UPCOMING BOOK FOR 2012 …
“THE BASEMENT” …
AN EXCERPT FROM INGRID D. JOHNSON’s DEBUT NOVEL … BASED ON A TRUE STORY
In The Closet Productions, “The Basement”, Ingrid D. Johnson © 2010. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WARNING!!! NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN
It’s Saturday morning and Grandma (not my real grandma) has left me alone with him again to make another trip to the grocery store. In my head, I quietly ask God to make him leave me alone, but God ignores me and grandpa calls me down into the basement. It is a new scene for his crimes. My head is reeling, my heart is racing but there is nowhere to run – no place to hide. Slowly I walk through the kitchen, at the back of the house, and head towards the basement door that is slightly ajar, and grab the door with sweaty palms. The sound of his voice calling my name, for second time, startles me, as I take those stairs one-step at a time. With every step I take, I can feel my innocence falling away, but I continue down into the lair where the lion lives. God saved Daniel from the big, bad, lion. I wonder if he will save me this time.
The grey wooden steps are as cold as ice under my bare feet, and the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs is even colder. Why is he doing this? What did I ever do to deserve this, I wonder?
“Come here.” He says. He starts every encounter with the very same line.
The basement is stuffy and dark and the only light comes from a small, dirty, window across the room that gives the room the presence of a dungeon. The only witnesses to crime, that is about to take place, is a washer and dryer that sits docile in the far corner of the room. A few brown cardboard boxes serve as a headboard on the small bed he sits on, naked. The sight of his wrinkled up, old, body makes me nauseous so I quickly case the room for a place to focus my eyes in order to avoid looking directly at his. I settled on a dirty basement window. It is clear enough for a few streams of sunlight to poke through, but just dirty enough to block anyone from the outside world from looking through. He has picked the perfect place to commit his felony.
“Take your clothes off.” He says abruptly.
I want to scream but I know that screaming is pointless, so I give in and focus my attention on the dirty basement window, as he unzips my little striped brown and white dress. A tear threatens to trickle down my eye, as the zipper reaches the middle of my back, but I hold it in tightly. Do not let him see you cry, Butterfly. Save that for later when you are all alone. He has already taken so much from you do not let him take anything more.
Suddenly, my dress falls to the floor like a petal on a rose and my undeveloped breast are exposed to the cool basement air that sends a shiver through my spine. My half-naked body excites him and encourages him to further his perversion by relieving me of my white underpants. After that, he lays me down on the twin size bed, covered with old white sheets that smell like stale laundry detergent and mothballs. Then, he quickly bends down to the ground and picks up a bottle of baby oil with excitement.
With shaky hands he pours some of the baby oil into his left palm and sets the bottle back down on the floor, as he rubs baby oil up and down my tiny body, as I drift in and out of reality.
In my head, I envision the swings in the schoolyard. It is the closest that I have ever come to flying. He has moved over to my left leg now. I am picturing myself on those swings. I can feel the wind underneath my feet, against my back, on my face. It is lifting me higher as I pump my legs faster. The view is so beautiful from way up here. I can almost touch the sky, and the clouds look like big, fluffy, marshmallows that turn into a path leading towards heaven He is rubbing me with baby oil, as he pries my legs apart like pages stuck together in a book. In my mind I am jumping off those swings into the arms of God. I wonder what God is like. They say that He is everywhere and sees everything. I wonder if he is here now and watching this. I wonder why He is letting him do this to me?
They say that God lives in heaven and that heaven is a land that flows with milk and honey. They say that all the streets are paved with gold. I wonder if God will ever take me there. I wonder if I will be one of the chosen.
He has moved his hand from my legs, past my stomach, and on to my chest. He seems so pleased with himself, so satisfied.” I feel strange.
Suddenly, I am back in the schoolyard, flying further and further away from the earth and closer and closer to the sky. He is rubbing his “thing” faster and faster, and I am doing everything in my power to live inside my mind.
The air feels different up here. My lungs have to work harder to breathe. Then, suddenly it is all over and he uses a towel that resembles an old rag to wipe up his mess. It is the same stuff I saw in the toilet water, the first time he called me into the bathroom. It looks like milk.
In a calm voice, he tells me to put back on my clothes and go back upstairs. I quickly slide of the bed and grab my dress and my underwear off the floor, and without shedding a tear. I put them back on and walk the short distance from the twin size bed to the staircase, and float up the stairs into a cloud. Realizing that I was not as lucky as Daniel was in the lion’s den, because the lion had left bite marks, and I was a shadow of the little girl that I once was …
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“Wounded Souls” A collection of Poems and Songs by Ingrid D. Johnson
Copyright 2009
Wounded Souls is a book of socially conscious poems, songs, and bold spoken word pieces by local author of the 2005 bestselling poetry collection, Little Black Butterfly in Iridescent Sunlight. The work is a spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, and musical journey that offers insight, wisdom, hope, and inspiration to those struggling to overcome the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.
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This book is for all those who have survived a childhood tainted by incest. This book is for those who have survived the searing sting of betrayal. This book is for those who have survived the violation of abuse and the isolation that comes along with it. This book is for those who have suffered alone in silence, for so many years. This book is for all those who have been overwhelmed with sadness. This book is for the broken-hearted. These poems were written for those who still have the courage to dream… long after so many dreams have been shattered.
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