Just Breathe (eBook)

chapter two

“BORN AGAIN”

We left the next morning and went to my mom’s, but I think a little piece of me got left behind at Bonnie Drive. When we arrived, I remember feeling all kinds of emotions: sadness, fear, excitement, and hope—all at the same time. Would this, could this possibly be my chance to be normal? To have a family with a mom and a dad who cared about me, took care of me, and loved me—could this be a chance at the life I had always hoped for?

My mom was happy to get us back. She had married a man who was a “born again” Pentecostal Christian. This was an unusual direction for her; I see now that she was just grasping at life, at a home, and at stability—someone or something to make her feel love and a connection. Three of her other children had moved back home, and now there were five of us in the house. This was my mom’s fifth husband in twelve years, and he was unlike any of her others; I always wondered if maybe that’s why she was drawn to him, hoping he would give her the life she always wanted because he was so religious. But I learned quickly that religion makes you a good person the same way reading about money makes you rich—it doesn’t.

Now, in this home, I was exposed to more religion than ever before, but I was never closer to hell.

This God my stepfather knew was demanding and legalistic—like an angry cop waiting around the corner to catch me in the act for the sheer pleasure of it—waiting for me to fail. This God expected us to be at church three nights a week, and my parents fasted every Monday, and there were locks on our cupboard, so that meant we were usually on our own if we wanted to eat. Women couldn’t wear pants, only dresses and no makeup, and we weren’t allowed to swim with other kids because it would cause us to lust. The prayers people prayed were frightening and forced and in another language I’d never heard; they called it “tongues.” There was no TV, no secular music, no Halloween, and no jewelry.

I had been trying for so long to figure out how to let love in, and now everything in our lives revolved around keeping everything I loved out. Every part of our life was filtered through a God who wanted nothing good for me.

It was confusing because I believe my stepfather truly loved and wanted to serve this God, but what I saw didn’t match up because he was so fanatically spiritual that it just seemed weird and foreign to me. And I didn’t like him. I used to hear them sing that old song “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” and all I could think was, Please don’t.

There were so many of us kids in that little house, and my half-brother Dathan and me were definitely screw-ups from the start. I remember wiping dog poop on the neighbor’s car and that sometimes Dathan went into the closet and threw the cat against the wall, overarm and as hard as he could, and that the five of us were terrible to each other. We had little supervision, and we were abusive, mean, hateful and confused, which has left me with many regrets from those years.

Trying to get us under control, my stepfather would take a fiberglass rod from a bicycle, the one that holds the flag, and yelling Scriptures from the Bible at us, he whipped us until we were covered with welts. I suppose he was trying to fix our broken lives, to discipline us to make us better the only way he knew how, but it only made me hate him and want to rebel worse.

Once, he found a Johnny Mathis album in my closet with the single, “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late.” It belonged to my mom, but she kept it hidden in my room to keep it from him. When he found it, he beat me, and I let him because I wanted to protect my mom. I was so angry and told him I wanted to go live with my dad. He shoved the phone at me and shouted, “Go ahead, call him; he don’t want you!” I called him to prove my stepfather wrong, but he was right. My dad hemmed and hawed on the other end of the line with some excuse why it wasn’t a good time for me to come home. I thought how ironic the words of that song were because that is what I felt like I was: too much, too little, too late.

This left me feeling even more alone. I was afraid and resentful. Now in junior high, I fell into deep isolation and depression. I had no idea who I was or where I was going. Insecurity hovered over me at school, and I felt like I didn’t matter, like a ghost in the halls—unseen, unnoticed, and inconsequential. I was failing my classes. I was socially awkward and unaccepted. I felt like a loser, and I was lost.

I had to get out, and for once in my life my failure would be my savior.

My stepfather told us kids it was five licks for every F on our report cards. I knew it was going to be bad. Good. Bring it on. My straight Fs and Us were going to be my official “F U” to my stepfather. I flunked every class. He beat me so severely I could hardly walk and couldn’t sit down the next day. At school, I was sent to the nurse’s office, and after one look at my bruises, she immediately called the Department of Child Services. They humiliated me, taking pictures of my naked butt, legs, and lower back, like a wounded animal on a table. They pitied me, but it was a small price to pay for my escape.

That day I was taken from that house and placed in temporary foster care. After the last two years of hell I’d been living, I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t know what was next, didn’t know what I was going to do, but there was one thing I did know: I was walking away from this task-master god and out of the shackles of this house. And I would never let anyone put them on me again.

I had only been in foster care for a short time when my mom’s mom, who I affectionately called Grandmugie, and her husband took me in. My grandfather never really said much; he was retired from the Navy and worked a blue collar job in a factory. Grand-mugie sold vacuum cleaners, and they attended church.

There was something different about her. She loved me, and she told me she loved me. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say those three words to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. Sometimes I could just hear her say it from the other room at different times throughout the day. She just said, loud enough for me to hear, “I love you, Keith!” I felt like ice was melting inside me. I didn’t know what to do or how to answer back; I didn’t understand how she could love me when I didn’t even love myself!

I had never seen anything like that, felt anything like that before. It took me months before I could respond, not because I didn’t love her but because I didn’t know how to love anybody. One day, I finally muscled through the words and said back, “I … love … you … too.”

It felt so good to love somebody. So good to be loved by somebody.

Things were starting to look a little brighter for me. Grand-mugie sent me to a school called Bethel Baptist, and I started feeling happy and a little more confident and normal. I even decided to sign up for a preaching contest. I practiced my sermon over and over. It was called “Whom God Uses,” and Grandmugie sewed me a brand new white suit to wear for the competition. I remember getting on the school bus to go to the Southern Baptist state competition; I had never gotten to do anything like this before, and I was so proud.

And it wasn’t like I suddenly started believing in this God I didn’t understand, but I started to feel like a part of something and like I might be good at something, which I had never thought would happen. And there I stood to give my sermon. Here I was, this messed up kid, displaced, without a family, neglected, abused, and lost, and I won! I couldn’t believe it! It made Grandmugie so proud, and deep down, I was proud of myself too. Pride and love were new feelings for me, and they felt good.

Soon after, there was a candy drive at my school, the kind where you sell candy door-to-door, and I made up my mind that I was going to sell the most candy in the whole school. I went everywhere, knocked on every door I could find, and the night before the contest ended, the sales numbers were tied between me and another girl at school. I remember calling her up to see if she wanted to combine our efforts and split the winnings, and she turned me down. She shouldn’t have. Maybe there was something I was good at after all.

Yet, I still wanted, more than anything, to have friends, to be liked, to fit in, and I still just didn’t. One day, we had a new student at school named Donny. Donny was my definition of hip, slick, and cool, and for some reason, he wanted to be my friend. We walked home from school together and hung out in the mall and talked to girls. I had no idea how to do that, but after hanging out with Donny and his moves, even girls started to notice me.

One day after school I had my first fight. I didn’t know what I was doing, so as we approached the crowd standing around to watch the fight, Donny coached me on what to do. “Hit him in the nose as soon as you walk up,” he said, “then finish him.” That’s exactly what I did. It felt really good to win, and suddenly it seemed like I fit in.

Donny introduced me to girls, and he also introduced me to drugs. He showed me how to smoke weed, and we partied. I thought Donny’s parents were awesome; they didn’t care if he smoked, and if he stole from them they either never noticed or never said...