Diary of a Young Girl

by Mark Anthony

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction

Synopsis

After her mother's tragic death, Shayla is left to navigate her teenage years with little help from her neglectful, playboy father. Used and abused by the adults around her, Shayla makes some risky choices, taking a job as a waitress in one of Harlem's top strip clubs before she's even of legal age. She makes ends meet by running scams on unsuspecting patrons, but her luck soon runs out when she is raped and left for dead one night after work.

Confused and scared, Shayla concocts a lie that leads to an arrest. A man is convicted and sent to prison for the crime, though he insists he's innocent.

Shayla goes about putting her life back together, and with the help of a great mentor, she makes some big changes. Now a graduate of Howard University, she's ready to begin a new career and put her old life far behind her—until an unexpected twist turns everything upside down. New DNA evidence leads the court to reopen her rape case, and Shayla will be forced to confront the lies that she told. Will she ever be truly free from the ugly demons of her past?

Release date: December 1, 2012

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 240

Sample

Dear Diary,

I was just nine years old when I first held a vibrator. I thought it was a toy until my live-in nanny, Joyce, caught me playing with it and raised her voice, scolding me with her thick Jamaican accent. Unfortunately, Joyce was very sick in the head and on several occasions, either when my dad wasn’t home or when she was bold enough to sneak me into her room, she showed me how to use her vibrator. That was just the start of the sexual abuse that I endured at the hands of Joyce. Only I was too young to really know what abuse was. Like I would always feel awkward and instinctively knew that something was wrong about what Joyce did to me, but at the same time I kind of enjoyed it.

See, my daddy was a male whore, never home and always out chasing women so I couldn’t run to him. And sadly, my mom had died when I was very young so I couldn’t run to her either. Fortunately for me, I loved to write from as early as I could remember. I loved to create stories that were so compelling and believable just so it could help me escape to a fantasy world, a world where I didn’t have to cope with abuse or with the reality of growing up without my mom.

Make-believe stories weren’t the only things that I wrote about. I also would write about reality in my secret diary. Early on in my diary I would write deep things for my young age. Like I would ask God how come he didn’t take some little boy’s father away from him, instead of taking my mom away from me. I would write and say that God didn’t love Shayla Coleman because if he did, there is no way that he would have taken my mom from me.

I reasoned in my diary that fathers usually help their sons with external things that are outside of a boy’s life. Things like learning to tie a necktie, or learning to play baseball, all trivial things like that. But with mothers and daughters it is different, I reasoned. Like only a mom could truly teach her daughter about things that directly impacted her. Internal things. Things like her first period. Training bras for the new bumps that form on a woman’s chest. A daughter can trust a mom when a mom talks to her about sex and what is healthy and what is not. A mother can tell a daughter what is a violation of a woman’s body. And a daughter can trust her mom to go to her for protection when a violation of her body has occurred, especially if it’s a repeated violation.

But, for me, I didn’t have my mom physically present to help me. All I had was my diary. It got to the point where I stopped writing about deep things and just started writing about the daily things that were happening in my life. What’s funny is before I knew it, those daily things that I was writing about started to take the form and the shape of a full-length novel but I continue to call it a diary. And while my diary may read like a novel, my story wasn’t make-believe. My story was real and my story was just that. My story. A story that started with Joyce “tickling” me with something that was far from a toy and one that progressed into incest, an addiction to pornography, and me living a very promiscuous life.

My father had an alarm system on our house. It was set up where anytime a door or a window in the house would open a quick, one-time beep or chirp sound would go off, sort of like an alert.

Well, I was almost sure that I heard that beep sound and I panicked like no end.

“Joyce! I think my dad is home!” I blurted out to Joyce in a loud whisper as I jumped up in a panic, trying to figure out just what the hell to do.

“Lawd Jesus!” Joyce screamed in panic and not pleasure as she started scrambling to pick up her clothes.

She screamed at me to take my things and run upstairs as fast as I could. We were in the living room, which was in the front of the house. Thankfully there was a formal dining room and the kitchen that separated us from where my father had entered the house.

“Shayla, go in me room and get dressed! Hurry for ya’ fada catch me and kill me!”

I darted toward the stairs and I glanced at Joyce standing in front of the VCR banging on it and yelling at it, trying to get the tape out. This was 1983 and back then VCRs were big and bulky as hell and loud as hell and slow as hell when it came to ejecting tapes.

“Shayla!” my father yelled out to me.

My heart was pounding and I didn’t answer him. I just knew that he had heard the porno tape. I was stiff and frozen because from upstairs I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t tell if my father had made it into the living room and realized what was going on or what.

“Shayla!” he yelled out again, only this time the yell was louder and filled up the whole house.

I managed to put on my pants and as soon as I slipped them on Joyce came bursting into the room and she locked her door behind her. She was breathing really hard to the point where she was almost hyperventilating. The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t see the porno tape in her hand.

“Hurry up and get dressed!” she screamed at me as she hurried and put on her skintight jeans. She almost tripped and fell on her face in the process.

“Shayla!” my father shouted again. Only this time I could tell that he was making his way up the steps.

