FEATURE STORY
I
n February 1999, I had my first child. At the time, Ken and I were on and off, he had become more jealous and during the next few years the jealousy continued. You might be wondering why I stayed with him, well, I was used to seeing people around me stay in the same type of relationship, so I wrote it off as normal and what comes along with being in a relationship. He would constantly tell me he loves me and therefore to me, I took it as its ok, no big deal.
In 2001, I gave birth to my second son. During this time we had officially broken up as per his request. He had moved onto with younger girl. At first this was a hard for me because I had spent a long time with my ex and dealt with a lot of torment from him and his family. Later on that year, I eventually moved on and began dating someone else. This is when everything became a living nightmare for me. I was literally on the run and in hiding. One thing about domestic violence is everyone assumes that it is so easy to walk away and live your life, but the reality is, it’s not, depending on the perpetrator. Over the next months, I experienced threatening phone calls, stalking, being choked, sadness and bitterness. The guy was so slick; one night he called my mom and told her that he didn’t know why I wouldn’t answer my phone yet he had been trying to reach me to give me some money for the baby. My mother assumed he was telling the truth, little did she know that he had just forced me into his car and took me into the Garden State Parkway at 100 miles an hour preparing to run the car into a wall while saying, “I will kill you now; I’m a kill both of us right now if you don’t come back to me.” There were other countless incidents; there was the time he kidnapped me and dragged me to the car with a machete to my neck, and raped me in his parent’s basement. But it was the fatal incident that occurred on September 14, 2002 which I nearly lost my life. I woke up that morning and received a call from my ex that he knew I was out the previous night and with a new guy. I politely told him he needed to come over and pick up some items he had left at my mother’s apartment because the only reason he had them there was to watch and monitor me. That Saturday morning, my children were in the kitchen. I later on got on the phone to talk to one of my friends to plan on going to Chuck E. Cheese’s with our children, but it never happened. It’s that time that Ken pulled up his truck outside in a diagonal position in the middle of the road. I hung up the phone, went downstairs and opened the door. Ken came, brushed passed me going up the stairs while looking around the apartment. I handed him his stuff and she remembers him putting them at the door. He then went into the bedroom and came out. From here things got cloudy. I remember him choking me and telling me that no one will ever want me. At that point my children were crying and screaming. He punched me in the face while I screamed. I remember looking at the clock in the kitchen, going down to the ground and hearing my children screaming. That was it. I was unconscious for about two hours. I recall having a conversation and thinking I was dreaming. In the conversation I met with God and he told me I had to go back, but I said no, I wanted to finish sleeping. He said you have to go back. And then He said to me three times “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” I woke up and tried to move but couldn’t.
47| OCTOBER ISSUE | www.afroellemagazine.com