Chapter 35 #2
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did?” she mutters. “Please tell me you didn’t agree to go back to him. You’re not with him now, are you?”
“No.”
“So you signed the NDA?”
“No. I…I think I fell in love.”
“I’m sorry. Come again?”
“I think I fell in love.”
The second time it comes out of my mouth, that light and dark feeling bursts inside of me and jolts my body forward.
I grab hold of the toilet seat.
It’s that same feeling I kept getting while I cried in bed. It made me want to leap out of it and run to Rich again, but his silence held me back.
“Love, as in the four-letter word?” Yessenia asks. “The same love that had me running around the Bronx half-naked with a broken nose and a screaming baby? The same love that has you hiding out in Texas and dodging NDAs? You’re talking about that love?”
I pinch my eyes shut. “I know I sound ridiculous, but I think this is a different love.”
She blabbers out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t understand. I’m trying…but I just really don’t understand.”
“Me neither.”
The city grows quiet in the background, and I hear the familiar “Hey, how are ya?” from the security guard outside the Liberty Tower. It was the same greeting he gave me when I had strolled inside with my bruised rib and signed in under the alias Yessenia gave me.
“So you mean to tell me that AJ and his people are chasing you across the continental USA and you’re over there talking about you think you fell in love with another man? I mean…it is a man, right?”
“Yessi…”
“It’s a fair question.”
“Yes, it’s a man.”
She scoffs. “It’s only been a month. How could you possibly fall in love in a month?”
A wave of warmth rolls through my body, and all I see are Rich’s dark eyes, and all I feel are his rough hands on my skin trying to shoo away that mucky feeling that just won’t stay away.
“So what’s wrong with him?” she asks.
“What?”
“What’s wrong with this dude you say you’re in love with?”
“Who says anything has to be wrong with him for me to feel this way?”
“Ramiro was an alcoholic I thought I could turn into a sober Mr. Right. AJ had so much childhood trauma from his dysfunctional, perfectionist family that you let him turn you into his punching bag while you tried to do everything in your power to fix the parts of him that his parents broke. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that we have the best taste in men. So what’s wrong with this one? Huh?”
Rich’s secret squeezes my pounding heart. I hold on to it as tight as I can. I even try to push it to the back of my brain as if Yessenia can read my thoughts.
“So much that you would judge me for, and I don’t think I’d even be offended,” I reply breathlessly.
“Goddamn it, Lovie,” she hisses. “Please tell me he doesn’t know what you’ve been through with AJ? You know better than to tell him that. I always told you never to tell a man what you’ve been through.”
I glance at Ginger’s cat eyes and wispy tail swinging back and forth against the bathroom floor.
“He knows, doesn’t he?” Yessenia mutters. “You told him.”
“I didn’t. He just looked at me and knew.”
“Fuck.”
We both grow quiet. Ginger purrs over the music playing from the sunroom, and Yessenia’s heavy breaths make me wrap my arm around my body.
“I know you think I’m terrible, but this…this isn’t what I felt for AJ. This is something else.”
“I don’t think you’re terrible,” she whispers. “That would be pretty hypocritical of me to think that. So what’s the difference between the love we know and this new love you say you feel? What’s different?”
“I…I’ve been on this Earth for eighteen years without a mama and daddy.
I’ve gone so long without a mama’s hugs, a daddy’s wisdom, and most of all without that unconditional love that only a parent can give you.
I know my aunt loves me, Yessi, but when I’m in this man’s arms I feel everything I’ve been missing.
He holds me in a way I haven’t experienced, that wisdom comes out of his mouth with ease, and I can tell him anything and he’ll still look at me like I’m pure—as if I haven’t been tainted by another man’s fists—as if those fists didn’t break me down into a million little embarrassing pieces.
He looks at me like I’m whole—like I’m perfect. ”
A door slams in the distance, and the rowdy streets of New York City sneak their way back into the lulls of our conversation.
She sniffles. “You know I’m trying my damnedest to hate this dude, right?”
“That’s valid. That’s really valid because I’ve tried my hardest to do the same.”
“So where is he now?”
“He made me leave him,” I murmur with a cracked voice.
“He says I need to finish putting myself back together. He thinks he can’t give me the life I deserve.
He thinks he’ll ruin my life because of all the bad he’s done.
But he’s already inside me and I’m inside him.
I have a piece of him that I can’t let go of.
I came home so numb, and he taught me how to feel everything again.
God, what would your blanquita therapist say about me? ”
I swipe my wet nose as we both snicker.
“I…I think she’d say that maybe this guy is holding onto a piece of you just like you’re holding onto a piece of him. Maybe the piece he’s holding is the one you need to finish putting yourself back together, but what do I know? I still haven’t graduated from therapy.”
“This isn’t the way to Mr. Jackson’s,” I mumble, staring out of the passenger window of Aunt Faye’s car at the tall townhomes squeezed onto the lot where the Auto Depot used to be.
She sighs. “Yeah…we’re not going to Mr. Jackson’s. I told him I’d be by later this week.”
“So, where are we going?”
“To run an errand.”
That painful silence settles between us again while we pass Lockwood. She smells loud. The skunky scent clings to her clothes and hair.
I crack the passenger window to let the warm outside air filter in and glance at her out of my peripheral. “Uncle Kenny know you smoke weed with Ms. Vera when you’re upset with him?”
She squeezes the steering wheel, keeping her hands at ten and two. “Lovie…”
“I’m not being a smartass. I just want to know.”
“No…he doesn’t.”
We roll up to the red light at Bayou Bend, and my body angles itself toward the sidewalk, yearning for a piece of Rich, but LaTanya isn’t weaving in and out of traffic with her cup. My eyes dart from the bus stop to an empty parking lot where a few people are sprawled out underneath blankets.
