Single, Black, and Government Owned

By Omegia Keeys

Single, Black, and Government Owned is the explosive follow up to O. Keeys's critically acclaimed memoir, Rise and Fall of a Track Star. After walking away from a rising track career Omegia joins the military and leaves her son at home with her family.

For nearly thirteen years she balances being a single parent, dating, and her commitment to Uncle Sam. Single, Black, and Government Owned is an up close and personal view into the life of a woman overcoming the challenges of being a victim of sexual assault. This memoir takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride and will leave you feeling liberated.

Ms. Keeys work never ceases to amaze me. She captures the life experiences of so many single women that are working, raising children, and jumping over the hurdles that are in the way.

Author Alexis "Cherie" Norwood, Loyalty Above all Else and Bittersweet

A must read for every female that wants to break the cycle of using men as a retirement plan.

Author C.H. Towns, Night and Day

Important read for those that want to highlight the experiences, expectations, and achievements of mothers with careers.

Author Tiffany A. Flowers, Sage Advice for the Indie Children's Author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Passionate Writer Publishing
• Release date: May 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452475547

Book preview

Single, Black, and Government Owned

by

O. Keeys

Smashwords Ebook Edition

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Passionate Writer Publishing

www.passionatewriterpublishing.com

Single, Black, and Government Owned

Copyright © 2012 by O. Keeys

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This book is a work of nonfiction. All opinions expressed therein are solely those of the author. This book is intended for informational and support only. Some names have been changed to protect parties involved. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of nonfiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

*****

Also by O. Keeys

Rise and Fall of a Track Star

The Not So Common Sense Guide for Authors

Young Adult

Unloved

The Baby Girl (Key Rollins)

Mainstream

Under Omegia Keeys

Passionate Playmates

Seduction.com

Can You Keep a Secret?

Erotic Moments: Love, Lust and Desire

Short Stories

Keeping Secrets

Honey

*****

Acknowledgments

I’d like acknowledge everyone who has ever said a kind word to me throughout the years. The path before us isn’t always easy to follow but you made mine a little more bearable.

To my mother Jo Ann Johnson Campbell, we haven’t always seen eye to eye but I wouldn’t have it any other way. You always said I will understand when I am older. Oh how I do and I am not too proud to pick up the phone and let you know when I find myself repeating your words of wisdom.

To my Daddy, not many will step up and do the things you have done. I thank you because I am one of the lucky ones.

To my lovely ladies of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority keep on being the prestigious women you are.

To my military family, keep holding your head high, and always lead from the front.

To everyone else, good or bad I thank you because you helped mold me into the woman I am.

Dedication

To my Big Ma Ms. Alice F. Orr.

Thank you passing down your strength and courage which has allowed me to be strong in the face of adversity.

April 8, 1926-February 8, 2012.

Dear Reader:

Thank you for purchasing Single, Black, and Government Owned. This memoir is a follow up to Rise and Fall of a Track Star. But, don’t worry because you don’t have to read the first one to understand the second. The second is the aftermath. Within these pages I take you through my life trying to cope with being a victim of sexual assault without realizing I was actually doing so at the time.

I was a victim of child molestation and rape. Those things happened to me but they don’t define who I am as a person. This is why most people who’ve known me for years didn’t even know what I’d suffered through until I decided to tell the world.

My reasoning for doing so now is because I want to help others who have been victimized and open the minds of others who have not. As you read this you may wonder why didn’t she do this or that was an odd reaction? The answer is not simple, but remember you are looking for a rational response to an irrational action. People react to things differently during different phases of their life and it also depends on what they are going through at the time. It’s as simple as looking at a minor car accident. Some people cry, some talk it out, while others jump out their cars and beat the crap out of people. The person jumping out the car acting a fool probably just lost his or her job and the accident was the last straw. On any other day the accident wouldn’t have been a big deal.

Now, I’m not saying any of this for you to think this is a woe is me story—not the case at all. Even in some of my darkest moments I’ve found humor and it’s displayed in my title. Black comes from an old saying, I don’t have to do nothing but stay black and die. If you haven’t heard this then it’s probably a good thing. It means you haven’t ticked off the right person. The Government Owned portion comes from something me and my military family know all too well, Property of the US Government. It means once you raise your hand and swear in you lose most civilian rights but hey, you get used to it after a while and it becomes your norm. And, the single part is self-explanatory but I’ll say it anyway. It has taken me years to learn how relationships should truly function in order for me to allow the right one into my world. Thus, I have been a single woman most of my adult life.

