God Is Not Pixie Dust

Dedication

To my husband.

I needed a space. A space to breathe, to heal, to be quiet, where I could encounter my soul in all of its tangled beauty. You gave me that space. Thank you for shouldering more, so I might rest and restore my strength. You saw my need and provided a respite for my spirit to heal. My heart, body, and soul thank you.

To my daughters.

I needed a muse. A dream of more that would sing to me in those predawn hours when I hesitated. A muse to remind me that all would be well if I opened myself to the fullness of the truth. The sweetness of your very existence sustained me. Every single day, I am grateful for both of you.

To Dr. Jendayo Grady, my counselor.

I needed a bridge. A link between the impossible weight of my story and the awesome promise of God's healing balm. Thank you for challenging me to trust God with my healing. I will be forever grateful.

"And the day came

when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful

than the risk it took to blossom."

―Anaïs Nin

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Thank You

Connect with Me

Resources

References

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Upcoming Project

~ Preface ~

My story is hard, traced with sharp edges and filled with secrets, like strata within sedimentary rock. The layers having cemented one upon the other, never expecting to be separated, never revealed. And, the memories of my adolescence are the fossils trapped inside.

When I looked at the first blank page, I told myself everything about my story and the time that would have to be spent probing the dusty crevices of my mind was an impossible feat—an exercise in futility. For the words to meet the page, I would have to access parts of myself that were beyond me, steeled tightly within my soul, ensuring the brittle bones of my secrets never cut my much-too-thin skin. And yet, over time, each memory broke through the surface in full shapeless chunks, blood and dust covered, but somehow still intact. They were always there, it seems.

And, with each day, it began to matter that others know my secrets. Even if we must flinch together. And so they have arisen, erected themselves within my mind and in my heart, and I see how over the years I've built an altar to them, committed to live with aching bones. How I have been completely satisfied that the edges had been ground down a bit, and that only intermittent throbbing remained.

I believed that the weight of this burden would always be with me. And I lived in a fear-filled space, constantly on guard for the tomb rolling over, afraid that it would keep me captive, pinned down on one counselor's couch after the next, each time grinding back more and more without hope of ever completely changing the shape of its ragged edges. You see, our bodies had connected us, our silence had connected us, and my blind commitment to standing guard over our undiscussable had connected us. I accepted that my stones could never be crushed to a mere coating of dust.

Now, I know that anything is possible.

Know that some stories can't be told from rocking chairs on verandas while sipping mint juleps. Some tales only make sense at 4:00 am in small diners with slick, greasy floors and windows smudged with fingerprints. They can only be told to complete strangers, to people who have lived so hard they remain unimpressed with the hardness of your own story. No matter what I tell them, they will simply nod with indifference, while dipping their buttered white toast into runny egg yolks. So, I'll assume that's you and that we're there talking quietly in the still of the night.

Now, be clear, you can't pretend to be acquainted with despair. You must have experienced it intimately, petted it up close, feel comfortable within its rancidness. You can't be a child-like observer of life, squeamish about blood or other unpleasantness. You must understand the seduction of living in the gray, even when there seemed to be a choice not to reside there. You must be open to my penchant for double-ness (double lives, double truths, double journeys) as I developed at the intersection of contradictions. Even then, you won't get it all. There are many things I will never tell, not even to you. Some words simply dissipate in air, refusing to be said.

So, if you don't indulge in alcohol, this story might not be for you, as certain paragraphs simply demand a snifter of whiskey. There's no need for a crystal glass; a red party cup will do. If you don't smoke, some parts of my tale might be hard to inhale, as they require time to ponder, to watch the loose smoke ringlets rise, to feel the burn heat the back of your throat. If you are squeamish about reading uncomfortable truths, admit it and close the book now. There will be pain. I won't protect you.

~ Chapter 1 ~

In some perverse way, I was grateful for what I learned.

Let me tell you quickly. If I tell you quickly, like ripping a Band-Aid from a scab, I might be less likely to romanticize it, to recount my memories as some jaded love story. It wasn't. Actually, it was a slaying, a murder to harvest fresh blood. These pages contain the story of a unique rite of passage for a young girl, the slaughter of a child's soul and the education of putting on an armor of shame. It is a story of how I was methodically molded into a plaything, a knickknack, a bauble, and then prosecuted as a nymphet by a man who held all rights to me. I was possessed spiritually, emotionally, and physically, all at the most tender stage of my development, when I was between 15 and17 years of age.

In my teenaged mind, he was a man whom I wanted, whose attention I panted after, whose touch I begged for, for whom I was willing to be fashioned after for his liking. It was a sacrifice of self, for experience, to explore some romanticized, underdeveloped version of womanhood. Well, at least that's what I told myself, that I had a choice. In reality I had no more choice than a peacock caught alone on a riverbank by a starving dog; my crime was my decision to spread my feathers, shimmering, flaunting them instead of running. I convinced myself I wanted it, that I could handle it, that it was a game. It took a long time to discover I couldn't handle it, and it wasn't a game.

By the time I was 15 years old, Kelvin, my pastor, had chosen me. He was a young, charismatic man who determined that I should love him, crave him completely. A haunted man on a big stage with a fondness for nubiles, he needed a sweet thing, a petting rock in his pocket, his prize for balancing the enormity of his public and private self. Rubbing the concealed rock soothed the blackness that threw shadows at his insecurity, providing a response to the fear that he was, in fact, unworthy. He was a child-lover, fabricated to chase Lolita, an innocent.

His entire lustful and obsessive attention was targeted to train me, his willing pupil. He taught me the rewards of secret keeping and the art of wanting. His self-righteousness taught me how to tuck myself completely beneath a thick blanket of disgrace, to breathe it in like vapor, to make it my fault. I was conditioned to submit absolutely from the innermost parts of myself, a space where understanding wasn't required.

