MY COUSIN MARRIED MY FIANCE'

When my cousin eloped with my fiancé to Las Vegas and posted her wedding video and announced on F******k, she blamed me.

She told everyone I was so neglectful of my fiancé that I deserved this betrayal. Our family became divided on the matter. She told everyone that I was so focused on caring for my dying father and work that I failed to be present for my fiancé emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically.

What hurt me the most was my own mother and siblings taking her side against me. Why do they always treat me like the black sheep of the family? And why do they always try to portray me as the villain? Why do they always treat me like a second-class citizen, like the maid in my own home......... in my own family?

My cousin Keisha Yvonne Harris has always been mean to me for no reason. She has always tried to compete with me, even in school. My cousin Keisha has always been the very helpful type. She's always ready to lend a helpful hand if it will benefit her. She has always tried to use me as a scapegoat to get out of whatever trouble she has failed herself in for some reason.

She once maxed out her mother's credit card, saying it was to help me pay off my gambling debts. It took me a whole summer to prove that it wasn't me and I never got an apology from anyone. After that, she racked up $2000 worth of collect calls from her boyfriend at the time that was in jail and blamed it on me. She had informed her parents that I had a secret boyfriend and came over to use their phone while they were at work, and she covered for me. The truth was not revealed until a month later when some neighborhood boys confronted her mom about the protection money they were promised by her daughter from her. Her parents quickly paid the boys and moved to another neighborhood. But not before her father checked the mail and discovered love letters from the jail address to their daughter. Again, no apologies.

Then, the time she stole her parents' income tax return check in middle school to pay a boy to be her boyfriend. She blamed me again, saying I came over to visit during Valentine's weekend while her parents were out. I must have stolen it then. If it had not been for the boy's mother noticing her son spending lots of money, I would have been blamed. The boy's mother, being a single parent and fearing her son was selling drugs, demanded the truth from him. He quickly confessed that Keisha gave it to him to be her boyfriend. Luckily, he had only spent $250 of the $8000, and she contacted the school and arranged a meeting to give the money back to Keisha's parents. She was an honest God-fearing woman who believed in doing good and right by others. She even replaced the $250 that her son had spent.

Last time she and my older sister, along with three of their friends, decided to rob a bank. They robbed the bank and attempted to flee the scene. They took the police on a highway chase. I was outside gardening and playing chess with my elderly neighbors who were always kind to me in my parents' neighborhood.

When Keisha and Tiffany called, they invited me to have dinner with them and go to the movies. I should have known something was up. They never invite me to hang out with them ever or their friends. They said they were on the way and to be ready. I ran into the house to change and freshen up, and I was back on my elderly couple's front porch 20 minutes later waiting for them.

They showed up in a blue Ford sedan I had never seen. They told me to have a seat in the car while they ran into the house to use the bathroom. I didn't think anything of it. Unbeknownst to me, they had run into the house and out the back door, quickly grabbing different shirts as they fled out of the house.

Before I knew it the car was surrounded by the police who had their guns drawn on me. If it wasn't for the whole neighborhood coming to my defense and the elderly couple willing showing the video footage from the security camera showing me being present with them all day and even my sister, my cousin and their friends' arrival and then, them going into the house. I would have been a goner. They would have put them handcuffs on me.

I dared to think of what would have happened to me. They were sentenced to four years in prison and received 10 years on probation. My family took loans out on their homes for both girls for bail and to pay for good attorneys. I was forced to testify against them. My family was **** with me. However, I was ordered to testify by the state's attorney's office for the State of Pennsylvania.

But I felt I did not owe them any loyalty. Especially when they set me up to take the fall for them. My family even begged me to say I was involved in some way or to take the fall for them in some way, but I refused. I was eighteen then, and I had just graduated from high school. I wasn't doing it.

I wish I could say my cousin, aunt, uncle and my parents or even my siblings had apologized to me for believing I could do those terrible acts. I wish I could say they have apologized for anything that they've said or done to me, but I can't.

Even doing holidays or family gatherings, I was forced to cook and serve everyone. I was never allowed to eat with everyone else. I had to eat in the kitchen all alone. When my father bought school clothes or Christmas presents for all his kids, he bought my siblings stuff from Macy's or Best Buy and all my stuff came from Walmart or Kmart.

I remember one horrible summer, when I was twelve years, I was sent to my Father's sister house in Baltimore by myself for the whole summer vacation. My aunt's new husband and his three older teenage sons made me increasingly nervous with their unwanted advances till one day my Aunt had went to the supermarket and left me home with them. They lured me into basement and tried to gang rape me. I barely managed to escape and run out of the basement door and deep into the woods.

I ran and ran until it was pitch black and I came upon State Park and saw a elderly white couple. I ran up to them and asked if I could have something to drink and if they could call the police for me. They gave me something to drink and drove me to the nearest State Trooper precinct since they didn't own a phone. I told the police what happened and my parents came and got me. All the adults lied and said I was a problem child and making up lies for attention.

I was beaten with an extension cord and told never to talk about it again. However, two years later the four of them were arreested for gang raping the next door neighbor's daughter and then killing her. They had placed her body in the dumpster behind the local neighborhood shopping center hoping it would not be discovered. However, hidden cameras in that area led to their fast capture as well as DNA results. They are now serving life in prison.

My name is Ivanka Marie Harris. My parents are Mary and Donald Harris. I have four siblings: Tiffany, William, J.R. and Sharon. My nickname is Ivy. Like Poison Ivy because once my sisters' purposely made me hide in a bunch of poison ivy, playing hide and seek as a child. I looked awful and felt awful for two solid weeks. I'm the youngest child, but it was still my fault. I should have known better at 6 years old. They were 16 and 14 years old at the time.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, or dead, is entirely coincidental.