Painful Reflexions: Book 2: Saying Sorry Won't Stop the Pain

By Artie Woodington

Book 2 tells of Chock coping with being molested and raped at the age of ten, and years of racial bullying in school, and years of spousal abuse by the men she trusted during her adult years.
At the age of sixteen Chock was married to an abusive man for twenty-three years.
Three years after Chock’s divorce, she meets Isaac. Chock decided to leave her home and live with Isaac in Los Angeles.
With Isaac, Chock began to feel different about herself. To save Isaac’s life, Chock had to put on another pair of big-girl panties. She was forced to find the bitch in her that she had buried and tried to keep hidden by pretending that the ugliness hadn’t happened to her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984546760

Artie Woodington

Artie Woodington was born in a small town in east Texas. She left Texas at a very young age and lived the majority of her life in Idaho. She was a graduate of Pocatello High School. After graduation, she married and reared four children before attending Idaho State University. She taught schools in Idaho for a number of years before she relocated to California. While living in California, she continued pursuing her career as a teacher and enrolled in graduate studies at Dominguez Hill University. The author is the mother of four, the grandmother of ten, and the great-grandmother of three. She has always loved making up stories to entertain, to motivate, and to help children understand some of life’s hard lessons.

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Copyright © 2018 by Artie Woodington.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2018909633

ISBN:                    Hardcover                          978-1-9845-4674-6

                             Softcover                            978-1-9845-4675-3

                              eBook                                  978-1-9845-4676-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/18/2018

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Contents

Preface

Part 1 In the Beginning

Chapter 1 Feelings

Chapter 2 Chock, Isaac, and Jimmy

Chapter 3 Is This How You Repay Me?

Chapter 4 When Chock Met Jimmy

Chapter 5 Chock and Jimmy

Chapter 6 A New Attitude

Chapter 7 The Women, the Woman, and Another Woman

Chapter 8 You’re Just Imagining Things

Chapter 9 I’ll Be Right Back

Chapter 10 Out of the Pot and into the Frying Pan

Chapter 11 Check, Please! I’m Done!

Part 2 The Worm Had Turned

Chapter 12 Hey, Hey, Good-Bye

Chapter 13 Meeting Isaac, Black Moses

Chapter 14 Chock and the Police

Chapter 15 Lessons From Isaac

Part 3 Another Beginning

Chapter 16 Leaving Another Home

Chapter 17 What are You Doing?

Chapter 18 Prelude To Chock’s Untold Story

Chapter 19 Chock’s Untold Story

Chapter 20 California, California, Here I Come—Again

Chapter 21 Too Pooped to Pop

Chapter 22 The Crazy Amekin Wumeen

Chapter 23 Shopping with Isaac

Chapter 24 Traveling

Part 4 Trinidad and Tobago

Chapter 25 Meeting the Family

Chapter 26 The Wedding

Chapter 27 Chock in Trinidad

Chapter 28 Going to the Beach in Tobago

Chapter 29 Bare to a Difficult Cross

Chapter 30 The Voice from Above

Part 5 Back to the Good Ole U.S. of A

Chapter 31 Home Again, Home Again

Chapter 32 Me Too

Chapter 33 We Can’t Live Here Anymore

Chapter 34 Chock’s New Job

Chapter 35 The Mean Old Bitch

Chapter 36 Can We All Just Get Along?

Chapter 37 Family Emergency

Chapter 38 You’ve Been Served

Chapter 39 Big Daddy in LA

Chapter 40 What has Happened?

Conclusion

Author’s Bio

To those who feel alone and are reluctant to

come forward and say, Me too.

We no longer have to feel that we are alone.

We no longer have to hide the feeling that we don’t belong.

We no longer have to pretend that nothing happened.

We no longer have to hide our fear, shame, anger, guilt, and physical and mental pain.

We no longer have to hide this damage that was done to us.

This damage and feelings are the results of sexual harassment, sexual molestation, rape, or being battered and abused by criminals. These criminals have despicable sexual appetites and an extreme need to bully. These sexual predators and bullies feed their empty egos by preying on those they feel that they can abuse and control.

Thanks to the #MeToo Movement, the victims of these despicable predators have a voice. Now the abused can tell someone without being made to feel shame or made to feel that the abuse was their fault.

