Introspection

By Reginia (Regana) McKinney-McGee.

Gina Phillips is hiding her pain. While her work takes her all over the world, she attempts to follow Gods laws and love her family. Even so, she is battling internal demons that have caused her to push her dreams aside and live a lie. The truth is that no one really knows her.

Gina has taken it upon herself to dispense justice in her own way. As she meets one man after the other, she feels nothing as she sleeps with them, steals their identification, and leaves them with something that will change their lives forever. No one knows what she is taking or giving to the unsuspecting menexcept God. But even as Gina continues down a dark path lined with deceit, a piece of her soul seeks deliverance from the hidden secrets that have left her ashamed, alone in her pain, and without peace. Now only time will tell if her secret will ever be exposed.

Introspection is the poignant story of a struggle between morality and retribution as a woman with deep secrets embarks on a life-changing journey to seek justice from unwary souls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480804760

Reginia (Regana) McKinney-McGee.

Reginia (Regana) McKinney-McGee is the founder of a foster family agency and publisher of several magazines. She lives with her husband in Fresno, California, where she enjoys serving God, spending time with her three children, granddaughter, and pursuing several hobbies, such as riding motorcycles and scuba diving.

Book preview

Prologue

P eoples’ stories! Others don’t want to hear it. Others don’t want to be involved. Others could care less. Well, this is my story. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don’t; how the world just keeps going, how everybody just keeps going on. If I could get through the things that I could change, I would, but I don’t know which way to go, I don’t know how to go, I don’t know what to do. You see, this is my story and I’m going to tell it the best I can. I hope you can understand, by the time we get to the end, that I am a woman who loves God. I love God so much that it hurts me to the core with the things that I’ve done, but then there’s the other side of me that just wants to let go. How? Why? If I only knew how to deal with it, if I only knew how to let somebody know the agony and pain, I wouldn’t have to endure it alone, but I can’t. I can’t reveal the secrets that are hidden deep inside of me.

They’re not going to understand. They’ll never understand. I’m sure I’ll be an outcast. How can I truly believe men would ever want to be there for me? What would Junebug do? What would my mother and father think, my sisters and brothers? This is my story. I have to tell it. I have to get it out. Maybe one day I can save someone else. Maybe one day I can help someone.

With the trainings that I do, I need the trainings more than anybody else, but I can’t let anybody know. I can’t let anybody experience what I’ve gone through or what I’m going through. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s not fair. How do I rid the wrongs done to me and then rid the wrongs that I’ve done to other people? How can I do that and still keep sane? Are there two sides to me? Is there something wrong with me? The introspection of my mind not understanding, not understanding what it’s really about. Introspection is what this book is about. The examination of one’s own thoughts, impressions and feelings especially over long periods, observation or examination of one’s own mental and emotional state and mental processes, the act of looking within one’s self, and the tendency or disposition to do this. To do what? What am I doing? Self-examination, mental introspection, that’s what I’m doing. I’m searching. I’m looking to find a piece of me that was taken, a piece of me that was stolen dealing with the contemplation of my own thoughts, feelings and sensations. What sensations do I even have? What would my parents think? My family? Do I even know myself? Where are my boundaries? Boundaries, what boundaries? I have no boundaries. They’ve been stripped like a deer that’s been hit by a car, the life taken away from it. You know, if someone stops and sees a wounded creature, they don’t know how to help it because they don’t know where to begin. This is how I feel at times.

They see me cry, they don’t understand the pain, and I can’t let them know the pain. I don’t even know the pain. The trainings I do, I need it for myself. Who is Gina? I don’t even know. Where did she go? Oh how my soul longs to find this lady. Morals and values, I live on one side. As I look into my mind, the introspection of who I am, the morals and values that I was brought up with from Sunday to Sunday as I sat and listened to the pastor speak of God’s laws, commands, decrees, and precepts. I love the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit. Jesus has come into my heart and he has saved me, but then I’m dealing over here with morals, values and virtues that are contrary to what God has for me. If I could turn back the hands of time and go back, I wouldn’t have stepped out on that cold, beautiful night, driving my car to a place just to get relief with a Slurpee. Ha! My life changed…twice.

That’s why my story has to be told, because the pain is too much to bear. I can’t share how I really feel. They don’t know me. No one really knows me. Yes, Junebug has a clue that something isn’t right with me. If only I could turn back the hands of time through the introspection of my mind. This is my story. My name is Gina. I know I have a lot of love in me. There’s so much love around me, yet I can’t experience the love, I can’t feel the love and I can’t understand the love. What is my destiny? I don’t know. Only God knows where I’m going. I’m like a ship sailing out to sea with no one controlling it. The winds taking it wherever it wants to go. No sense of direction, purpose or outlook.

