AIRING OUT MY DIRTY LAUNDRY

It was June 9, 1986, when this nightmare of a life began. A little background history on Delilah’s parents: Her mother is paralyzed from the waist down and has been classified as mentally retarded by the state of Texas since the day she came in this world. Her father was a man-whore who paved his way through life as a street pharmacist and died of HIV/AIDS at the young age of thirty-three. Her Aunt Ruth is the one and only family member who loves her more than anything in the world. She is the one who started taking care of Delilah at the tender age of seventeen. But the twisted part of the whole thing is that there is a lot of incest in this story. So it turns out that Delilah’s mother and father are brother and sister. Her mother brought this to her attention at the age of ten, and Delilah didn’t want to believe it. But at the age of fourteen, on her father’s deathbed, he felt that she should know. Later on in life, she would find that her brother Joseph was born out of incest as well because his mother and her father were cousins. Although Joseph’s situation was much different from hers, it was also, in a lot of ways, much similar. So now they are up to the count of four—that is, that they know of. Delilah, like characters of many unfortunate untold stories, was inducted into adulthood at an age that was far below, knowing what was to become of her life from that point on. It seems as if she can recall more things that went wrong in her life than any of the good things. She had her first sexual encounter at the tender age of four.