There are many versions of a story. It all depends on where you’re standing. This one is mine. Once again thank you for purchasing my memoir and enjoy!

Blessings,

O. Keeys

Chapter One

What the heck was I thinking? I stood in front of a brown brick building with about fifty other people, both male and female, being screamed at. We were lined up in four rows with ten in each column. I was in the second row, midway down and an arm’s length away from the each of the four other people surrounding me.

Drop your bags! Pick them up! Hold them with your arms straight out! one of the drill instructors yelled.

Dressed in their battle dress uniform (BDU’s) and Smokey the Bear hats, they swarmed us. Something about those hats made them more intimidating. For me, it was because it blocked their eyes, but for those who got the one-on-one attention of the drill instructors, it was something more. The fear could be seen on their faces whenever a drill instructor approached them. One guy with long, blond hair received special treatment with the hat. The drill instructor stood so close as he spoke to the boy, the brim of the hat smacked the boy in the forehead on every other word. By the time the drill instructor was finished, the poor guy had a red indention on his forehead.

You rainbows are a bunch of freaking idiots! You just couldn't follow directions, could you? The Airman manual clearly said pack two changes of clothes, another drill instructor added.

I found out later they called us rainbows because it was day one of Basic Training and we hadn't been issued our uniforms yet. The group of us standing together in formation with different colored clothing made us look like one big rainbow.

With my arms out straight and parallel on both sides of my body, I fought desperately to hold up my bags in my hands. My arms were just beginning to feel the burn and from all my years of watching military movies, I knew this was only the beginning. I held back tears as I reflected on what had gotten me to this point.

I was done, defeated. I had just walked away from my one true love—track. Running had been the one thing in my life that was consistent and then it was turned into a vice used by others to put me down. How dare I leave my son with my mother and step out into the world to better myself? How dare I dream to be something different than what I had grown up seeing around me? I was supposed to be like all the others who have a baby as a teen, drop out of school, get on welfare, and let all of my dreams fall to the wayside.

Well, I was determined not to live that life, so I took the scholarship offered to me and went to college. There I excelled academically and in track, but mentally, I was fading fast. The hard, protective shell I had put around myself no longer held the negativity at bay. The shame from my childhood was catching up with me. The more races I won, the worse I felt. Why would anyone like me deserve something good? Who was I to achieve any of the accomplishments I had? If I was so special, then why did something so horrible happen to me? Those thoughts were why I left my love and walked away.

A lonely month dragged by and I began to realize the gravity of the situation I found myself in. It was way worse than the one I had left. I was living in a rundown apartment on the east side of Indianapolis without scholarship money to help pay my bills. The money I made working in the shipping and receiving department of a warehouse only provided enough so I could pay for the daycare in order to get to the crappy job in the first place. I reluctantly picked up a part time job at Walmart so we wouldn’t starve.

Once a week when I left the house, I set off a bomb to keep the roaches at bay. I had discovered the unwanted guests on a trip to the kitchen in the middle of the night during my first week there. When I complained to the rental office, I was handed roach motels. No way was I going to house those things. I wanted them gone, not stuck to the inside of a box in my kitchen.

Thus began my roach bombing campaign. I’d have my son stand in the hallway, I’d set off the bomb, and then run out the apartment. The roaches would disappear for a week and then return. Living in an apartment provided them an escape. They would leave and come back once the coast was clear.

I tried pleading with my neighbors to bomb their apartment along with me, but they blew me off. One day I took matters into my own hands. I saw an open window, popped the top on an extra bomb I had and threw it in. Cursing and screams spilled out into the stairwell. I picked my son up and ran to the car before they came outside and saw who the culprit was. My fear of being caught subsided as I made my way to work. It was gone by the time I got a phone call later that afternoon informing me I had not been hired for yet another job.

After going to more interviews and hearing the same thing over and over—You're a smart kid, but you have no experience—I was beginning to realize it had been a wasted effort for me to have busted my behind trying to erase the stigma of being a dumb jock. My grade point average meant nothing to Corporate America. Neither did my blank diploma. Oh, I had finished college, but somehow Indiana State University claimed I owed money. I was on a full-ride scholarship, but arguing with the Controller’s Office landed me nowhere, so I gave up.