It is time for all of us are hiding and ignoring our pain to say, Me too.

Preface

Book 1: Saying Sorry Won’t Stop the Pain

At the age of ten, Chock’s life, and the life of her family, took a devastating turn. A white man decided to publicly sexually abuse Chock’s mother. Her father showed his objection.

To escape the consequence of his objection, Chock’s father had to escape from this town with his wife and eight of their eleven children. Hitting a white man was a hanging offense.

The family was homeless. They became migrant workers and moved from one labor camp to another looking for work.

One night, on one of these moves, Chock was molested, and later raped by the same man.

Painful Reflexions

Book 2: Saying Sorry Won’t Stop the Pain

Book 2 tells of Chock coping with being molested and raped at the age of ten, and years of racial bullying in school, and years of spousal abuse by the men she trusted during her adult years.

At the age of sixteen Chock was married to an abusive man for twenty-three years.

Three years after Chock’s divorce, she meets Isaac. Chock decided to leave her home and live with Isaac in Los Angeles.

With Isaac, Chock began to feel different about herself. To save Isaac’s life, Chock had to put on another pair of big-girl panties. She was forced to find the bitch in her that she had buried and tried to keep hidden by pretending that the ugliness hadn’t happened to her.

Part 1

In the Beginning

Chapter 1

Feelings

As a little girl, Chock kept all the things she was ashamed to tell hidden. She felt she couldn’t tell anyone what had happened to her. When she got older, she did tell, but no one believed her. They told her to stop making things up about them men. Her anger and resentment grew toward those that seemed to belong and those that seemed to not have a care in the world.

Chock became an outsider looking in. As she watched the others, she thought, how can they be so happy? Why can’t someone see that something bad is happening to me? Why me? Why is this thing happening to me? What did I do? There must be something evil about me. Chock thought no one cared about her anymore; she didn’t belong. She felt that she was not good enough or clean enough for anyone to like her.

Chock buried her shame. She pretended that nothing was happening to her the nights when her nightmares became reality. When the hand came out of the dark and was placed over her mouth, she pretended she was still asleep and having another nightmare. When she woke up, everything would be all right.

There was no one she could tell about her nightmares, even if she knew how. She knew that no one understood why she was becoming so critical of others and was always on the defensive, ready for a fight. No one knew how Chock really felt inside. No one knew about her evil thoughts. As Chock grew older, she became conniving and carried a grudge. If she couldn’t win the fight, she would find a way to get even.

Chock felt as though she had become two people. She kept the other person that endured the shame of the ugly nightmares hidden. She had to keep the evil, dirty, conniving person hidden with the ugliness and shame to protect herself from the shame of reality. No one needed to know about this evil person. This person Chock kept hidden was allowed to come out of hiding only when Chock felt she had a score to settle.

Everyone at church and her teachers at school would say when they met Chock, Oh, she’s so cute, Oh, she is so nice, If everyone was like her, it would make our jobs easier.

Chock’s mother taught her daughters how to act, to put on the dog and smile when in public.

Looking at the smile on that nice girl’s face, no one would ever guess the evil thoughts in her head. No one would guess that this girl despised herself for doing things she thought she had to do to fit in, to make people like her, and to survive.

The behavior of the men Chock thought she could trust had conditioned her behavior. Chock never applied being brainwashed or conditioned to behaving in a certain way to her behavior. In college, she had studied certain behaviorists. She learned about the studies done with rats and dogs. She never thought being conditioned would apply to her. Chock wasn’t aware of it, but she had been conditioned. She had been conditioned to do whatever she needed to do to survive.

As Chock got older, she fought back, verbally and physically. When she got married, she was willing to honor her husband as her mom honored her dad. Chock didn’t marry a man like her dad. She married a man who thought his only responsibility was to please women, and it was the woman’s responsibility to provide for him.

Chock’s mom drilled her daughters on how to act like a lady. Chock’s father taught his seven girls how to fight back and protect themselves if necessary.

Chock was too young to tolerate mistreatment. When she married, Chock was too young to know, or even think about, how these confrontations with her husband would affect the lives of their children. Chock fought back until she met Isaac, a soft-spoken West Indian man who sounded like thunder when he laughed.

