All That Drama (13 page)

“Yeah, then what? Do you want him to stalk you and me and possibly kill both of us in our sleep? I don’t think so! I told you, you just don’t understand. Jessie’s new love, heroin, does not care whether it’s right or wrong. The only thing he cares about is being able to score more drugs and I am the means that he is using to continue to get it and that’s the bottom line. He would kill me if he knew that I told you. I’m only telling you now ’cause he don’t watch my back like he used to.”

“Girl, I don’t understand this; he has been using for some time. Weren’t there signs?”

“Now that I think about it yes but, back then, I did not pay attention.”

“But going from snorting heroin to shooting up, that’s a big step. It should have been written all over him!” Sammie just shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

“Hey, wait, back up. What do you mean, watch your back? This is getting too confusing. Are you trying to tell me that he watches you have sex with other men?” I asked.

Sammie nodded her head. “He used to. He would drive me down to Boulevard and Moreland and make me stand on the corner for hours until I made enough money. We would do it in the back of the car,” she whispered.

I was appalled at her acceptance of the situation. You could not get me to go on Boulevard in the daytime let alone at night. Of course, selling my body would have never been an option either, unless you had a gun to my head and even then I think I would have opted for the bullet, but that’s just me.

Once again, I urged Sammie to get out but I guess I really didn’t comprehend how profound Jessie’s control over Sammie was.

“Sammie, I can’t say this to you enough. I got your back, girl, and one of these days you are going to hear me. If you need a place to stay, come with it. You only have to say the word and we will handle the other bullshit as it comes.”

Sammie shook her head. “It sounds worse than it really is.” We both knew that wasn’t true. I played along not knowing what else to do. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life.

“I’m fine, at least I was,” she said. “Jessie would conduct the actual money transfers and stand guard while I do the do in the back of the car. Jessie said that’s where most whores make their mistake by getting hotel rooms or doing it in gas stations.”

She told me that she was doing at least three to four guys a night. I felt sick to my stomach and my agony left me at a loss for words.

“How much money are you making?” I asked her. Sammie was the only person I knew that was prostituting and I was always curious.

“I don’t even know. I never get to see any of it anyway.”

“Un-fucking believable! You are doing all the work and you don’t get a dime? I’m sorry, girl; all I can say is it wouldn’t be me. If I were going to be a trick, then I damn sure would be getting a treat. You know what I’m saying.”

“I don’t have a choice. Aren’t you listening? He will kill me if I don’t. You don’t understand, Marie. He’s not just doing drugs now; drugs are doing him. He will do anything, and I mean anything to get them,” she shouted, straining her already abused vocal cords. “My number one problem right now is that he does not play lookout anymore. I’m on my own. I just wanted someone to know if I turned up missing.”

Comprehension was slow to evolve but I finally understood; short of leaving the state, Sammie was stuck with him until the shit played itself out. And that is exactly what happened.

No longer content with the money that he was getting from Sammie’s whoring, Jessie started pimping himself. In the beginning he would only offer himself to women but later he really didn’t care. Sammie was not exactly sure how much money he was spending daily on drugs but she assumed it was quite a lot ’cause they no longer had any electronics in the house. Hell, he even sold the damn cordless phone.

He sold the TV, radios, DVD player and most of the CDs and DVDs that they had been collecting. He stopped doing hair all together. He spent his days copping and the rest of the night trying to finance the next day’s activities.

After a while Sammie and I stopped talking about her marriage and Jessie’s exploitation of her ’cause she felt hopeless and I felt helpless. Not knowing any better, we just ignored it. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t scared for her, but what was I to do if she couldn’t help herself? Her situation continued to get worse. She called me one night in tears.

“I’m scared, Marie,” she said.

“What now?” I asked, not meaning to sound so cold but she didn’t give me any other options. I couldn’t do anything but listen.

“Jessie is really nutting up. I am not bringing home the money I used to because he won’t watch anymore. It’s scary out there. Half the time, I don’t know who to trust and the men aren’t offering me much money. I told him it was different than when he was there but he wouldn’t hear it. He said, ‘Ain’t no nigger dumb enough to fuck with your fat ass! Shit, I make more money in one hour than you make all night.’”

“Then tell him to step it up a notch and sit your happy ass on the sofa and count the money he brings in!” I said. “Why do you continue to do this to yourself? I don’t understand Sammie. Just stop doing it. If he’s making all this money, you don’t need to subject yourself to that shit!” I angrily declared.

“How many times do I have to tell you this, Marie. He will kill me, plain and simple. I’m not ready to die yet.”

