Next, take some time to heal! I was formerly in several abusive relationships. After raping and beating me, the man took out his penis, urinated all over my face and said, “Bitch! You ain’t shit!” I believed that for a long time because I saw myself through his eyes and not God’s eyes. I was depressed for a while and am still affected by some of it today. In my previous marriage, after we had had a wedding with a horse and buggy and the whole nine, my then husband asked me on the way back from our honeymoon, “Can we take an AIDS test?” I agreed. His results came back inconclusive. Mine negative. Again, this is all chronicled in my book Computer Love. I’m leaving an excerpt at the end. However, I’ve discovered that there are people who have gone through much more than we ever have. We have to not only motivate them with words, but we have to serve them by providing for them until they are strong enough to make it on there on. We cannot create an atmosphere for them to serve us. Asking abused women to pay for tapes and seminars while they are in the middle of a crisis, even responsible for the well-being of children while going through hell, would be like kick a dog when he’s down. Please, sister, for the love of God, don’t try to capitalize on pain whether it be your pain, the pain of abusive women, or that of Bishop Weeks.
The bible does say, “Touch not my anointed one and do my profit no harm”. I have done neither and I believe that we must be willing to take advice just as equally as we give it. Although you may not ever read this letter, I wanted to share my honest feeling with you because it’s better than talking about you behind your back. Continue to be all that God created you to be and as you go through the fire, don’t be surprised if God directs you to sell all that you have and give it to the poor!

Your sister,
Ndu
Email: Ndukanachi@yahoo.com
P.S. I hope you enjoy the excerpt.
Computer Love
A Woman’s Search for Love over the Internet
In The Beginning
The ivory candles were lit among bouquets of live calalillies, giving a romantic light and serene mood to the beautifully decorated church sanctuary. Red rose petals were scattered on the white runner extending from the front of the church, down the aisle, and to the back, where Daddy and I were standing. The two flower girls looked like dancing ebony dolls as they innocently rebelled against the wedding director’s instructions to stand in place until the end of the ceremony. In terracotta colored dresses, the bridesmaids stood erect, like statues of Nubian queens from a distant land. Joining them were African kings in black tuxedos. Everyone looked so beautiful. Everything was well organized and perfectly placed. The organist struck three soulful chords and the audience stood up to await my grand entrance. I peeped over the well-dressed crowd, searching for Mama, my support. When I spotted her long pressed salt and pepper hair that glowed like her face, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, clutched Daddy’s arm, and walked down the aisle to marry Clifton, even though I knew he wasn’t the right man for me.
Sunday evening, while we were flying back from our two-week honeymoon in Jamaica, my premonitions were confirmed when my new husband turned to me and asked, “Do you mind if we take an AIDS test?”

“An AIDS test?” I asked, baffled by his bazaar question, “Shouldn’t we have taken an AIDS test before we got married? Why do you want to take an AIDS test now?”
Clifton sighed and looked down at the floor. Then he looked back up at me. “Because Jacqueline,” he said, “sometimes people experiment.”
The word experiment didn’t set right with me. I didn’t know if Clifton meant he’d experimented with a freaky woman or if he meant he’d experimented with someone of the same gender. I didn’t want to spoil my high from the feeling of freedom I’d embraced during our stay in Jamaica, so I didn’t ask him to clarify his statement. Instead, I remained perfectly submissive and agreed to be tested.
The following evening, Clifton and I drove to a nearby city where no one knew either of us. As the nurse took samples of our blood, we looked on intensively. After she’d carefully labeled each specimen, we completed a survey, thanked the nurse for her services, and whisked through the lobby past teenage mothers and crying babies.
It would take seven days for the test results to be delivered by certified mail. For the most part, we tried to return to life as normal. I remained calm by filling my schedule with after school activities, books, and movies, but Clifton acted very peculiar and more nervous than I’d ever seen him. He acted as if he were fighting some internal demon. Nevertheless, when the mail carrier delivered the envelope that sealed our fate, Clifton’s uneasiness was explained. While I had tested negative for both HIV and AIDS, Clifton’s status was inconclusive.
