The Beauty of Staying Together

"What am I gonna' do?" she yelled into the air, throwing her long arms up and letting them drop to her sides. "Duane's gonna' beat the crap outa' me," she whispered through clenched teeth. She was afraid of Duane and felt trapped. Trapped in an abusive marriage to a man she no longer loved. Trapped in a tall, skinny body that she hated because it had brought her unrelenting teasing during her school years. Trapped in her mind because she saw no way out. Oh, how I wish I had stayed in school. I'd be graduating in two years and goin' on to the police academy. I'd be helpin' to put people like Duane in jail.

Whenever Calvina was scared and feeling like a caged circus animal, she thought of all the things anyone had ever done to her. Fear turned to anger that gripped her very being. She found herself transported from the present to the time she caught Duane and her best friend, Anita in her bed.

That man got the gall to judge me after what he did. She was becoming enraged. I scrubbed peoples' floors and cleaned toilets to get the money to buy a decent bed for us and he wallowed around in it with that...that... I didn't want him back! The church mother said I had to give him another chance ‘cause he asked for my forgiveness. And she said if I didn't forgive him, God wouldn't forgive me for things I had done.