Amazing Grace

My ears pricked up immediately. This story was starting to have an eerily familiar ring to it, and I suddenly grew extremely uncomfortable. My dad was a manager at the big Sears on the corner of Lamar and Arnold streets on the south side of Dallas, and I also had a sister, Hannah, three years my senior.

"The little girl left shortly after he began working on the toilet. Once he finished, Faith -- that was the woman's name," Augustine emphasized, turning to look me in the eye. I turned white as a ghost. "Faith led him upstairs where they showered together. There was something about that day, he told me. It had been a few weeks since they'd been together, and both of them were horny as hell."

My own memories came alive as my heart began racing. Images of my childhood best friend Annie, dressed in her pretty blue dress and sparkling tiara. Her dad proudly hoisting her in the air as we sang to her. The Barbie doll we'd gotten her as a gift. The plan for us to all go swimming, and my need to run home and grab my forgotten bathing suit.

"Their sex was wild. She got down on her knees and blew him in the shower and then they continued in her bedroom. He went down on her again, but soon he had her legs pushed all the way back and he was pounding into her. She was about to cum and moaning like crazy -- too loud, he feared -- but he was too far gone to do anything about it. He was fucking her for all he was worth, making up for lost time."

I remembered rushing into our side door, which was never locked, and making a beeline for the stairs when the strange noises first registered in my ears. The sounds of bed springs, like when my sister and I would jump on the mattress until our parents would make us stop. A rhythmic knock, banging against the wall at a constant interval. Underneath that, the grunts of an older man, but they didn't sound like daddy's. A woman's voice, too, but that definitely was my mom. She was moaning like someone was hurting her. Joe, the man who always came around to fix things for my family, had been there earlier, but he and my mom always seemed friendly. I couldn't imagine that he would do anything to hurt her. I tiptoed upstairs to investigate.

"That's when her moans turned into a bloody scream and she started desperately pushing at him, trying to get him off. He looked down and saw the horrified look on her face, her eyes facing the door. He turned around only in time to catch the fleeting glimpse of her little girl running off down the hallway."

I couldn't breathe by that point as the blood curdling sound of my mother's screams echoed in my head. I remembered the vivid image of muscles flexing in Joe's naked backside as he slammed his hips into my mother's. I remembered the sweat glistening off of his skin. She was also naked, and I couldn't understand why. Her breasts flopped about as Joe rode her. I remembered then turning to look at my mom's face, her hair all wet and her skin all flushed as she screamed bloody murder. What had he done to her? I took off running and didn't stop until I reached Annie's dad.

"She didn't even give him time to get dressed," Augustine continued. 'No, you have to get out of here NOW! You have to run, run as far as you can and don't come back,' she told him. He flew out the back door in only his draw's and the rest of his clothes in his hands when he was met by a man carrying a shotgun pointed right at his head."

'This can't be,' I thought to myself, rocking in place. Annie's papa was quick, grabbing his Remington shotgun and taking off. I followed, with Annie's mom chasing after me and trying to pull me back. I thought it was luck at the time, but Annie's dad was smart. He went right towards our back yard and caught Joe running out of our back door. Momma was standing in the doorway covered up with her bathrobe. She was crying.

"Go call the police, Sue-Ellen, and then call Gracie's dad at work and tell him to come home," I remembered him saying. He made Joe lay down on the ground with his arms stretched out.

"Other guys showed up, also with guns, and they hog-tied him while they were waiting for the police," Augustine continued. "He protested, insisting that he hadn't done anything wrong, but Faith wouldn't back him up. She just stood there crying. He was lucky, he told me, that the police arrived just before Faith's husband. Otherwise, he might have killed him on the spot."

Before my dad and the police arrived, my mom did beg Annie's father to just let Joe go. She argued that he'd been scared well enough that he knew to never come back again, and she didn't want to see anyone get hurt. But Annie's dad was having none of it. He was proud of his hog-tied capture and he wasn't about to set him loose.

"When the police arrived, they asked Faith in front of her husband and everyone else gathered around by that point if the man had raped her. She said yes," Augustine said, finishing his drink.

"This is bullshit!" I interjected. "He did rape her! I saw it!"