Fearing the worst, I wished I could have turned back the hands of time to the day we’d first met, during our college days at Howard University. At the time, I was a junior Elementary Education major and Clifton was a senior, majoring in Polymer Science Engineering. That summer, Clifton, who’d had a flat tire a block away from my apartment complex, saw me outside moving crates, books, and other supplies that I’d used in class to create educational games and colorful bulletin boards. He approached me and asked if I happened to have a spare. I opened my trunk and started shifting boxes of construction paper, wooden blocks, and children’s books around to find the tire. That evening, when he returned it, I invited him in for dinner. Little did either of us know, in a matter of months, we’d move in together.
During our courtship, we created a business plan for our future. We made education and economics our top priorities, but we left God and spirituality somewhere in the background. Five years later, after nights of passionate kinky sex, intellectually stimulating conversations, and trips throughout the country, we met at the altar and exchanged vows.
Initially, we both wanted to live our lives as members of the black bourgeoisie, the upper crust, the African-American elite. But somewhere down the road, after I started attending the empowerment seminars at the Essence Festival in New Orleans, I shifted gears and my views changed. Participating in the conference each year did something to me, for me. I began to see myself, not just as a black woman, but as a child of God, a daughter of Africa, affirming the royal blood that ran through my veins and the melanin imbedded in the dermis of my skin.
As I began spending more time with God through meditation and prayer, my quest for knowledge intensified and connecting with black people throughout the Diaspora became more important than the black Lexus I drove to work each day. I expected Clifton to change too, but he continued to drown himself in America’s economic cesspool of capitalism and consumerism by continually seeking material gain and by competing with his friends and his fraternity brothers for the most expensive cars, clothes, and art. He also continued to feed his spirit with degrading rap music, images of half dressed hoochies on BET, and pornographic movies.
Originally, being married to a sister with a straight and flowing mane fitted the black urban professional image he wanted to portray. But when I changed my hair from long and permed to short and natural, he said, “I want a wife who is pretty! You look like a man with your hair short and nappy like that!”
My reply was, “God knew what he was doing when he made my hair coarse and curly. Why should I change who I am naturally to fit the European standard of beauty?”
The closer I got to God, the more He began to cleanse my heart and my mind, which eventually led to a confrontation with the dirty secret from my past, sexual abuse. I probably should have shared my issues with Clifton earlier on in our relationship, but I didn’t because I wasn’t sure how he would react. Facing my issues alone was too much for me to handle by myself. I needed a shoulder to lean on. I decided that I would tell Mama, especially since she deserved an explanation for my unpredictable teenage behavior, which had fluctuated from extreme withdrawal to downright rebellion.
One evening, after contemplating long and hard, unable to hold the poison inside of my system any longer, I sat down to my black Toshiba laptop and wrote her a letter that chronicled every detail of my past. I told her how my cousin, her nephew, now pastor, would make his way into my bedroom at night after everyone had fallen asleep. Then I told her how he raised my gown, thrust his penis inside of me, and dared me to scream. I even told her how as a child, I’d been afraid of his inappropriate gestures, but how as an adult, living in a land of confusion; I enjoyed the incestuous acts that validated my female qualities, my womanhood, my attractiveness. College days that were supposed to stimulate and nurture intellectual growth and development had been cursed with nights of intense sexual intercourse alternated between my first boyfriend and my first cousin.
After I’d regurgitated every dismal detail from my mind onto the computer, I felt exhausted, yet light-hearted, liberated, and free. It had taken thirty-six pages of run-on sentences filled with grammatical errors and painfully agonizing emotions to tell my story. I needed rest, calming rest, revitalizing rest, rest that would replenish my mental energy. I decided that I would later spell check the document, print it out, and address an envelope to Mama so that I could drop the letter off at the post office the next morning on my way to work.
Leaving every painful detail on the screen, I pulled myself away from the computer, went upstairs into our bedroom, and stretched out across the king-size bed. In the meantime, Clifton, who had normally used the computer only when he wanted to check his e-mail, became curious to find out what had kept me in front of the screen and away from him for over three hours. When I woke up and went back down the stairs to pick up where I’d left off, the disappointing look on his face told me that he’d read everything and in no way was he going to be sympathetic about my abusive past.
“Baby, what are you doing?” I asked Clifton, who was still sitting in the oversized brown leather chair in front of the computer.
