Naleighna Kai's Literary Cafe Magazine NK Literary Cafe 2018 Mother's Day Issue | Page 18

Aunties --the other Angels
We lived in hiding for a few years to protect a woman
from a husband who had threatened to kill her. He had
almost made good on an attempt once or twice, but as
she lay in bed recovering from his last attack because she
tried to leave, she formulated a plan. That plan included
my mother changing jobs, changing homes, me changing
schools, and us living quietly in the suburbs instead of the
city of Chicago that I’d known all my life.
This woman, my Aunt Vee, would be someone who taught
me some amazing things. One of them was how to be
strong. Though in the first days that she came to stay with
us, I saw the fear, and the times that she wouldn’t leave
the house, I saw what it was like to be broken. I didn’t
know that is what it was called at the time. I was about
ten, eleven maybe. I did know what sadness looked like
and watching her I learned what it felt like, too.
I witnessed as my aunt tried to come to terms with
her new life. Some of it was looking over her shoulder
because she just knew he was coming for her. She had
been his life. She had been his eyes and his voice. He did
not believe he could function without her. He wanted her
dead instead of free to live her life. We, my mother and I,
helped to change that.
The experience carried over into my book The Things
I Could Tell You. I wrote it when I was fifteen and it
came because of a classroom assignment. The teacher
challenged us to write a horror story. Most of my
classmates wrote the Friday the 13th, Jason, and other
type of scary film scenarios. That didn’t frighten me as
much as what I put on paper—having to kill one parent
to protect another. The story, about seven pages or so,
was written in first person. It frightened the teacher so
badly that she called for my mother to come to school.
The principal and school counselor were also in the
room. All for them to find out that it was fiction. But
the emotions I felt when it came to my Aunt Vee were
all up in that story. I hurt because she hurt. I was afraid
at times because her fear was real. But I remember the
first time she came out of her safety zone — and it was to
protect me. I was late getting home from school and after
a while she left the house to search for me. She was afraid
that something had happened to me. The tears on her
face and the fact that she hugged me so hard touched me
in a way that I will never forget.
I’m writing this article as a tribute to Aunt Vee, who is
now living on her on terms; and to all of the Aunties
of the world. The women who are angelic mothers that
stand with the biological ones that God gives us.
God bless every single one of you.
18 | NKLC Magazine