As soon as Keithe left the house on his way to work, Michelle turned and ran back up the two steps she’d traveled down and headed into their room. Picking up the phone that was sitting on the nightstand, Michelle took a quick seat.
With her knuckles, Michelle saved the damage to her manicured nails and punched in the telephone number she held in memory. Waiting for the line to connect, Michelle pushed her bangs to the side and waited.
For weeks she had tried to get Keithe to open up and get their marriage on track. But when she saw that even her attending church with him wasn’t breaking him, she slid right back into her wicked ways. The day she laid eyes on Bishop Perry, Marcus, and the heffas who had stolen both men from her, Michelle knew going back to that church would spoil everything she’d worked for so hard.
With a nosey stretch of her neck to make sure the housekeeper wasn’t making her upstairs rounds, Michelle said, “Hello? Brad.” Before she could utter another word, she was cut off when Brad’s voice mail used his voice, begging for a message to be left.
“Hey, sweetie, it’s me, Michelle. I think I better take a rain check. Keithe was on edge before leaving, and I want to be here when he returns this evening. so no date night for us.” She tried her best to sound wounded. “We’ll just have to meet at the condo some other time. Kisses.”
Her reach to place the phone back in its holding place wasn’t complete before she heard the door squeak. Jolted by Keithe’s stance against their bedroom door, Michelle thought her bowels would release right where she sat. Grabbing the lower part of her silk-covered stomach, Michelle inched back until she was squared up in her husband’s direction.
“Did you leave something?” she asked nervously, not knowing just how much of her private conversation her husband had heard.
Not yet moving a muscle, Keithe leaned against the frame of the door and stared. “I surely did,” he announced as he finally picked up his right foot and started his stride away from the door.
“Your briefcase? But you had it with you.” Michelle uneasily rose to her feet, making her way around the bedposts. “Honey, what do you need?”
“My suitcase,” Keithe yelled. Not caring if the housekeeper heard his pain or not, Keithe was on a mission. “I don’t even know why I came back to this raggedy relationship,” he spoke to himself.
Two weeks hadn’t passed since the day Bishop Perry had called with his own assumption of just who Michelle was. Ever since then, Keithe had been holding a grudge against her in secret. Now with the proof that Michelle wouldn’t or couldn’t stop her evil ways, he felt everything was for a reason.
“It’s one thing for me to get the phone call from Dr. Philips saying that the burning that has intensified is from gonorrhea you’ve given me,” he said, which was the news he was coming back into the house to share. “Haw, that’s not enough. Today I had to walk in and hear you on the phone with your man.” not stopping his intended mission of packing, Keithe continued. “But it’s okay, Michelle. Now you can have all the men you want, all the men you need, and all the diseases that come along with them. Where’s my suitcase?” he yelled.
With pep in her step, Michelle waltzed right past Keithe and stood in the entrance of their double-door closet. Her arms and legs spread–eagle, Michelle’s body stood to compare with the letter X.
“Your suitcase? where are you going, Keithe? what just happened? I thought you left for work. What, man?” she wanted to continue to play Keithe for dumb.
Shaking his head, grasping the fact that Michelle didn’t get it, Keithe roared even louder. “Is that why you were on the phone with Brad? Because you thought I was gone to work? huh?” Prying her hands away from the rims of the door, Keithe got agitated on every try. “Move,” he said forcefully.
“No. Not until you hear me out. There was a reason I was talking to Brad,” she rambled as she tossed her own body to and fro, trying to keep her husband from getting close to his bags. “Are you going to listen?”
“No. No, I’m not going to listen. What can you possibly tell me, Michelle?” Keithe finally stood still and placed his hands in his slacks. “What?” he asked again with hunched shoulders. “Are you going to tell me how you told your boyfriend that you couldn’t make the room date because I looked like a lonely pup? Pah-lease. Or better yet”—he gained momentum—“Were you actually going to break it off with him? Better yet, were you going to ask him to give you some medicine to give to me in my drink, because I presume this is the same Dr. Brad Stevens who belongs to the country club. Right?”
“It’s not like that, Keithe.” Michelle was getting angrier by the minute. Sure she was guilty. Caught red-handed with her hand in the cookie jar. No matter what, she still needed him to listen to her. “You’re not talking to me. You’re not hugging or holding me.” She finally found her voice.
“What am I suppose to do? hug you and hold you and thank you for burning me? huh? You want to know why I came back into the house? Because my doctor just called to tell me that gonorrhea is my new best friend, Michelle.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Are you serious?” he asked. “Who else would give it to me, Michelle? I’m not the cheater, you are. And to think I’m taking up for you, thinking Bishop Perry has you mistaken with some other woman.”
“What…what are you talking about?” Michelle was shocked.
“Oh, please. It probably is true. You have a scar that you don’t even like to talk about. I thought I knew you. I don’t know half of you, Michelle.”
Wham! Michelle laid her hand across his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You and your bishop friend are lying fools.”
Michelle could see that the mere sound of her voice made Keithe choke. A hard jerk on her arm freed the opening to the closet. The freedom Keithe looked for came with a price once Michelle kicked him from behind, right in the spot God meant for reproduction.
“All I want you to do is to listen, Keithe.” She had sorrow on her face just as soon as her foot hit the floor.
Keeled over in pain, Keithe couldn’t do anything but moan. Panting for air to reach his brain because his mind wasn’t working, fury became his only hope. With one swoop, Keithe removed his hands from his groin area and pushed himself up as straight as possible.
“Now are you ready to listen?” Michelle had the nerve to ask as if she had the upper hand. “I just want—” Before she could state her claim, Keithe’s large hands were around her neck. Trying his best to choke every lie, every vow, every curse word, every breath out of Michelle’s body, Keithe just held on without a word.
For every word anyone had ever told him about his wife, even down to Bishop Perry, Keithe wasn’t going to let go until he could make Michelle regret ever lying to him.
Not able to vocalize any regret, or any apology to Keithe, Michelle grabbed the rounds of his elbows, trying her best to wiggle out of the death grip. Moving her body in every direction, as soon as she spotted the nightstand, Michelle lifted her foot and began to try to kick the lamp. Keithe, not knowing what she was up to, had nothing but pain, betrayal, and marred hope in his eyes. Not even the love he still had for her was enough for him to let go.
Moving her lips as fast or slow as she could, mouthing for Keithe to let go of her, Michelle moved her grip to her husband’s hands that were around her neck, and pulled. With an extra-tight hold, Michelle found the reach in her leg and was able to kick the gold-plated lamp to the floor. The crash of their bedroom ensemble didn’t help earn her the right to breathe.
The only thing Keithe was focused on was taking her breath away. He wasn’t listening for her moans for him to stop. He rambled about a baby, Bishop Perry, her lying, and how her cheating was way too much.
Tears wrestling for space in his eyes, Michelle could see how much she had hurt her husband and, for once, stopped fighting. Her own tears made an appearance just as she closed her eyes and lost her gaze on her husband. The only vision left was that of Keithe with tears in his eyes.