Casting Down Imaginations

by LaShanda Michelle

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said, and sat up.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You sure you wanna do this? We haven’t even talked about it. Once we cross this bridge, we can’t go back.”

  “I’m down if you are. Are you?”

  “Yeah. I mean…”

  “Come on. I want this. And I know you do, too.”

  “I do,” he confessed. “I mean, I really do. But this could make things really complicated.”

  I kissed him, then said “Only if you make it that way.”

  Derrick pulled me close and we gave each other what we wanted. He didn’t disappoint me, either. He was soft, tender. He took his time. He didn’t rush, but was attentive. He ran his fingers through my hair and appreciated every inch of me. We reached our satisfaction at the same time, and as we lay on the rose petals he held me. I fell asleep in his arms, and I felt secure. I really cared about him, and I knew that he cared for me, too.

  sixty one

  Anaya

  I pranced around the dressing room with a smile on my face that no one could take away. My mind was on Derrick and the love we made last night. I was just remembering the way he made me breakfast in bed this morning when he burst into the dressing room.

  “You really need to learn how to knock,” one of the girls fussed at him.

  He ignored her and walked over to me quickly. “We need to talk.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him as I finished lacing up my thigh boots. His face was intense. I’d never seen him so serious before.

  “Get your stuff,” he directed me.

  “What?”

  He kicked my locker. “Hurry!”

  “Alright,” I said, disturbed by his lack of patience. I didn’t know what his problem was, but whatever it was, I was sure I had nothing to do with it.

  “Now! Grab your purse! Come on, we gotta go outside!!!”

  “Can you calm down a minute? What’s your prob—”

  SLAM!

  I jumped at the sound coming from the other side of the dressing room door. Several loud screams followed, along with more thuds and the sound of glass breaking.

  Derrick grabbed me just as I snatched my purse and pulled me out of the dressing room. I screamed as gunshots rang out around us. We turned down the hallway that led to the employee parking lot. I couldn’t keep up and fell. Derrick tried to help me to my feet, but as more shots fired, he ended up dragging me. When we made it to the door he picked me up and hoisted me over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?” I screamed at him.

  Everything was happening so fast. Men with guns rushed past us with the word SWAT printed on their backs. Derrick was running as fast as he could, making me dizzy while people around us screamed.

  He stopped, and suddenly I was thrown in the back seat of a car. He got in with me, and then screamed “GO!” at the driver.

  We peeled off. I reeled backward, not prepared for the speed at which we were traveling. My legs went up in the air as I grabbed the back of the driver’s seat in front of me. I realized then that the car was my own, and Amber was behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her, out of breath.

  “Sit back and stay low,” she told me. “Everything will be explained.”

  I didn’t understand, but I did as she said. Through the dark I peered at Derrick, who was ducking down with me. He knew I was scared, but he remained calm for me and held my hand. The light from headlights of cars passing by allowed me to catch quick glances at his face. His eyes were affixed on me, but they were different, and I knew something serious was happening.

  We’d been in the car for about twenty minutes when Amber finally pulled the car over. We were somewhere on the highway, parked behind Derrick’s car.

  “Five minutes,” Amber told him, and got out of the car. I watched, confused, as she walked over to Derrick’s car and got in the passenger’s seat.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Derrick. Grief already sat in my stomach.

  “I gotta make this fast,” he told me, and pulled something from under the seat in front of him.

  “Make what fast? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Anaya, I really want you to know I’m sorry.”

  I was already pissed off. “Don’t apologize. Just tell me what the hell is going on. Why the hell was Amber driving my car, and what the hell was going on at Prestige?”

  “I’m gonna explain everything. Just give me a chance.”

  “You better start explaining right now. What the hell is this? Some type of kidnapping? Derrick, you better start talking.”

  “First off, my name is not Derrick. It’s Trevor,” he said, and turned on the car light above us.

  My mouth gaped open.

  What in the hell is going on here?

  “Anaya, I’m not who you think I am.”

  You think?

  “I’m Trevor Farland, and I’m an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  My mouth grew wider and so did my eyes as I stared at the badge and ID that he showed me. They looked authentic.

  “I have to do this fast because I don’t have much time.”

  He placed a folder in my lap. I opened it. Inside were various pictures of Jeff and other people who worked at Prestige, including me.

  “Jeff Williams is a convicted felon. In 1999 he was arrested and served five years in jail for attempted murder. At that time, he was also suspected of drug trafficking, but there was no evidence. After his release, he dropped from the Chicago scene and appeared here in Texas a few years ago, when he assumed ownership of Prestige. Williams is smart, so we knew we had to be careful. We’ve been watching him for months. This time when he goes to prison, he’s not ever getting out. We made sure of it. He’s going down for dealing drugs and a whole bunch of other charges.”

  I flipped through the pictures in disbelief. “What does this have to do with me?”

  He placed his hand on my knee. “My director wanted you arrested as well.”

  My heart dropped and my stomach flip flopped. “Huh?” I asked him. I couldn’t have heard that correctly.

