Neither Confirmed nor Denied

By I. G. Martin

“Neither Confirmed Nor Denied” tells the story of a woman who endures the hardships brought on by her unfortunate childhood, marriage and motherhood. Adversity and distress are the strongest factors that affect Cinderella’s life, and her family has everything to do with her misery. She flees to America to build a life for herself and her children and to pursue the American dream. In the process she encounters more failed relationships and ingratitude and bitterness from the very same children for whom she has sacrificed just about everything. Her family is totally dysfunctional and her American dream turns into a nightmare. Of necessity she descends into survival mode, compromising her values and resorting to unthinkable lows. Her story is a very compelling one which continues, but without the promise of a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496919465

I. G. Martin

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Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Family Ties

S he was the fourth of her mother’s children, her father’s third, a position which thrust her into a lifetime of servitude, initially to her three elder brothers, then to the two succeeding sisters, and later on to just about everyone else who entered her life. In any other family she might have been a Queen by virtue of being the first female offspring of the union. But as fate would have it, she instead bore the brunt of her mother’s angst and grief against a philandering husband. In many ways she was Cinderella, doing most of the cooking, cleaning, ironing and other household chores that were delegated to her in her pre-teen years including picking up after her brothers. Actually it afforded the dual distinction of preparing her for wife and motherhood whilst giving her a convoluted view of how her later life and life expectations should be.

For sure she was loved by her parents, a love that was not manifested in words but rather, as pertained to her father, by his outright refusal to participate in the leathered belt whippings that were administered by her mother. Sadly enough, very often she had to feign sickness to gain some type of attention or some evidence of reassurance that her mother cared about her. In the end, however, it was the lack of verbal love manifestation and not the corporal punishment that vastly corrupted her years of motherhood and her eventual relationship with her children.

For sure she knew hardship, she knew what it was like to sleep on hard wood floors, the bed being reserved for her parents and the occasional guests. At times, if she were lucky, there would be scraps of bedding placed to mitigate the discomfort of the flooring. She also knew what it was like to do without many of the amenities that parents routinely provided to children in other homes. But the boastful and show off trait that she, and all her siblings for that matter, inherited from her father, tempted one to root against her seeing any modicum of daylight. Initially you felt a good feeling whenever she was able to catch a break. But the vainglorious, braggadocios and relentless ensuing stream of hyperbole, self-accolades, self-aggrandizements, half-truths and at times outright lies made that feeling dissipate in a second. Secretly it made one wish that she were still mired in the doldrums.

She was also a person who from a very young age knew how to harbor a grudge. Any petty fall outs with her school aged friends would result in her ignoring them for prolonged periods of time. She would walk right past them and treat them like if they did not exist. She was as stubborn as a mule. The word apologize or saying that she was sorry did not exist in her vocabulary, and getting her to admit that she was ever wrong was worse than pulling teeth. She gave new meaning to the term cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face since she was willing to endure whatever punishment or retaliation was meted out with hardly a whimper or a squirm. All that mattered to her was that she would not be the one to blink or cave in first. And if her refusal to bend meant the end of the friendship or relationship, so be it. She could be as tough as nails whenever she wanted to be such. She was very much her father’s daughter.

He was from the old school of Black men who were uncomfortable in their skins and who, subconsciously and hence non admittedly, hated themselves and anything and anyone that bore any trace of blackness.

Actually, he was an equal opportunity hater. He harbored deep resentment towards the African Continent and despised anything or anyone African. He hated their language, their culture and everything about them, for he felt that it was those bastards who had sold his ancestors into captivity and were responsible for all Black people’s hardships today. He wanted no identification with the mother country. He did not even want to see a Tarzan movie or read a Phantom comic book, professing his hope that Ebola or some other disease would wipe out the entire continent.

Similarly he hated White people for the privileges they enjoyed which, according to him, seem to be based purely on pigmentation and not on merit. He loved the fact that he had a French surname and was determined, that for him and his descendants’ sake, he would strive to put some milk into his coffee. He was not going to chance having any tar babies.

