Car Accident Claims Lives of Local Couple
Tragedy struck on Route 16 late Friday evening when a two-vehicle collision claimed the lives ofSteven and Carla McKinneyof Federalsburg.
Authorities report that the couple’s car veered off the road, striking a guardrail before overturning. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. Their teenage daughter, Pepper McKinney, received minor injuries, and is being kept for observation as Easton Memorial.
Investigators believe alcohol may have been a factor for the other driver involved whose identity has not yet been released pending charges.
On a warm nightin July as we were leaving the fair a drunk driver took the two people in my life that grounded me to my humanity. The love my parents had bestowed upon me was unmatched by anyone else in my life. According to my parents I was such a happy baby that they were sure that if they tried again their next baby would be a psycho. I’m sure they spoke too soon because by the time I was four years old my mother said she could clearly see the signs that I was different from other kids my age. And not just because I was reading at a third-grade level. The doctors refused to diagnose me at such a young age but if they had, I believe that they would have said that I was a textbook sociopath with a slit personality. Or in medical terms Antisocial personality with dissociative identity disorder, but that would become more noticeable in later years.
My parents taught me early on that I was different and that was okay. But that wasn’t really the case out in the real world. The fact that I was a perfectly normal child only existed in the bubble that they created for me to thrive in under their care.Outside of our home I was the child that other family members gossiped about and wouldn’t let their children play with even though my parents instilled in me that family was everything, something to protect, love and to never hurt.
Things for me came crashing down when they both died in that horrific car accident. Leaving me no moral compass and an ugly scar. Being my parents’ only child, the state had no choice but to place me in the care of my closest relative or put me in foster care. Begrudgingly my father’s sister Demonica took me in after a three-month stint in a group home for teens with psychological issues since the doctors believed my behavior after the death of my parents made me a danger to myself and others. Sometimes I wonder if the group home would have been a better situation. Growing up I had little contact with my aunt, she never hid the fact that she thought I was strange, but like my parents taught me family was important, something to protect and love. I lived with my aunt and my older cousin Tyron who turned out to be the only other person that never treated me like I was different or weird.
While my aunt never outright abused me, she didn’t treat me like she was supposed to either. Often using threats of my return to the group home as a weapon to get me to behave. I think that was mostly because she was lowkey scared of me, like most people that met me were. I would say that I was treated with a sort of mild neglect and disdain. As long as I stayed out of her way she ignored my existence entirely. I learned that if I wanted to make it in this world without my parents I would have to be as normal as possible.
So, I did everything in my power to be seen as normal and after a while it worked, mostly. All my urges and desires that plagued me as a child were forgotten and your average, boring teenager was all that was left, unless something triggered the monster that my aunt knew lurked inside of me. At first it tookwork to be what I thought the world wanted but after a while I became who I thought I needed to be to survive.
But Demonica was always there to remind me of my place in the world and in her house. She felt that at my age I could fend for myself, so if I wanted anything outside of a roof over my head and food in my stomach, I would have to get it on my own. Lucky for me my cousin Tyron cared enough to help me the best he could with school clothes and other essentials that his trifling ass mama refused to buy. Demonica received a check for me every month from social security and my parents’ insurance but still refused to do anything for me. She said the check was her payment for keeping a roof over my head and if I didn’t like it, I could always go back to where I was before she took me in.
I often caught my aunt looking at me like I was a venomous snake she wanted to kill but was scared I might bite her ass. But what could I expect from a woman that thought she was in competition with me. Even though my aunt constantly tried to convince me of how strange and ugly I was because of my scar and weight, she couldn’t deny the looks I got from people ever since I hit puberty. I may have been fat in her eyes, but my fat was proportioned right. I had large breasts, a small waist and a fat ass, that fit my 5’5” 220 pound frame perfectly. If I had to guess she was jealous that she had to pay for the body, I was given naturally.
Now don’t get me wrong Demonica was beautiful, body very much tea after she healed from her surgery. She was blessed with the same smooth chocolate brown skin as my dad with pretty hazel eyes, and long curly hair. She just didn’t get the body to go with it. And after her surgery she had a problem with picking fuck boys that were more attracted to her underage niece than her. My aunts’ home was a revolving door for strange niggas that vied for her time in her, all the while eye fucking her neice any chance they got. If she knew like I did, it was inher best interest to keep them weirdo’s away from me before somebody came up missing and I’m for damn sure it wasn’t gonna be me.
I did everything I could to keep the peace in her home, wearing baggy clothing because it hid my curvy figure from the weird ass niggas my aunt entertained. What’s more fucked up is that wearing clothes that made me less appealing made my aunt treat me better, which kept me from having to remind myself that family was important and not to be murdered in their sleep. That and the fact that I knew my cousin loved his mother even though he didn’t really like her and if I murdered her, it would hurt him. And I just couldn’t do that to my favorite relative.
So therefore, I found an outlet to help me remain sane and calm. Reading was the one thing in my life that allowed me to escape the reality of my parents being gone. It made it less obvious that my emotions and urges were warring with the values my parents had instilled in me. My books grounded me and helped me to keep her in check. When I moved in with my aunt Tyron became another one of my anchors that kept me from spiraling.
I used to hear Tyron and Demonica arguing about my needs and the type of company she kept around possibly triggering me. But like she said she was grown and if he didn’t like it, he could get the fuck out which he finally did two years before my world turned to even more shit than it already was. Tyron called me every day to check in after he moved out and he still visited from time to time to drop-off clothes or a little money for school events. But his departure left me with another gaping hole in my heart, chipping away at my fragile psyche. With no one to guide me I was forced to fend for myself in Demonica’s household. So, by the time I was seventeen the only thing I had going for me was my intelligence, and dreams of a better life and the fact that I had only had minor run ins with schoolauthorities. No matter how I tried I couldn’t keep Nyx contained when bullshit occurred. But nothing could be proven so it was an accomplishment, nonetheless.