  He took the pictures from me and flipped through them until he found pictures of me in my car. I was confused at first, until I realized when they were taken. They were from the day I got hired at Prestige. When Jeff had me drop off that bag…

  “But he likes me,” Trevor continued. “I convinced him that you were just an innocent person who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he told me that if I got you away from the scene of the bust, he would make your file go away, despite the evidence we have against you.”

  My head was swirling with confusion. “Evidence?”

  “Yes, evidence. You dropped off crack cocaine that day. Did you know that?”

  A pitiful whimper came out of me. “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah. That alone can send you to prison. But I quickly learned that you had no idea what you were getting yourself into. Just a young girl caught up.”

  A young girl caught up… Caught up?

  “So you were just using me?” I asked him, thinking of last night.

  “No. It’s really complicated, Anaya, but I want you to know that I honestly didn’t use you. I really do care about you.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, right.” I could have kicked myself. Once again, I allowed myself to be played.

  “If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t have went out of my way to protect you. You have no idea of the things that were going on around you. Jeff ran a prostitution ring. He was pimping those girls. All of them, except you. I made sure of it.”

  “What are you talking about? There was no sex going on at Prestige.”

  “I know. Not at Prestige, but Jeff held private parties, and at those parties the girls traded sex for money. We got evidence that he orchestrated several of those parties, and took a percentage of the so-called profits. I made sure
all of that stuff stayed away from you, because I didn’t want you going down behind a thug like Jeff. Because I care about you.”

  Private parties? That’s what the bank teller was talking about!

  All I could do was shake my head. All of this was happening so fast. Last night he was my new man. Tonight he was some cop from out of town who was working undercover.

  What the hell did I get myself involved in?

  “I gotta be totally honest with you,” he said, and pulled something out of his coat pocket. It was a gold ring, and he placed it on the ring finger of his left hand.

  “Oh, hell no,” I managed to say. “You are not married!” I fussed at him, my hands shaking.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Tell me you are not married! I know you are not married!”

  “That’s why I was trying so hard not to get physical with you,” he confessed, and put his hand on my knee to try to console me.

  I pushed it away, disgusted by his audacity. “Getting some before the big bust must have been nice, huh?”

  He held his head down. “I promise you, baby girl, what we got is something serious, now.”

  “Don’t call me that. Your wife wouldn’t appreciate it.”

  He stared in surprise. “Alright. Look, I ain’t got time. I just wanted to be honest with you to the fullest.”

  “Who’s your wife? Amber? Y’all got kids, too? What else are you gonna tell me?”

  “Stop clownin’, alright? Amber is just my partner. And you lucky she likes you too, or she wouldn’t have helped me get you outta there. Now look, I ain’t got time to go through no dramatics right now. I gotta hurry up and get back, and you gotta get outta here.”

  “Where am I supposed to be going?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But when you get there, call me,” he told me, and gave me a card with a number on it. His real name, Trevor Farland, was printed on it. I could have screamed.

  “I need to know that you’re okay,” he insisted. “But whatever you do, don’t go back to Daytown. If you do, you’re on your own, and there won’t be anything else that I can do to help you.”

  He leaned over and tried to give me a kiss, but I pulled away, the hurt I was feeling seeping from my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized, and kissed my hand instead. I pulled it away as well and turned away from him. He opened the car door and got out, and I watched through blurry tears as he hustled into the car with Amber and they sped off through the night.

  Angry, I took his card and ripped it into shreds, then threw the tiny pieces out of the car window. They fluttered in the wind until they eventually fell to the ground, and I felt just as lost and hopeless as they looked. I cried. Hard, upset that once again everything around me had fallen apart. I sprawled across the back seat and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, then got in the driver’s seat and took off, asking myself how could I have been so stupid to fall in love with a married man.

  sixty two

  Anaya

  My foot was leaning heavy against the gas.

  Eighty…

  Ninety…

  One hundred…

  One hundred ten…

  The numbers on the speedometer didn’t scare me, although they should have. I was going entirely too fast, but I didn’t care anymore. I was tired, and I didn’t feel like living anymore. If I crashed into another car or ran off the road and rolled over fifty million times and landed upside down with a cracked skull, I didn’t care. I was tired of the heartache. Tired of the pain. I just wanted to die. My life wasn’t worth living anyway. No one would care. I would just be some half naked stripper on the side of the road. In the newspaper they probably wouldn’t even print my name. No one would miss me because nobody cared. I may as well just put myself out of my misery…

  Deacon Patterson flashed before my eyes.

  I burst into tears, and after years of running, I finally surrendered. Even though my foot was still pressing the gas, a comforting force pressed the brake for me and guided the car off the road and to a complete stop.

  “Jesus,” I cried wearily, and collapsed onto the steering wheel. “I’m sorry!” I managed to get out.

