Diary of a Young Girl

by Mark Anthony

  “Kwame, please call my father and talk to him and let him know in so many ways that if he even thinks about calling here that I will get in my truck and drive down to New York and kill his sorry fucking ass!” I screamed. I meant every word that I had said. With Antonio Reid’s reversal of conviction getting so much news coverage I was sure that my father would be calling me just to put salt on my wounds and pump himself up with his own sick form and sick sense of reverse vindication.

  “Shayla, the first thing that you need to do is stop cursing like you’re doing,” Kwame said.

  “Kwame, don’t tell me that. I’m not trying to hear it. What the hell am I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “You’re supposed to trust God no matter what?” Kwame calmly said.

  “Shayla, God works everything out for the good of those that love Him,” Andrea added.

  I sucked my teeth and I didn’t say anything else. Then Andrea reminded me that her office was the one who had prosecuted Antonio Reid and that she probably was feeling just as bad as I was.

  “And you know what? I’m not gonna sit around here and watch you sulk and throw a pity party, Shayla. What we’re both gonna do is take our asses back to New York, look Antonio Reid and his family right in the eyes and apologize from the bottom of our hearts for what we in essence put him through. And Shayla, at the end of the day, what else can we do?”

  I sat on my living room sofa in my plush 750,000 dollar home and I just was numb. I couldn’t believe that my past still had such a hold on me, but apparently that hold was very strong and it didn’t want to let go.

  As the day went on and progressed, I knew that no matter what I just couldn’t let myself slip back into that mental prison that I had been trapped in for such a big part of my life. All I could do was face the truth and tell the truth, and the truth was the only thing that could really set me free.

  Facing that truth meant admitting that, yes, I had engaged in risky behavior in my past and that was what led to me getting cervical cancer. I would have to deal with that present reality by facing up to it in the present and not by living in the past. As far as Antonio Reid was concerned, I had to face him and tell him the truth, and the truth was that I had sincerely thought that he was indeed the man who had raped me.

  Now, as it turned out, I was sincerely wrong and I couldn’t stay stuck in that mistake that I had made. The only way I wasn’t gonna stay stuck was by confronting Antonio Reid and allowing myself to admit and face the truth in the present and not run from the past.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Real Power

  On the last Monday in September 2002, Andrea, Kwame and myself boarded a plane and we headed to New York. We were planning to meet Antonio Reid and some of his family members at his mother’s home, which was located in Roosevelt, Long Island.

  For the entire duration of the trip my palms were sweaty. I was beyond nervous, and at a complete loss of words in terms of what I was going to say to Antonio Reid. I have to admit that I was also a little apprehensive as to what his reaction would be to me when he was to eventually see me. Like, I didn’t know if he was gonna just rush me and try to beat the crap outta me or what. If he did, I can’t say that I wouldn’t blame him for it.

  Well anyway, after our plane landed and we had rented a car, we made the twenty-five minute ride out to Roosevelt. We eventually pulled in front of a very dilapidated one-story cape-style house. The grass in the front yard was full of dirt patches and crabgrass and there was a sick-looking pregnant dog that was running loose behind the white picket fence that was falling apart.

  Kwame, Andrea, and myself made our way to the front door of the house and after being sniffed by the pregnant dog, we rang the front bell. The door was opened by a young girl who looked to be no older than four years old.

  “Hello sweetie, is Antonio home?” Andrea asked.

  The little girl didn’t answer. She ran off, yelling to her grandmother that some people were at the front door.

  Before long the little girl’s grandmother came to the door and she cordially asked us to come in. She explained that they had been waiting for us to come. She invited us to sit down in the living room and she asked us if we wanted anything to eat or drink but we respectfully declined.

  “Antonio,” she yelled. “The prosecutor and the young lady and a gentleman are here to see you.”

  We waited in silence for about two minutes for Antonio to arrive. During that time the young girl who had opened the door for us came up to me and began showing me her baby dolls and trying to get me to play with her. She was the cutest thing and she was full of such innocence.

  Finally Antonio appeared from one of the rooms that were situated toward the back of the house. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers and he also had on a Sean John T-shirt. He no longer had that scruffy beard and what was surprising was that he actually looked healthier and younger and more fit than he had looked when he was on trial.

  The three of us stood up to greet Antonio and my heart was beating and my palms were still sweaty.

  “No, sit, relax,” he said as he sat down in a chair across from us.

