Shattered but Not Broken

By Kathryn Lena Rhodes Mims

An extraordinary true story about how love doesn’t hurt. In this story, you will discover how those three words, I Love you, lead to being shot multiple times at gunpoint and left for dead.

The purpose for this book is to relate to men and women, young and old, concerning the seriousness of domestic violence. An act of domestic violence can happen to anyone. Statistics show that domestic violence is rapid and most times, silent. Many people have lost their lives by the very hand that fed them. Please, let this not be you. You will unfold many warning signs as you read my book. It is my prayer that you will take heed and control. Love is powerful and is the very force that connect us. In addition, love doesn’t hurt; in fact, it nurtures, protects, believes, endures, hopes, and most of all, never fails!

Do you know anyone can be a victim of domestic violence? Domestic violence does not discriminate. It will destroy you if you let it. Its purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy you and whatever stands in its way. Don’t be a victim of domestic violence; understand what love is. I’m writing this book to save someone’s life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098029265

Book preview

Chapter One

Chapter One: From Daylight to Darkness

Kathryn Mims Mother

My name is Kathryn Lena Rhodes. I was born September 28,1956, in Dallas, Texas, to the parents Sanford and Pearline Rhodes. I have seven siblings. I am the fifth child, also the youngest of my two sisters, and I have five brothers. Coming up as a little girl, we lived in East Dallas Frazier Court Projects. My father always worked two jobs, and my mother was a housewife. She was excellent at taking care of nine, including herself. And all the things that needed to be done. Mama was on top of things; cooking for nine people three meals a day, keeping all our clothes washed and ironed, making sure we had clean things to wear. Mama washed and combed all three daughter’s hair and made sure we got our nightly baths before bedtime. My three oldest siblings were already in school. I was at home with Mama every day. I was not of school age yet. I stayed under Mama because I was kind of spoiled but not rotten.

Every day, Mama would comb my hair, and I would cry. My hair was long and thick; I was very tender headed. Mama didn’t care about me crying because she was used to it. When she said, Lena, get the comb, brush, and hair grease, my crying started. When she was done, she would tell me to wash my face and go outside and play with my friends. They would be waiting on me and would start laughing at me because they knew I had been crying. My friend that laughed the hardest was named Charlotte Glover. The thing about her is she never got her hair combed, and it was always a mess.

When I turned seven. It was time for me to go to school. I remember Mama taking me to the Freeman Clinic to get my school shots. I was so excited to be going to school with my two sisters. I went to Julia C. Frazier Elementary School. Going to school was fun; I liked my teacher. My worst memory at school was when a teacher ran into my classroom, crying to my teacher. We were told to go to the auditorium. President John F. Kennedy had just gotten shot. We were all watching it on TV in the auditorium. Being just seven, I did not know a lot about our president.

My daddy was always working, trying to get his family a better place to live. My daddy and my mama went house shopping. We moved from the South Dallas projects to Oak Cliff. We moved several times, trying to find a bigger house. Finally, my parents found a nice house in South Oak Cliff on Alaska Street, close to South Oak High School. By that time, I was in the third grade. I went to Clinton P. Russell Elementary School. I had to walk ten blocks to school with my siblings and friends in the neighborhood. We laughed and talked as we went to school. I was the only African American in my class. There was only one African American family on our street besides our family.

As we all started getting big enough to help one another, my mother was ready to go to work. She had been home for years taking care of us. She was a very independent mama. My daddy did not want her to work, for some crazy reason I didn’t understand. She had been home all those years, raising us up. She was ready to work. My mother applied for a job at the school we went to and got hired in the lunchroom. My daddy was furious, but he tried to hide it at first. Mama made sure she made us breakfast before she went to work even if was just a pot of oatmeal. I was happy for Mama. She started buying things that we didn’t have in the home., Yes, my daddy could keep the bills going, but there were other things that she wanted to buy for our house. My mother loved a beautiful home. The house we moved in did not come with carpet, so Mama had our house carpeted from the front to the back. Eventually, Mama got a better paying job at Morton’s Food. After working there, she had our garage turned into a den. We had central heat but not central air. So, she bought a water cooler to go in the window, and we would wet the straws, and it would make the house cold. This made the rage start coming out in my daddy. He still worked two jobs but was off on Saturday and Sunday. He started bringing a six pack of beer home every Friday. That was my first memory of the arguments. He would drink a couple of beers and would start an argument with Mama. We were told to go to our rooms, but we could still hear the fussing and cussing. My mother continued to work despite it all; she was doing what was making life better than it was. She was not working against my daddy; she was working with him, but he did not want to see it that way.