“Yes, Daddy?” I responded. “I’m in Joyce’s room doing my homework,” I lied. I didn’t know where that lie came from but considering it had been the first day of school, it sounded good and it came off smooth as hell.

“Okay, listen, I got something for you but it’s in the basement and I need you to stay upstairs for about five minutes or so until I get everything set up and ready. Okay? Don’t come down until I call you.”

Wheeeeeewwww. I thought as I blew out some air.

“Okay,” I hollered back.

My heart continued to beat a mile a minute but I was so damn relieved at that moment and lucky as hell!

What I later found out was that when my father had initially came home and opened the side door. He had gone directly to the basement so that he could bring in the dog cage, dog food and supplies he was carrying and wanted to surprise me with. That had been the only thing that had prevented him from coming directly into the kitchen and then into the living room where he would have surely caught me and Joyce.

Yup, it was my birthday after all, and my missing-in-action father trying to surprise me was the only thing that had saved my ass from a serious ass whoopin’ and Joyce’s ass from being deported or killed or sent to jail, or a combination of all of the above.

The reason that my father had told me to wait five minutes before coming downstairs was so that he could go back outside to the car and get the puppy that he had bought for me as a surprise.

Looking back, I don’t know if I should thank God for my father not having caught me and Joyce that day or if I should be mad at God for not allowing my father to catch me and Joyce that day.

All I do know is that Joyce and I had dodged a major bullet but the thing was, from that day forward I was hooked on watching “girlie flicks” as Joyce described it, and I was also hooked on touching myself. What was even sicker was that having almost been caught, that sort of provided me with an even bigger thrill, as if I was an exhibitionist or something. What’s sad was that I was only in the fifth damn grade at the time and I didn’t have a clue as to the seriousness of what I was being exposed to.

By the fall of 1986, Joyce had gotten older and somewhat wiser. I never actually knew her real age because on more than two birthdays, Joyce had told me that she was twenty-two. So I knew that she lied when it came to her age. I think that she was always actually seven to ten years older than any age she would ever tell me. She was a pretty woman who reminded me a lot of the actress Jackée Harry who played Sandra on the TV show 227, only she wasn’t as tall.

Joyce had managed to establish herself in this country to the point where she was ready to move on to bigger and better things than being a full-time nanny. She had finally gotten her citizenship and she had also managed to get her associate’s degree from Manhattan Community College. With her degree she landed a job at a law firm doing paralegal work. As part of her natural progression she also managed to get herself an apartment of her own out in Queens.

As for me, I had turned thirteen years old and was in the eighth grade. With Joyce having served as my sexual abuser for the past four years I was fast as lightning. I was armed with sexual experience and skills that most married women in their thirties couldn’t claim.

I had mixed emotions when I found out that Joyce was leaving. On one hand I was happy for her because she was prospering and progressing. But on the other hand, I was upset because I didn’t want Joyce to go. She was like a rock of stability for me in many ways.

With my mom having passed when I was so young, Joyce had been like a mother figure to me. In fact, she was really the only mother figure that I knew. And with my father constantly on the go, chasing skirts and tricking money on chicks, I could never bond with him emotionally the way I desperately had wanted to. So emotionally, I guess it was kind of natural that I latched on to Joyce in the maternal kind of way that I had, regardless of her sick ways.

Joyce had been the one that I had run to when my period came for the first time when I was eleven years old. She’d bought me my training bra and explained to me about cup sizes and all of that. Joyce was the one who had taught me how to cook and how to wash clothes. Joyce taught me about style, fashion, lingerie, and how to walk in heels. She was the one who would wake me up in the mornings to make sure that I was on time for school. She was also the one who would protect me on the few occasions when I’d gotten into altercations with some jealous-ass ghetto chicks from my school in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

Yeah, Joyce was definitely like my mom, a big sister, and playmate all wrapped up into one. What was bugged was that by not having my mom around, I had always just assumed that the sexual things that Joyce exposed me to were the things that my real mom would have exposed me to and taught me had she been alive. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned differently. In my mind, I thought that all of the girls in my school had a mom who watched “girlie flicks” with them and who tickled them in the same way that they would buy maxi pads for them.

I know it sounds bugged but that was my reality. My reality with Joyce also included the time that she literally stood by and coached me during a threesome. I lost my virginity that day at twelve years old to one of her thirty-year-old jump-offs. Again, I thought all moms were right there in the room with their daughters when they lost their virginity the same way they would be in the room if a doctor was examining their daughter in a hospital or something. How was I supposed to know any different?

Anyway, when Joyce finally left, it sort of marked the end of an era for me. Yeah, Joyce gave me about two hundred and fifty dollars in hush money and she told me that she would stay in touch with me and visit me and check up on me, but part of me just sensed that she was gonna disappear out of my life in the same way that my real mom had disappeared out of my life. And sure enough, after about two months or so had passed I never heard from or saw Joyce again.