"You thought you saw it," Augustine said calmly. "But her medical examination didn't confirm any signs of rape or assault. They didn't even use it at the trial because it didn't help their case. I had my new lawyer look into it. No, what convicted him was the testimony of that little girl, who got up on the stand and told the jury about the constant nightmares she had, remembering how she came home and saw him on top of her mother, hurting her and making her scream. It was that testimony of Gracie Elizabeth Sterling that got Joseph Edwards a 25-years-to-life sentence for aggravated rape, battery and sexual assault."

I was sick to my stomach, and angry. "I still have those nightmares!" I shouted. "I don't know what you're trying to do with this story but it's all lies!"

"Call your mother, Grace, and ask her," Augustine challenged me.

"I don't have to call her. My mother was never the same again from what he did to her! He traumatized her for life!" I screamed. Augustine just remained calm, which made me all the more upset.

"Was it trauma, or was it guilt?"

"You don't know what you're talking about! I watched her, I saw the difference in her mood, how her personality completely changed after being raped. She was never the same happy mom again!"

"If you're so sure, why don't you call her and ask? Or is this like the DNA evidence with my trial -- you don't want to test it because you don't want to know the truth?"

He cut me deep with that one question, stabbing at my very integrity. "Fine!" I huffed. "My phone's in my purse, can you hand it to me?" Augustine walked over to where he had dropped my purse earlier and dug around inside. He searched and searched, then finally looked over at me, exasperated.

"I don't see any damn phone in here," he complained.

"Just hand it to me, I'll get it."

"Humph! I don't think so," he said, dumping out the contents on my bedroom carpet. It was a smart move. Besides my gun which he had already taken from me, I carried a small can of pepper spray and a taser. Augustine recognized them and set them aside. "Now tell me where the hell you see a phone."

That's when it hit me. He completely missed the smartphone revolution and had no idea what they looked like. "It's the light blue thing with the rhinestones on it," I said meekly, not wanting to insult him.

"This?" he asked. I nodded and he handed it to me. He looked on in confused intrigue as I found my mother's number and hit the call button.

"Can you put it on speaker?" he asked as the phone rang. I complied, confident that my mother would dispel the vicious lie his father had told him.

"Momma, it's Gracie," I said when she answered.

"Hi sweetheart. I'm so glad you called. Your dad and I were just-"

"Mom," I interrupted, "I need to ask you a question and I need you to tell me the truth. It's important."

"Sure sweetie," she said with only a slight hesitation. "Shoot."

"Were you and Joseph Edwards lovers?" Silence.

"What did you say?" she asked finally, fright creeping into her voice.

"I said, 'were you and Joseph Edwards lovers?'"

"Wh.. wh.. what... wh.. why would you... hold on for a sec." We heard muted murmurings and then a door closing before she resumed. "Honey, wh..why would y..y..you ask me such a thing?"

"Just answer the question, Mom. Yes or no, was Joseph Edwards your lover?"

"I..I..I just don't understand why you want to bring up such painful memories, and wh.. why you would even think to ask such an awful accusation of your mother?!" The look on Augustine's face revealed that he thought she was stalling, feigning incredulity. I had to press on to know the full story.

"I need to know the truth, mom!" I emphasized, my voice beginning to crack. I stood up and began pacing about the room, no longer caring about the fact that I was still naked. "His son came to see me today, who was unborn at the time of the trial." I felt no need to tell her Augustine was standing right in front of me, or that he was my first major case and that I put him in prison on a wrongful conviction for 12 years. Or that he'd just orally raped me and planned to do much more before the evening was out. Besides, what he was trying to do to my mind was causing me far more trauma than anything he planned to do to my body.

"He went and met his father for the first time in prison," I continued, "and he relayed to me a very different story about the relationship between you two that his father told him. I told him that it couldn't be true, that I saw with my own eyes, and heard your screams with my own ears." I was beginning to tear up, as I did every time I relived that awful day. "He seemed to know things about you, intimate details, that only daddy should know. So tell me, tell me that he was lying."

There was another long pause. Just as I was about to ask if she was still on the line, we heard her muffled cries. Augustine just looked at me as if to say, 'I told you so.' I felt a sickening nausea in the pit of my stomach.

