I’m flexing my writing muscles again. I hope you find this short story enlightening or moving in a sense… *smile*
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“I ain’t nobody’s angel,” Sasha Mourning so eloquently said to Ezekial as he asked her about herself. See, when he approached Sasha, after watching her from the opposite side of a small cafe on Park St in Savannah, GA, he told her how beautiful she was. He told Sasha that the reflection of her soul resembled that of an angel. Although he also could easily recognize the pain in her eyes.
“No suga’”, she said again. “Sasha ain’t nobody’s angel.” Looking at her, Ezekial decided he should be straight forward. He asked her, in his deep baritone voice, “And what makes you say that? What happened to you in your life that left those hints of pain in your eyes? I see the strength that’s etched across your face, the strength that cries out in your walk but something else is there. Talk to me Sasha. Tell me why ‘Mourning’ hangs at the end of your name?” Ezekial found himself quite amazed at his own actions, but everything about this woman had peaked his curiosity & his interest.
Sasha’s ears were open to his voice. She heard the southern twang in his syllables. As she tilted her head slightly to the side, she witnessed something in him that her eyes haven’t had the luxury of seeing in the longest time. Sasha saw honesty & trust. She took the deepest breath she had probably ever taken in her entire existence, & looked at this man who’s name she didn’t even know. A small smile spread across her face as she said, “Where would you like me to start?” They both shared a comfortable laugh. Ezekial slid his chair closer to her proximity saying,”How about you start at the beginning?” Sasha, shaking her head in disagreement, replied, “Maybe I should start with my rebirth? Maybe I should tell you how I became ‘Sasha Mourning’ & left behind Stefani Jones?” Ezekial nodded in agreement,& he listened intently as Sasha began to unravel her story.
With eyes gleaming & full of a raging cacophony of emotions, Sasha spoke.
“I was born of man. Not of woman like most people. What I mean by that is, although, I came from the womb of my mother just like everyone else, my present state was formed by the hands of men. Not by one man because I was molded like pottery at the hands of a few.
I, Sasha Mourning, was born at the hands of rape, molestation, physical abuse, emotional abuse & heartache. Ask me who I was prior to the first rape & all I can tell you is I was a young girl named Stefani Jones. Do I remember birthday parties before I was raped? No. Do I remember what school was like before I was raped? No. Do I remember what a sunset looked like before I was raped? No. My life as I know it began that day. And with it came the manifestation of my alter ego.
From that day on, Stefani Jones was dead. Stefani was gone. I left her behind on dirty, soiled sheets on a putrid bed belonging to a monstrous man in a house of horrors. After being raped, I could never be that little girl again. I was forced to change & evolve & deal with some of the ugly truths of adulthood. I did this the only way I knew how. In my mind, I became someone else. I became some dysfunctional, misunderstood version of woman in the body of a child. I became Sasha Mourning.
Sasha Mourning, a no nonsense, doesn’t care what anyone thinks, angry, vengeful, vagina totin’ beast in a set of fly kicks or heels. That’s who I was. That’s who I changed into so I could feel some sense of control. But the reality was, I was OUT of control. The back seats of cars & smelly sheets at slum hotels became my familiar ground. I sexed boys & some of those male specimens that called themselves men. Which is ironic because they would jump in between my young, shapely thighs without thinking twice.
I was heartless & as they thought they were using me, I moved them around strategically like I was playing a game of chess. I was leaving their noses wide open as if someone had just rolled two bowling balls up their nostrils. All the while, thinking to myself & believing that this was my only means of survival in an inhumane society.
Then, after about four years of disconnection, I fell in love with a man. Well, let me clarify that: he was a man in a sense that he was over the age of 21. He was a man in body but not at the heart of things…not in his mind. My vagina was finally connected to my heart strings. He told me everything a wounded heart & broken soul would want to hear. He told me he wanted me. He said he loved me. He said that once I graduated from high school, he wanted to make me his wife. The sad fact though is, foolishly, I believed him. Truthfully, I WANTED to believe him. I NEEDED to believe him. I desired a hope & a dream to grasp on to with all my might.
In the end of this tragic Romeo & Juliet affair, he left me for another WOMAN. She was older than me & more fitting to the fake persona he was trying to create for the judgmental hypocrites around him. Still, I can’t blame those people because he was the one with the weak mind who thought their opinions were significant.
After two years with him, I once again found myself alone in the dark with no one to help me deal with the pain or the heartbreak. Wait. I take that back. Sasha Mourning was there just like she was before but now, she was more angry, more vengeful, more heartless, more careless & ready to strap her heels back on. Sasha resurfaced with one mission in mind: to provide me with gratification & a top flight defense mechanism. Yet, not even Sasha could prepare for the walking, two-legged time bomb that would become my husband.