  There was a moment of awkward silence and then both Antonio and I tried to speak at the same time. He then gestured for me to speak first.

  “Mr. Reid,” I said as I shook my head and began to tear up, “I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart, that I am so, so, so sorry for what I put you through. I know that words can’t reverse time, and it can’t reverse anything so my words may not do much to help anything but I just felt, as did Ms. Boswell, that it was important for me to come and personally apologize to you face-to-face.”

  Antonio nodded his head and acknowledged my apology. Then Andrea apologized and Antonio nodded to her and acknowledged her apology.

  I was sort of bracing and I was waiting for him to give us this fierce tongue lashing but surprisingly he didn’t give us a tongue-lashing. Instead he did begin to talk to us in a very low, deliberate and reserved manner.

  “You see that lady sitting right there?” Antonio asked us as he pointed to his mother.

  We looked at her and nodded our heads.

  “That’s my mom. She is the only one who rode with me and stood by me and in my corner for the duration of my time. My friends bailed out on me. My relatives bailed out on me. My kids bailed out on me. What hurt me the most was when my fiancée bailed out on me and told me that she couldn’t do the time with me and ended up getting married to someone else.” He paused and tears began to well up in his eyes.

  “If my girl could have just rode it out with me it would have been easier for me to deal with the time and do the time. But her, and everybody else who supported me so strong in the beginning, after like two years they all started dwindling down that support and a lot of them even started doubting whether or not I was truly innocent. I can’t begin to tell you how much that hurt me.”

  I couldn’t help but break down and cry. All I could do was repeatedly apologize to him.

  “Shayla, it’s all right,” Antonio said to me. “I told you that that woman over there, my mother, she got me through this. It was her wisdom and her strength that I was leaning on, and if she wasn’t there for me I wouldn’t have made it through this. I mean, look around this room, you can see that we don’t have much and that I don’t come from much. But the one thing that my mother could give me was the ability to have faith and my faith was the thing that helped get me through this ordeal.”

  I nodded and looked at Antonio and I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t coming across as angry, bitter, or upset.

  “See, after like my seventh year in prison, my mother told me and taught me that I had to learn to forgive and just let go. She told me that until I learned to do that and learned to come to peace with that, that I wouldn’t be able to exercise any power over my situation,” Antonio explained. While he was talking his mother spoke up and elaborated on what he was saying.

  “There’s things that we’re all gonn
a go through in our lives and not understand why we’re going through what we are going through. We’ll be unjustly accused of things that we didn’t do, we’ll be victims of senseless things that are unjust and unfair, and in those circumstances we’ll feel so powerless and like victims and we’ll want justice, and in most circumstances we’ll be deserving of justice. But the thing that the Lord has taught me over the years is that the power that we all have and what no one can take away from us is our ability to forgive and let go of indiscretions that are perpetrated upon us. See, there is power in the ability to forgive, but you have to choose to exercise that power and when you do you will be at total peace with the circumstances that you cannot control.”

  When she was done talking, Antonio spoke up. He said to me that he had forgiven me years ago and that he had decided to let his anger and bitterness and resentment go because he knew he was innocent and that was the peace that he let resonate in his soul.

  “Wow,” I said in a low tone. It was like I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Shayla, there is one thing that I do wanna know. I guess it’s something that I always wanted to know. And that is, did you honestly in your heart of hearts think that I was the man who had raped you?” Antonio asked me.

  Before speaking, I looked Antonio square in the eyes and I slowly nodded and I said, “Antonio, I honestly believed that it was you. There’s no way that I would have accused you if I didn’t,” after I said that, I broke down again and started crying.

  “You know what, I believe you, and that just confirms the decision that I had made long ago to forgive you,” Antonio said.

  My husband spoke up and he asked Antonio if there was anything that he and I could personally do to help right the wrong that was committed against him.

  “Well, just pray for me, that’s all,” he responded.

  I could absolutely not believe Antonio’s humility. I was about to speak up and then he started speaking again. “See, listen, I can keep it real. I mean, there’s obviously things that I wish would have turned out differently. I wish I hadn’t lost that relationship with my children and my fiancée and all of those years in general, but that’s in the past and I have to just move on. I don’t want anything from you all because all that will do is keep me locked in the past and I’ve moved on from there. I’m at peace and I’ll be fine. But if you wanna do something for me then just do it for my kids and that would be more than anything that I could ever ask.”

