Chapter 2 – Janelle Norris
Chapter Two
Janelle Norris
The bus always runs late when I have somewhere important to be.
The barbershop closes in thirty minutes, so if I want a ride back to my place from my boyfriend, I need to get there before he gets in his car and leaves.
He hasn’t texted me back because he has a Friday afternoon regular he can’t say no to. I get it.
Someone else approaches the bus stop to wait and I stare at my phone hoping the man doesn’t say anything to me.
Men always have something to say when they see a woman minding her business, even if I’m only doing something as simple as waiting for the bus.
Nothing provocative, nothing that even hints at my interest.
The man who sits next to me is blond, tall, and doesn’t look like the type of guy you usually see riding the bus around here. Frankly, he looks like a Southerner or a country boy or something like that.
“Good day, ma’am.”
I offer up a disinterested half-smile. I’m not in the mood to start a conversation. I just want to get on the bus and see my boyfriend. There’s nothing like snuggling up with the person you love at the end of a long work day and I don’t want to entertain any other man’s motivations right now.
“Does this bus take you to Somerville?” the man asks me.
I don’t know why he doesn’t use the app like a normal person.
Maybe he’s from out of town. Ugh. I’m annoyed that he’s talking to me, but I do the decent thing and answer honestly just in case he genuinely wants directions and isn’t just making an excuse to talk to me.
“Yes.”
I glare at my phone now, hoping this man just stops talking to me.
I have a boyfriend. And even if I didn’t have a boyfriend, this guy really isn’t my type.
He’s too tall, his hair is too blond and I don’t trust any white man from the South.
Period. For all I know, he could be here to do the dirty work for immigration enforcement.
A chill runs down my spine, mostly because he keeps talking to me.
“I just moved here, it’s been hell getting around,” he mutters.
My glare intensifies. “Sorry to hear that.”
He gets the hint that time and looks down at his feet, red around the tops of his ears.
The bus arrives. Thank God. I get up quickly and I can feel the man’s eyes watching me as I board.
He doesn’t move. Weird. Why did he just ask me if the bus went to Somerville if he was just going to hang out there on his phone?
I shouldn’t, but I look over my shoulder one last time as I board.
I don’t know why he stands out to me. It’s not because of his looks, although he’s not bad looking.
Just not my type. And I have a boyfriend.
But there’s something strange behind his eyes that makes me wonder about him.
You see strangers like that often in cities and then you never see them again.
It makes you wonder if you’re like that for someone you’ll never meet again – a strangely memorable oddity that sticks out to them.
My boyfriend texts me as I take my seat close to the front.
Rakeem: wmnbdfhhuuu
Janelle: I’ll be there soon.
He must have texted me with his butt again.
Luckily, it’s not a long ride to the barbershop and from there, Rakeem will drive me out to Randolph, just outside Boston, where I live in an elderly couple’s in-law apartment.
I can’t move out unless I want to be homeless because rent in Boston has gotten ridiculous these days.
I definitely can’t afford to live there on what I make…
Not yet at least.
The bus pulls up a block away from the barbershop and I’m giddy on my way over.
I finally get to tell Rakeem the news I got today about my pay raise, and I know he’s going to be so happy for me.
He really is the perfect boyfriend – the black king I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
When I was in my early thirties, I thought I would never find real love and then I went to a Halloween party with my homegirl, met Rakeem dressed as a minion from Despicable Me, and it was game over after that.
We were inseparable.
I open the door to the barbershop and Rakeem’s coworkers stop cutting hair and just stare at me, like it’s weird that I would stop by on a Friday afternoon. (It isn’t.)
“Where’s Rakeem?” I ask Elijah, the guy who owns the shop and got Rakeem into the whole cutting hair business.
Elijah doesn’t answer. He’s still staring at me like I’m a zoo animal while Dominic, the other guy working there, offers up some type of answer.
“What’re you doing here, Janelle? Rakeem is out for a while.”
“I thought he had a regular on Friday.”
Elijah snickers and goes back to cutting hair. I guess he’s leaving all the explaining to Dominic. Something is wrong, I know that, but I don’t know what it is.
“Listen, I’ll call him, okay?”