My father replaced Joyce with a new live-in nanny named Vera. Vera was cool and she too was a young, pretty West Indian girl but she was definitely no Joyce. Vera was way too uptight and she seemed like she didn’t know how to let her hair down. I mean I gave her a chance to see how she would work out but it soon became clear to me that she was not gonna be that mother figure to me that Joyce was.

But it was cool. Joyce had bounced on me and she couldn’t be replaced. My pops was still missing in action and I was at the point where I stopped hoping and wishing for his attention.

Looking back, I now know that I had this real big emotional void that I was desperately trying to fill. That is why I probably turned my attention to being desired and noticed by my classmates. I soon got on a quest to become popular and accepted at all costs.

I was only thirteen and in the eighth grade, but I was about to get buck-ass wild!

I was light-skinned with hazel eyes and naturally straight hair that extended down to my shoulders. I was extremely attractive with an Alicia Keys type of look. At thirteen years old, my five-foot-four-inch body was developed like that of a nineteen-year-old college freshman, complete with big legs, full C-cup breasts, and a nice onion booty. Yet despite all of my physical attributes I never felt like I looked good or was all that pretty.

So despite all of the attention that I would receive from the opposite sex I would always dress in the tightest jeans and the tightest shirts that I could fit into. When it came to shorts, they had to be short shorts. Although I liked wearing sneakers, I preferred to wear heels or some type of sexy open toes shoes or sandals.

To say I dressed provocatively—well, that would be an understatement. A hoochie momma would be a better way to describe how I looked on most days when I would head out of my house and make my way to school.

The thing was that my hoochie momma look did get me the type of attention that I was craving and usually that attention was from guys who were older than myself. For the majority of the time I would get approached by guys who were in high school and in college but more and more I was also the recipient of catcalls and comments from men who looked old enough to be my daddy.

Although I wasn’t in high school, my route home from school would take me right past Canarsie High School and put me in constant contact with a lot of the students who went to Canarsie High. That was how I had come to meet this guy who everybody called BK.

BK was a super-senior and he had that sexy, thugged-out look. Me and BK would make small talk every time I would see him. He would always come at me with comments about how good I looked and how I was so sexy and all of that. Usually I would flirt with him as well but I kept it to just flirting. In the back of my mind, I knew that I was eventually gonna call his bluff.

Not much longer after the time that Joyce had totally disappeared on me, I walked into this bodega located on Rockaway Parkway, the same bodega that I would go into everyday after-school. It was at the start of the wintertime so the bodega was sort of like an impromptu after school gathering spot where everyone could gather and escape the cold winds and kick it with each other before heading home.

I walked into the bodega with one of my home-girls named Angie. Angie and I were so much alike when it came to our style of dress and the hoochie momma mentality that it was scary. The only difference between the two of us was that Angie was dark-skinned and I was light-skinned. I mean, I knew that Angie didn’t know as much as I knew sexually—in fact, she was still a virgin—but she had this vibe that she would give off and from that vibe, I knew that she would always be open and down for whatever.

Angie and I were both in the bodega just standing around chat-chatting when BK, who was also in the bodega, walked past us. He didn’t immediately recognize me, so I playfully pushed him in his back.

“Oh shit! What’s up Shayla?”

“How you gonna just walk past me like that and not speak?”

“My bad,” BK said while licking his lips like LL Cool J. “With that big ass of yours I don’t know how I didn’t see you.”

I just laughed at BK’s comments, but at the same time I loved the fact that he’d taken notice of my ass. I was wearing a Triple F.A.T Goose jacket that stopped right at my waistline. Although it was wintertime and I had to cover myself up to keep warm I made sure that I always showed off my ass no matter what I wore.

“BK, you know you don’t know nothing about this,” I said while trying to squeeze one of my hands into the back pockets of my jeans while simultaneously placing a blow pop into my mouth using my other hand.

“Angie, you know BK?” I asked.

Angie shook her head no, and I was going to introduce them but BK spoke up.

“I don’t know nothing about what?”

“About this,” I said as I took my hand out of my jeans and tapped on my ass with my right hand. “You wouldn’t know what to do with this!”

I could tell that I had caught BK off guard simply by the way that I had made him blush. Angie began smiling and giggling with embarrassment.

“You hear this chick?” BK asked while tapping his homeboy on the shoulder.

“Don’t ask him, because he wouldn’t know what to do with this either. Y’all can’t handle this,” I said and smiled as I sashayed my way out of the bodega, sucking on my blow pop. I instructed Angie to follow right behind me.

“Shayla, you know this dick right here would have yo ass speaking in tongues!” BK bragged while grabbing his crotch.

I didn’t respond right away and I began to walk in the direction of East 103rd Street, where my house was located.

“Angie, call me later,” I said to her, being that she lived in and was heading in the opposite direction, toward East Ninety-fourth Street.

“You better tell your girl to watch her mouth,” BK said to Angie as she went about her business.

“She a big girl, she can handle herself,” Angie said, speaking up for me.

As I waited at the light to cross the street, BK yelled out to me, “Shayla, I’m gonna have to come check for you if you keep talking that shit you talking.”

I just looked at BK and smiled and then I crossed the street as the light had turned in my favor. For the past two days straight I had been in a horn. . .