Suddenly, I was laughing and back in good spirits again. I didn’t drink too much because I didn’t want anyone to
have
to come and get me.
When I walked in the house, Tracey and the kids had gone upstairs. I stood in the kitchen, staring at Dwight while he stared at the television. I sat at the kitchen table in the dark. “Dwight.”
“Yes,” he said without turning to face me.
“Are you sleeping out here again?”
“Nah, I’m sleeping upstairs.”
I rationalized there would be periods where one wife would get more attention than the other. I began to feel sorry for Tracey, for all the times when I was so confident and content, knowing he was more connected to me than to her. I didn’t like the way I felt. It was empty and lonely in a house full of people.
Tracey
T
he day had come. Alicia awoke to my man for what would be the last time. I got up and got dressed. I was feeding DJ breakfast when she came down the steps smiling at her son. I was acting too normal, even told him to say bye-bye to Mommy. I probably missed my calling, because I should be in Hollywood for my acting skills. Alicia didn’t suspect a thing. We talked as usual and I even offered to make her breakfast. She had no clue that I’d put the girls on a plane an hour ago. Danielle would meet them at the airport.
Dwight had turned in his resignation nearly two weeks ago. He was waiting for me to call and let him know when she left. We were on our way home, back to our normal life. And most important, she had no clue that the “life insurance” document granted full custody of DJ to Dwight and me.
The minute she walked out the door I started bringing bags out of the basement and dialed Dwight. “She’s gone.”
“I’ll be right there,” he said.
The movers would be here in two hours, so I started throwing things in big garbage bags, in the same hasty fashion that I left Jacksonville to come here.
The movers came in wearing blue jumpsuits and moved all our belongings in a matter of hours. Our house was empty and echoed as I walked through it to make sure we didn’t leave anything. All that was left was Alicia’s bedroom furniture and a bunch of her other random belongings. I looked around and couldn’t believe it had been an entire year and I was finally doing what I intended on doing when I first arrived: take my man home. Dwight looked around and then at me and said, “I’m so sorry I took you through this. I don’t ever want to look at another woman.” He took my hand and we walked out of the hellhole together.
Alicia
I
t seemed awfully weird that I hadn’t spoken to Tracey or Dwight all day. I called his office phone and it kept going to voice mail. I tried the house and the phone just rang. Around five, I got concerned. When I called the day-care center to find out if Tracey had picked up DJ, they told me that he hadn’t come in. My heart dropped.
I hoped everything was okay. In a frenzy, I ran out of work and flew in and out of traffic. I was reluctant to do so, but I called my mother. I didn’t want to alarm her. It was primarily an attempt to calm myself down. Why did the tremble in her voice frighten me more?
“Ma, why aren’t they answering the phone?”
“Baby, maybe they took the day to spend time alone. I don’t know. I wish I had the answer.”
My heartbeat was in my ears because I couldn’t hear anything else as she attempted to rationalize my hysteria. My high speed slowed as I approached the house. I bit my lips. Calm down. These emotions are uncalled for. I peeled from my car. Huge tire tracks were in the lawn and my stomach began to bubble.
I opened the front door and the echo slapped me in my face. Empty! I rushed into the kitchen. Empty! I ran upstairs. Empty! I screamed for Dwight. I cursed at Tracey. “Somebody answer me! Where are you?” I ran into my bedroom. Everything that belonged to DJ, gone. I yelled, “No! No!”
I wanted to fight. I rushed into the kitchen searching for a knife. Everything in all of the drawers was gone. I wanted to run her over with my car. They all had smiled in my face this morning and everything now was gone. What did I do to deserve this?
I called and I called. My legs eventually couldn’t bear the pain, and I found myself lying on the kitchen floor, crying. “Please, Lord. Please. Tell me this is all a dream.”
Still, I hadn’t absorbed everything. They had stolen my baby. Suddenly, my strength reappeared. I hopped up from the floor. I dialed 911.
In between sniffles, I said, “I would like to report a missing child.”
I was hysterical as I tried to explain that my son’s father and his wife kidnapped my son. The police came and interrogated me.
Just find my damn son!
