The World Trade Center
I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on that Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001.
I had gotten up early, as usual, and fixed my then seven year old niece pancakes and sausages for breakfast while she got dressed for school. I had a little black and white 5 inch screen TV that I’d purchased from Walgreens for $19.99 on in the kitchen. And I was watching Good Morning America with Charlie and Diane.
After my niece left for school, I poured myself a second cup of coffee and was just settling down when Diane said something about an explosion at the World Trade Center.
I was glued to the TV from that moment on until around two a.m. the next morning.
Late Wednesday afternoon, September 12, 2001, convinced that World War III was about to start, I sat down and started writing my autobiography, STALKED! By Voices. I was convinced that I was not going to outlive being stalked and harassed by the mad, crazy, obsessive, screaming, vicious, and downright dangerous family that had been stalking me since I was a child. I wanted my side of the story told.
Here is Chapter 14
IN THE FIFTH GRADE my dreams became flesh.
There was a little girl in my class who wore a pink sweater that had pearl like buttons down the front. It was a soft pink cashmere confection that glowed even more gloriously against the girl’s dark black skin.
The tiny buttons that adorned its front were not flat like the cheap sweaters I wore, but were raised, round, pearlized pieces of wonder. I thought about that sweater all day on the days she wore it. I loved that sweater. I didn’t have anything as lovely as that sweater. I wanted that sweater.
In the fifth grade, it was my job to clean the blackboards after school each day. One day, the little girl forgot the sweater. She had carelessly left it hanging on the back of her chair. How could she have gone home without that marvelous, glorious, wonderful sweater, I wondered.
On the day the little girl left the sweater, I was absolutely alone in the room, cleaning the blackboards, or so I thought.
While waiting for Mr. Mel’s school bus to arrive and pick us up for the journey home, I had the overwhelming compulsion to take that sweater. And I did.
I took the sweater, balled it up and stuffed it into my school bag. I caught the bus home and hid the sweater in among my meager things. I never told a single soul I had the sweater. That was on a Tuesday.
By Friday of that same week, my mother was summoned up to the school and was told that I had stolen the sweater.
Understand that my parents were extremely poor. My mother didn’t work and my father worked at Stuckey’s Lumber Mill making forty dollars a week. He had eight people – two adults and six children – to feed, clothe, and house on that paltry sum.
My teacher, oblivious at the time, I thought to our plight, asked my parents to pay for the sweater.
My mother went home, having never confronted me directly, and tore the house apart until she found the sweater and returned it to the little girl the very next day.
A week after the sweater incident, the two girls from my dreams became a reality. I can barely begin to relate to you my confusion and apprehension. Two people that I thought were products of my nightmares had turned into solid living beings and were suddenly standing in front of me! And, they started following me all around school, calling me a thief. They were relentless.
I remember one day during recess being on the playground with my friends, and these two girls came over to where we were playing, and working like sheep dogs herding sheep, they separated me from the other kids. They got me alone in an isolated part of the playground.
For a few moments, they just stood there regarding me as if they were figuring out the best way to rip into my flesh. And then they smiled — an evil smile that sent a chill of fear through me. Slowly they began circling me. Round and round they went, taunting me as they went, screaming, “Thief! Thief! She stole my pink sweater! Thief! Thief! She stole my pink sweater! Thief!”
Neither of these girls was the little girl, in my classroom, who normally wore the coveted pink sweater.
I knew from my dream experiences, that I had to get to someplace safe or somehow anchor myself. So, I grabbed onto a nearby pole and held on for dear life as they circled me, getting louder and faster. They kept this up until their screams became a roar in my ears. It was my friends, Betty, Carolyn, Shirley, and Virginia who came to my rescue.
After that, I came to realize that whenever something bad happened to me at school, these two older girls were usually the source of the problem.
And after the pink sweater incident, I couldn’t shake these girls. Either they or their mother were always hanging around.
Bear in mind, that while all of this was happening, I was all of eleven years old trying to stay out of the path of three experienced and practicing sexual predators.
PS. A lot of people have questioned me as to why I never learned these people’s names, but honestly, I was too terrified to even speak to three people most of the time. All I ever said to any of them was yes or no. Never, never, ever, anything more.
By
Eliza D. Ankum
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