  There was pitch blackness all around me, but when I closed my eyes I saw white. There was a brightness to it, but it was soft, and in the car I felt it rocking me. I continued to apologize, but the glow of the whiteness told me that everything was going to be alright. I didn’t have to be sorry anymore. It was almost too good to believe, but I knew that this whiteness had been protecting me this entire time. It was forgiving. It didn’t care that I had sex with numerous people, that I had an abortion, that I lied, stole, or that I took my clothes off for money. It didn’t care that I unknowingly had sex with a married man. It loved me so much more than all of those things. While I was running around being promiscuous, it kept my body healthy. After I had my abortion, it kept my sanity. While I stripped, it kept me safe. This whiteness that consoled me was love, and it came from God.

  I curled into a ball and let Jesus rock me. Tears continued to fall, and all of my pain was taken away. The hurt of my first heartache, David, was gone. The light took it. The betrayal of a close friend. Gone. The light took it. The pain of aborting a child. Gone. The light took it. The hurt of never knowing my mother and being overlooked by my father. It was no longer there. The light, my Father up above, took that, too. Being attacked by Adam, rejected by Reese, taken advantage of by Jeff, and used by Derrick. The hurt was no longer there. Jesus took it and covered the emptiness with His grace and mended the openness with His mercy. My brokenness was healed. The fragmented pieces were mended, and I was made whole.

  I must have sat in the car for two hours, crying, basking in this precious presence that showered me. Finally, I started the car again and headed home.

  sixty three

  Anaya

  I parked my car in the driveway of Deacon Patterson’s home. I was tired. I sat in the car for a moment, afraid to move. I didn’t know what I would say or do, or if Deacon would even let me in. I’d treated him so horribly, when all he ever did was love me.

  “Stop it,” I rebuked myself. There was no sense in going down that road. I was already here and had no place else to go. But I realized just now that I was still dressed in my stage clothes. I had on a bustier with a pair of ruffled underwear and tall spiked heeled boots.

  I mumbled a few curse words to myself. I already knew I didn’t have anything to cover up with in my car. I purposely kept it clean and clutter free.

  The car radio said it was six o’clock in the morning. None of the stores around were open yet, and even if they were, I couldn’t go inside dressed the way that I was.

  My gut told me to just get in the house. If I knew Deacon, he was already up, sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee and reading his bible before he headed off to work.

  I looked up and down both sides of the street that I grew up on, where I used to play hopscotch when no cars were coming, and Karen and I would race each other and play hide and seek and play with our dolls. No one was coming, and no one was outside. The quiet neighborhood was still asleep. I quickly got out of the car and made a mad dash to the front door.

  Once I was on the porch I felt more at ease, although I was still nervous. I was shaking. I didn’t know if Deacon would let me in. He had every right to slam the door in my face and send me on my way. I must have been such a disappointment to him, such a let down.

  I was discouraged, and almost went back to the car. But somehow my finger ended up ringing the doorbell.

  I gasped when I realized what I had done. I wanted to run, especially when I heard the familiar shuffle of Deacon dragging his house shoes across the wooden floor of what used to be my home. I was fidgeting, my knees threatening to give out on me. I squeezed my hands together in front of me, trying my hardest not to cry.

  I failed miserably when he opened the door. The look on his face was too much for me. His eyes widened when they
recognized me, then his mouth dropped. He blinked a couple of times as if to see if he was dreaming.

  I immediately curled into a ball at his feet and cried.

  “Daddy!” I wept loudly. I hugged his feet and kissed the top of his slippers. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry, Daddy!”

  I wanted to say more, but nothing else would come out but deep sobs. I quivered with remorse. I just wanted him to take me in his arms and tell me that he loved me and that he forgave me and that I was still his little girl. If he never did anything else for me again, I knew I would be okay, as long as I had his love.

  I felt a slight draft, then something covering me. I opened my eyes to see the sleeve of his robe next to me. I cried even harder.

  “Come on, baby girl,” Daddy said softly as he wrapped me in his robe and helped me stand to my feet.

  I was too ashamed to look at him. I kept my head down to the floor and covered my face with my hands.

  He hugged me, and as I continued to cry I heard him praise God for bringing me home.

  “I was so worried about you,” he told me. “And I prayed and asked God to cover you and keep you safe. And now He’s brought you back home to me.”

  I hugged him back, and through my tears, I thanked God, too.

  sixty four

  Karen

  The breeze from the open window of my bedroom tickled my face. I stirred, not wanting to wake up yet, but figured I may as well since Kevin’s constant kicking through the night hadn’t provided for a decent rest anyway.

  A sigh came out of me when I thought about all that had happened in the last year. I left home for college, thinking that I was going to stick to this wonderful plan for my life. I was going to stay celibate, finish school, grow up and get married and have this wonderful life. But then life happened. Daddy lost all of my school money, I moved in with Terrance, became sexually active again, got engaged, and now, I was leaving him. It was time for me to get back to me, the real Karen, who was committed to God and didn’t live life to please others. The Karen who stuck to doing what she knew was right. The Karen who was waiting on God to let her know who that right one was. And I couldn’t do that living with Terrance. So yesterday I went down to the bus station and bought a ticket.