I paced back and forth. The officers kept asking if they had left any notes or messages. Finally, we discovered a short note on my dresser explaining that they had gone back to Jacksonville. And the only explanation for this irrational stunt was that they no longer wanted to be a part of this arrangement. They wanted to go back to a normal life. In so many words, they were saying that I was the only eccentric one in the relationship and they were tired of living a lie. What prevented them from just talking to me? Why couldn’t they just tell me? While I tried to explain the letters and our arrangement to the cops, I broke down. I thought we’d found the solution to an age-old problem, but everything had blown up in my face. The cops kidded about how cool they imagined our life to be. Did this shit look happy? This was stupid. I was stupid. At the end of the day, I was a mother trying to make things work with the father of her child. Did anybody see that I was in pain? My son could be anywhere on the road to Jacksonville and I was being questioned. After seemingly hours, they granted an AMBER Alert.
DJ’s picture and name was posted on news stations from Maryland to Florida. I sat on my mother’s couch and it flashed across the screen. I finally wanted to be a mother. I needed to be the best mother I could be. Just as I basked in believing I could get over, I got played. I’d treated Tracey like a live-in nanny. I failed to recognize the obvious love between her and Dwight. I cried because he was gone. I cried because I had convinced myself that he loved me more. I muffled my anguish with one of my mother’s accent pillows. She rubbed my back and repeatedly apologized. She swore this was her fault.
It wasn’t her fault that I’d grown to trust Tracey. It wasn’t her fault that Dwight made me believe that I was the treasured wife. And most of all, it wasn’t her fault that I had settled for this type of relationship.
We held each other and cried. All she ever had was me and I was the most important thing in the world to her. What would I do without her? What will I do without my son?
Tracey
T
he moon was following me down the same highway I came up. We had Dwight’s car in tow. I had accomplished what I had set out to do. It didn’t work out exactly how I’d planned, but it didn’t even matter anymore. I was so blessed I had gotten away from that stupid bitch. She didn’t deserve Dwight. I was tickled just thinking about her coming home to an empty house. She probably called her mother and they sat on the steps and cried with each other.
Once we were back in Jacksonville, everything would fall right back into place. I missed my house. This ordeal was over, thanks to Mama Dee’s ingenuity. We still hadn’t decided how we were going to explain DJ to everyone. I guess we were just going to have to tell the truth.
It is what it is.
The darkness of the winding road was making me tired. We had just crossed the South Carolina state line. We had been on the road for the past seven hours. Two hundred fifty miles from home. I’d had been doing eighty since I started driving. I began to search for a radio station to listen to. Country music stations seemed like the only stations I could pick up, then I heard an oldies station playing Diana Ross—“I’m Coming Out.” Oldies were better than country music. The loud beat pumped me up more than I already was. As I sang along with Ms. Ross, I noticed police headlights behind us, so I slowed down. A ticket was the last thing I wanted to get. The cop raced up to the car as if he were going to crash into us. I pulled over to the side to let him go around. But instead of going around, the cop car flagged us over to the side of the road. Why was he stopping me? I woke Dwight.
“Dwight, wake up. The cops pulled me over,” I said, as I nudged Dwight and the cop got out of his car. I hated these little racist towns. They didn’t have anything better to do than to harass us. I heard the police officer’s radio going off and he answered back, “I stopped them. I’m at marker 452.” Before he reached the car, two other police cars pulled up in front of us.
“What’s going on?” Dwight asked as he looked around at all the commotion.
“I don’t know.”
The police officer came to the window and asked me for my license. I handed it to him. He just looked down at the license and then asked Dwight for his.
“Can you tell me what I did, officer?”
He didn’t respond to my question.
“What do you need his license for? You still didn’t tell me why you even pulled me over.”
He flashed his light on DJ in the backseat.
“Ma’am, can you get out of the car?”
“For what?”
“Get out of the car!” The officers came over to Dwight’s window and asked him to get out of the car also.
“For what? I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Ma’am, this is the last time I’m going to say it. Get out of the car with your hands up,” the officer yelled.
I looked over at Dwight.