His sole ambition with respect to matrimony was to win the heart of someone outside his race. And not being able to land his first choice of Caucasian female, he settled for someone of Indian descent. He was convinced that this arrangement would ensure him offspring that did not have kinky hair or at the very least, limited semblance of blackness. The thought of marrying for love finished a distant second or perhaps never really gained any consideration or traction in the first place.

In many ways he was the personification of Mr. Neanderthal since it was okay for his wife to have her views and viewpoints as long as she kept them to herself. He took out an insurance policy on her life whilst refusing to reciprocate. His reasoning was that it would be a cold day in hell before he let another man enjoy both his wife and his money should he precede her to the grave. And to further dissuade any potential suitor, should that situation materialize, he vowed to arrange to have his obituary state that AIDS was the cause of his death. He insisted that whether he died from a head cold, pneumonia or even from stomping his toe on a stone, he wanted his death certificate to register the dreaded disease as the cause. He stated that this would ensure that any future suitor would be someone truly in love with her and willing to chance infection.

He gave absolutely no consideration to survivor protection or creation of an estate for the benefit of his children and other family members. Nor was he interested in doing so. Such was the degree of his selfishness. His only concern was that he should be financially set should his wife encounter what he considered a premature death. According to him, women generally enjoyed a longer life span than men and this was what he needed to hedge against, the odds of her defying the norm. And all his wife could do was sit back in her chair and rock back and forth as he spewed this garbage to the audience of ignoramuses who constituted the base of his friendships.

Though he never attended university, college or any institution of higher learning, he still fancied himself as an intellectual. His claim to education was a correspondence course in radio technology which made him an expert on virtually everything, from medicine to politics to science and world affairs. And his habit and manner of speaking loudly over everyone else with his deep penetrating voice was supposed to reinforce, confirm, validate and hammer home his obvious intellectual superiority over his listeners, and every other person within earshot for that matter. Everything he possessed was according to him the absolute best. Whether it was a stove, a refrigerator, a phonograph, anything owned by his friends or neighbors was incomparable and inferior to his. Maybe manufacturers destroyed the molds or prototypes once he or any other member of his family had made their purchases.

He was also extremely ruthless, possessing animalistic, predatory instincts. Word filtered through the grapevine that he had made an unsuccessful attempt to kill his wife’s first son, his stepson, much like a lion taking over a pride and killing the lioness’s cubs to ensure sole propagation of his sperm. People in the know speculate that it was the years of truancy, playing hooky and learning to swim at the city’s tadpole infested ponds and mangroves that actually honed the skills that would eventually save the young boy’s life. The father-son fishing expedition that he sold his wife on as male bonding was actually an opportunity for him to attempt his cowardly deed.

But he was lord and master of all he surveyed, at least within the confines of his home. All week long, Monday through Thursday, he was sure to ensconce himself on his sofa shortly before sundown and lay there either listening to his music or watching television until he felt sleepy enough to retire to his bed. He was actually like a fixture. Any visitor to the home after seven pm was sure to find him propped up in his relaxation posture. Any request for anything would be deferred or referred to his wife thus giving the impression that she was the boss and controller of the purse strings.

Actually the true intent behind all of this was that it provided an escape hatch, a way to wiggle out from requests from his friends for loans or other favors whilst saving face. The ruse was that if he wanted to make the loan or grant the favor, he could strengthen and cement the friendship by explaining all the hoops he had to jump through and all the opposition and difficulty he had to endure to convince his wife. And the friend in return would feel an intense obligation to repay since the loan or favor was being granted by the wife and not by him. Similarly, if he did not want to grant the loan or the favor, he could simply lay all the blame squarely at his wife’s feet without his friends ever being any wiser and without any hurt feelings. The truth is, however, she could not do a darn thing or go anywhere without his approval and consent. Everything had to be rubber stamped or approved by him.

But Fridays he reserved supposedly for his card and dominoes games with his buddies. And it was on this nonnegotiable one night of freedom that his transformation often took place. In actuality it was the night that he would embark with full force with his sexual liaisons, as if he were trying to make up for time lost during the week. Hell would actually break loose. And he did not mind paying cash for these favors either. As the dawn broke and the sun came up on Saturday mornings, Mr. Hyde would again become Dr. Jekyll and would return to the sanctity of his home and to fawning over his straight hair daughters.