"It's true," she finally admitted. "He was my lover." There was now sobbing on her end as my own tears started to flow.

"Mother how could you?" I uttered weakly, my knees giving out. I fell flat on my butt on the bedroom carpet and there I sat, losing my grip on reality.

"You don't understand," she cried. "Please let me explain—"

"Explain?!!" I exploded in anger, "what could there possibly be to explain? How could you do that to that man?! How could you do that to me!?! How could you do that to daddy?!!!" I yelled.

"I did not intend to cheat on your father, but Joseph was kind, beautiful, and attentive to me in all the ways your father was not. He was respectful, too. He had been working for us for a while as a handyman, and in all that time he never got fresh with me, never tried any funny business. I was the one who was lonely and begged for his touch." Listening to her, I could see that Augustine was starting to get agitated. He began pacing about the room as her story went on.

"Finally nature took its course and he gave me some attention. I expected it to just be a one-time thing but I wasn't prepared for how good it felt to be loved by him. You must understand, Gracie. Your father and I got married just out of high school, when neither of us even knew who we were yet, or what we were doing. As time went by I discovered how different we were from each other, and I felt so stifled in our marriage. I had nothing of my own and did nothing for myself. By then we already had you and Hannah so leaving wasn't an option. I resigned myself to my fate and put everything I had into loving you kids.

"But Joseph came along and he saw me, appreciated me as a woman with thoughts, a personality, and an opinion, not just as a hot little thing to bear his children, cook his meals and iron his shirts. He saw me as a woman with her own desires, not just there to satisfy his. There are things that a good southern girl just can't do, even with her husband. Hell, especially with her husband. But with Joseph I felt so free, I could explore and just be the woman I truly wanted to be, without fear of judgment. I knew Joseph was married and I shouldn't have pursued him, but I wanted just a little something for myself so badly. Being married made it perfect, as neither one of us wanted out of our marriage. Neither of us felt cheated when the other had to go home to their spouse."

"So you met this nice guy who was good to you, slept with him then accused him of rape?!" I yelled, my anger rising. "How could you do something like that?! Do you know he is still in prison?!"

"I know exactly where he is," she replied, still sobbing. "I've been anonymously putting money on his commissary account all these years." More memories, driving down those country roads when we were little and seeing the prisoners out there working in the fields, and finally understanding the anguished look of hurt and longing that would cross my mother's face as she stared out the window.

"And you think that makes it ok?!!!!!" Now I was getting really angry.

"You still don't understand. Things were different back then. At first I just lied to get the police to take Joseph away so your father and his friends wouldn't shoot him. But then I found myself stuck in the lie. Your father would have left me and took it all: the house, you kids, everything. No judge in the South would have ruled in my favor. They would have called me a nigger lover, and I'd get no alimony, no shared custody, and no support of any kind. My parents would have disowned me. They would have taught you all to hate me as well. I had a terrible choice to make: sacrifice Joseph or sacrifice my kids and risk never seeing you. I couldn't stand the thought of you not being able to grow up with me as your mom. I'm not proud of what I did, and I hate myself for it every day, but it felt like what I had to do."

"But I heard your screams!" I cried, "You sounded scared, like he was hurting you!"

"Sweetie, Joseph never hurt me. He made me feel good. He made me feel alive. He made me feel... desired. I screamed when I saw you standing in that doorway, eyes wide open catching us in the act. My whole life flashed before my eyes, and so did his. I screamed because I was scared of getting caught, scared for what would happen to me and scared for Joseph. When I was a child, they'd soon as kill a colored man for doing what Joseph was doing to me. I screamed to let him know that something was wrong and he needed to run."

"You let me live all these years reliving that memory thinking you were brutally raped," I said softly as the enormity set in. "You let me testify in court and help send that man away for over 30 years... and it was all a lie..." I trailed off.

"Sweetie, I'm so s—"

"I can't talk to you anymore right now, mother," I said coldly. "I have to go. I'll call you back later." I disconnected the call and just stared at the floor, my tears flowing freely. I could not bring myself to look Augustine in the eyes. My phone rang, and I knew it was my mother calling me back without even looking. I sent her call to voicemail and set the phone up on the nightstand.

