Page 3 of Dark As Coal

When I turned eight, I hadn’t made it to my bedroom in time.

Thankfully, the man who had come that night didn’t like little girls.

However, the man that came when I was nine and had kicked in my bedroom door, and my closet door… he did.

My mother had sat there on our old, dilapidated couch while pushing a needle in her vein as that man did unspeakable things to me.

And I hated her.

After a child goes through having to learn how to hand wash their clothes for school in a kitchen sink.

After a child learns they can get food from dumpsters on the weekends to hold them over until free breakfast and lunch at school.

After that child knows that while everyone is excited for Christmas break and seeing all the marvelous things Santa Claus brought them, that child is just praying that the lock on their bedroom door will hold.

That child doesn’t cry when they find their mother unresponsive on the couch that morning.

They don’t cry when the cops show up.

Nor do they cry when they watch their mother being covered up with a sheet and taken from the trailer.

Not even when they are placed in home, after home, after home, all so those people can get checks to feed their drug habits and make it look like they are taking care of the children in their care without doing it.

And when I was fifteen and moved into my final home, we had a neighbor.

I watched as our neighbor beat the shit out of the man who he had just seen spit on me where I lay curled up in the grass behind the house with my underwear around my ankles, my body blue and purple already.

Before that man could take me to the hospital, he had called someone, and a black van came, then a couple of men loaded the unconscious man into the back of it and sped away.

The foster family I was with got a verbal warning from our neighbor.

Thankfully, that warning held true.

No other men came to the house.

And for what he had done for me, being the first person to have my back and to care, on the day I turned eighteen, I gave him one of my kidneys.

As I lay in the hospital bed after reacting badly to the surgery, it was to find the same man, our neighbor, Piney, holding my hand.

Once he made sure I was awake and lucid, he lowered his voice, softening it, “Owe you a marker. No other person on this planet have I ever met would have come to the hospital on their eighteenth birthday and donated me, me of all fucking people, a kidney.”

“That was payback,” I told him with a smile. Not even recognizing my own voice.

He shook his head, “No, darlin’ girl. What was payback was making my meals and cleaning my house, even though I told you, you didn’t need to do that shit.”

I sighed. Over the past two years, I learned that once Piney had something on his mind, there was no talking him out of it, and I knew that when he continued, “Still owe you a marker. You call it in whenever you need it. Okay?”

I sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded.

I took in his worn down, cracked face, the mangy beard that didn’t know whether it wanted to be a riot of wire spring curls, or be completely straight, right as he said, “Now, what I’m about to offer you doesn’t count for this marker.”

Once he made sure he had my eyes, that was when Piney, a member of Zagan MC located in Fulton, Mississippi, rocked my entire world.

“Darlin’ girl, the way I see it, you got this light. It’s so bright it’s unreal. You got a few choices, no matter what you choose, I’m gonna back you. No matter what.”

Once I nodded, he laid them out.

“First, I got money. I’ll help you get on your feet. I’ll have your back.” Immediately, I shook my head at him in the negative.

---