“Are you going out tonight?” I needed to know but I did not want to know. It was so much easier to plead ignorance.

“Yeah, I’m leaving now. I just wanted someone to know where I am, just in case…” She deliberately did not finish that statement.

“Shit, Sammie, what am I supposed to say or do when you talk like that? Do you want me to go with you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You would get both of us locked up and with Jessie out there doing God knows what, who would bail us out?”

She had a point there. At least with me on the outside, if she got in any trouble with the law, I could always go get her out of jail.

“Call me, girl, if you need me—do you hear me?” I demanded.

“I hear you.” She hung up the phone before I could say anything else to her. “Be careful,” I whispered into the dead line.

I
hung up the phone with Sammie feeling emotionally drained. Sammie had a way of doing that, sucking me into her drama and draining my energy. I needed an instant pick-me-up, so I called my mother. Our conversation was short but that was par for the course. The mother/daughter relationship had been strained ever since I made the decision to make my divorce final and that just didn’t sit right with me. Although Mom seemingly accepted my decision to separate from Keith, I knew that it was still a sore spot with her. Unfortunately, she did not understand that some marriages fail. She was lucky enough to find a man that was as committed to her as she was to him. Every time I tried to speak to her about my marriage we ended up fighting. She was totally against my conviction to make the separation from Keith final. As long as were separated, she felt there was still hope of us getting back together.

Mom was from the old school and she believed that no matter what, marriages were made to last. Only death should break apart two people who were joined by God. Up until my last trip home to Baltimore, I believed that as well. I decided to spend some time with her when I picked up the kids later that evening.

“Hello,” I yelled when I walked in the door of Mom’s house.

“I am downstairs,” Mom yelled from the basement. “I’m just putting their clothes up. I will be right there.”

I realized that it had been a while since I had actually come in the house and sat for a spell. She had redecorated the living room. There was new furniture and she had painted the walls a soft shade of cream. It looked really good. Mom always had a way with decorating. I tried to get her into interior designing after Dad passed away but she said she could not do it for money. She wasn’t hurting financially so I didn’t press the issue. I just thought it would be a way for her to meet more people and keep herself busy.

Mom finally came up the stairs with the childrens’ clothes in her hands. They had stayed with her over the weekend so she washed everything that I had packed for them. Mom was incredible; she even washed the clothes that they didn’t wear.

“Mom, why did you do their laundry again?” I asked. “I asked you not to do that!” I wanted to get angry with her for not listening to me, but that was the way she had always been. Even when I was little, she used to wash my clothes every night and put them back in my dresser. It got me so confused that one week I wore the same thing for three days in a row before some of my classmates started teasing me about it.

“Nonsense,” she said with a wave of her hand. I wanted to argue with her but realized that it was pointless.

“Where are they anyway?” I inquired about Keira and Kevin.

“They are down the street at Pat’s house. Her number is by the refrigerator on that little pad,” she said.

“Oh, well, I’m not in any rush; they can stay down there while you and I visit.” She raised her eyebrows at me but did not say anything as she put their clothes back in the suitcase. I went into the kitchen and turned on the instant pot. I grabbed two cups, the coffee and some sugar. Mom came into the kitchen as the water began to boil. She pulled out a chair and folded her arms defensively across her chest. I did not say anything until I was done preparing the coffee.

I went up to my mother dropping to my knees and hugged her around the waist. I shocked her as well as myself since I had not given into this luxury in quite a long while. I looked into my mother’s eyes and tears began to form in the corners. We stayed that way for about ten minutes and it felt good.

“What was all that about?” she said when I finally took my seat.

“I just wanted to hug you. Dang, can’t a girl hug her own mother?” I said, trying to appear nonchalant about it.

“Sure you can, honey. You just caught me off guard, that’s all.”

“Mom, I owe you an apology. I came over to tell you I’m sorry for the way I have been behaving over the last six months.”

Mom didn’t say anything. She knew what I was talking about and also knew that if she interrupted me before I finished talking there was a good chance that I would clam up and go home.

“I was angry with you for not supporting my decision to divorce Keith and I just wanted to say I’m sorry. You are entitled to your opinion and I need to respect that.”

“Honey, I have always supported you,” she interrupted. “I will say that I was disappointed that things didn’t work out for you two, but I have always been in your corner.”

“Mom, you told me that we should plant a garden together and our love would grow!” I said, starting to get agitated again but quickly lowered my tone. I didn’t want to fight with her; I wanted her to understand where I was coming from.

“I only wanted you to take your time before you rushed into a decision. It’s hard being a single parent in this day and age. I wanted you to be sure that this was what you wanted to do.”