I just can’t let anybody know who I am. I can’t let anybody see who I am. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I feel like two people playing games, yet someone is going to get caught in the crossfire again. Do they understand what I’m doing? Do I understand what I’m doing? Do they even care what they’ve done to me? Do I even care what I’ve done to them? If they could only see the pain inside of me, a little girl longing to come out and live free, free from the debris of all that has happened to me. I’m Gina. This is my story and this is my life. I’m just trying to get it right.

Chapter 1

I t just hurts sometimes. No, who am I kidding? The pain is so strong; otherwise I would not be doing this. Why am I doing this? The pain is just too much.

It’s a beautiful night. I wonder if those people really know what’s going on. Do people really care? I was pure. I wasn’t perfect, but I was pure. I just wanted to do what was right. I tried to live up to everybody’s expectations, even my own. I just wanted to do what everybody else was doing: live, serve the Lord, marry, and have a family, kids. If I were to stay at home, that would have been fine. If I were to work, that also would have been fine. All that has been taken from me.

Yeah, yeah, I have my career. It doesn’t mean a thing when you are so stripped. My body has been stripped. Who do I go to? I was crazy about Slurpees. If I just didn’t have that Slurpee! That cold, refreshing taste had cost me and I still crave that stuff. Oh, wow. If I could just take it all back, but I can’t. It’s too painful. It just hurts sometimes - the memories.

Who do I tell? So, I acted it out. Yes, I did. The first one, I didn’t think anything of it, at least not at the time. I was at a club. I was minding my own business, and he wouldn’t leave me alone. He just kept coming up to me, talking to me, saying he knew me. That was because he was a pro-basketball player and he thought he owned the world. Women thought he was cute, but I didn’t. I thought he was sickening and disgusting. He reeked of alcohol. God, I wished I could have just slapped this man! I could just taste the alcohol as he spoke. Little pellets of spit dripped from his mouth. His teeth were cigarette stained. How disgusting! People worshipped him as if he were a god. He was 6’9. I wished this man would just leave me alone. I was definitely not interested!

All of these other women, yes, they liked him. They cared for him, but not me. There was nothing appealing about him. His name was LaDontae; at least that’s what he told me. Like I really cared. He told me he was a center, leading re-bounder, voted most VP, VIP, MVP, whatever that meant. At the time, I could care less.

He made it a point to show off his rings. He had two of them. That didn’t impress me at all. Really, I could care less. He was disgusting. All I wanted to do was run because he was rubbing on me, touching me. He kept feeling my hair, caressing it, telling me how pretty I was. I felt like a rag doll. I couldn’t stand the touch. As he kept getting closer and closer to me, I could feel the hardness of him as he rubbed up and down and back and forth on my leg. I just wanted to grab his penis and yank it out of its socket. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

He kept insisting that I dance with him, so I finally got up after a long period of trying to ignore him. He was just on me. His tall legs towered over me. Each time he would go up and down, I could still feel the hardness in his pants. He wanted me to feel it. I knew what he wanted. Knowing my situation, this was not something I wanted to do to anybody, but he kept on. He pulled me closer and closer and this was a fast song. I knew I was in trouble if a slow song came on, so I danced and I danced.

Finally, the DJ did it to me. He played that slow song. He pulled me closer. All I was looking at was his chest. It didn’t even feel real. Heck, I didn’t even feel real. I just wanted to go home. Why was I even here? What led me here? What caused me to be here? I was overwhelmed by the smell of alcohol, the stench of everything, the loud noise, and the muttering sounds of people pretending to be happy when deep down inside they were lost, unhappy, and trying to fulfill happiness through drugs, alcohol and sex. Oh, why was I here? Was I one of them?

As the song came to a halt and they made that last call for alcohol, I was truly relieved. I was getting out of that place and going to my hotel room. LaDontae would not leave me alone. He offered to take me to my hotel, but I didn’t trust him. He gave me his card and the name of the hotel that he was staying at. He walked me to the cab and bid me farewell. He took my hand and kissed it. I got in the cab and drove off. I turned around and he was still standing there, 6’9, towering like a grinning streetlight. I sunk back into the seat of the cab, just thinking. I said, What the heck? Okay, I’m going to do this. I don’t have anything to lose. So I had the driver drive around for an hour and a half and then take me to his hotel. I got out, paid the driver and took the elevator to his room.

My heart was pounding. As I got closer and closer to the floor, my heart just pattered, pattered, pitter-patter. I must say I was nervous. My palms were sweaty. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this. I went ahead and knocked on the door. There he was standing there in just his shorts.