She tried desperately to stay and keep the family together. The more she struggled to keep their home together, her husband, the man she had married at the age of sixteen, seemed to do everything he could to take their family apart.

Chock was leaving the home she had created for their family. Lately, the house had become a prison to her. Whenever she went inside the house, he reached for the .38 she kept hidden by the door. She took the gun from its hiding place and checked it to see if it was still loaded. Then she went to checked all of the doors and windows. She wanted to be sure that no one had come in the house while she was at work. If so, they could be hiding somewhere in the house waiting to attack her.

After Chock made sure all the windows and doors were locked, she went to her bedroom and locked the door. She secured the door with a club to make sure that any intruder would have to force the door open, which would make a noise loud enough to wake her in case she happens to fall asleep.

Chock took the pillows and the covers from her bed and placed them in the corner that was farthest from the door. She sat down in the corner and waited. She sat in the corner all night waiting. She was determined to kill whoever came through that door into her bedroom. Nothing happened that night at Chock’s house. When daylight came, Chock got up and got dressed for work. On her way to work, she went to Isaac’s apartment. She told him why she needed to leave the gun with him for safekeeping. She placed the gun on the table beside his bed.

When Chock met Isaac, she was doing a balancing act, trying to be like everyone, instead of being herself. Chock was swinging upside down on a tightrope again and was showing her bare bottom. Her sister wasn’t there to stop her. This time, it was Isaac.

Now, Chock was starting a new life with Isaac. She had to try to forget, try to undo what she had been conditioned to do, if she wanted to be happy.

When she was a little girl, she thought when she moved away from the place that held bad memories, she would leave these memories behind.

She thought when she moved to a new place, she would not wake up thinking someone was standing over her with a knife, but she did.

She thought she wouldn’t feel frightened by the least little sound, but she was.

She thought she would no longer think about a hand coming out of the dark, covering her mouth and being raped, but she did.

Every night, she would think about all the abuse, the rape, and the pain. She had nightmares. In her nightmares, she was attacked, again and again. Then she would wake up and try to forget and live a normal life.

When she was awake, she relived these attacks. She was afraid it would happen again—if not by Jimmy, then by someone else when she let her guard down, a stranger or someone she thought she could trust. She trusted no one. She couldn’t tolerate any grown-up, outside of her family, touching her without her feeling resentment or anger.

The night Chock was leaving another home, she was relieved to be leaving. This was the house where she had sat in a corner all night waiting to commit murder. She didn’t dare to look back. She had to try to forget this house—the house she had made so many sacrifices to keep. She had to forget the home she so desperately wanted so her children would know they had a home that didn’t belong to anyone else. She had to forget this house and the ugly memories she endured to live there. She was leaving her home behind to start a new life. She was leaving her home to start a new life with Isaac.

Chock didn’t look back at the house she was leaving when she and Isaac drove away. There was no reason to look back. There was nothing left in the house she wanted to take with her. There were things she wanted to leave, and had tried to leave, but these things had followed her from Texas to Arizona to Nevada, then to Idaho to California and back to Idaho. Now these things were leaving Idaho and following her back to California.

Isaac was aware of some of Chock’s baggage, but he didn’t know about the baggage Chock kept hidden, not only from him, but everyone who thought they knew her.

Isaac was Chock’s lifeline. Chock often wondered what would have happened to her if she had not met Isaac. When she met Isaac, she knew she was in deep shit, and she was swinging in the wind. She had learned to fight dirty, but she was not yet dirty enough to keep fighting her ex.

She knew if she kept fighting him, she would become that other person. She was afraid that she would become the person she tried to hide from her parents, her children, and everyone who thought they knew her.

Chock was tired of fighting. She had to stop. Something bad was about to happen, but before it did, Isaac came to Idaho and gave her enough support to leave.

Chock was leaving her home before someone was murdered. She had to leave before she was murdered, or before she became a murderer.

She had to leave before one of the kids were killed trying to stop one of their parents from killing the other.

Chock hid her shame with the other things she was ashamed to tell anyone, but she couldn’t forget the memories. The pain would always be there to bring her back to the memories she tried to keep hidden.