His wife was not deceived, nor was there ever any real attempt to fool her. In fact, she was the one to whom his underwear, that often bore traces of dried semen, would be entrusted for laundry services following his Friday night heroics. On one particular Saturday morning as he made his way into the conjugal bed, his wife could not help but notice the fact that he wore his underwear back to front, an indication that he had taken it off earlier during the night. This occurrence did not provoke any reaction since it had been trumped previously. On a prior occasion, in which apparently he had dressed in the dark, he woke up the next morning in his bed, right next to his wife, clad in ladies underwear.

And then there were the Sunday jaunts. Decked out in his finest threads, each week he religiously made this trip to the home of his deputy where he would enjoy a few hours of relaxation, which was essentially lovemaking, some horseplay and a sumptuous meal. This was a ritual practiced by most of his male friends, all of whom also had concubines on the side and whose justification was that they were a source of regeneration. This was their idea of machismo and the worst kept secret on the planet. And their love interests were usually quite content with this weekend arrangement in which they could exercise control and ownership over someone else’s husband for a few hours. They had no intention of being nursemaids to these guys all week. They were simply happy for the attention, gifts and good times that were being lavished upon them. The prayers, incense burning and scripture readings offered on these wives behalf by their church sisters and their prayer group had as much effect on softening the husbands’ hard throbbing cheating penises as they had in cooling off the excited, hot, promiscuous vagina of the pastor’s teenage daughter.

Her mother bore all the traits of the Indian women of the time. Subservient to a fault, with the misguided expectation of marital fidelity as a reward, she toiled incessantly to bring a sense of comfort and economic wellbeing to the home. Armed with her tray of goodies, which she and Cinderella usually prepared well into the night, she ventured daily to the neighboring schoolyards to ply her wares. She also sold ground provisions and vegetables from her home. Basically she was staunchly committed to building a home for her family, even if that meant purchasing building materials one brick at a time.

She bottled up her grief and dismay over her mate’s sexual forays, choosing to channel her anger instead towards Cinderella, often berating her for not washing or ironing the household’s clothes to her anguish imposed standards of excellence. On one occasion, on account of missing money from her funds, she administered a beating to Cinderella that was so severe that Cinderella ended up with large welts all over her tender teenaged flesh and confessed to a crime of which she had no knowledge. On yet another occasion, Cinderella’s hand was held over a lit stove in punishment. To this day she still bears the scars, both emotional and physical, from that experience.

Mother was already from the school of thought that sparing the rod would spoil the child and so her frustrations with her husband led her to having a trigger temper when it came to dealing with Cinderella’s pubescent behavior and imperfections. Deep within her bosom she knew that she was being unfair to Cinderella. It pained her. But it was the only outlet that she had for her sufferings.

She also endured indignities one after the other, watching her husband emerge from a notorious short-stay motel known for the intentions and behavioral patterns of its clientele, walking hand in hand with a young lady. She also endured being told to her face by a woman whom she hardly knew and who obviously felt that she was doing her a favor, that despite anything that she may have heard or been led to believe, her husband only had two women in his life, she the wife and she the other woman. For clarification, and perhaps to make the wife feel a bit better, she added that she was not sure whether the husband would feel or admit that she was his woman, but that she certainly considered him to be her man. She further elaborated that she did not really care about how many other wives or girlfriends he might actually have, that all she knew was that he was her man and that her joy and desire would be to be impregnated by him.

On yet another occasion, along with her husband, she was asked politely to leave a baby’s christening reception when talk surfaced that her husband might actually have been the baby’s father. She had heard rumors prior about him having an outside child, but she had never given it much thought.

In retrospect, nothing concerning this man should have ever surprised her. He had been a bully and a common thug his entire life. In his youth, he and his brother took the law into their own hands and bulldozed a church that was supposedly built illegally on a vacant plot of land owned by their family. For this he provoked the curses and ill wishes of a small Baptist congregation that thought that the site was actually squatter’s land. Also, from time to time he had come under the scrutiny of the law for all sorts of petty mischief and had actual court cases involving drug and gun possession.