Little did I know that what awaited me was much worse outside of it. Because Demonica refused to sign the paperwork I needed to go straight to college after I graduated or give me access to any of the money my parents left for me. I was forced to continue my education at the local community college that offered two years of free tuition to students that graduated from an in-state high school. Thankfully I enrolled in dual enrollment in my last year of high school and was able to complete my prerequisites for my biological sciences degree at the same community college.
We lived in a small rural town on the eastern shore of Maryland, which was about a forty-five-minute drive from the Bay bridge. In a community that thought Ocean City was the end all and be all of beach life, a crab feast was a requirement during the summer, scrapple was a breakfast staple and that if you graduated and got a job at one of the local factories you had made something of yourself. There was no space for a fat orphaned black girl with mental illness in my community. People had their own shit to deal with.
Fortunately for them I had bigger dreams beyond driving across the bridge to visit Baltimore or DC on the weekends and had no interest in staying here. The first step to being free of all of this was to get the hell out of Federalsburg, Maryland immediately leaving behind the drama that had become my life since I moved in with this wench. And then maybe my dream of becoming an anesthesiologist and living a life like the ones in my books where the FMC got to live their happily ever after.
The only thing that was holding me back was my irrational fear of planes and the fact I had no money, and the weight of my abusive, cheating boyfriend hanging around my neck like anoose. Oh, and did I mention the daily threat of being thrown into a mental hospital now that I was too old for a group home for any type of disobedience. Taye had come into my life when all I needed was someone to love, protect and never leave me and he preyed on that, using it to trick me into believing that he was all the family I needed. Once I got with my Taye, it was like I became invisible to everyone.
Demonica no longer had to worry about her men wanting me because they knew I was off limits because of him. And I didn’t have to worry about people saying nasty things about me as long as I was with him. Taye was handsome, popular and charismatic, everything that I wasn’t, and people looked at him like he was royalty around here. At first, I didn’t see anything wrong with being with him. He was a little rough around the edges, but he overlooked all of my flaws and that was what I thought I needed. I thought his jealousy, controlling ways and possessiveness was love, but I was sadly mistaken.
I learned the hard way that he was manipulating me into being dependent on him. He used my desire to be loved and have a family to control me. It kept me from being able to grow and step out on my own. He trained me to be scared to be out on my own, fearing that people would judge me and treat me poorly because of how I am or how I looked. So, I stayed until it became too much.
My aunt thought he was the best thing since sliced bread, but Demonica wouldn’t know a good man if he fell out of the sky and landed in her bed. Sometimes I felt that she only wanted me to stay with Taye not just because of the money he provided but because she wanted him too, not to mention he kept me in line, her words not mine. I saw how she watched us together sometimes and the evil looks she gave me when I was with him. He was always here keeping an eye on me and that gave her more access to him. But then again, I never got the sense thathe liked her more than just as the mother of his brother. But Demonica was a money hungry hoe, and you could never put anything past her. Including fucking someone else’s man. In this case though I kind of wish she had and saved me the years of trouble that I endured.
Taye was the perfect gentleman when I first met him in person two years ago. I had secretly crushed on him from a distance for years, always wondering if he was the type of man I read about in my books. He was my cousin Tyron’s half-brother on his dad’s side and I saw him at a few barbeques throughout the years growing up. He was so handsome, standing at six feet two inches, two hundred and thirty pounds, he had the build of a basketball player with dark brown skin, beautiful brown eyes with lashes that women would kill for, black curly hair, perfectly lined mustache and goatee and the prettiest smile I have ever seen on a man. He came to the fourth of July BBQ at my aunt’s house, the summer after I turned eighteen.
We stole looks at each other the whole afternoon. I couldn’t believe someone as fine as him was checking for me. I mean I’m no slouch in the face department, but sometimes constantly hearing how ugly the scar on your face was starts to dampen a girl's confidence. My parents and all their friends always told me how beautiful I was and how much me and my mother looked alike with my face framed by big natural 4C curls, dark brown skin with reddish undertones, dark brown eyes with a hint of honey in them, a button nose with thick lips and a beauty mark over my lip. But I wasn’t the big booty Instagram model men like Taye went for with the modelesque figures and tons of makeup. My aunt often told me after she noticed my change to baggy clothes that I needed to stop being a tom boy that dressed like I was looking for a girlfriend and that I was too big not to keep my appearance up.
“You too big to be walking around looking like you just rolled out of bed. At least try to look presentable. Pretty soon people gon start thinking you a stud, damn.” She said all the time.
But I had grown comfortable walking around in ballin’ shorts, T-shirts, and tennis shoes.
Taye smiled and joked as he charmed everyone in attendance. I watched him occasionally as he made his rounds. About an hour before the BBQ wrapped up, he approached me with my cousin for our actual introduction. I looked up from the cup of iced tea I had been sipping and was greeted with his gorgeous smile.
“Pepper, this is my brother Taye. You remember him, right?” Tyron said, formally introducing us.
“Yeah, hi.” I said, looking back down still a little uncomfortable with making eye contact. I noticed how close he was standing next to me, causing a faint buzzing in my ears when I became anxious.
“Hello, baby girl. Can I sit with you?” He asked.
