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    The Other Woman
    The Other Woman
    The Other Woman
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    The Other Woman

    By Tunette Powell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Other Woman is a bold and emotional memoir based on a sixteen-line rap written by the daughter of an addict. In this honest portrayal of addiction, Nette loses herself in the stories of her father's struggles. She vividly recounts his memories of the crack houses and prison cells he once frequented, and openly recalls how that other world stole so many years from Bruce Callis and his family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWriteLife Publishing
    Release dateDec 19, 2012
    ISBN9781608080762
    The Other Woman
    Author

    Tunette Powell

    Tunette Powell and Tulane Holder: From Daddyless to Destiny: Finding Freedom in Your Story(June 2014; self-help/relationships). Tunette is also the author of the memoir, The Other Woman. Tunette and Tulane are a mother/daughter writing team and have spent the past two years building their mission as educators and advocates of those affected by substance abuse and fatherlessness. We regularly receive purchase orders from organizations from The Urban League for this title and are anticipating a large order from Girls Inc. With more years and seasoning in this industry, Tunette stands the chance of being a rising star.

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      Book preview

      The Other Woman - Tunette Powell

      Copyright

      THE OTHER WOMAN

      Tunette Powell

      Copyright © 2012 by Tunette Powell.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from publisher.

      Published by WriteLife, LLC

      2323 S. 171 St.

      Suite 202

      Omaha, NE 68130

      www.writelife.com

      ISBN 978-1-60808-076-2

      First Edition

      Dedication

      To my father,

      As the African Proverb teaches us, When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

      We have harbored these stories for so many years because we were hurt, embarrassed and ashamed of them. But if we want to lead people off the porch and if we want to encourage people to recycle the human life, we must tell our story.

      Though painful, I pray that our story helps someone else. Most importantly, I hope it heals us.

      Love,

      Nette

      THE OTHER WOMAN

      by

      Tunette Powell

      Track 1

      Hi, my name is Tunette and my father is a drug addict.

      There, I said it.

      For a long time, I pretended as if my father’s addiction didn’t affect me. Sure, I hated his addiction. Growing up, I spent so many nights crying and begging God to deliver my father. But I never prayed for myself. I just pushed my feelings aside because I didn’t want to be guilty of violating my father’s golden rule.

      I before E, Nette, my father used to say. Intellect before emotion.

      Somewhere along the way, I became so focused on not breaking that rule that I was blind to what was happening to me. It had been years since he first said those words. But it didn’t matter. My father’s words never expired. Whenever something was wrong, memories of old prison letters haunted my thoughts and reminded me that emotions have no place on a sleeve.

      Then a few years ago, I lost control of my emotions for the first time. My father was in prison. I was twenty one. And by that time, writing and receiving letters from my father was old. I dedicated most of my childhood to licking envelopes, pressing stamps and reading my father’s cursive handwriting on white tablet paper. And even though at a young age I vowed to never give up on my father, I had to admit it was getting harder to keep that promise.

      As a child, wounds healed days after they appeared. But as an adult, not even bandages could hide my scars. My heart was a bunch of pieces with no instruction manual. I tried to repair myself through relationships. I dated way too many boys and carelessly flirted with way too many girls. Even as young as five-years-old, I sought that attention. While most girls were grossed out by boys in elementary, I skipped right past that boys have cooties stage.

      There was a hunger in me that craved for attention and approval.

      And I fed it.

      My freshman year of high school was tarnished by my obsession with attention. That year, I went to an all-black high school and starred on the freshman girls’ basketball team. And even though I was closer to Gary Coleman’s height than Lisa Leslie’s, I thought I would go on to play in the WNBA. After practice, I would join in with my teammates as we pretended to be gay. We wrote and exchanged inappropriate letters and pretended to be in intimate relationships with each other. Now that I’m ten years removed from that freshman year, it sounds silly. But at fourteen, I was looking for anything to distract me; anything to replace the emptiness I felt. I wasn’t attracted to girls.

      I was attracted to attention.

      It was the only way I knew how to cope with my father’s absence. As I recklessly tried to fill that void, I broke so many hearts. Brendon was one of those broken hearts.

      I love you, I randomly proclaimed one day.

      I love you, too, Brendon confessed.

      I didn’t love Brendon. I just wanted him to love me. Brendon wasn’t the first boy I’d done that to, and surely not the last. I was a blank sheet waiting to be called music. And I didn’t care how the notes got on the page. I thought to myself that as long as I wasn’t on the broken end of the equation, it didn’t matter. I knew one thing – I would never let another person walk out on me the way my father did. No man would ever two-time me the way my father did our family with drugs.

      But there I was; sitting in the passenger’s seat of Maurice’s black Honda Accord with my hands over my face because I was too shy to look him in his eyes. He was in the driver’s seat reciting Tupac lyrics, and trying to convince me that Jay-Z was not the best rapper alive. In between Maurice rapping along to Tupac’s Blasphemy, we talked politics, religion and eventually love. Normally by the time we got to love, his phone rang.

      It was her.

      I was just his side chick. I knew that from the beginning. Initially, I only flirted with Maurice to see if he would flirt back. But then I became infatuated with his style – his intellect, his taste in food, music, sports, and so many other things.

      Then I fell in love.

      Love was never a part of the plan. I knew it would be difficult to remain in control if my emotions got involved. But before I could pull my heart back in, it had already run away. And his girlfriend, well, she was only a technicality. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

      Think of us as a marathon and not a sprint, I remember him saying.

      And for a while, I did that.

      I got used to the frequent text messages and phone calls while he was at work and the silence in the evenings when he was at home. This unhealthy co-relationship almost lasted an entire year. Until one day, it all came falling down.

      It was Memorial Day. Maurice called and asked if he could come over after he got off work, and I said yes. In between his phone call and his arrival, for the first time, I sat on my couch and really thought things out. I was in love with a man who was living with another woman. And it didn’t bother me. As tears fell down my eyes, I ran into the restroom, looked myself in the mirror and hated the woman I saw.

      I cried out to God, but this time I asked him to deliver me. When Maurice got to my apartment, we argued. He left; I closed the door behind him, and pressed my back against the door as I cried. That night I rushed out of my apartment and sank into the driver’s seat of my 2002 peanut-butter-colored Saturn. I locked the car doors, positioned my head on the steering wheel and cried like a baby. Then I reached into my backseat, grabbed a pen and notepad, and started to write. I didn’t write a letter to my father, nor was it a letter to Maurice.

      I wrote to myself.

      I ignored my father’s advice and put my emotions out there. I couldn’t hide my feelings in men anymore. I needed something else. I needed something stronger. With an instrumental beat in my head, I started writing a rap.

      It’s gotta be a nightmare; it’s gotta be a dream, I started out.

      And it was a nightmare. I didn’t know who I’d become. But instead of the next line being about me, it was about my father.

      Envisioning a father transform into fiend.

      I blacked out.

      When I came back to, the rap was written.

      It’s gotta be a nightmare, it’s gotta be a dream,

      Envisioning a father transform into a fiend,

      Rapes his family of their goods and flirts with the world,

      Traded in his baby girl for

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