As she and Isaac drove out of the city lights, the darkness came in around them. The darkness awakened in Chock another ugly fearful memory. Each time Chock brushed her teeth, she forced herself to forget about that dark night. As she drove into the darkness, she was overwhelmed by the memory of that night. The humiliation and pain she had endured that night would no longer stay hidden.

On this night, sitting beside Isaac as they drove into the darkness, Chock could no longer pretend that the years of rape and abuse had not happened. Her past came back in the darkness and forced her to take a look at her ugly, painful past.

Chapter 2

Chock, Isaac, and Jimmy

Jimmy had done everything he could think of in his efforts to break up the relationship between Chock and Isaac.

One morning, around four o’clock, he used the keys he had stolen from Chock’s purse. When Chock was on recess duty, he sneaked into her classroom, took her keys, and had duplicates made.

He used the duplicated key to get into the house.

Chock and Isaac were sleeping. Earlier, they had attended an event at one of the hotels. When Jimmy made his entrance, they decided to leave to avoid any confrontation.

The night was still young. They stopped at a grocery store on their way to Chock’s home to pick up a bottle of wine. When they went inside, Chock kicked off her high-heeled shoes and went to the bedroom to get comfortable. Isaac turned on the stereo and opened the wine. After a few dances, they sat and talked until the wine was gone. It was Friday night. Chock didn’t have to work, but Isaac did. He said that he had better be going because he had to get up early. Chock trusted this man and invited him to stay the night. Chock had been divorced from Jimmy three years. She had never invited a man into her bedroom before or after her divorce until that night.

Chock never had that sexual feeling that is portrayed in songs and on the movie screen. After what she had endured from Mr. TC, she couldn’t understand why someone would desire to do something so hurtful, nasty, and disgusting.

Her thought was that sex was what men and women did when they were together. That was what Jimmy kept telling her that convinced her to have sex with him before they were married. With Isaac, Chock felt different. She didn’t feel that she had to have sex because they were together. He was just as loving after sex as he was before sex. Chock fell asleep in his arms. She was awakened by the noise at her front door.

When Chock heard the noise at her front door, she sat up in bed and was surprised that Isaac was still there. He pulled Chock down and told her to keep her eyes closed. Chock didn’t listen. In a matter of seconds, bright lights blinded her.

Chock couldn’t make out the figure standing in the door; but there was no mistake that the raspy, authoritative, military voice belonged to her ex-husband.

What are you doing in bed with my wife?

When Chock’s and Isaac’s eyes adjusted to the bright lights, they got out of bed.

Isaac came around the bed, nude with his belonging pointing at Jimmy. He took a stand between him and Chock.

Isaac said with his heavy West Indian accent, You say, Shoock your wife? She say to me you divorce long time now.

Chock’s ex left the room.

When he left the room, Chock locked the door behind him, and she and Isaac scrambled to get dressed.

A few minutes later, Chock heard Jimmy at the door. When he couldn’t get in, he seemed to be chopping at the door with a hatchet.

He finally managed to break the lock. He came in to the room with a knife in each hand. He had a meat cleaver in one and Chock’s deboning knife in the other.

Chock was standing closest to Jimmy, and Isaac moved to stand between them.

Jimmy grabbed her and put the deboning knife, the sharpest knife in Chock’s kitchen, to her throat.

He said, If you come any closer, I will slit her f—— throat!

OK, OK, mon, just let she be.

I’ll let her go if you leave right now!

Me go, you do no ting to she?

No, just get the hell out!

OK, mon, me go, just put tee knife down.

Isaac left.

Jimmy still had the knife against her throat when Isaac left. Her ex had given Isaac his word that he wouldn’t hurt Chock if he left. Chock’s ex didn’t keep his word. He never kept his word. It took Chock almost twenty-three years before she realized that he would never keep his word.

After Isaac left the house, Jimmy started to work himself up into a fever pitch.

Then the phone rang.

Jimmy grabbed it and answered it.

Chock heard him say, You got your motherfucking nerve calling my wife!

He jerked all of the phones out of the walls and chopped them into pieces with the meat cleaver.

While he was busy with the phones, Chock was edging quietly toward the front door.

He saw her and pulled her back into the bedroom. He pushed her onto the bed and closed the door. He started slashing and breaking everything in the bedroom. Then he turned his attention back to Chock.