I didn’t find anything sexually attractive about this man. There was nothing appealing about him. If anything, I found him appalling. He grabbed my hand and led me to the chair. I was asking him questions about himself. He told me he was 26 years old. He had a fiancée and wasn’t sure if he loved her or not, but he loved women. He was going to sow his oats and enjoy his life until he tied the knot.

Man, you are just so conceited!

I’m not conceited, lady. Conceit is a fault and I have none. I’m not conceited: I’m convinced. I cannot be denied.

Holler! Hmmm, you will be.

What do you mean I will be?

Hmmm, you will be denied. Conceitedness is a fault and you have none? We’ll see about that.

Excuse me? What do you mean by that?

Oh nothing, we’ll just see about that. Holler!

Why do you say holler?

Just holler!

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Whatever happened in that room had no strings attached which was fine with me. Conceited jerk. The last thing I needed was a string tied from me to him; I have too many that I’m trying to get rid of already. He talked about his future goals. I sat there and listened very intensely wondering how long it would take him to reach and if he would reach. He lifted me up to put me on the bed. He pulled my clothes off and proceeded to make love to me. At least that’s what he called making love. It was nothing. I would have preferred to curl up with a nice cold Slurpee. What was happening? My mind just hurts sometimes. I want the hurt to go away. He was a nice size to be 6’9, but that didn’t faze me at all. After he was through, he rolled over.

He finally asked me what my name was.

It’s Denise.

But I thought you told me it was Tammy!

No, it’s Denise. How did it feel?

He said he enjoyed it. I asked him if he ever hurt or if he’d ever been hurt and what he thought about the word hurt? He said he usually does the hurting. He can’t say he’s really been hurt. He’s been protected from the hurt. I asked him if he has ever been hurt.

No, not that I can remember.

As he got up to go to the bathroom, I asked:

Why do this?

I don’t know.

He went in the bathroom and closed the door. I jumped up, grabbed his wallet and his driver’s license, looking for a social security card, I guess. Why I was looking for that I don’t know. I guess I had a reason at the time, but I took his driver’s license and waited for him to come out.

When he came out I told him I had to leave. He told me it was good. I told him that one-day we would meet again. I got dressed and closed the door behind me. What I was going through was just something in my mind. How could any person go through something like this? I can’t blame God.

Chapter 2

I t was so nice. I remember standing over it, trying to reach at the door. I had to have been 2 years old, but I don’t understand why I can remember this so clearly. I was in the crib in my mom and dad’s bedroom, just opening and closing the door. I still don’t understand it. That’s one memory I have of being a child. That was so calming. I’m the youngest of such a loving family, Christians who really believed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At a young age I loved God so much and boy did I love going to church. I loved it so much!

You know, my family was really close. It was amazing the way our family interacted, 16 including our parents. The makeup of our family was very different. I don’t know too many families who had the makeup of our family. My father was African-American. His mother was African-American and Indian. My grandfather was African-American and Indian. My great-grandfather was Indian, African-American, and he married a half Russian, half African-American woman. Here I am mixed on my father’s side, with African-American, Russian and Indian. On my mother’s side, my mother was Italian, Irish, Hispanic, and African-American through the linage of her parents and grandparents.

So here you have me, down the line, and I have the traits of my great grandparents. Even though I have these different mixtures, I have a fair complexion; green eyes and I can pass for white. In the summer, I can get dark, real dark and if I dye my hair brown I could either go for a light-skinned African-American woman, high yellow, Mexican, or an Indian. I never knew that as I got older, because of these traits, I would be able to use them to my advantage, and I did. Boy, did I.

Back to my family, now you know the makeup of my family. One thing I can say about my family is that we were very close. Because of each one of our heritages, we went to all types of museums, Indian, Russian, Italian, and African-American. Our father made it a point to know our culture, our history and with that he taught us, especially my brothers, that there was nothing stronger than the bond of family. Each brother was responsible for the other. Therefore, each brother was to make a circle and put us girls in that circle. There were times the boys would get together and hold hands and put us five girls in the center and say they were our protectors and we leaned on them. Nobody messed with us; I mean nobody messed with the Phillips family. They knew we were a God fearing family, a loving family, but we were close all the way down.

Now, me being the youngest, of course, I was the butt of everybody’s jokes. I didn’t consider myself a very attractive girl as I was growing up. My sisters were the pretty ones. They were the shapely ones. My brothers were handsome and the smart ones. I was just me, but I loved music. Oh, I loved music, but because there were so many of us, I was thrown to the side when I started doing my own thing by myself. I loved the drums immensely, but because I was a girl, and during that time girls didn’t play drums, so I wasn’t able to play. That hurt me deeply.

