Ree's Chronicles: The Price I Paid For A Cup Of Sugar

By Marie Florence

The Price I Paid for a Cup of Sugar is being told by a young woman locked up in a mental institution from having an emotional breakdown caused by heartbreak in her life. The Price I Paid for a Cup of Sugar is just the beginning of Ree's Chronicles, which are true events based on a little girl growing up in a big family feeling unnoticed, unloved, and unappreciated until the time she gave her life to Jesus. Ree was a lost and was a broken down young girl, who had been raped at the tender age of twelve and managed somehow to fall in love with the man who raped her and continued to have sex with her for four years after until one day she realized that it wasn't love she was in; it was a traumatic state of mind she had covered up all those years. Laying in the hospital bed at Arden Hill Behavioral Health is where God revealed to her his plan to save this woman and the reason she had gone through so much in life. One reason was out of disobedience to God and the second was so I can live to help other women survive being molested, raped, abused, heartbroken, and many other situations that some women go through in life. God told me to put it on paper, and he would do the rest. I spent seven days lying in the hospital, praying and reading God's word, asking God, "Why me?" And he said, "Just put it on paper, Ree, and I will do the rest." I didn't understand until I got home from the hospital and about 2:00 a.m. the next morning, I began to write down things, and I have not stopped-yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635756173

Book preview

cover.jpg

Ree’s Chronicles

The Price I Paid

for a

Cup of Sugar

Marie Florence

ISBN 978-1-63575-616-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63575-617-3 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by Marie Florence

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

In memory of Willie James and Florence Dorsey Jackson. I love you and you both will never be forgotten.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my Siblings; James, Jeff, Gidget, Betty, Fred, Freida, and Gary. I love you all deeply, many people thought we were not going to be much in life but look at God. My sincere thanks to my babies; Bobby, Jaiseeta and Skyy. Thank you for being born, which were three of the happiest days of my life. It’s because of you all that I keep going.

I also would like to thank the Gibson family and the late Pastor Douglas Gibson, it’s because of you all that I know God for myself. Thank you for bringing me into your family and I love you. To my current Pastor Meade and First Lady Meade, Thank you for helping me learn the Bible and for being wonderful friends and mentors. I am forever grateful to you both. To my best friend, Robert Ali, I love you for being there for me when I wanted to give up and for encouraging me to always do my best no matter what others think or say. Thank you for teaching me Simplicity. To Nicole Hepak (My Publication Specialist), thank you for being patient with me. To Oluleke Oladapo, thank you for all the editing you did for me, may God continue to bless you and your family. And not forgetting Christian Faith publishing, Thank you for a chance to explore a new channel in my life. May God for ever bless this company.

Introduction

Lying in the hospital bed looking up at the ceiling, thinking, Why? Damn! People always find a way to crush my soul. I cried with such a force. My side began to hurt. I felt my soul was coming through every tear drop. I had just suffered an emotional breakdown. My mind was tired, my heart was broken, and I just felt like I couldn’t breathe.

As far back as I could remember, I always dreamed about success and how I would accomplish getting there, but that was every child’s dream, right? My plan was to become the next Whitney Houston because I was gifted with somewhat of a powerful singing voice, or a movie star because I had such charisma; seemed like everything I touched turned out exactly how I wanted, except for me. I rolled from side to side trying to get comfortable. The human mind has a sense of humor of its own. You ever notice that you can go and go and keep taking low blows from people and life, but it will be the simplest life issue to send you over the edge and cause you to lose control of one’s self, and when you stop to think about it, you laugh because it really wasn’t as bad as you thought.

I’ve battle the worst of the worst situations; not saying it was easy, but I came out not defeated of course through prayer and fasting (something that I believe in doing), not once did I ever think I wasn’t going to make it out of any situation. I was raised by a mother who stayed on her knees, and if I didn’t know anything else, I knew that the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (Jas. 5:16). Not that I always understood what this meant. I just knew that when my mother went in to prayer; things begin to happen. So why was I lying in a hospital on a mental ward? Anything that a woman could ever go through in life, I’ve managed to have experienced it at a point in my life. (As my daughter would say, "Been there, got the tee shirt.) Molested, got my tee shirt; raped, got my tee shirt; beaten, got my tee shirt; bad relationships, got the tee shirt and been married to the biggest cheater in New York (my opinion), and let me not forget: dealing with my child who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Trust me, there is nothing funny about suffering from these horrible situations, but I’m letting you know that if God did it for me, he will certainly do it for you. So then you are probably still wondering why I am in the hospital. Why did this simple breakup cause me to crumble? Why couldn’t I just pray my way through as I always have and why did this particular moment feel like the end of the world for me? Why? Because God had a plan for me, and as you start to read the chronicles of Ree, you will then understand how all I’ve gone through in life has turned around to work for my good.

Chapter 1

As I lay there in my dark and cold room, not even thinking about pulling the blankets over me, being cold was the less of my worries because it would not have made me feel better at that time. A light seeped through a crack in the door, and I saw shadow’s passing by, and with each passing, I thought someone was coming in my room, so I would stop crying because I didn’t want the hospital staff to give me more medication to sleep. Suddenly, it became very quiet, and a warm feeling started to cover my body, and out of nowhere, I heard a voice say, Ree! I turned quickly to see who was calling me, but I didn’t see anyone. I thought the medication the doctor prescribed for me was playing tricks on me. Although the voice sounded very familiar to me—it was mother’s.

Again, Ree! I was scared to answer because I was already locked up on the mental ward for evaluation, and all I needed was someone to hear me talking to myself.

