Casting Down Imaginations (2 page)

As much
as I wanted to forget all about her and put her on the same “Forget You Ever
Met Them” list that David was on, I couldn’t. As if I hadn’t made it clear that
I wanted nothing to do with her, she decided to follow me to Daytown University. She said she made the decision to go long before she knew I was going
there, but I didn’t believe her. She was just trying to follow me around so she
could keep a watch on me and try to tell me how to live my life. Little did she
know, as soon as we got on campus, I was going to act like she didn’t even
exist. It was my turn now, and nobody was going to stop me from doing what I
wanted to do. I couldn’t wait to get away. I loved Deacon Patterson, but I was
ready to get from under his strict rules and finally be free. I’d broken pretty
much all of them already, but tomorrow I would be able to
really
do
whatever I wanted. I could almost taste the independence!

The only
thing I needed was a car. If I had that, then I would really be grown. But
Deacon said he couldn’t afford it right now, and that maybe by Christmas I’d be
able to get one. So my first semester of college I would be catching the bus
with the rest of the broke students. Oh well, maybe I’ll meet a fine guy on the
bus and he can be my man… Maybe not. I had to have a man with a ride.

I looked
up again for Deacon Patterson. He was walking toward the truck now.
Thank
God!

“You
couldn’t wait?” he asked once he opened the door and looked inside.

I put on
my sweet daughter voice, the one that always got me whatever I wanted from of
him, as long as it wasn’t too drastic.

“I’m
sorry, Deacon,” I apologized. “I tried to wait for you, but my head was hurting
and I just had to come lay down.”

He smiled
at me and climbed inside the truck. “That’s okay, Baby Girl,” he said. “You had
a big day today, telling everybody good-bye before you go off to college.”

Deacon
started the truck and pulled out of the church parking lot.

“Are you
ready to go?” he asked me.

I didn’t
want to seem too eager to leave the nest. “Yeah, I think so,” I hesitated.

“That’s
good,” he smiled. “I’m proud of you Nya. I know if your mama was here, she’d be
proud of you, too.”

That last
comment surprised me. He hardly ever brought up his only wife that died after
three years of marriage when I was four months old. He must have been feeling
really emotional about me leaving.

“Thanks,
Deacon,” I said.

“Are you
upset about not having a car for school?” he asked me.

“No,” I
lied again. “I understand you don’t have the money right now. It’s okay, I’ll
be alright.”

“Thanks for
being so understanding. Are you all packed?”

Am I
packed? I finished packing last week. The only thing I had to add was clean
underwear and toiletries, and I’d be set.

“Yes,
sir,” I answered.

We
continued to drive in silence. Finally we turned on our street, and Deacon
spoke again.

“I have a
surprise for you at the house,” he said.

I looked
at him and smiled. “Really? What is it?”

He
pointed down the street. “Look.”

I looked
down the street and saw a car parked in our driveway with a big red bow on it.
I shrieked. “You got me a car!”

He
laughed as we pulled up next to the house. I unbuckled the seatbelt and hopped
out of the truck before it had completely stopped and ran to the car. It was a
brand new black Mitsubishi Eclipse, the exact car that I told Deacon I wanted
as a graduation and going away present.

I opened
the door and sat inside. “Deacon!” I exclaimed. “How did you?”

He walked
to the car. “Well, yesterday I went down to the car dealership and bought it,
but I had them drive it over this morning while the two of us were at church to
surprise you. Do you like it?”

“Do I
like it? Deacon, I love it! This car is
so
me.”

I checked
out the car’s sporty interior and admired its features. I was going to look
good driving around campus in this thing!

“Can I
take it for a spin?” I asked him.

“Sure,
Baby Girl. Have fun, but don’t go too fast in it. I don’t want you getting any
tickets.”

I
retrieved the keys from the glove box and cranked the engine, then turned the
radio on. A song about cheating boyfriends from a popular girl group came out
of the speakers, a song I should have been singing to David throughout our
relationship.

I looked
up at Deacon, who was watching me with joy and pride in his eyes. I realized
that today was probably going to be the last day that we would spend together
for a while.

“You
wanna ride with me?” I asked him. “I can take you to get something to eat.”

“You sure
I’m not gonna cramp your style?”

I shook
my head. “No, Deac. Come on. I’ll even turn the radio down for you. I know how
much you hate hip hop. Better yet, I’ll put it on a gospel station for you. How
about that?”

He
grinned and got inside. We pulled out of the driveway and drove off together,
enjoying each other’s company for the first time in a very long time. I knew
then that I’d let too many of these moments slip away.

two

Karen

I pulled
my suitcases from beneath the bed and examined the space in each one. I didn’t
know why I always waited until the last minute to pack, but I did.

“Lord, I’m
sorry for procrastinating,” I repented. I should have learned this lesson long
ago, but here I was again, struggling to get things done in a hurry. At least I
hadn’t waited until tomorrow. Then I would have really been pushing it.

Someone
knocked at the door.

“Come
in,” I yelled.

Kevin, my
little brother, walked in. “Here are those boxes you wanted,” he said, dragging
the folded pieces of cardboard behind his five year old frame.

