Chapter 18

            Janoah told me that she had a brother 1 ½ years older than her and he lived there too, but he never came to the Kingdom Hall and I only saw him a few times when I went to the house. She said he knew The Truth too and would probably get baptized at some point, but their big brother wouldn’t let him leave the house twice a week like she did to attend meetings, because he had some issues and couldn’t be trusted to come back. The few times I saw him he looked fine, well-groomed and cared for, same as Janoah. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

            Ibrahim had learned to read between the lines and he got just as much if not more information from what commenters did not say. The red flags were like sore thumbs to him. He could pick apart a totally benign observation and come up with answers to his questions. “Didn’t trust him to come back? Of course, he was not going to come back to Isaac’s house if he had any choice since he never wanted to be there to begin with and you probably wouldn’t have taken him back there either!”

            While the bruises on Wissy’s face had been attributed to the fatal head injury, Ibrahim knew deep down in his soul there was no way he had been struck “with substantial force” only once during his 3 years in Florida with Isaac. The boy had wanted his mother, he had wanted out of Isaac’s house, and had actively resisted all attempts to subdue him refusing to believe the woman he worshipped had truly abandoned him. Ibrahim didn’t doubt he had angered and irked Isaac to no end with his recalcitrance catching plenty of hell for it. Whatever he had said upon returning to Isaac’s home on November 2, something about returning to Kentucky with their mother after No-No was removed from life support if Ibrahim had to guess, had caused a blind rage and the worst assault yet. Then, with less regard than one shows a dog, he’d been dumped like an orphan in front of a hospital 100 miles away.

            As he did every time he gleaned or received new information he converted it to fodder to add to his still untitled book.

            On June 26, 2010 Wissy was finally laid to rest in a vaulted silver casket wearing the clothes I’d purchased for him months earlier. Keep in mind we’d been expecting all along to get him back in a body bag. He wore a red zip up sweater with a black t-shirt underneath, black washed jeans with silver pinstripes, black socks, and red&black Stacy Adams shoes on his feet since Mama didn’t want him to be barefooted. I’d also got him a silver chain necklace. Mama had learned to love his poker straight dark brown hair after he outgrew the angelic blondish curls he was born with and insisted that it be cut and styled just so. She must have spent a solid 10 minutes brushing and rebrushing it, changing his part from the right to the left and back again before she was satisfied. Then she kissed his bruised face and left plum colored lip prints there for the world to see bearing testament to the words embroidered in the top of his casket, Forever Mommy’s Prince.

 In 2011, I finally got the right address from a fellow Jehovah’s Witness. Between April 2006-August 2009 we had made numerous trips to Florida looking for Isaac’s place. Of course, he’d lied and we never could find them. When I had Isaac’s address, although there was no need for a rescue, I made a call to social services. In the aftermath my family had discovered Isaac had a son and after what he’d done to the children in our family, I’d be damned if he was going to keep playing happy home with his b*****d and that poor white trash he called a fiancée. From the moment, I had first laid eyes on the woman, when she disrespectfully attempted to enter No-No’s hospital room without permission to spy on Isaac’s behalf, I had had nothing except contempt for her. To her face, before I showed her the exit off the ICU, I told her she was trash and something else too…I told her she’d live to regret the day she ever met Isaac and supported him in his madness.

            Ibrahim as well as Dorinda and Karisma refused to accept Isaac’s child and had no interest in ever knowing It. It was neither a grandson nor nephew, but rather a glaring reminder of how their treasured son and brother had suffered needlessly at the hands of someone who had promised to take good care of him. Undoubtedly It had never been hidden away and deprived of family and home, isolated and tortured, as a part of some sick game. For no other reason than to even the score a bit, Its’ mother was now learning to a minuscule degree what having one’s child taken away felt like.

            “Daddy, it’s worship time!” Hayvn called out snapping him back to reality.

            “Get your stuff and go sit at the table.” He stalled her to give himself time to collect his thoughts and put away the powerful emotions that had nothing to do with her. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

            It was the responsibility of family heads to conduct a weekly family worship at home. There was no set topic, whatever the family head thought was appropriate or children expressed interest in was fine, as long as it got done. Ibrahim and Hayvn had their family worship on Friday evenings at 7 p.m. sharp. Hayvn was an imaginative child and delighted in reenacting Biblical scenes, which Ibrahim found amusing and let her spend most of the hour putting on a show for him while he read the account.

            A disgusted sound escaped his lips as he rose to his feet stiff joints cracking. Nobody had forced him to give up the comfortable and predictable life he had built for himself in Houston to return to Louisville to raise his sister’s child after his mother’s death, yet he hadn’t thought twice and had adjusted without complaint. Although Hayvn at times exhausted and frustrated him, he never resented her and couldn’t imagine harming a single curl on her head. If ever he had those inclinations then he’d call social services to come pick her up long before he let his thoughts mature into malicious actions. Try as he might he simply could not justify or understand why Isaac had done what he did to their baby brother and sister, why he’d taken them from their home of his own volition and put them through so much. What kind of demented psychopath had he been calling his identical twin for the past 28 years?

            “What song are we singing tonight, darling?” He asked Hayvn as he entered the dining room to find her patiently waiting with her tablet which had the JW app created by the society open on it and the JW.org website in another window as back up. While he poured limeade into blue solo cups and got a pack of Biscoff cookies out of the pantry for them to share, he heard the beginning lines of Song 77 titled ‘Light In A Darkened World’ and instantly felt a bit lighter. They sung together as he brought their refreshments to the table and sat down with his own tablet.

            “In these days, dark and lawless days, shines a light we can see. Like the dawn of another day that will soon come to be.”

            Hayvn herself was light, the only light that remained in the midst of utter depravity and insanity, a reason for Ibrahim to go on when the depravity and insanity of the past threatened to overwhelm him. Her mother had been driven away from this place and her grandmother into an early grave by it. The two most important people in her life gone away with no explanation. Because she believed wholeheartedly all that she had been taught about the coming end of all wickedness and resurrection to paradise, the sadness most children in similar circumstances would have felt had been numbed greatly by the promise of better days just around the corner. On the day, she finally learned the truth though, Ibrahim was certain the liveliness that bolstered him, would be sucked right out of her.

            “Jehovah, protect this child. Only You can.”

Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

Uh oh, here's another, overly long and confusing.

Whatever he had said upon returning to Isaac’s home on November 2, something about returning to Kentucky with their mother after No-No was removed from life support if Ibrahim had to guess, had caused a blind rage and the worst assault yet.

And this:

They sung together

I am pretty sure it is "they sang together," using past tense rather than the past participle.

This is all so sad for poor Hayvn, and I pity Ibrahim too. Your writing is moving.

[MeratheRestless]

You aren't the first to say I string together very long sentences. I am not good at writing short sentences when there is a lot of details to be conveyed. Thanks for bringing this to my attention so I can go back and do some more polishing.