What A Person Wants (18 page)

The first thing that came to mind when Tara said Isabel’s mom had been hurt was that her asshole boyfriend Petey had done something to her. I started my car and peeled out of the pup's parking lot. Kelly's was located in the upper section of Newport News. It would take me a while to make it to Sentara Hospital in Hampton, but if I sped I could make good time.

“Tara, did they say what happened to her?” I asked as I sped down the road.

“No. We got the call a little while ago. Some stupid nurse who called Izzy had her thinking her mom was about to die, so we damn near flew over here. They haven't told us a thing yet, though.”

“What?”

“Honey, I don’t know, but as soon as I find that nurse, I'm slapping the shit out of her. Just wait.”

“So, is her mom in a private room?”

“Yeah, Izzy was just let up to see her a minute ago. They had us waiting like we had time for all that. I hate hospitals. What the hell are you looking at? Don’t point to the damn poster! I need to use the goddamn phone!”

“Tara, who the hell are you talking to?” I heard someone in the background fussing at Tara about using a cell phone in a hospital. Isabel’s friend wasted no time in telling the individual to shut the hell up and sit the hell down. Tara could be a sweetheart, but more often than not, her mouth needed a good bleaching. Washing it out with soap probably wouldn't do anything but make her swear more.

“Sorry about that, Richie. These assholes here are trying to rush me off the phone. Anyway, like I was saying, Izzy just went up. I’m sitting in the waiting room on the first floor. Visiting hours are over, but they're letting her in to sit with her mom for a while.”

I glanced at my watch. “Alright, I’m headed towards Hampton now. Give me twenty minutes. Stay there.”

“Okay.”

I was about to hang up the call when I heard Tara yelling my name. I quickly put the phone back to my ear.

“Richie, did you really kiss Chloe?”

Aw, fuck me sideways!

I took a deep breath and told the truth.

“Wow,” Tara said. “You know you really hurt her feelings. She’ll never tell you flat out, but I know my best friend. She really likes you. Probably more than she liked Kyle.”

Warmth spread through my belly and flushed my face to what I’m sure was a sudden scarlet red.

“Well, she loved Kyle. Why else would she have gone off the way she did when she found out about him and Lawanda?” I responded.

“You should know better than anyone that you can love a person and not like them. They’re two totally different things. Chloe should have taught you that. But trust me! She only went off like that because she expected him to marry her so they could have a home with a white picket fence and a couple of rug rats and all that extra stuff. And since Kyle was the only man she had ever had a serious relationship with…well, you can do the math.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I can do the math.”

After we said our goodbyes, I took another deep breath.

Good god! When it rains, it pours.
 

ISABEL

I sat in my mother’s hospital room in an uncomfortable armchair and waited for the nurse to finish checking my mother’s vitals. It hurt so much to see her lying in a hospital bed with her face battered and bruised, her right hand bandaged all the way to her elbow. One of her eyes was swollen shut and her bottom lip resembled a rubber inner tube about to burst. However, despite all of the pain she must have felt, she still smiled.

The nurse finally finished her work and left the room, promising to come back with some pain pills in thirty minutes. My mother rolled her head towards me and gave me a tired grin.

“I told them to call you to let you know I was here. I didn’t expect to see you come over so soon. It’s not like I’m about to die.”

I rolled my eyes, remembering how the nurse on the phone made me panic. “Well, Mama, it doesn’t matter. I’m here now and I would really love to know how you ended up like this.”

My mother said matter-of-factly, “Petey.”

At that moment, I didn’t know what was worse. The fact that Petey had finally put my mother in the hospital or the fact that my mother seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. Swollen face and all, she seemed…peaceful.

“Ok, just start from the top. What happened?”

My mother proceeded to tell me how she had just come home after dropping Sabrina off with her grandmother. Petey was supposed to pick her up from school, but he was a no show as usual. After she finally made it back home, she opened her front door and found Petey hugged up on the couch with a mammoth of a woman.