“Just listen to him.” DJ was still asleep as the police officer instructed me to place my hands behind my back and place my fingers between each other. Then he put handcuffs on me.
“What are you arresting us for?”
“For the kidnapping of Dwight Wilson Junior.”
“What?”
“There is a National AMBER Alert. For you, and this child.”
“That’s our son. We didn’t kidnap him. We have custody of him. Please look in the glove compartment—you can see all of our paperwork.” The officer went to the car and pulled everything out. He studied the paperwork. “We still have to take you in.”
“You see the evidence right here.”
“Yeah, but this all can be fraudulent. If this is real and you are telling the truth, then we will have to let you go,” the officer said.
Maybe I did the wrong thing. Maybe I was wrong and about to get caught
, I thought as I was whisked away to the police station.
A few hours later an older white man who identified himself as Lieutenant Mitchell came to my cell and said, “Ma’am, I am sorry. But when an AMBER Alert comes across we have to take them very seriously. We had to bring you into custody to verify everything was legitimate.”
Alicia
W
hen the investigator called, he said, “Ms. Dixon.”
I nodded at my mother because his voice sounded positive. I crossed my fingers. “Yes.”
“We found DJ.”
I mouthed, “They found him.”
I said, “Where is he?”
“We found him in South Carolina.” I was relaying all the messages to my mother. She raised her thumbs.
I asked, “What do I have to do?”
While we rejoiced, his tone changed. “We have a problem. Mr. Wilson had his birth certificate with him. He also has a court document where you granted him sole custody.”
“Hell no! I never gave him custody. Why the hell would I do that?”
“Well, Ms. Dixon, you’re going to have to explain it to a judge.”
“What are you saying?” I yelled.
My mother looked at me. She yearned to know what was being said on the other end. “They’re trying to say that I gave him custody.”
“Did you?”
I snapped at her. “Hell no! I wouldn’t give anyone custody of my baby.”
There was a suspicious look on her face. “Ma, I swear I didn’t! I swear!”
The investigator seemed to be growing impatient with my ranting. Finally, he said, “Ms. Dixon, I do apologize if there is some misunderstanding, but he had the information ready for us.”
“They forged my signature. There is no way in the world I would sign over my baby.”
“I hate to tell you this, but I have to close this case. You’re going to have to take this to a judge. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”
I yelled, “Bring my fucking baby home!”
“I’m sorry. I won’t be able to do that. You can give me a call tomorrow when you calm down and I’ll help you proceed with filing a case.”
“You can’t help me if you can’t bring my son home.”
I slammed the phone down and wept in my mother’s arms. We were both stunned. Who planned this out so well? How could they just disregard my feelings? I spent an entire year in a house with imposters. I thought he loved me. I thought she loved our arrangement. How could they be so heartless?
I almost allowed defeat to settle in when it dawned on me that I had to get to Jacksonville and I had to get there fast. My mother asked if we should drive. Hell no! I booked us one-way tickets on the first available flight, despite the $700-per-person price tag. What we didn’t have packed, we wouldn’t. We both had the necessities and the will to find our baby. I sat up and rocked until it was time to leave at four in the morning. My heart ached. I felt betrayed. My mind couldn’t rest because I kept replaying my entire relationship with Dwight. How had I let everything go? I thought he was so innocent and I assumed that Tracey was naïve. Now, I was sitting here trying to solve the complicated problem they’d created. I hated them. I hated what they represented. They didn’t deserve to be in DJ’s life.
When we arrived in Jacksonville, all I had was a ZabaSearch.com list of all of their previous addresses. My mother wanted to check in to a hotel before we began our hunt, but I didn’t. I offered her the option of checking in and letting me go alone. She refused. So, with no sleep and a bunch of anxiety, we drove around Jacksonville.
My first stop was where I assumed Dwight’s sister lived. My mother stayed in the car when I went to knock. My heart raced as I prepared to explain this long story to a woman who was clueless. I had gone along with Dwight and Tracey and had not told their family here about our arrangement because, as they claimed, they wouldn’t understand. Tracey would always say we were socially forward and Jacksonville just wasn’t ready. A slightly ghetto-looking girl with rollers and a scarf opened up.