He looked at me, shook his head, and called me pathetic, pitiful, disgraceful, a slut, a whore, and trash, without ever opening his mouth. Then he got up, snatched his keys from the coffee table, and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked, somewhat confused and disappointed by his non-verbal response.
“To fuck my damn cousin!” he replied.
Days passed, bringing with them even more devastation and resentment. Now when my husband looked at me, there was no longer that beam in his eye. He remained in our marriage physically, but emotionally, he was unavailable. When I dressed up for special occasions, he no longer complimented me. Each time I reached out to him for a hug or a kiss, he pushed me away. And just as quickly as he’d come in from work, he’d leave again, not returning until three or four in the morning. I was broken-hearted and my spirit became wounded and I wondered if I should have kept the past hidden in the deep crevices of my soul.
With every essence of my being, with every iota of my love, I tried to recapture the romance that Clifton and I had once shared. But after he knocked me through the glass coffee table, I realized that the affectionate stimuli I mustered would forever yield the same disappointing result: REJECTION.
The eve of our first year anniversary continues to weigh heavily on my mind, not because it was a celebration of our marriage, but because it was the day that Clifton showed me just how low down he could be. The tension between us had really started to affect my health in a serious way. The arguments, the continuous pressure of trying to make our relationship work and the verbal abuse caused the hormones that regulated my menstrual cycle to become unbalanced and as a result and without warning, I began hemorrhaging profusely.
I was awakened in the early morning hours by blood clots gushing down my legs. I cried out in horror as I stared at my soaked pink cotton gown and the bloody white sheets on the bed. I became extremely weak. And as Clifton continued to sleep by my side, I continued to weep, afraid for my life. Aware that I needed medical attention, I reached over and shook him gently.
“What do you want?” he asked, agitated by my disturbance.
“Will you take me to the emergency room?” I said, pleading for his mercy. “I’m afraid I’m going to bleed to death.”
“I’m not your damn chauffeur! Leave me the hell alone so I can get some more sleep!” he said, pulling the covers back over his head.
Fighting sharp abdominal pains, I managed to call into work, shower, and get dressed.
God gave me just enough strength to drive myself to the emergency room.
Dragging my body along the wall of the hospital, I struggled in, thanking Him for allowing me to make it without having a wreck. The only thing I remember after that is waking up on a cot in a chilly examination room with nurses surrounding me. I blacked in and out, trying to make sense out of what had happened to both me and to my marriage. I was so incoherent that I couldn’t answer a single question they asked me about my medical history.
Trying to rationalize Clifton’s attitude, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and told myself that he was in a bad mood and that somehow this tribulation was entirely my fault. But I also begin to question myself.
“Is this the way my life is really supposed to be?” I pondered. “Shouldn’t a husband be loving and caring enough to drive his wife to the hospital? What can I do to make him love me?”
When I felt someone holding my hand and massaging my legs, I opened my eyes. Standing by my bed, were a black male nurse and an Indian female doctor. Both had looks of deep concern on their faces. Still drifting in and out of consciousness, I vaguely heard them say something about my blood type, a blood transfusion, and the risk of HIV/AIDS.
The doctor reached over and handed me a clipboard. I scribbled my name on a piece of paper and soon thereafter, the nurse hung a bag of blood on a silver pole and inserted a long needle into my arm. After a while, my condition began to stabilize and I began to feel somewhat better.
“Mrs. Latham, can you hear me?” the doctor asked.
I nodded yes.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded again.
“You are in no condition to drive yourself home. When you came in, your body contained less than one third of the blood that it needs for survival. A normal blood count is thirty. Yours is eight.”
When I realized how close I’d been to death’s door, a tear rolled down my cheek. The doctor squeezed my hand tightly.
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m fine,” I lied.
“Is anyone here with you?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Can you call somebody to drive you home?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I answered, thinking of Clifton, who was probably still asleep.
“We’ll call a taxi for you, if you’d like,” the nurse added.
“No thank you. I’ll just lay here a little while longer and get some rest. I’ll be OK.”
The doctor and the nurse exited the room and for the next two hours, I slept. When I was awakened again, the doctor gave me two prescriptions: one for a bottle of iron tablets to rebuild my blood, and the other for a two-month supply of birth control pills to regulate my cycle. Slowly, I rose from the bed and got dressed, realizing that while the remedy might cure my physical ailment, it wouldn’t cure my somber emotions.