“You should have seen her, baby. This woman had black and fire red hair, floppy breasts with no bra, and the biggest nose I had even seen on a human. Not to mention that she had to be at least three hundred pounds of pure flab. It was a terrible sight watching the two of the paw each other.”

It took all of three seconds before Petey noticed Mama standing mouth agape in front of her opened door and started fussing at her. Like
she
was wrong for walking in on him in
her
house! The woman who Petey was fooling around with on the couch wasn’t the same woman who had come over before and hit my mom in the head with a crowbar.

My mother explained how she had kicked the woman out of her home, literally. She ran over, grabbed the woman by her red and black weave, and led her across the room and out the door, kicking her in the ass on the way out. It wasn’t long before Petey had got up and slapped my mother in the face for disrespecting his company.

“Izzy, something in me snapped when he hit me,” she said softly. Mama stared at the wall behind me as if she was watching the events unfold on screen. “I couldn’t believe it. How
dare
he get mad at me when he was the one who was cheating on me! In my own home, no less! It was as though when he hit me, he literally knocked some sense into me. I got angry.”

Angry was putting it mildly. According to my mother’s story, she hulked out. After Petey slapped her, fussing and cussing the whole time, my mother went into the kitchen and pulled a huge knife from her knife rack. Ever so calmly, she went into the living room and told Petey that if she ever caught him with another woman and if he so much as laid a pinky on her, she was going to cut him. He didn’t believe her. He hit her again, so hard this time she tasted blood. Before she could react, he took the knife from her and called her stupid for trying to threaten him.

That didn’t help calm the fire that brewing inside Mama. When she got her bearings, she hit Petey back, almost knocking him off his feet. Stunned, Petey couldn’t respond fast enough to Mama’s quick hits. She beat him with everything she had, including the television remote.

“And I just kept yelling at him, ‘you will never hurt me again! You will never disrespect me again!’ By the time I had bloodied his nose, he started fighting me back. You should have seen it, baby. We were all over the living room, the kitchen. He broke my coffee table after I slammed him into it.”

I cut her off, shocked. "Mama, you slammed him into your coffee table? How did you do that?”

Mama started to chuckle, but her laugh quickly turned into a wince. She gingerly laid her hand on the side of her chest where her ribs were bruised. I was halfway up from my seat to check on her before she gestured for me to sit back down.

After a moment, she continued. “Honey, let me tell you something. When you finally get fed up and you start fight back, you be surprised at the strength that comes from you. I don’t know what possessed me. I was just tired of being hurt and disappointed. For five years, I gave that man my life and in turn, he did his best to crush it. Never mind the cheating. He belittled me. Took me for granted. I simply got tired. Petey putting his hands on me only proved that I meant nothing to him, and I wasn’t going to allow him another opportunity to break me down.”

It didn’t take long before the cops were called by a neighbor and both Mama and Petey were rushed to the hospital. She told me that Petey was actually in a room down the hall in far worse condition than her.

“Izzy, I hate to say it this way, but I beat his ass. For all the crap I took from him, I gave it all back. And I’ve already spoken with the police. I’m filing domestic abuse charges on him. I’m through.”

I sat in amazement, staring at the woman who birthed me as though I was looking at a complete stranger. Who was this battered woman on a hospital bed telling a story about abuse with a smile on her face? I only had one question for her.

“Mama, if y’all had such a bad fight and you’re so hurt, why do you seem so happy?”              My mother’s bright brown eyes twinkled as she smiled even harder. I don’t know how she managed with her lips so swollen, but she smiled just the same. Her answer amazed me even more.

“Because I have peace. For the first time in a long time, I have peace. Why? Because I finally know and understand that I am worth so much more than Petey or anyone else who wants to better themselves by knocking me down. I understand that I don't need a man to validate me or prove to myself that I am worth something. I have myself and I have you, my beautiful daughter. Today is a new day, baby girl and I’m loving it.”