My ex-husband & I had known each other, casually, long before we started dating. After only six months into our relationship, he asked me to marry him. Me, being so excited about the mere thought of some one wanting me in this way, I quickly said yes. I wed him & became his little, treasured girl-wife. I wed him & became his willing whore. I wed him & became his living, breathing punching bag. I wed him & became…nothing. I merely became nothing but a blood stain on the wall. I was just a sticky ejaculation on our bed.
At least, that was the case until Sasha came back with blood in her eyes for him because he had hurt me. And Sasha’s mentality was strictly blood for blood so she began to fight back. She began to rebel against his dominating ways.
One night, after drinking himself into madness, he came home & slapped her across the face because his food was cold. He made one mistake though: he turned his back on Sasha but when her turned towards her again, he found a .380 pointed right at his skull. Sasha’s finger was on the trigger, & she didn’t have one trembling bone in her body. She told him he simply had two choices: let her leave or watch the blood from his head drip down the walls. Needless to say, he backed down like the weak bastard that he was. After that, all he saw was Sasha’s receding figure as she blended into the black of the night with her bags & shattered dreams in tow.
During her escape that night, Sasha made a decisions as she fought against the suicidal thoughts in my mind. Sasha decided that it was the end of the road for me. Sasha decided she had to take over permanently. From that point on, I no longer introduced myself as Stefani Jones. After all the hell I’d been through, I was the only person I could be: I was Sasha Mourning…”
Ezekial found it impossible to hold back the tears that ran down his cheeks. He did the only thing that came to his heart & mind to do. He put his open hand out & said, “Hello Sasha Mourning. It is my honor to meet you. My name is Ezekial Konner.” She now looked at him with a curiosity of her own. “Ezekial,” she questioned. “That’s a prolific name. Why did your mother & father name you Ezekial?”
Ezekial sighed lightly & cracked a small smile. He was thinking seriously to himself that here was an opportunity to give her something more to hold on to than pain & shattered dreams. Ezekial, having never told a soul the real meaning behind his name, was trying to figure out how to tell her this story. Once more, he decided to be completely honest with her. He leaned back in his chair a bit, & in the dim light of that tiny cafe, he shared a part of his life.
Sasha found herself watching Ezekial’s plump lips as he spoke.
Ezekial said,”My mother told me that her life before my birth was like “dry bones”. It was just pointless & lifeless. But upon the moment of my birth, the piercing sound of my first cry was like the breath of the Lord breathing life into her world…into her soul. She said that she felt a movement in her spirit. My birth was the Lord’s way of telling my mother that she could survive in this world of men. I was God’s way of saying that, despite the mental & physical turmoil she had experienced at the hands of her husband, she could let go of the suicidal thoughts & live.
See, one day, like you Sasha, I questioned her, “Why mama? Why did you give me THIS name? Why Ezekial?” With tears in her eyes, she looked in my hairless thirteen year old face & plainly said: “Your birth was God’s way of putting the will to live back in my spirit & His breath of life back in these here dry bones. Your presence spoke to me just as the voice of Ezekial when he was instructed by the Lord to tell those ‘dry bones’ in the valley, ‘Thus said the Lord God to these bones: “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.” (Ezekial 37:5) That is the legacy in my name.
Ezekial pauses briefly to look at Sasha in the eyes before he speaks again. He tells her,”Three weeks after I was born, my mother took a major step in her life. She packed us up with what little belongings we had, & she left my abusive father. I’m telling you these things, Sasha, to say this: Your pain & heartache is not the end of the road for you. There is still life in your bones yet & you are very much alive!! Don’t give up & don’t give in to those suicidal thoughts!” Right then, they both glance down at the scars on her wrist from where she put a knife to it. Ezekial continues, saying, “Fight!! Fight to live, Sasha, & not to die. You are worthy to be loved. You are beautiful. YOU ARE WOMAN! I don’t even know you & I love you because you are human. That’s all I need to know about you. That fact alone warrants love & respect.”
Sasha just looks at Ezekial in awe. She’s crying in front of this man that she barely knows. Suddenly, he grabs her & hugs her. He’s trying to give her every ounce of strength he has in this embrace. When they finally let go of each other, Sasha is smiling. She grabs a pen from her purse & begins to write words on a napkin. She won’t let Ezekial see it yet. When she is done writing, she picks up her purse, folds the napkin, gives him the napkin, stands to her feet & gives him a kiss on his lips that touches his soul. Sasha then walks out the rickety door of this tiny cafe in GA.
Ezekial fumbles with the note as he tries to read it. The letter says: “I will never forget this day in all my life Ezekial. I will never forget the way you listened to me or the way you understood me. But most importantly, I will never forget that someone loves me. A beautiful stranger in a cafe on Park St in Savannah, GA. You helped me see who I can be even after this rugged life I’ve lived. I am forever grateful.”
Those were the most magnificent words he had ever read. But he was thrown for a loop & taken aback at the end. The letter was signed, “Forever changed… SASHA M-O-R-N-I-N-G”….
Melanie YeYo Carter