Chock fought back, but she was no match for a crazy man with two knives. She could feel the blood running down her face and into her eyes. She could see that everything in the bedroom was being splattered with her blood.

Chock knew she had to stop being afraid and think about how to save her life. She rolled to the far side of the bed. When Jimmy came around the bed to get her, she quickly rolled back to the other side of the bed, jumped off the bed, and ran into the bathroom and locked the door.

There was a linen closet by the door. When one drawer to the linen closet was open, the door to the bathroom couldn’t be opened.

Chock opened all four drawers.

Jimmy tried to get inside the bathroom. He broke the lock and chopped a hole in the door, but the drawers to the linen closet kept the door from opening.

When Jimmy realized he wouldn’t be able to get in, he tried to bully Chock into opening the door. If you don’t open this door and come out, it’s gonna be worse for you when I get you out!

Chock knew Jimmy would never get in the bathroom. She sat on the toilet stool and listened to him ranting and raging.

After a while, he seemed to calm down. Chock could not hear any movement on the other side of the door. Then he started calling her again. The anger in his voice had dissipated, and he tried to coax Chock to come out.

If you come out, I won’t hurt you.

Chock was already hurt. She turned on the water to wash her face. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror, she was horrified. She didn’t recognize the horrible-looking person staring back at her. Her eyes were almost swollen shut. She saw blood running down her face out of her matted hair. Blood ran out of her swollen nose and the cuts on her face. Her lips were just hanging flesh. Chock opened her mouth to scream but could not make a sound. She tried several times to scream. Her mouth was open, but still, she could not make a sound.

Jimmy kept trying to convince her to come out of the bathroom, but Chock didn’t trust him to keep his word.

Then Chock heard, Oh my god, come out before you bleed to death!

He must have seen the bloody water that was running under the door. Chock had forgotten to turn off the water.

Chock decided to take her chances before she bled to death. She closed the linen closet drawers and opened the door.

When Jimmy saw her, he was also shocked. His arm was in midair with the deboning knife in his hand ready to strike, but he just stood there, with his mouth open, looking at her.

Chock started walking to the front door. She was going to drive herself to the hospital, but she was too weak. Her legs crumpled, and she fell to the floor. She looked up at Jimmy, still looming over her with the knife, and begged him to take her to the hospital. She told him that if he took her to the hospital, like the other times, she wouldn’t tell anyone what he had done to her. And just like the other times, he believed Chock and drove her to the hospital.

Chapter 3

Is This How You Repay Me?

On the way to the hospital, Jimmy kept repeating how ungrateful she had been to him after all the things he had done for her. Not once did he mention all the things he had done to Chock, or how Chock had waited on him like a slave whenever he happened to be home.

Chock had no idea where they were, or even if they were going in the direction of the hospital. She sat in the car as far away from him as she could get. He seemed to have forgotten he was taking her to the hospital.

The car, which he had bought her as a bribe to try to get her to go back to him, meandered slowly, almost coming to a stop, while Jimmy kept preaching to her about how good he had been to her and all he had done for her. Although she was in excruciating pain, he was in no hurry to get her to the hospital.

Chock was shaking, trembling, and going in and out of consciousness. Blood dripped out of her hair and ran down her face. Her eyes were almost swollen shut. Her ears were ringing like a million phones.

His behavior was so erratic even he didn’t seem to know what he was doing, what he was saying, where he was going, or why he was doing these things. He seemed to be lost in a dangerous hostile trance. Chock wasn’t certain he remembered where he was going or that she was in the car. He seemed to have gone off to a place to create an excuse that would make him the victim. He was creating the story he would tell Chock’s family and friends, everyone at the bars, and everyone at the hospital emergency room.

Chock was afraid to interrupt his tirade. She was afraid that if she interrupted him, he would stop the car and finish what he had started. Chock knew that whatever he decided to do, she was too weak to fight anymore, and she didn’t know if she wanted to try.

As he talked, Chock could feel his rage rising. At certain points in his tirade, he took his hands completely off the steering wheel to make a point and to bang his fists on the steering wheel. His voice was getting louder and mounting to fever pitch. Chock sat quietly, hoping