Ree! Very stern this time.

Yes, Mommy? I whispered.

What is wrong with you?

She sounds angry with me, so I didn’t answer;

What is wrong with you? she said again. I tried to tune her voice out of my head, but she kept calling me, so I answered her.

Mommy, I’m tired.

Tired of what? she replied.

Life. I’m tired of being alone.

You are never alone; I’m always here.

I said, "Mommy, every time I turn around, it’s something different. I’m tired of trying and fighting and struggling and disappointments. I mean, I just can’t catch a break.

She giggled (of course I didn’t think anything was funny) and said, Sounds like God’s using you for his glory.

I’m thinking sarcastically, What is she talking about?

I didn’t say a word because even in her death, I wouldn’t dare get sassy with her. She didn’t say anything else, but I could still feel her presence throughout the night. It was that night God started to reveal his purpose for me and why my life had taking this route. As I slept, I began to see a little girl running around, playing with her siblings, and I realized it was me. Ree. And with the call of my name is where I began this path of being me began, where my first real cry started and finding out how much the price of a cup of sugar would cost me.

Ree, can you go borrow a cup of sugar from Tom?

Mommy, can Betty go?

No, I told you to go.

Walking down the stairs, I had a feeling come over me as if I wanted to throw up. My head began to hurt. I took my time hoping she would ask one of my other siblings to go. When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, my mom and her friend Betty were in the kitchen laughing about something, and when she saw me standing there, she said, What took you so long? I answered her that I was not feeling well. Nothing is wrong with you. I just heard you upstairs playing. You just don’t want to go do what I asked, was her retort.

She then added, Now get on across the street before I get mad. As I walked out of the house, she yelled down the alley, Tell Tom I’ll be ready at 10:30 p.m.

Tom was a family friend. He was single, fresh out of the military, and he loved my mother. All the people in town clung to him because he was so helpful to others. Tom and my mother rotated driving each other back and forth to work because they worked the same shifts. I first met him when I was ten, maybe eleven, years old, and I was babysitting for the girl whom he was engaged to. He was very funny and played with all the kids in the neighborhood, and our parents didn’t mind my siblings and me going to his house all the time to watch TV. He had cable, and we didn’t have cable. Every day after school, my sisters and I went over to his residence to watch Little House on the Prairie. While there, he let us do anything we liked. We ate his snacks, drank his fruit punch soda, and played his Atari games. Tom’s house was the place to be at that time. He always had a house full of kids. Our parents trusted him with no doubt in their minds. My mother borrowed money and some other things we needed from him, and she would repay her debts when she or my dad was paid from work.

We were a large family of ten—my mother (Florence), my dad (Willie), and seven brothers and sisters: James, Jeffery, Gidget, Betty, Fred, Frieda, Gary, and myself. We lived in a small town called Highland Falls, outside of West Point, New York, and everyone in town was so close that we all looked out for one another. We were all like family back then and kept watch out for each other’s houses and family. We slept with our doors unlocked, and if someone broke into your house, we all knew right away who it was. My mother and father worked pretty hard. We didn’t have food stamps and Medicaid. My father worked for the government as a security guard, and my mother worked in a residential home for the state. We struggled to make ends meet, but my parents helped raised quite a number of kids in the neighborhood. They were the type of parents that never said no to anybody.

My father drank a lot, but he was a magnanimous man. He was what people call a Good Drunk. When he got drunk, anybody could get anything from him, and when he wasn’t, he hardly said more than two words. As for my mother; hers was quite a different story. She was a hardcore disciplinarian and didn’t take any crap from nobody. She was very kind to all but strict with her kids, especially her girls. Her voice was so intense and powerful that if you didn’t know her, you would presume that she was a mean and hateful woman, but on the contrary, she was the sweetest woman whom anybody would ever want to meet. This was why I didn’t understand why it was okay for me to go to Tom’s house alone.

While I was walking down the alley and across the street, oh, how I wish I would run into one of my friends to ask them to come with me. I thought about this because I didn’t want to go alone and how a few weeks prior, Tom had felt on me inappropriately. I had just turned twelve years old a few Sundays ago, and after church, my friend Theo, my baby sister (Frieda), and I went to Tom’s house. He said, Ree, you are looking so pretty. I had worn a red-and-white poker dot dress, which Theo’s mother had given me on that fateful day, and it made me look older than I was. I have to admit that it was a pretty dress.

Ree, how old are you now? Tom asked.

I just turned twelve.

Oh my, you look so pretty.

Thank you.

As I walked into his kitchen to get something to snack on, Tom came behind me and rubbed my back in a sexual way. He pretended that he was looking for something and bumped into me, but I could tell the difference. I then walked back to the living room where my younger sister and Theo were watching Fat Albert. As I sat on the sofa beside Frieda, he came to sit next to me and started rubbing on my legs. This time, I jumped up and told Frieda, Let’s go home. Tom tried to persuade me to stay, but I told him we needed to get home for dinner, and Theo said she had to go as well because her mother told her to come straight home after church. After this incident, I tried to stay clear of Tom’s house as much as possible, and if I did go, it would be when I knew his roommate was home. Even then, I could feel him staring at me in an odd way. I had become scared of Tom over the past few weeks, but I didn’t let anyone know about my fears. I just kept my distance from him. I had thought to myself, what would be so attractive about a twelve-year-old girl with barely and boobs, just nipples poking, no booty, and I hadn’t even started my monthly cycle as of yet. Maybe