In some perverse way, I was grateful for what I learned. I thought it set me apart from others, gave me a level of human understanding that most people don't experience, something exclusive to ponder in my rocking-chair years down the road. I learned of the fickleness of the hearts of people, and of the intense human need to claim security above all else, even common sense. I learned how blindness can be selective, a willing conspirator. I learned of the oily innards of indignity. Most important, I learned to drown within the nuances of adulthood, without the slightest whisper of a sound.

How does this happen? How can such a fantastical story happen without it appearing on the front page of the Washington Post, or lighting up the daytime talk-show circuit? The entire scenario fell from the clouds, borne on the winds of a perfect storm. My childhood had perfectly prepped me for him, even before I first felt his wanting, his asking for me. I learned my core ways of being from my father's people in Boonville, North Carolina, and from my mother's people in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and in that space in between, my childhood home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Each space contributed just enough groundwork to ensure I was fertile, ripe to receive the bulb that Kelvin had an obsession to plant. I was tattooed with invisible ink, to be marked wholly available. My background was rich soil for his preoccupation with planting seeds in darkness.

Before you get antsy, don't worry about me giving away the plot so early in the story. The content of my tale is inconsequential, because that is not where the real meat lies anyway. The true worth is found within the unfolding of the investigation, within the combing of the crime scene, and within the remains of a blue, stone-cold soul. You must understand that the world first crafts the perfect victim. Without the right formula, the cast of complacent humankind, it is nearly impossible for malevolent opportunists like Kelvin to get in. These stories could never happen. One cannot exist without the other.

I want you to witness my beginning, my perfectly timed crashing, and then the calculated cultivation of my submission, to understand why I kept the secret, why I shielded him. Only then can you truly understand how those consecrated church pews, and the people who sat in them, produced their own Greek tragedy, set among tobacco fields and rolling soybean hills. All things working together.

How does one become the perfect prey? When you learn the history of my family, my people, my upbringing, then, perhaps you will understand.

~ Chapter 2 ~

Good-natured humor and happy food"

covered a multitude of sins and secrets,

of which there were many."

The story of my father's people begins with my very first memory of my grandfather. His name was Cleve, but everyone called him Ol' Buddy. He is the eldest man I remember in my life and my only grandfather, well, the only grandfather I knew. I saw my mother's father once in a casket on an impromptu trip to Washington, DC. I can't remember much of anything about him before that, or his funeral. I remember Mama bought me a new dress, and my parents let me go with my cousins to the corner store on Upshur Street to buy 25-cent sour pickles. The men stood outside the funeral home chain-smoking cigarettes, the white sticks jumping up and down from their lips as they talked in cryptic sentences, the way men do. Their eyes squinted half-closed against the gray vapor. I never thought to ask my mom if she even had a dad, and she never thought to tell me. I guess it didn't matter much. It still doesn't, really.

But, I remember Ol' Buddy, especially his smell, which lingered in the air around him and permeated his clothes. He smoked a pipe with sweet tobacco, and his hugs carried the scent of peaches and hickory-smoked bacon. I must have been about five years old when he died. I don't remember much about his funeral, except an awkward, bittersweet sadness. You see, Ol' Buddy had a way of making every person feel as if he or she were the only person in the entire world. He treated you as if you were the only activity on his agenda that day, and he'd awakened that morning just to see you. The sadness in our little country church was a collective sorrowful sigh. It was as if each one of us had suddenly lost a favorite locket or a treasured belonging. It was like missing the last stunning sunset of fall, a moment of joy, gone.

Ol' Buddy lived in a world where folks walked wide-legged over rows of collard greens, snap peas, and sweet potatoes in worn-out dusty sneakers, unfettered by the occasional slithering garden snake. His habits were molded from countless dew-filled mornings, milking cows, hours spent fishing for catfish on muddy riverbanks, and smiling, always smiling. He was loved by everyone—especially me. I can't say one bad thing about him.

I can't recollect every detail of his dark face, but I remember his eyes. They were dark and milky, with a little tint of blue around the edges. You've seen eyes like that, with the combination of colors and hues that old folks get when their eyes have done a lot of laughing, and maybe a little crying too.

As with most of the Williams clan, Ol' Buddy was a talker. He would talk about anything and everything, with tremors of laughter in between. My father and I, and now my gregarious three year old, follow in this tradition. I always said I come from a family who can talk to walls, because we don't need a lone soul to talk back. We are passionate lovers of people. My grandfather had a special recliner, which sat beside the wood stove in the living room. He would sit there and talk to every single person who walked past him, which wasn't hard to do in a six-room house, bathroom included.

I couldn't have been more than three or four years old and yet, I remember his excitement when he saw me. My earliest feeling was that I was special to him. He would put me on his lap and sing, Hey, Porsharee (my middle name is Sharee), call what you see, if you don't see nothing, don't call on me! He would erupt into a deep belly laugh every time he sang that little ditty. You would think by the fiftieth time, it would have lost its appeal. But not so! He could sing it all day long, while eating cold biscuits dipped in congealed bacon grease and talking about who said what, the hogs in the back, or his little family garden. He was a good man, and a wonderful grandfather to me.

For years, I walked to Ol' Buddy's gravesite each week after church. I don't remember being especially sad about the visits. I just had to be sure the words on his tombstone didn't change, that some word thief didn't come in the darkness and steal them. I had to check on my main man. The strange thing is, until now, I have never thought to miss him, though he's always been in my heart. Now, it stings a bit.

Boonville, North Carolina, sits at the