I took
the boxes from him. “Thanks, babe.”

“Karen…
Can I stay in here with you while you pack?”

I smiled.
Kevin didn’t want me to leave, so he was spending as much time with me as he
could.

“Sure,” I
told him. “But if you stay in here, you’re gonna help me out. Is that cool with
you?”

He
nodded.

“Good,” I
said. “You can start by taping the bottom of those boxes together and taking
all the pictures off the walls.”

Kevin
looked up at the pictures, realizing how big the task was going to be. Pictures
decorated every wall. There had to be at least thirty frames of all different
shapes and sizes. But he began to fold the boxes anyway, finding peace with
having a reason to hang around me.

I opened
the sliding door of my walk in closet, exposing my collection of designer
clothes, shoes, and purses. There was no way everything was going to fit in my
suitcases. I would leave some here, but Mama said she wanted everything out.
She was turning my room into her “Special Room” and she wanted it left bare
when I left for school in the morning. Everything had to go.

I
rummaged through the clothes and picked out my favorite jeans, T-shirts,
blouses, sweaters, and slacks, and brought them all over to the bed. There was
still a lot left over once I finished, but I didn’t want to box them up and put
them in the basement with the rest of the things I wasn’t taking to school with
me. By the time I came back for them they would be out of style and a waste of
perfectly good clothes. I was just gonna have to bag them up and donate them to
the Salvation Army.

“Kevin,”
I called, getting his attention.

He looked
up, finished with taping the bottoms of the boxes together.

“Can you
go get me some big garbage bags out of the kitchen?”

“Okay,”
he said, and left to go retrieve the bags.

As soon
as he was gone I locked the door behind him. I had to change into some more
comfortable clothes and I didn’t want him bursting in on me as he’d done in the
past. I grabbed a pair of oversized sweatpants from my bottom dresser drawer
and an old T-shirt and sat down on my bed. Once undressed, I looked in the mirror
and caught a reflection of the tattoo on my upper thigh. TERRANCE. I rubbed at
it, wishing it would come off, but the permanent ink remained there as it had
for the last two years.

“Ugh,” I
pouted as I got dressed. The tattoo was a souvenir of my past life that I had
to look at everyday. As much as I tried to view it as simply a reminder of how
far the Lord has brought me, it still annoyed me.

“Karen,”
Kevin called from behind the bedroom door. He twisted and jiggled the knob,
trying to get in. “I got the bags you asked for. Hurry up and open the door.”

I quickly
got dressed and let him in.

“It’s
about time,” he mouthed off, handing me the bags. He was getting so big. I bet
by the time I came back for Christmas he’ll be even bigger. I’ll hardly be able
to recognize him.

Kevin
took a picture of me and Anaya off the wall and placed it in a box. It was a
picture Mama took of us at a church picnic when we were seven.

“Let me
see that picture,” I instructed Kevin, pointing so that he’d know which one I
was talking about.

He got it
and brought it over to me. I stared at the little girls in the picture. We both
were missing teeth at the time, but that didn’t keep us from smiling at the
camera. The remaining teeth were slightly stained from the red fruit punch
drinks we were holding in our hands. We stood there, arm in arm in unity,
loving each other the way that we were supposed to.

I laughed
aloud, thinking of all those times. Things were simple then. That was before
the boyfriends, before the sex, and before the fights. Things certainly have
changed.

For one,
Nya and I were nowhere near as close as we used to be. The whole time we were
growing up we were partners in crime. But now I could hardly get her to say two
words to me without rolling her eyes. She thought I was stuck up, but the truth
was that I decided to dedicate my life to the Lord. That meant that there were
some things I just didn’t do anymore. If I had to lose a friend because of my
relationship with God, then so be it. God came first in my life and I could
never live my life to please people. Real friends wanted the best for you
anyway, not the worst. I hated that our friendship had to end that way, but she
made it very clear that she didn’t want me in her life anymore. I couldn’t
force anyone to like me, or love me for that matter.

The drama
between us really started in the eighth grade when I became sexually active. I
had sex with my next door neighbor Eric, who was two years older than me. Nya
and I argued because she said that I knew better and I shouldn’t have been
messing around with him because he had a bad reputation. We stopped talking for
a while, but she was right. I did know better and he did have a bad reputation.
But I didn’t care. I liked the attention and I continued to have sex with him
until I finally realized he was playing me for the young fool that I was at the
time and broke it off. After that, Anaya and I became friends again.

By the
time we were in high school, both of us were moving at paces way faster than
two girls who grew up in church should have been. We were lying to our parents,
sneaking out of the house, going to wild parties, and in relationships that
were leading us down wayward paths. In the beginning of our freshman year Anaya
met David, a college guy who was a major playboy, and through him I met Toney.