And then there was the story about him being brave and bold enough to accost the husband of one of his lovers, literally holding him by the scruff of the neck whilst lifting him several inches off the ground, and threatening him with retaliation should he ever lay one more finger of abuse on his adulterous wife. Even during their very courtship, when questioned about his unexplained absences and whereabouts, he would grin and ask to be spared the aggravation by letting him know precisely what lie she was interested in hearing. The love being new, she found that reply to be cute, amusing and charming.

In the throes of infatuation she did not see any flaws in him. Everything that he did seemed wonderful and the relationship seemed to be perfect. She had convinced herself that no one before had ever made her feel the way that she now did and that he was her Mr. Wonderful. Even the escapade, in which he clambered through the basement window of a restaurant, thus stranding and leaving her to face the music because of his inability to pay the tab, was viewed with an element of humor.

And then there was their wedding. As she made her way slowly up the aisle dressed in her Victorian style white gown, replete with flowing trailer held by one of her bridesmaids to not impede her steps and avoid her tripping on the red carpet, soft sobs of happiness could be heard coming from below the white veil that draped her face. This was finally the realization of her life’s dream and as she drew nearer to the altar the crying became more pronounced.

And there he was, waiting to undertake his holy vows of matrimony and officially make her his wife. Decked out in a blue dungaree jacket, plaid shirt, blue Lee jeans and Converse ‘limousines for the feet’ brand sneakers, he was a picture in stark contrast to her bridal elegance. Regardless of what any of the guests may have thought, this was actually a strong indicator that their love was indeed real, because no right minded, fair thinking woman on the planet would settle for such inattention to sartorial detail on this the biggest day of her life. It was obvious that she accepted him as is and for whom he really was.

The reality was that she was one of these women, from decent homes and stellar upbringings, who somehow seem to be attracted to dangerous men, mistakenly believing that they could somehow change them or at the very least save them from themselves. The more parents objected, the more they would gravitate towards the recalcitrant. And then the absurdity of having children for these men or starting a family with them. And by the time that they fully realize what they have gotten themselves into, it’s all but too late. The rest of their lives are then devoted to making the best of a bad situation.

She had forgiven him for the time that she had come home early from work and met him taking a shower with her very best friend. She assigned that blame squarely to the friend. And God knows, she might have even forgiven him if she had ever found out that during their marriage he had once slept with her youngest sister. But eventually enough was enough. The adulterous dalliances, her constant shame at regularly having to submit herself to Aids testing, the ignominy and her husband’s constant and unrelenting assaults and affronts on her pride and morality wore her down. It took a tremendous toll on her and became too much for her. She was simply overwhelmed. To her credit she did not resort to weedicide as was the custom of people of her race. Instead she succumbed to cardiac arrest brought on by the combination of immeasurable stress and enormous grief. She was in her mid-forties, a life much too short by any measurable standard, but lending credence to the theory that only good people died at a young age.

CHAPTER TWO

Upheaval

C inderella was determined during her youth not to become emotionally or sexually entangled with any of the young men from her neighborhood. To her way of thinking, and rightfully so, there was nothing that any of them could do for her since they were literally all in the same boat. Their common impoverished situations did not present or offer any real prospect of upward social mobility or elevation within society. With her clairvoyance she recognized that all that a relationship with one of them would guarantee was a future life of more poverty, misery and a slew of pregnancies. The notion of being bare foot and pregnant was what she actually envisaged. However, she could not escape the stares and the roaming imaginations of the older men in the community, including her father’s brother, who romanced her in their minds. Sure there might have been snow upon their mountain tops, but fires still raged below in their loins. One could only surmise that the only barrier standing between her and the execution of some perverted act against her was the large looming fear of reprisal from her three elder brothers. So instead, they molested her with their eyes. As for Uncle Harry, he often nursed a massive hard on after having had her sit on his lap during their innocent uncle and niece interactions.

Her determination made it all the easier for a pen pal intruder to sweep her off her feet and carry her away on his proverbial white horse. Armed with the requisite letter to the parents requesting the daughter’s hand in marriage, but which made no mention of the initial stages of the daughter’s pregnancy, the intruder was able to obtain the blessings of the matriarch. This clearly debunked later claims by other family members as to the occasion being a shotgun wedding. However, the fact that a daughter was born less than five months after the union provided ample fodder for the gossip mill.