“Mom, that’s the point. I am sure. We have been in Atlanta for two years now. Keith has been here once to see the kids and we saw him when I went home. There is nothing left for us. I was unhappy with Keith for eight years. I told myself that I would hang in there until Keira and Kevin were older, but when I got home from Baltimore I realized that I might not have the luxury of waiting.”

Mom didn’t interrupt so I continued. “I tried to look at Keith in a different light when he came to visit but the feelings were just not there. Remember the first summer we were here when Keira got sick with pneumonia?”

“How could I forget?” Mom said, shaking her head and holding herself.

“I considered taking Keith back then. I was tired of carrying the responsibility for the children by myself. It opened a dialogue between Keith and me, and we started talking again. But it wasn’t enough! Forcing it would have been a bigger mistake than marrying him in the first place.”

“We went through the motions but it just didn’t work, and there is no fault to be placed here. I should have listened to Dad in the first place and never married him.”

We both sat quietly for a few minutes while our coffee grew cold in their cups.

“Marie, baby, regardless of what you think, I never judged you. I may not have understood what you were going through but I still supported you. I wanted you to remember you have a responsibility to those children first and foremost,” she said.

“I know that and I live up to that responsibility each and every day of their lives. They come first but don’t I deserve some happiness, too? Everyone can’t have the kind of marriage you shared with Dad. Sometimes, for whatever reasons, people make mistakes and I’m woman enough to say, I made a mistake marrying Keith.”

“That man loves you, Marie,” she said.

“No he doesn’t—not in the true sense of the words. Not like Dad loved you. Keith loves what I brought to the table. He loved the fact that I would provide for him when he fell short. He loved having me around to sleep with, but that’s it. I’m a possession to him—not a wife or friend. I need more than that and the kids deserve more, too.”

I paused for a cleansing breath and continued. “If we stayed together, I would have resigned myself and them to a life of fighting. Keith and I fought about everything. We could not have a simple conversation about anything without it ending up in a battle. I was sick of arguing.”

“You could have gone to counseling,” she said under her breath.

“Keith would never agree to that and you know it. He said he didn’t need anybody, including you, sticking their noses in our business!”

“You never told me this before,” she said. “You just came back from your vacation, marched in here and said, ‘Mom, I’m getting a divorce’ and walked out. What did you expect me to say?”

“I am sorry I did not break it down for you, but I didn’t really know what to say to you. I didn’t want to disappoint you, but I also did not want to continue along the same path that I was walking either. Do you remember Cheryl from my high school?” I asked.

“Sure, the little girl that used to live around the corner from us in Baltimore?”

“Yeah, she died. She had just gotten married and had another child. It was a boy. I saw her when I went home. I cussed her out for not returning any of my letters since I moved to Atlanta. We made arrangements to go to lunch and catch up and when I called her all that night and the next morning trying to confirm our lunch, she didn’t answer. So I cussed her out again on her answering machine. Her mother called me back and left a message on my voice mail that Cheryl had passed,” I said in a whisper as new tears dropped from my eyes.

For a few minutes, I could not continue as my body shook with fresh sobs and bitter pain. My mother came over to me and put her arms around me. I grabbed her and we cried together. When I calmed down, I continued.

“That day when I saw her, she had been complaining of a headache all day long and her husband wound up taking her to Johns Hopkins Hospital’s emergency room later that evening. The test that they ran did not show anything so they sent her home. Her mother said she woke up during the night and said she could not move. They took her back to the hospital and after further tests, discovered a tumor in her brain. They operated on her immediately and the operation was successful, but the hospital staff dropped her when they were moving her from the surgical table to a gurney. She never regained consciousness.”

I dislodged myself from mom’s embrace and got up to fix another cup of coffee since the other one had grown cold. Mom still had not spoken. We sat and shared our coffee with each of us lost in our own thoughts. I looked Mom in the face and she retuned my stare. “That’s when I decided that life is not promised to any of us. I could spend the next ten years with Keith and be miserable or I could cut my losses and pick up the pieces. Can you understand that?” I asked.

“I understand that. But I don’t understand why it took you six months to tell me that. You are my daughter and your pain is mine to share. How could you be so selfish and withhold that type of information from me?” she demanded.

I got a reprieve from responding when Keira and Kevin busted through the front door.

“Momma,” they both yelled in unison. They bum rushed me, each pulling on a limb to get their kisses and hugs. I looked over their heads and smiled at Mom. We had reached a milestone and we both knew it.

“I’m sorry,” I mouthed and she shook her head in understanding and forgiveness.