  I immediately reached inside my pocketbook for a pen and I asked Antonio for the names of his children and I wrote them down. Then I asked Antonio’s mother for her name and she gave it to me and I wrote that down too. I then proceeded to write three separate checks in the amount of 500,000 dollars each and I handed them to Antonio. He looked shocked and he frowned his face up and then he looked at me.

  “Is this real?” he asked me.

  I nodded and told him that the checks were as good as gold.

  “Oh no, I can’t take this, then,” he replied.

  “That’s why I didn’t make those checks out to you. Those are checks for your children and their education or for whatever it is that they wanna do with the money. And Mrs. Reid, that other check is for you to do whatever it is that you wanna do. You can pay off your mortgage, you can buy a new home, you can go on a vacation or do whatever it is that you wanna do,” I said.

  Antonio and his mom both looked stunned. I could tell that they both felt very uncomfortable taking that kind of money from me. I just hoped in my heart that they would take the money and accept it as just a small gesture on my part to try and further make amends for the wrong that I had done and the error that I had made in having accused Antonio of rape.

  Thankfully, Antonio and his mom did accept the money that I had put forth. What was so ironic was that I had come to New York to make a formal apology to Antonio and I was initially scared and apprehensive about how the outcome of the meeting would unfold. As it turned out all of my fears of meeting Antonio had been unwarranted. What ended up happening was that Antonio had basically helped to confirm the depth and trueness of something that my mom had told me when she had visited me in my dream and told me, “And baby, if you don’t remember anything else, just remember that you can and you will overcome anything that comes your way, but you’re gonna have to first forgive and let go.”

  On the entire plane ride back home I was a ball of snot and tears. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how noble Antonio Reid’s character was, and how he had moved me so much. As I sat in my window seat and looked at the beautiful clouds that the plane hovered over, I realized that God had used Antonio as a living sacrifice for me to learn firsthand the power of forgiveness.

  If Antonio Reid was so willing to graciously forgive me for what I had done to him, then who in the hell was I to not forgive someone for the wrongs that had been perpetrated against me?

  Right then and there I had made up my mind that I was going to do whatever I had to do in order to locate my nanny from back in the days, Joyce, and let her know that I forgave her for what she had introduced me to and had done to me. I was also gonna forgive Earl for what he had done to me, and I was gonna forgive my father for the way that he raised me and spoke to me and viewed me, and I was gonna make sure that from the bottom of my heart I forgave my mom for having passed away when I was so young. But most importantly, I was going to truly forgive myself for all of the bad decisions that I had ever made in my life and let the baggage go once and for all.

  Yup, on that plane ride I was having an epiphany of just how and why I needed to exercise real power. With that epiphany I was truly freed from that mental prison that I had been in for close to twenty years, because finally I would be able to truly forgive myself and everyone else who had contributed to my life as a promiscuous girl.

  On the programs that were handed out at my mother’s funeral years ago, was a scripture from Romans 8:28 and it read: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God.

  I had never understood just exactly what that scripture meant because I never could see or understand how all things, particularly bad things like car accidents, or rapes, or murders could work together for good. But as I sat on that plane it finally all became crystal clear that when God is in control that even what the devil meant for bad God could somehow turn it around and use it for good.

  Epilogue

  With the help and unconditional support of her husband Kwame, Shayla went on to beat her battle with cervical cancer and although she was never able to bear any children of her own, through her nonprofit organization that she started for at-risks youth, she was affectionately referred to as “mom” by many of the young men and women who had come through her organization seeking help. She had a huge, positive impact on the lives of thousands of young men and women who had been victims of molestation, incest, and rape. In running her nonprofit organization she realized that everything that had ever happened to her had finally come full circle. There was nothing that gave her more joy than positively impacting exploited, abused, and scarred young men and women.

  Shayla and Andrea continued to be lifelong friends and she continued to refer to Andrea as her mom.

  Shayla was able to personally confront Joyce, Earl, and her father and let them know that she forgave them. Although all three of them had become very defensive and even attacked her character, she felt good about the interaction that she had had with them, simply because she was resolute about who really had the power.

  The statute of limitations for rape victims in the State of New York is only five years, which meant that even if Shayla’s true rapists had been caught they would not have been able to be indicted and convicted for the crime, but as far as Shayla was concerned, it was okay, because the rapists didn’t yield any more power over her simply because she had forgiven the true rapists and she was able to move on with her life.

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  Diary of a Young Girl Copyright © 2010 Mark Anthony

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-6228-6042-5

  This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.

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