real life

"My father raped me, but I still wanted him to walk me down the aisle".

Sharisse T. Smith

 

 

 

 

TRIGGER WARNING: This article deals with an account of rape and may be triggering for survivors.

I was only a child when my fixation with creating the perfect picture began.  I would watch as my father, a freelance photographer, created works of art out of imperfect people through still photos. At thirteen, I’d wanted to have my own portraits taken.

One Saturday, while my mother was at work, my father set up the photo shoot in our dining room, took a few pictures of me and called it a success. Then he said extra shots were needed in his bedroom. Then he raped me.

A week later, I told my mother what my father had done to me and she confronted him. He denied it at first but later confessed. The three of us went to see a therapist together and she concluded that my father was sorry, he would not hurt me again and that keeping our household “stable” was the best way for us to heal. Afraid to be alone, my mother agreed. So we continued to live together as one of the few nuclear African American families in our neighborhood–a pretty picture.

I soon became obsessed with capturing beautiful images on film—never scenery, just people. Good times with friends weren’t real unless I had a photo to prove it. I took rolls and rolls of pictures, developed them, assembled them and put them on permanent display in a photo album by month, year and occasion, with their corresponding negatives in plastic sleeves.  Things were normal. I had the proof.

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I was sixteen when my father tried again. All of my friends were getting their driver’s licenses and I wanted one too, so when he caught me in my towel on the way to the bathroom, he bargained with me. “Just leave the door cracked when you shower. I want to watch you while you lather up. Then I’ll let you practice driving in my pickup truck.”

I charged at him with the intent to kill, but my towel fell down. Afraid of him seeing me, I ran to my room hysterically crying, locked the door and called a friend to come get me. When my mother returned from work and asked me what happened, my friend said, “He tried it again and she’s leaving with me.”  I left home for three months, only returning for clothes every couple of weeks.

“I was sixteen when my father tried again.”

Six years after my father raped me, I asked him to walk me down the aisle.  My twenty-four year old fiancé had proposed to me on my nineteenth birthday. Finally, I had a way to escape living in my father’s house and being the raped daughter and the daughter of my rapist. Instead, I’d be a wife. Still, all I could think about was how incomplete my wedding pictures would look

without my father in them. I had no brother, no uncle who could stand in. It had to be him.

When my father agreed to give me away at the ceremony, my mother and soon-to-be husband both looked at me, then each other. For a moment, I’d hoped my fiancé would knock my father to the ground, but he just shook my father’s hand and said, “Thank you.” I was hurt but not surprised. No man had ever saved me; why should my fiancé be any different?

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But this only intensified my rush to escape and I moved the wedding up to Las Vegas. I picked a chapel with the best picture deal: Five-hundred dollars for thirty-six portraits, a special frame, a small cake, a bridal bouquet and a limo ride.

The day before we said “I do,” my mother, my father and I jammed into my groom’s compact car. My parents were crushed in the back seat, forced to listen to me play Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” on repeat. .

Heartbeat, real strong but not for long / Better watch your step, or you’re gonna die

I loved it.

After a while, I began to fear the song might be unfortunately prophetic. Though my father had been ill prior to the trip, he looked sicker than usual. Was he going to have a sickle cell crisis? Die on the way up or in his sleep the night before my wedding? Then who would walk me down the aisle? What about my pictures? I’d never asked him for anything. All I wanted was a few steps and a smile. I thought, he would have some nerve to die now.

Read the full article here. 

This article was first published on Ebony.com and has been republished with full permission. You can read the original article here.

Sharisse T. Smith is a writer and has an MFA in nonfiction from The New School in New York City, NY. Her work has appeared in The New York Times.com, Ebony.com, Babble.com and is forthcoming in Salon.com and The Los Angeles Review. She is a real life Army wife with four children. You can follow her on twitter at @SharisseTSmith.