Toney and
I met one night when Anaya and I had a sleepover at her house. Once Deacon
Patterson had gone to bed, Anaya and I snuck out to join David at a house
party. At this party David introduced me to Toney, who was also in college. We
had fun together and after that night we continued to see each other secretly.
We started having sex after about three weeks. Toney had me drinking alcohol
and smoking weed, but at the time I didn’t care. I thought I was in love and
that was all that mattered to me. Our relationship was going good in my eyes,
until he started tripping, talking about how he wanted to have a baby. I
laughed at him at first, because I thought he was joking. He was serious
though, and I told him that I was too young to go there with him. He left me
the minute he found a girl dumb enough to get pregnant by him, so that was the
end of our relationship.

Then I
got involved with Terrance. Terrance and I had actually known each other since
we were little. Both of us played basketball at the YMCA, but he was two years
older than me. We were in the same Spanish class the spring semester of my
freshman year, and by that summer everyone knew we were a couple. The beginning
of our relationship was good. We took things really slow and he even came to
church with me from time to time. Daddy approved of him, and we usually spent
every weekend together.

But the
end of my sophomore year was when the problems started. Terrance was doing very
well in basketball, and receiving media attention from people all over Texas. He ended up getting drafted into the NBA, something that we all were very excited
about. It was around that time that I realized I hadn’t gotten my period. I
didn’t know what to do. I was only fifteen and I didn’t even have a job. When I
told Terrance, his response to me was, “If you are pregnant, it’s not mine.” He
went on to say that he didn’t want to be with a girl who was trying to trap him
and he broke up with me.

I went to
the doctor a week later and he confirmed that I really was pregnant. To prove
to him that I wasn’t a liar, I brought the results to school to show Terrance.
Instead of embracing me as the mother of his child like I thought he would, he
slapped me in the face and pushed me down on the ground in front of everybody.
It took two of his friends to get him off of me. The guy who I thought loved me
so much and would have given his life for me turned around and attacked me. I
called Mama and told her what happened. When she picked me up from school, she
took one look at my face she had me stay at my aunt’s house until the swelling
went down. She knew Daddy would have attacked Terrance and would have ended up
in jail for assaulting a minor. I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I
was pregnant though, so I kept it to myself. I knew it would have broken her
heart to know that the daughter she was trying so hard to raise in the ways of
the Lord was having premarital sex.

But the
situation with Terrance proved to be harder than I assumed it would be. The
break up left me very depressed and stressed out. I had no clue how I was going
to take care of a baby all on my own.

Then one
morning I woke up feeling sick. It wasn’t a cold or the flu, but I knew something
was wrong with the baby. It took all the courage I had to confess to Mama that
I was pregnant and thought the baby needed help. After screaming and crying
over what I’d done, she took me to the doctor who informed me that I’d had a
miscarriage. I cried for days over my lost child, but God gave me peace about
it and let me know that my baby was with Him.

But every
since that day, Mama never treated me the same. She said that she didn’t look
down on me, but I knew that she really did. I don’t think she has forgiven me.
We lived in the same house and hardly said anything to each other. I often went
out of my way to ask her how she was doing, and she always pretended that I
wasn’t even there. It was like we were two strangers just passing by, even
though we were family. She didn’t rejoice with me when I got accepted to Daytown University, either. She just asked me when I was leaving. Her telling me she wanted
my room completely empty when I left let me know she’d been looking forward to
me getting out of the house for a long time. There was no “I’m so proud of
you.” No “I’m praying for you.” No “Good luck.” All I got was “When are you
leaving?” and “Have that room bare when you walk out of that door.” Even still,
I was determined not to let her ways get to me.

My
relationship with Anaya changed during that timeframe, too. Even though I told
her I was different, she never really understood. I think her confusion is what
ultimately drove her away from me. I tried my best to explain to her what was
going on with me, but she never wanted to see me as a new person. She tried so
hard to keep the old Karen that was dead and gone alive and well. When I
wouldn’t allow it, she couldn’t handle it. My refusal to be involved with wild
parties, drugs, alcohol, and sex caused her to detest me. She knew that I had
gotten pregnant, but when she didn’t see my stomach getting big she asked me
what happened. I told her that I’d miscarried and she called me a liar. She had
the audacity to tell me to my face that I killed my baby to save my reputation
at First Bethany. That was the craziest crap I’d ever heard. After that she
stopped calling me, and then wrote me a letter expressing that she thought I
was phony and that she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.

I was
very hurt by it all, but I gave her over to the Lord and let Him handle it.
Even if we never become friends again, I know that I will always be there for
her if she needed me, and I let her know that, too. She began to do things that
were contrary to the way I wanted to live my life, including fighting. She and
some girl named Jayla started having fights down the street from the school,
something I never imagined she would do. Then I heard the same girl was messing
with David behind her back. Some kind of friend she chose. I even heard that
she started stealing, too. Anaya? I concluded that there was just too much
drama associated with her for me, so I pray for her from a distance.

I never
talked to Terrance again, either. Last I heard, he messed up his knee and was out
of he NBA. He was supposedly moving back to Texas, but I am not sure if that’s
really true. I stopped following his career a long time ago and could care less
what he was doing.

Snapping
back to the present, I put the picture back into the box that Kevin was
packing. If I was going to get everything done I didn’t have time to travel
down memory lane.