One day Mama and her best friend Ms. Rosie went to apply for work at a company called Temple Manufacturing Company. The company made wooden soda pop containers. This job paid more money than they were making at the time. They both got hired. The company policy stated that women had to wear pants because of having to bend down. My daddy blew a fuse when my mother told him that. He did not want my mama to wear pants. My mother was a very pretty lady with a nice figure, and wearing pants really showed off her shape. Mama went and bought a few pairs of jeans, following company policy. She always looked nice for work. One day, my mother told my sister Sandra to get her a pair of jeans out of the closet for work. When Mama got ready to get dressed, she noticed that the zipper was broken, so she had to put on another pair. As time went by, the more jeans Mama bought, the more my daddy would continue to cut. I remember the arguments got worse. I would go in my room and cry. I had a little testament bible that I would get, and I would pray that they would stop the arguments before they started fighting.

My mother worked and saved up money to pay down on our first car. She really did not know how to drive. I remember us kids in the house, and we heard a horn blowing in the driveway. We peeped out of the window, and it was Mama. We all ran outside happy as a lark to have our very first car. The reason I said Mama could not drive that good because she was in the driveway crooked, but she was parked. Everyone was excited but our daddy. He could not drive and was so mean and jealous. He did not even attempt to try to learn, but when he wanted to get drunk, he would get Mama to take him across the bridge.

After Mama started driving our household was never the same again. My mother continued to work and seem like every Saturday my Father would fuss, argue, and drink. Sometimes he got physical with Mama. We, as children, could not say anything. That’s just the way it was back in the day. When Sunday came, they acted as nothing happened. My mother would be in the kitchen, getting things prepared for our Sunday dinner, while my daddy watched football. Everything would be back to normal through the rest of the week. I hated when it was getting close to Friday because it was the same routine. My daddy brought home solution in a jar from one of his jobs. We were told not to touch it. He said it was poison. He put it in the shelf in the bathroom at the very top. He told us kids that he brought it home to keep our commode clean.

Time went on, life as usual. One Friday evening, we all were playing with our friends. My daddy made all of us come in the house. We were told to go into our rooms and get ready for bed. We were scared to ask why we had to come in because we always played outside on Fridays, because there was no school the next day. Besides, Mama had not even come home from work yet. My sister’s and I were in our room in the bed, talking and trying to figure out why we had to come in the house so early. Besides that, we wanted to see Mama like we always did. It was not long before we heard some talking. The next thing we heard was Mama screaming. We all came running out of our bedrooms, trying to see what was wrong with Mama. She was lying on our front porch, hollering and screaming, holding her face. We had no idea that my daddy had got that solution out of the bathroom and threw it in my Mama’s face. The neighbors came over to assist. They called the ambulance, and my mama was taken to the hospital. My daddy had run off somewhere; he was nowhere to be found. After everything had calmed down, my daddy came back to the house.

Days passed; our house was not the same without Mama. There was sadness and loneliness for her. We continued to do our regular chores along with school and homework. I missed Mama so much; there was not a day that I did not cry when I came home from school. I did not know how Mama was doing in the hospital. It was like a couple of weeks before my daddy would let my older siblings go to see her. I remember them coming home very sad. I asked them what was wrong with Mama? They told me that she had lost her eyesight and that her face was so big and swollen that if you did not know that was Mama, you would not recognize her. The day finally came when I got a chance to go to see Mama. I was kind of scared of what she might look like. I went into the room, and my mama had patches over her eyes, and her face was still swollen and dark. It was good just to hear my mother’s voice again. I felt so sorry for her. I really did not know what to say, so I let her talk to me then I would say something. I did not get to visit for as long as I wanted to; if it were up to me, I would have never left. My daddy was even meaner to us while Mama was gone. We hated him, and I know he could feel that from us. There was not anything to be happy about in that house anymore.

Now the doctors were saying Mama could go home from the hospital. We were so happy. My mother seemed to be happy only because she was home with her children, but we knew she felt a lot of hurt and sadness not to be able to see her children, or anything else. Her life went from, daylight to darkness. I can’t imagine what Mama really felt; she did not talk about it. She was still a strong Mama for us, and she knew that we were sad.

Being that there with seven children at home and Mama could no longer work, she allowed our daddy to stay in the home to keep providing for us. That’s the kind of mother she was. Our well-being was important to her, and she did not have an income coming yet. Only Mama knew the things my daddy and her discussed about what he had done. It was a bittersweet household, and the only thing that made it sweet was my mama. When Mama got her strength back, she began to act like Mama again, even though she could not see. She still was strong willed. She was a Christian woman, and I know only God could give her the strength that she had, and she had a lot of support from church, neighbors, and friends.

The fighting and cussing had finally stopped. My daddy acted like he had not done anything wrong, but he knew he no longer had our love anymore. We only talked to him when we had too. One day, my daddy was sitting in the living room as usual on the weekends. We noticed he had a small gun sitting on a small table next to him. I went and told Mama; Daddy has a gun on the table next to him; she was furious. He knew he was wrong, and he did not know what my older brother had on his mind. My daddy was in fear of his life. My mama did not want my daddy in the home with a gun; she did not know if he was going to try to use it on her, or her children. I don’t think she said anything to my daddy about the gun. When he went back to work, she had my brother Sam