Every Christmas I wanted a set of drums, but I wasn’t able to get them. I remember one Christmas. We always had white Christmases. That was one thing about Reno back then, you could always wake up and the snow would be pure white, like cotton. Beautiful. Our tradition was that we would wake up at midnight to open our presents. My father went out of his way every year to decorate the house so when you got up at midnight the lights were on. Everybody in the neighborhood still had his or her lights on too. You would look out of the window and it was so beautiful – the snow, everything was perfect. Because there were so many of us, you can imagine how long it took to open up the Christmas presents, and we opened up every one.

I do remember this drum set that I did get. I mean, when I walked in and I saw it out, I wasn’t too thrilled about it. It had its bass drum, a little red pedal with a little red knob coming out of it. It was supposed to be the foot pedal, but the bass drum attached was a snare drum and on the top were two tom toms, little, thin symbols and if you weren’t careful you could just tip it over if you were to beat too hard on the floor pedal. Nowadays they call it the kick. I played it until I beat it and it ended up getting broken because my brothers put a hole in it. In spite of the fact that the drum set wasn’t what I wanted, Christmases with the family were great, extremely great.

After we opened our presents, we played a while and got everything cleaned up, and then it was time to go to bed. Of course we would wake up bright and early at 7 in the morning to play with all our toys. We’d then go outside because our backyard was kind of on a slope. We’d play and slide down the hill. My favorite part was lying in the snow and seeing who could make the prettiest angel. That was great. We would play and rest. In the afternoon, we would get together with the neighborhood kids. This was the one thing I enjoyed most of all, unlike the way kids are now, everybody played together. No one was better than anyone else on the block. We all played. We shared our toys and rode our bikes together. We’d go from one neighbor’s house to the next depending on what kids came over first; that’s how we determined where all the kids ended up in the neighborhood – whose yard. On Christmas day, all the kids came out. This was so neat.

Not too far from our house was a hill and because it snowed, the hill was icy and if cars were not careful they would plow right into the neighbor’s yard. I don’t know how many fences had to be repaired because of that hill. This particular day, a car came too quickly down the hill, plowed into a neighbor’s car and then another car plowed behind that. As the police were dispatched, I guess they didn’t take it too seriously either because they plowed into the other two cars! That was the excitement for the day of Christmas, but it was something to see. Red lights flashing.

Afterwards, we all went to the park and this was a fun time. Because there were so many of us, we would divide up and we would see who could make the biggest fort. Once the forts were made, we’d have snowball fights. We’d stay out there for hours and hours until we could barely feel our feet. Then, the oldest would say it is time for us to go. We always looked up to the older kids. We never gave them any argument, especially being girls. You always listened to the older boys because if you gave them any flack they wouldn’t let you play with them. So, we all got together and went on home. We walked and we talked about who got what. The girls talked. Everybody went home.

This was when we had Christmas dinner. Oh, the best dinner. I couldn’t wait. Now because of my mother, and with my father being African-American, our Christmases were awesome. Even though she was light-skinned, she cooked like she was a black woman. Oh, the turkey, the hams, the greens, ALL the collard greens, and the black-eyed peas! My dad helped too. That’s where I learned to cook. I later found out from my mother that my great-great grandmother was actually black, so my mother still had black in her.

I think back to the days of slavery where the masters would rape their slaves. Even though my mother came out light-skinned, I think what happened as far as her cooking is that it reached back into the generations where she cooked like a soul sister and we had the best meals that you could ever think of, full-course meals.

Even though I was a skinny kid, I could put away food. My favorite pie was cherry pie. I would get me some cherry pie; some apple pie and sometimes I’d mix them together. I had buckteeth so people used to call me rabbit when I’d eat, but I didn’t care. Give me that apple pie and that cherry pie and I was fine! I remember Christmases. Oh, they were the greatest times.

Chapter 3

H e thought he was something. Oh, this black man. He was a doctor. Yes, once again, I went to a convention and was sitting and minding my own business, hmm, hmm, just sitting around looking. The hotel was a very glamorous five star hotel. I was in Paris. I was there for a conference. I didn’t feel like going sightseeing because I was so tired. I decided I was just going to go into the lounge and I have to admit I was looking pretty, pretty sharp that day! I had on a business suit with a skirt that was so sexy that when I looked in the mirror, I wanted to fall all over myself! I looked that good!!

I sat down and ordered a drink. Next thing I knew, a drink was sent over to me. I always made it a point to have one drink – that’s it. I didn’t want it to impair what I was doing, what I was thinking, and I didn’t want it to control me so I refused it. I told the waiter to take it back, that I only have one drink. So he went back to the gentleman and he told him that I was only having one drink. Instead, he sent another glass over and it was Coca-Cola, so I accepted the drink. By the time I finished my drink, the Coke had watered down, but to be polite, I went ahead and started sipping on it. I guess he felt that gave him an open invitation to come and sit at my table.

He was a