I had no words. To hear my mother sound so strong and sure of herself was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I knew how much she suffered from a string of bad boyfriends while growing up, and I saw how poorly Petey treated her. All her life, she believed her worth and value was tied into having a man at home, but now she was ready to stand on her own two feet and live her life. I sniffled back my tears and leaned over my mother’s bed to kiss her forehead.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“For finally getting it,” I said and laughed.

“Well, don’t show me too much love yet, honey. I’m not through with you.” I frowned and asked her what she meant.

Mama looked me squarely in my eyes and said, “If you don’t listen to anything else I say, listen to this. You cannot waste your time waiting for someone who will never wait for you.”

Well, that was random. Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Hush now and pay attention.”

I shut up. It’s not every day I get shushed. I knew better than to push the issue. I sat back in the stiff armchair and let my mother say what was on her mind.

“Believe me when I say I am so very proud of the woman you've become, Izzy, but I have regrets. As a mother I regret never instilling in you the fact that you don’t need a man to define who you are."

"Mama, I don't-"

"Let me finish, Izzy. Now, I never liked Kyle Bennett, but I dealt with him because I didn’t want to hurt you. I always knew he wasn’t the right one for you, and nothing he has done these past few weeks surprises me. But when he left for Texas and you waited for him, it bothered me because I knew he wasn’t coming back home to you. You never would have accepted that if I had told you, though. That much I am certain of. You put so much faith in a man who didn‘t deserve any. You would have stopped talking to me if I had so much as said ‘boo' to that boy.”

I swallowed hard. This was the first time she had ever shared anything with me pertaining to Kyle. I had always assumed she was too busy worrying over her relationship with Petey to give me any sound advice on my relationship with him. Never did I consider she was merely avoiding confrontation.

“My point is simple, baby. Don’t waste your time. You’re young. You have a lot going for you. You have no babies holding you back. You’re educated. You’re a good person. It’s time you came out of your shell and had a little faith in yourself and not a man.”

“I have faith in myself,” I argued sheepishly with my head down.

My mother laughed. Laughed! I looked at her like she was crazy. “No you don’t,” she responded. “What about your writing? Have you finished anything lately? Have you even tried?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn't think of a lie fast enough. Nothing gets past Mama, though. She caught me trying to make something up and shook her head. “Even with something you’re passionate about, you still don’t believe you’re good enough. Trust me, baby, when I say you are.”

“But,” I began, knowing I sounded like a five-year-old trying to come up with excuses to stay up past bedtime, “I believe in my writing abilities. I just don’t have anything to write about.”

“Just write what you know. How do you expect for your words to flow if you don’t even try?

Well, she got me there.

“Honey, you are my world and I love you. I want to see you happy and I know you’re the happiest when you have a pen in your hand and Richie on your side.”

“Whoa! Okay, you’re taking a whole left turn here. What does Richie have to do with anything?”

“Girl, are you that slow?” Mama asked in disbelief. Sensing her question was a trap, I didn’t respond. “You and Richie belong together. Why you haven’t told that man how you feel about him is beyond me.”

“We’re just friends,” I repeated for the second time that night.

“Yes, you are. That's apparent to anyone who sees you two together. But what I don't understand is why two friends who have feelings for each other can't be together? Where is it written that you can’t be both?”

I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. It’s funny how things work out. Here I am, rushing to the hospital because my mother’s been injured and she’s the one lecturing me about my life. I opted to tell her the truth that I never wanted to admit.

“I’m not really in Richie’s league, Mama. He’s used to beautiful outspoken women. I’m just…me.”

“And that, my dear, is why he likes you so much. I see how he looks at you. You’ve got a big chunk of that man’s heart. Don’t think for one minute that you’re not good enough for him because you’re good enough for any man worth his salt. Don’t end up like me, wasting time waiting for a Prince Charming to rescue you when you have a knight already in the wings.”