“No… No, don’t bother…”
Dominic reaches for his phone while I look down at mine, scrolling through my latest texts with Rakeem for signs of anything weird. There are none. There’s just the last butt-text he sent me and then the little bells hanging over the barbershop door jingle and I turn around to see Rakeem.
And someone else.
He drops her hand quickly. But it’s too late and too confusing. The woman standing next to Rakeem looks up at him in confusion. I stare at him, dumbfounded. I know what I’m seeing, but I don’t want to believe it. That’s the problem.
“Rakeem,” My voice slows down. “Who is that?”
“Um, I’m his girlfriend,” the girl says, looking at me. “Who the hell are you?”
What does she mean, his girlfriend? I know what she means, obviously. But I’m so stunned that I stammer out the dumbest thing ever. “I’m his girlfriend.”
Rakeem bends his elbows and holds his hands behind his head.
His girlfriend comes towards me and I don’t even piece together that she’s going to swing on me until it’s too late.
I do my best to catch her fist as it crashes into me, but she shoves me backwards and I go flying onto one of the empty leather chairs in the shop.
Oh hell no. I throw myself back up onto my feet and grab her clothes.
She’s around my size, but I do not want to be fighting with anybody right now.
And my desire to get this over with might mean I have to disable this crazy ass.
She screams as I hold the lapels of her magenta leather jacket and use her body weight to move forward, shoving her into the brick wall close to the entrance.
The woman shrieks and scratches at my eyes with long manicured nails that could easily scratch my eyes out. I pull her forward and slam her back into the wall again.
“Hit me again and I’ll beat the shit out of you,” I scream.
I hear the men in the background making some type of noise but none of those assholes step up to separate us.
The woman moves her mouth like she’s going to spit on me and my ass was not going to let this day get any worse than it already was.
I smack her across the face so the spit flies out of her mouth going over her shoulder instead and then I use my weight to slam her against the wall again, dodging those crazy ass nails as I get her dizzy enough that she can’t fight – so I throw her aside on one of the barber chairs.
Rakeem says my name. “Janelle.”
Does he really think I’m going to stand here and have a conversation about this? I give that cheating ass liar one look and tell him straight up, “Don’t you bother coming to get your shit because I’m throwing it on the fucking lawn. And don’t you ever in your life try to talk to me again, Rakeem.”
He just says my name again like a damn parrot. I don’t look over my shoulder as I walk out of the shop. I’m shaking and I don’t want to get caught up and arrested for assault on the day that was supposed to be the best day of my life.
Fuck. What the fuck am I supposed to do?
I don’t have any money, but I can get some by tomorrow to pay the overdraft fees, so I just get a rideshare about a block away and speed walk away from the barbershop.
If Rakeem came after me, I would have run.
But he never comes. A black rideshare driven by an Ethiopian woman playing a Christian radio station picks me up and she hums gospel music all the way to Randolph.
When I get to my apartment, I don’t want to open the door.
I might have left Rakeem at the barbershop, but he’s everywhere inside.
Tears form at the corners of my eyes as the weight in my chest gets too much for me to bear.
I’m thirty-four. No kids. And the man I spent my twenties with just walked into the barbershop holding hands with another woman like it was nothing.
Like we were nothing. He was a part of all the formative memories of my twenties and I don’t even know who that man is.
If I want to cry, I have to go inside. So I do that.
And I can’t bear to be anywhere but the shower, so I strip my clothing off and cry there, convinced that I’ll never find love again because if this is the best love has to offer me, I don’t want it.
I don’t want any of this.
He didn’t even stop that woman from trying to beat my ass.
I hate him.
I thought he was the love of my life.
But then again…
I cry harder when I finish the shower and my face looks all puffy and my eyes are so red that I look like I spent an hour in a smoky room.
My hair is wet enough that I can twist it into two flat cornrows along the side of my head and have enough length in my natural hair that the braids hit the middle of my chest.
But I look and feel a mess. And once I’m out of the shower, I’m scared Rakeem will come over and try to do…
anything. I don’t want closure. I don’t want to see him again and unpack all the times he lied to me.
This whole apartment feels like a cage that I need to break out of.
I call the only person that I know in Boston willing to come out as far as Randolph after work.