“She’s probably over at the Green’s rooming house. Senior pays for her room there,” she mutters. “It’s decent.”
My shoulders drop. “So all those times you stopped and gave her money, it was because you knew her…”
“I would’ve given her money regardless because she’s a woman, but yes.
The first time I met her was at the Mitchell’s down in the Bottoms. Lorraine was having a barbecue for her husband’s birthday, and LaTanya was there—pretty, with skin the color of sugarcane molasses, and so drunk she could hardly walk straight.
I wanted to hate her when I first saw her.
I wanted to hate her so damn bad. I remember Senior left me in the kitchen to go talk to Mr. Mitchell and LaTanya waltzed up to me in her halter top and low-rise jeans—looking me up and down like she was gonna swing.
” She snorts out a laugh. “Then she asked me if I had held and kissed her baby goodnight before me and Senior left the house. I told her I had snuck and done it when Senior was waiting for me in the truck. I thought she wanted to argue about me taking care of her kid, or I figured she might’ve been jealous that I was dating Senior. ”
There’s a lightness in her voice I’ve never heard—not even when her and Uncle Kenny were on good terms.
She sputters out a low laugh. “Do you know that lady flung her drunk ass in my arms and told me to keep doing what I was doing because her baby needed that? She said he needed a nice woman in his life to hold him because she couldn’t. I learned that night that LaTanya’s not a fighter.”
I smirk. “So Rich is the product of a lover and a fighter?”
She lets out another quiet laugh and tosses her head against the headrest. “Yeah, I guess he is.”
She pushes on the gas pedal, and we glide through LaTanya’s intersection, leaving their memories behind. That painful silence comes back and settles between us again.
Aunt Faye clears her throat. “So, what’s your plan?”
“For?”
“For AJ and that NDA. Kenny texted me and said Blake called him.”
“Rich said not to sign anything, so I won’t. AJ should move on and Blake should lose Uncle Kenny’s number.”
“You can’t live and die by what Rich says. Y’all ain’t together.”
“You live and die by what Senior says, and y’all aren’t together.
As a matter of fact, you go to Beatrice’s and sit by his bedside every week, and y’all aren’t together.
That’s why I’ve been cleaning Mrs. Farris’ place alone.
It’s why I cleaned Rich’s house alone when I first came home because you were at the Barnes’ ranch—living and dying by whatever Senior ingrained in you. ”
I cut my eyes at her, waiting for an explosion of emotions to burst out of her like they did when her and Uncle Kenny argued, but she props her arm on the window and drops her head in her hand instead.
“I know about everything—Jamari, the debt, Melo Barnes—all of it.”
She stares at the back of the pickup truck in front of us with a stone-like expression.
“Are you gonna say anything?” I ask.
“What am I supposed to say? What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything. Tell me it’s all gonna work itself out like you told me it would the second time AJ cheated. Tell me Rich will wake up one day and answer my calls and say he was just overreacting. Tell me something.” My throat and chest tighten. “I…I just need something.”
“I can’t, Lovie.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s been twenty years and I’m still here fighting for his daddy to tell me the same shit!
To tell me he’s been overreacting all this damn time!
To tell me I can take care of him!” She slaps the steering wheel, and my body jerks.
“I love Rich, but Sonia would roll over in her grave if I encouraged you to chase a man who killed somebody. Yes, what Jamari did to Arnez was horrific, but Rich took a life. This ain’t some movie where things get wrapped up with a neat lil’ bow in the end.
This is the real world. I told you to be careful with him. I warned you.”
That light and dark feeling materializes again. It floats in that uncomfortable silence that keeps lingering between us. I feel it in the pit of my stomach along with that word—killed.
“The best thing for you to do is to move on from Rich and AJ,” she murmurs in a trembling voice. “Blake said they’d give Kenny a new AC unit and punching bags for the gym if we signed that agreement, right?”
I nod, wrapping my arms around my middle to make that feeling settle as it thrashes against the bottom of my stomach.
“Forget that AC unit and those punching bags. Make him pay you. Take him to the goddamn cleaners for putting his hands on you and silencing you afterward. It won’t fix your head or your heart, but dammit he owes you.
You take whatever money you can get out of him and go back to school, get yourself a car, a nice townhouse in midtown or something. Just get away from here.”
She drives into Heritage Bank’s half-empty parking lot and pulls into the first space she sees.
“But what if I can’t?” I ask, pressing down on my stomach.
“You can.”
“I…I can’t leave Rich here to fight this alone.”
“Rich is a grown man.”
“But I’m the strong one out of the two of us. That doesn’t mean he’s weak…it just means that…that my brain is different. Mentally, I’m the tough one.” I shake my head, glancing down at my trembling hands.
“Lovie, I…I’ll be here with Rich. I’m not gonna leave him high and dry. I love him like a son.”
“But he’s never had anybody to love him completely—not maternally, but in a relentless, unyielding way that only a lover can. I love him.”
“And I love his daddy, but look where that got me—living and dying by his every word while he holds a piece of me hostage. He has me so messed up in the head that I’m here after he told me not to do this.
” She shoves the car’s gear into park, then points toward the quiet entrance of the bank.
“I’m here—desperate and fighting for a way to come up with two million dollars to pay off Melo Barnes for his son because of that piece of me he keeps with him.
I’m about to ruin my marriage over him and that missing piece to my heart he just won’t give back. ”
She lets out a quiet choke and stares at me with bloodshot eyes. “Rich is his daddy’s son. I can’t tell you that you can undo thirty years of bullshit ingrained in his head, and I can’t sit here and tell you he’s gonna get away with what he did. I just can’t.”