Free Casting Down Imaginations by LaShanda Michelle

his free hand to keep me still.
Some of it ripped from its roots. He used his blinker and pulled over to the
side of the road and turned off the engine. I tried to hit him again but my
arms weren’t long enough to reach him. Still controlling me by my hair, he got
out of his seat belt and backhanded me. My face flew into the window and the
taste of blood filled my mouth.
    “What’s
wrong with you girl, hitting me?” he yelled. “I ought to
    knock
you out!”
    My hand
slowly went up to my face as I started crying.
    “You
must have lost your mind!” he continued hollering, sitting back down in his
seat.
    I jumped
on him and tried to claw his eyes out. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” I
scratched at his face, trying to vent out all the pain that he’d caused me that
night.
    We both
screamed while I attacked him, me in anger and him in pain. I felt skin
underneath my fingernails, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him for
humiliating me by running and telling his friends all of my business. For
embarrassing me by telling them what I do and don’t do. For clowning me by
dangling some other girl in my face. I had to make him hurt for making me hurt.
    Reese
grabbed me by my arms and threw me over his shoulder into the back seat. I
turned back around and jumped on him again, but he palmed my face like it was a
basketball and shoved me back down into the seat.
    “What’s
wrong with you, girl?” he asked me, breathing hard and holding his hands up to
his face.
    “Urrrggggghhhhhh!”
I yelled out and jumped at him, but he knocked me back down. “I hate you!”
    He
grabbed me by my hair again and slapped me once more. It tranquilized me. I lay
back in the seat motionless, crying hysterically.
    “What’s
the matter with you?” he yelled.
    I cried
and cried. “Why did you do that to me?” I asked, even though it hurt to talk.
    “Do
what!?”
    He
turned around and checked his face in the rear view mirror.
    “Oh God,
girl! Look what you did to my face!” He used the tip of his shirt to wipe at
the blood that was running down his cheeks and temples. “You better hope to God
that don’t leave no scars!”
    “Why
didn’t you just tell me you weren’t happy?” I was crying so hard that I was
shaking.
    “What
the hell are you talking about?” he asked, still dabbing at his face.
    “Your
boys,” I managed to answer. “You told them! You told them about me! Why did you
do that?”
    “Lower
your damn voice, I ain’t no child!” he cut me off.
    I
lowered myself back down in the seat, not wanting to get hit again.
    “And
what are you talking about anyway?”
    “Adam
told me you told—”
    “Adam?
That’s what this is all about? You going through all of this drama over what
some dude said? Girl, if I ever, ooohhhhh… Don’t you ever bring nobody up in my
face, talking about what they said. I’ll put you out on the street for that,
you hear me? Adam ain’t nobody to me. I don’t care about what he said. He just
a pigeon.”
    I
started to cry even harder.
    “What?!”
    “You
don’t even care,” I cried.
    He
turned around and looked at me. For the first time the whole night I saw
concern on his face.
    “Did he do something to you?” he asked.
    I
couldn’t answer him. I just stayed in the same spot staring at him and
continued to cry. I felt my face swelling from the licks he gave.
    “Did he
try to touch you?”
    I didn’t
answer, but just kept crying.
    He
muttered under his breath, narrowed his eyes, then turned around and started
the engine.
    “Where
are you going?” I asked, holding my face. I was starting to get dizzy.
    “To the
after party,” he said to me. “I gotta go handle some business. Nobody touches
what’s mine. And I’m gonna make sure that fool learn that tonight.”
    I
stretched out horizontally in the seat and put my face down in an attempt to
keep my head from spinning. Before I realized it, I was asleep.
     
     
     
     
     
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    I