What�s Behind the Makeup?

By Monalisa Gayles

For years, Mona Lisa looked in the mirror and profusely hated the person looking back. She lived her life based upon other people’s perceptions and her negative views about herself. Following the deaths of several close friends and other life altering events, Mona Lisa began to realize her life was on the verge of ending abruptly and far too young. As a result, she began taking a truthful and in-depth inventory of how and why she lived vicariously on the brink of death. No longer bound by fear, rejection, neglect, loneliness, heartbreak, confusion, addiction, guilt, and shame. Mona Lisa now possesses the wherewithal to see lives changed, especially women. Thus, she has opened up her soul in the pages of this book and invited readers to take a walk with her down her pathway to healing, wellness, and authentic living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781684097944

Book preview

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What’s Behind

the

Makeup?

Monalisa Gayles

Copyright © 2017 Monalisa Gayles

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-68409-792-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68409-794-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to God and all the people

who believe in me.

Prologue

The Dream vs. Reality

Where did the staircase go? Only shattered pieces of it remained. There were no other options but to jump down to the floor from whence I came. When I landed on my feet, the phone rang. The person on the line informed me that someone we knew had passed away. Suddenly, I was in panic mode, planning to drive my family from California to Texas. I woke perplexed, wondering who was the person that died and why my journey didn’t begin in Texas where my family and I currently lived.

The next day, Aunt Lanetta called and said, Your mother is in the hospital on life support. She fell down a flight of stairs, hit her head, and went into cardiac arrest. The doctors can’t stop the bleeding in her head, so she probably won’t recover. The hospital staff and other family members confirmed Mother’s condition. Many emotions flooded my soul as I told my husband, Frank, and our children. Although my younger sister, Marcie, was in California, the decision whether or not to take Mother off life support rested on my shoulders. We were on the freeway the next day.

Two days later, we were in Bakersfield, and the whirlwind of activities commenced. I checked us into a motel, unloaded the van, and headed straight to the hospital. Uncle Alan and Marcie greeted me as I approached the acute care ward. Upon first glance at my mother, my heart raced, and tears flowed. She was disheveled with tubes going down her throat and attached to her body. The right side of her forehead was bruised beneath the skin, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. I felt numb and devastated.

After I conversed with Marcie and other relatives, a nurse contacted the doctor. He reaffirmed mother’s diagnosis; therefore, with a heavy heart, I gave permission to unplug the machines. Everyone was asked to step behind the curtain until it was done. Soon Mother was in view again, but she began making a strange snoring sound. I was shocked and frightened, then the nurse explained that Mother’s heart and the respiratory system could take up to twenty-four hours to stop functioning. My body was exhausted and experiencing too much sorrow and adrenaline to remain there any longer.

The following afternoon, we were summoned back to the hospital. Mother had been moved to a private room where she was crossing into eternity.

I painstakingly watched and rocked while her heart pumped slower and slower and breathing become nonexistent. When she took her last breath, I was horrified and froze because her eyelids popped open then slowly closed. The finality of it all overshadowed the joy of salvation that usually danced in my soul, considering there were no more chances for Mother to live a stable and victorious life. Nor would she ever spend meaningful quality time with her children or grandchildren or lay eyes again on the child she had walked away from twenty-eight years earlier.

Apparently, my mother’s tragic fall had taken place at a shady downtown hotel where she resided. The building was old, and the staircase did not have a proper guardrail. I talked with the owner and a few others about the incident, and they confirmed the original report. For years, we had been very disturbed about the way my mother had chosen to live. Furthermore, my mother had been an insulin-dependent diabetic with several mental and physical issues. Some family members and I tried to help her, but she demonstratively refused to comply. We backed away because you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to change.

The cold reality was my mother had never overcome being the unwanted five-year-old abandoned by her mother and left with an abusive alcoholic father. As a preteen, she was forced to help care for the multiple mentally challenged children produced from the incestuous relationship between her father and his niece. Furthermore, at fifteen, she had been beaten like a man by her father and mandated to work in the cotton fields to fund his gambling addiction. Ultimately, the tumultuous residual affects crossed over into her adulthood and the lives of my siblings and me.

Self-hate is a form of mental slavery that results in poverty, ignorance and crime.

—Susan Taylor

Chapter One

Exposed

Stop! I yelled, as I banged on our back door. Stop beating my mother. The uproar of her screams coupled with the whipping sounds of the thorny rose bush limb Jim was beating her with terrified me. Why? I thought to myself. Why is my mother allowing this to happen to her? For she had smooth cocoa-brown skin, lips that looked as if they had been painted on her face, and a commanding presence. In my eyes, Jim should have considered himself lucky to know her. I desperately wanted to rescue Mother, but I was only nine years old. My siblings, James III (a.k.a. Bucky) and Marcie were eleven and five. All three of us silently feared for our lives.

Not long after the beating ended, my mother came into the house crying. She had welts on her body and blood trickling from her bottom lip. At that moment, I said to myself, No man will ever control or beat me. Father and Mother had separated, and now I was dealing with the fact that Jim (a complete stranger in my eyes) may kill my mother. He had even beaten her after she became pregnant with his child, and the child died. In my opinion, Jim was a psychotic mommy’s boy, considering his mother lived on the same block and seemingly condoned his violent behavior. I despised them both.

Out of the blue, my father showed up to take Bucky and me on an outing. We went to Hart Park and had a fun time. During the drive home, I fell asleep. When we arrived at the house, I pretended to still be asleep, so Father carried me in. He was tall, strong, handsome, and proud, and I wanted him to stay and make the pain and turmoil go away. That didn’t happen. He left town that night without leaving any clues as to when we would see him again.

Thankfully, my mother broke up with Jim and moved us to Los Angeles.

The babysitter