ALL SKINFOLK AIN’T KINFOLK

CARVING OUT A LIFE FOR MYSELF IN SPITE OF....

However, I don’t look Caucasian at all. I am a light-skinned black woman mixed with Hispanic, period. I look more like the actresses Stacey Dash or Reagan Gomez.

Once arriving in Brownsville, I soon found out not only was my father not dead. He was in fact a very wealthy man with a new family.

I lived with my grandmother Maria in her two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Combes, Texas. She was wonderful to me. My dad gave her child support for me until I turned eighteen.

While my father, Victor, and his new family, who didn't want any part of me, lived in South Padre Island, Texas. They called me every black racist slur you can think of to hurt my feelings.

I quickly discovered my father was abusive to my mother and she fled. However, my mother and grandmother had stayed in touch secretly over the years. My grandmother had helped her escape him.

After my mom left with me, it motivated my father to get his life together. Now, he has a chain of hardware stores all throughout Texas. I have two younger siblings, Carlos and Lucinda.

I was able to graduate with honors. I was able to obtain a full scholarship to Texas A & M University. I was able to get a dual degree in Community Health and Business Administration.

I was the class valedictorian of both my high school and university graduating classes. My grandmother and uncle Ricky along with his family attended to support me. My plan was to open my own high-end consignment shop and nursing home.

My dad didn’t want to make waves with his new wife and family. So, he rarely came around. He would just send money or gifts in the mail.

It was a sore spot for his new wife. Due to the fact, he made the mistake of telling her before I ever returned to his life how much he had loved my mother. I happened to look just like my mom. So, I am a reminder of his first love. That had dared to run away from him, and he had never quite got over .

I even heard through the family grapevine that my sperm donor had even made the painful mistake of calling his wife by my mother’s name during s*x a few times in the early part of their relationship.

In addition, both her kids are not scholars. They barely made it out of high school. They wanted no part of college. They just wanted full access to daddy’s wallet.

I learned all this by playing dumb for the first two years. I acted like I didn’t know how to speak Spanish at all or read it. When, in fact, I grew up speaking it with my Dominican and Puerto Rican best friends, Joseline and Bernice. Plus, I had two years of Spanish under my belt from middle school.

I wanted to know who really cared for me and if anyone had any sinister plans to harm me in any way. Playing dumb helped me discover a lot of hidden truths and save me countless times. I learned quickly that my siblings had a grudge against me and wanted me gone with a passion. Nothing good would ever come from having any form of a relationship with them or their heartless mother.

Two years later, I graduated from college and was working at a nursing home in the Human Resource Department. I met and fell in love with my husband, Dylan Hernandez, a second generation undercover DEA agent at the time. He was handsome, charming and confident as well as over-protective. He is an extremely proud Mexican-American man.

However, I soon realized his over-protective nature was more controlling and manipulative in nature.

I was still living at home with my beloved grandmother, Maria Rodriguez. He was visiting an old teacher of his, Ms. Collins at the time we met at my job.

He courted me. I quickly fell in love with him. Within a year, we had eloped to Las Vegas, Nevada for a whole week. When we came back, his father threw us a huge party and a second wedding to celebrate our union with all our family and friends. I had my wonderful Uncle Ricky, and my loyal grandmother Maria walk me down the aisle to the love of my life, Dylan.

My trouble started six months into our relationship. When my little sister, whom I didn’t know at the time, stalked my social media pages. I had posted that I was in an official relationship now.

She started showing up wherever I seemed to be and eventually met Dylan. She was immediately taken with his good looks and started with her plan to steal him away from me.

She pretended to be so sweet, innocent and totally remorseful of her past behavior towards me. She was able to convince my husband. That she was at least only a foolish child, and she never really meant any harm to me. She really didn’t understand her actions at the time.

Which quickly made me the bad guy in his eyes. Since, I was unwilling to forgive her, my brother, their mother or my dad for always taking their side.

Once, they left me stranded in a very rough part of Mexico. I had only gone across the border because they had promised to take me to meet some family members that still lived in Mexico that I had not yet met. They dropped me off in front of a brothel. They turned off their phones and went back across the border.

They had told me to go in while they found a safe place to park, laughing. Something felt off about the neighborhood and listening to the people in front of the place speak in Spanish. I realized quickly before I even entered what kind of place it was and got out of there.

The second strike was that my brother had taken me to a party and put a mickey in my drink. I heard him tell some of his friends once I passed out, they could run a train on me. I was a virgin, so, have lots of fun and make it memorable for me.

I was able to make it safely out of there without them knowing I had left. I thankfully didn't drink any of the alcohol given to me. He had started speaking loudly in Spanish before I had even taken a sip, banking on the fact, I supposedly didn’t know any Spanish.

I was home safely in my bed when he called to find out where I was. I just told him I couldn’t find him and had decided to call it a night. I thought I had texted him. I guess I was too drunk, and the text was never sent. He fell for it. I never went anywhere with him again.

The third and final strike was they had invited me to their house under the pretense of apologizing to me. When I got there, they poisoned my drink and took away my phone.

Luckily, I had made some real friends in Texas. They had me promise to text them I was safe and well every twenty minutes during my visit. When I failed to do so, they promptly contacted the police. They requested the police conduct a wellness check on me.

The police found me unconscious and unresponsive in my father’s home. I was informed if I had been any longer obtaining medical treatment I would have died. I still have stomach issues to this day.

I was twenty years old at the time and still in college. Carlos was eighteen and Lucinda was seventeen at the time. I pressed charges against them. My father wanted me to forgive them and let it go.

My father got them a good attorney and was able to have the case sent to family court. They received mandatory counseling for ten years, 2000 hours of community service and seven years of unsupervised probation along with a ten-year restraining order to stay away from me.

Family was huge for my husband. So, my unwillingness to forgive was not acceptable to him. Especially, since she was my only sister. My brother and his mother even started coming around to support her scheme to steal my husband.

My husband always wanted a little sister, so she played into that unfilled dream. She even started pretending that if I didn’t forgive her, she would kill herself. My husband was raised by his father in a single-parent household. My husband was an only child. My husband always wanted a huge family. His father had been a foster child. So, it was just him and his dad against the world.

His mother had died when he was ten years old from breast cancer. Making me the ultimate bad guy in his eyes, so four years into our marriage we were in a bad spot due to all this family drama.

I was twenty-nine when everything went to hell in a hand basket and if it hadn’t been for that pocket watch I started wearing all the time, I would have died.