, it is nice to meet you regardless of circumstance. I want to say right away that your son, Benji, was not the aggressor.”
She let out a huff as she placed her hand into mine for a shake. “You must have known I was about to go in there and whup his lil big ass. I was in Charlotte when you guys called me.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry that you had to drive in for this. Let’s head into my office where your son and brother are,” I told her.
If I remembered correctly, she was a few years older than me. I never interacted with her when I visited for the summer, butshe may have known of me. During the summers, if I wasn’t at my daddy’s house, I was at my grandma’s house.