I knew I finished and that was all that mattered. I had completed the American Dream. Go to college and you would land a good job, right? I had yet to see the good job, and from the look of contempt on the last person I had interviewed with, I knew I wasn’t going to find it any time soon.

I made a decision to go down to the military recruiting center, join the Armed Services, and get the experience I was lacking. I did not want to be a welfare recipient and at the pace I was going, I was bound to end up there sooner or later. I chose the Air Force after remembering a conversation with my dad from childhood. He had retired from the Navy and always said he didn’t want his daughter on a boat with all those men and only men with nothing else to do in life should join the Marines. My choices were narrowed down to Air Force or the Army.

Coughing in the phone, I faked an illness to my supervisor and called in sick to my dead-end job. Afterward, I headed over to the recruiting center.

A large man in a tan uniform stood outside the building as I approached.

Where you going with that funny looking hair? He stared me down, making my five-foot-five-inch frame feel less than two inches tall.

I had been in a hair show a few days prior, and my hair was burgundy and in an up-do with two chopsticks sticking out of it. Nothing that I would have ever worn had it not been for doing my friend a favor and filling in for one of her no show clients. I wanted to say something smart back, but the look in his eye told me better. Instead, I glanced at the sign behind him and let out a sigh of relief. It read, Marines. I was looking for the Air Force or Army office. I sidestepped my heckler and continued to the door beside him.

The sign read Army but no one was inside. I continued to the next door, which read Air Force, and poked my head in. A man in a blue uniform glance up from his desk, and his gaze immediately went to my hair.

It was for a hair show. I normally don't wear it like this and the color is weave, I quickly muttered. I felt like an idiot.

No problem. What can I do for you?

I want to sign up.

Just like that?

Yes. I just finished college and now I can’t find a decent job. I need to have experience.

College, huh? He smiled. You have your diploma?

No, but I finished and my overall GPA was a 3.89.

He flashed those pearly whites at me like he had just won the lottery. After introducing himself to me as Technical Sergeant Harvey, he quickly went through his spiel and gave me the practice ASVAP test, a test everyone had to take before joining. He looked at my score and said I could pick any job I wanted, as he slid me a book with all the jobs the Air Force offered.

I read over a few and picked Intelligence Analyst. The job sounded cool, sort of like a spy. Technical Sergeant Harvey had me fill out some more information and a form to take my real test and physical exam the next week. What he neglected to tell me was I’d have to get naked and let some cruddy old doctor look at my female genitalia, walk like a duck in my bra and panties, and pee in a cup with someone staring me down. It was more humiliating than the first day of gym in junior high, but I survived.

I waited until almost two weeks were left until my ship out date before I told my mother what I had done. She wasn’t too happy about it. In fact, she loudly voiced her opinion. Her What? still rings in my ears to this day. She had a conference with my oldest sister, Lette. In the end, they agreed to keep my four-year-old son as long as I signed over temporary guardianship to my sister. I was hesitant, but saw no other way.

And that is how I ended up there with my arms held up like an idiot. I think they had it timed just right for us to lower them before they ripped out our sockets. After that, they shuttled us around like cattle up into our barracks on the third floor, females on one side and males on the other. Metal doors kept us separated and someone always had to stand guard to allow entry. No males, unless they were our drill instructors. They even had a sign on the wall in case you forgot.

The first weeks of training went fairly easy. Get screamed at, fold all your clothing into impossibly small shapes, iron and press your uniforms until they could stand by themselves, march around everywhere, exercise, try to stay awake in whatever class they had us in, learn the Air Force History, then hit the bed to wake up and do it all over again.

Anyone in the service or has been in the service knows that the Air Force has some of the best dining facilities. My first experience there standing heel to toe (or nut to butt, as the males say) with someone to my front and back did not stop me from eyeballing a T-bone steak sitting out for the taking. I was starving. I grabbed the plate, along with a baked potato, and made my way to the drinks. Side-stepping over to the fountain, I poured me some Gatorade and water. It was mandatory for us to have two drinks at all times.

The

Reviews for Single, Black, and Government Owned

[zenita · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I also went to Air Force basic training around the The same time the character attended Air Force basic training. It was interesting to compare my experience to hers.