What do you do, and what do you say, after your whole world has just been rocked and shaken to its foundations? I was at a loss for words. Softly, I kept repeating 'she lied' as I began to rock myself back and forth.

"After all these years he still can't understand how she did that to him," Augustine went on, still pacing about the room. "He told me that out of all the people he worked for, she was the one that treated him with respect, who wasn't racist. He gave me details about all they'd done together, how she gave herself to him so passionately, he just can't understand how she turned on him like that. All during the trial, he kept thinking that at any minute, she would come clean and save him from his fate. He was so sure of it that tried to protect her by not telling the whole courtroom all the intimate details of the different ways they'd fucked and how long it had been going on. He only maintained that it was consensual."

At that moment Augustine took a seat on the edge of my bed, just in front of where I sat crumpled on the floor. He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me up to my knees to make me look him in the eye, to make sure I was paying close attention.

"He didn't tell the court how wet she always was for him, how she loved to get down on her knees to suck him off and drink his cum. To protect her dignity, he didn't testify as to how'd fucked her in every room of your house, on the kitchen table, on the living room floor, in the shower, in the laundry room, even once in your bedroom. He didn't tell the court just how kinky she could be, or that the dirtier the sex the more she loved it."

It was shocking to think of my mother in such a way. I tried to block the mental images from flashing through my mind, but my imagination ran wild. I couldn't help but visualize my mother and Augustine's father naked and frolicking about our home, doing all manner of lustful, kinky things. Augustine was visualizing it, too. Even with all the anger he was feeling, he was getting hard again relaying these details to me. His flesh began to lift as it filled with blood and became solid, finally pointing right at my lips. I could feel his throbbing heat on my face as he continued to relate to me the adulterous sins of our parents. With a fist full of my hair he pulled me closer and began to smack me about the face with his thick shaft, its searing heat lingering on my skin every place it touched. Once again his musk berated my senses, and my anger began to lose focus, turning back to fear.

"Don't think those tears are gonna save you," Augustine warned me, pushing my face down into his scrotal sac. "Our night isn't over."

"Augustine please! I was a child, I didn't know."

"And you think that makes it any better? Thirty years. Thirty years for him and twelve for me. Do you think your tears and your sorry give us those years back?"

"No, they don't," I said dejectedly.

"Damn right they don't," he said, standing and dragging me onto the bed. He pinned my shoulders with his knees while he re-tied my wrists with the scarves. His cock hung low, weighted down by its fullness, and slid haphazardly across my face while he bound me. Before I knew it my arms were again pulled taut and stretched out to my sides. Augustine left my legs unbound, however, and I tried to squirm away when he shifted to grab hold of my ankles. It was no use, though. His grip was strong, too strong for me to resist as he plied my legs apart and pushed them back while he positioned himself between them. Under the bright lights of my bedroom my sex was splayed before him, denuded, exposed and vulnerable.

A wicked smile crept across his face as he eyed my defenseless pussy. Not quite satisfied with the view, Augustine pushed my knees back further until they hit my breasts, spreading both of my holes wide to his gaze. The full display gave him pause and he froze. It was like my sex had captured his gaze and he couldn't tear his eyes away. I wondered how long had it been since he'd seen a real woman exposed for him like this, if ever. Was his previous lanky and awkward self a virgin before I sent him away for the rape he didn't commit?

In his expression I could see the hunger that had built up in him over the past 12 years, furiously jacking off to fantasies of the very thing that was now directly in front of him. He looked at me with smoldering anger, then back at my pussy with burning desire. He repeated this, looking back and forth again and again, the muscles tensing in his shoulders and his neck, his expression changing with each shift. Then it hit me: just as much as he wanted to hurt me, he seemed to also want to devour me. There was no doubt that he wanted to bury every inch of his cock deep in my pussy and punish me with it, but the look in his eyes spoke of a competing desire waging war inside his brain. I thought back to his behavior earlier in my bathroom while I was peeing, the pleasure he took from smelling my panties. I remembered catching him smelling his fingers after they had been in my pussy, and how he wanted to taste them but stopped himself. As much as he wanted to punish me, what he truly craved was the smell of a woman, the taste of a woman. He wanted to bury his face in me and try to satiate that pent-up hunger, I just knew it.