But there is a school of thought that Cinderella’s marriage was more of an escape route from life with the parents rather than the result of flirtations of the heart. As it turns out, it was merely an exercise in poor judgment, a process of literally jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.

The wooer was a self-made man, fuelled by a burning desire to prove the elementary school teacher who told him that he would amount to nothing and who prophesied a life as a street cleaner, as an inveterate liar. As a young man he had grown up in a household with an abusive father who would make him kneel on a steel grater or pummel him in punishment, and much to his credit, he promised himself that he would not venture down that same avenue. In this endeavor he did not quite succeed, for the deck was stacked heavily against him. The stars were clearly not aligned in his favor. Genetically he was doomed. As they say, sheep don’t make goat. In fact, from time to time when angered, instinctively he would resort to exercising and demonstrating the same pugilistic skills of his father. And this he did to all the female love interests who entered his life. Coming from a generation that was fed largely on war movies, gangster movies and Westerns all glorifying violence and raw masculinity, violence was seen as an appropriate form of settling conflicts and asserting one’s manhood. Home was the place where emasculated men such as himself could freely vent his rage.

None of his women were fortunate enough to escape his wrath. Whatever he could grasp became his weapon of choice. It remained a total mystery as to how this puny, diminutive, shrimp of a man could amass such herculean power and fury when nudged, at times even going to extremes such as spitting and stomping on them, calling them all types of derogatory names and subjecting them to all types of verbal and physical degradation. And in the next breath, would still expect to engage in some type of sexual intimacy with them as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired earlier. There was a clear sense of entitlement to their bodies, minds and souls on his part. It was as if he felt that he owned them and that they were his private sexual possessions and property. And sadly enough, they often enabled, cooperated and participated.

In his youth he had worked at odd jobs, cleaning the window panes and showcases of small stores, then later on ventured into buying and selling items such as soaps, pens, socks and items of men clothing. Most of his customers were very patronizing in the sense that they had no real need for his wares. They could even have gotten them much cheaper at the local shops or haberdasher. But sympathetically they bought them from him. For some, it was an act or effort to appease their Christian consciences. For others, it was merely a charitable contribution, their good deed for the day and possibly their ticket to salvation. It could be their passport to St Peter and the gates of heaven.

Whatever their motives, it turned out that it was these small acts of compassion and generosity by an unsuspecting public that indirectly propelled him headlong into his life of singular dedication, reverence and allegiance to the almighty dollar. Money became both his whore and his God. He was determined to succeed and could not care less who he had to trample, step over, deceive, rob or betray. In a world that he perceived to be already characterized by greed and selfishness, he was determined not to be any different.

Possessing little formal education, Time magazine became his main source of instruction. He had an affinity and appetite for big words, most of which he used inappropriately or inopportunely. His favorite phrases were paradigm shift and parallel universe. He honed his speaking skills and reduced his stutter via Dale Carnegie speaking courses. He was hell bent on transforming his image from petty retailer to big time businessman. He even started wearing cheap polyester body hugging men suits that were as much uncomfortable on the eyes as they were on his meager frame.

Cinderella basked in all of this. Her intruder was on the upswing and social mobility was in sight. He was her knight in shining armor. The frog was undergoing metamorphosis and turning into Prince Charming, cultivating upscale friendships, joining elite business organizations and assimilating attitudes and tastes generally reserved for people of privilege. He was literally buying himself into or paying for admission into a society populated by people of influence and canons of good taste.

This transition, though initially thoroughly enjoyed by Cinderella, was not an easy one. For one thing it meant that she now had to get accustomed to chilling his drinking water in the refrigerator for approximately fifteen minutes prior to serving it to him. More or less time was totally unacceptable to him as he now wanted it served at a temperature somewhere between room and cold. Conversely, she also had to make sure that his teas and soups were served to him at the mid-range between warm and hot. It also meant the end of serving leftovers and, even more so, having to clean the kitchen walls from time to time after they were splattered with a meal that was