Cajun Woman

I was a freshman college student driving home for the weekend. It was raining when I left. I took a shortcut on a farm to market road yo get to the interstate and it was raining harder. It kept raining, so hard I could barely see the road when I slipped off the pavement, lost control and slid down the embankment and roled, landing upside down at the bottom of the ditch. I was caught upside down by the seatbelt. And the ditch was filling with rainwater. I went mad with fright, until I lost consciousness.

I came to with a man lifting me up into the seat so he could release the seatbelt, he released me into the water and pulled me out through the broken window. He grabbed under my arms, pulling me up the embankment, he fell and we lay there with the rain in my face. He recovered and got me up and into a pickup, and took me to his house, a trailer in the woods.

He stripped me, a woman telling me to lay still. With only my underwear on he felt me all over, the woman telling me I was fighting the wrong enemy. After he was sure I had no broken bones, he started on the cuts and bruises of pulling me through the broken window and up the embankment. I kept my eyes on his eyes, quiet, let him touch me and wash my cuts.

He left me with the woman, who helped me out of my wet underwear. "You're a lucky girl" she told me, "Papaw saved your life". I won't say I calmed down, I was scared.

Papaw became my foster father, and full time 'man' friend. He 'possessed' me. My body in his hands was a toy for him to play with. I never felt scared, I felt resigned. "Papaw loves you, you be a good woman to him". I tried hard to be a good woman, I was still a child really, in the hands of a man.

I switched between going home and going to Papaw's. "You're a woman now, Papaw needs a woman not a kid". I had to be a woman. When I graduated he bought me a pickup, a red neck Cajun pickup. I moved in once and for all. I settled there. I managed a job at the Bank in town, became part of the community. Papaw had it in him, I have three kids. Papaw built a house and cleared some of the property so the kids have a yard.

Red neck Cajun living, four wheelers, pickups, crawdads, boudin. The kids don't much like grandma's house in Houston. They aren't inside kids like I was. I'm home schooling, Papaw gave in. City girl, in a red neck world. Papaw loves me way to much, when I'm his arms I'm his woman. Kathy, his sister makes sure of that. "Don't forget, you breathe 'cause Papaw went back for you". I know, I know. Papaw loves me and I love him.