Chapter Thirteen

 

 

When You're Your Own Worst Enemy

I had grown up with what many would call the perfect example of what a marriage should be. My parents had been married for longer than either of my brothers had been alive and still seemed to love each other after all of this time. Despite that, I couldn't find myself willingly able to mimic the relationship that my parents had modeled for the three of us, not after attempting to follow in their footsteps left me looking like a fool. Sure, there were some pros, a lot of pros if you were asking people—not me, other people—but there were many cons as well, at least from my vantage point. So, I knew before I even suggested to Tonya that we get married that what we’d do something different; it would be something unique to the two of us. That was my intention, and for the most part, that's what came to pass. I didn’t want to be bogged down with the trappings of tradition and had been prepared to make my case if it seemed like it was a problem.

Tonya was everything I expected her to be and beyond. She was a woman who had a lot of love in her heart and didn’t mind showing it. Her honesty and guilelessness was such a contrast to the last relationship I’d been in that I almost didn’t know how to handle it—how to handle her—but she gave me the space to get my footing and never made me feel insignificant or worthless in the process. I know I wasn’t the easiest man to be involved with; my peculiarities in and out of the bedroom were probably deal breakers for a lot of women, but Tonya met the challenge head-on and excelled.

As I sat on the patio of Black Coffee, sifting through emails of various properties in the area and contemplating the sheer luck that I had stumbled upon when I met Tonya, my cell phone began to ring. I looked at the display and as I saw my mother's name flash on the screen, I wondered if, somehow, she knew I was enjoying life a little too well and decided to call so she could ruin that.

“Hello?”

“Hey, baby. It's Mama. I was just calling to check on you because I haven't heard from you in several weeks and, obviously if I didn't pick up the phone, who knows when I would hear from you again. So, here I am.”

I wish I could say it was a record that she didn't even wait two seconds to begin the guilt trip, but it wasn't. This was par for the course with Sabrina Hawkins when it came to me. She didn’t do it to my older brother, probably because he lived down the street from her, and as far as I knew, she didn’t do it to my baby brother. I could only assume that Hawk was exempt because he was so quiet that she just didn’t expect him to say anything at all.

“Hey, Ma. What are you up to?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said in a nonchalant voice that sounded suspiciously like a precursor to something I wanted absolutely nothing to do with. “Your father and I just got back home.” She paused and I realize that was my cue to deliver my lines.

“Where'd y'all go?”

“Oh,” she said, as if my question was a surprise instead of a setup, “we were at a wedding.”

There was another pause, and I wondered how long she would wait for me to recite my lines.

“Who got married, Ma?”

Apparently, that was the magic question—the right combination of words—to get her going because it was like I could hear her puff right up as she sucked in a breath before speaking.

“Do you remember Gordon Smith?” She didn't wait for me to respond. Not this time. “He was in your class, I believe. Well, he just married a gorgeous woman from up in Jonesboro. According to Wanda, his mother, the two only met eight months ago, but she said that Gordon told Johnson, his daddy, that he knew Fiona was the woman for him the moment he laid eyes on her and he had no reason to wait. Can you believe that?”

I know without a doubt that that was a trick question. One that I would not fall for. Internally, I absolutely could believe it, had experienced it when I met Tonya. But, of course, I couldn't admit that to my mother. She still didn't know anything about Tonya, and if I had my way it would be a good long while before she learned anything about her—including the fact that she existed.

I made a noncommittal sound in the back of my throat. “That's crazy.”

The sound of her sucking her teeth alerted me to her displeasure with my response. “The only crazy part is the fact that he's your age and yet not one of you boys is married yet! How is it that so many boys from you all’s graduating class are getting married or have gotten married in the past few years, and I can't get one of my children to give me a daughter-in-law? Hell, I'd even take a son-in-law at this point!”

I snorted. “It's nice to know all you care about is your personal gain, Ma.”

A scandalized sound came from her end of the phone. “You're trying to make me sound selfish, but all I'm saying is that I don't care about your sexual orientation and just want you to settle down, whether that's with a man or a woman. You're too old to still be out here running the streets.”

“I'm not too old to do anything. I'm only thirty-five. Besides, I'm not even gay, Ma.”

“Fine, Jer. Bi, pan, intersex, whatever.”

That was the moment I realized my mother was spending entirely too much time on the internet. “Ma, chill out. Intersex isn’t sexuality, and I'm straight.”

“Straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, his, hers, them, theirs, yours, mine, ours! I. Don't. Care! My question is: when are you getting married?”

Oh, fuck.

That was a direct question, one that I really couldn't deflect without knocking on the door of my conscience. The right thing to do would be to take this opportunity to let her know that I've already gotten married. To let her know that less than a year ago I’d asked a woman to be my wife and she said yes. To tell her that she had inherited another grandchild and she could stop hounding me for a newborn.

But that wasn't the easy way because I knew exactly what would happen if I did that. I could already imagine things changing. Could already picture the exact moment when my family found out about Tonya. How my mother would swoop in and swallow her whole. How she would no longer be just mine, be something—someone—just for me. It was selfish and I knew it, but instead of telling my mother that she could stop fussing because she already had what she wanted, I deftly changed the subject in an attempt to shift her focus.

“Wow, Ma. You’re just going to forget about the daughter-in-law you already have? So, Lisa don't mean anything now?”

I could feel the heat from her anger, all the way through the phone when I said that.

“Don't you dare! Don't you dare try and say that Lisa means nothing. You know how much I love that girl; however, she is just your brother's girlfriend even though they are too old to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Jeremiah hasn't achieved the level of maturity needed to propose to her. He's been stringing her along for all these years, playing house but hasn't made her a wife yet, and I'm pissed about it.”

“Hold up, hold up!” There was no way I was going to sit there and let her bad-mouth my brother, knowing that the truth was nowhere near the way that she portrayed it.

“Don't do my brother like that. Those two aren’t married because Lisa doesn’t want to be married. J has been proposing to her since they were in college, and she’s been shooting him down ever since. And you said he isn’t mature enough? Naw, never that. He’s the most mature dude I know. No one else is getting told no while they are down on one knee and still turn around and provide a good life for a woman.”

I was angry and breathing heavy, but the silence on the other end let me know immediately that I had fucked up. That was information I was never supposed to share with anybody. The kind of information to take to my grave. J was going to kill me, bury me, then dig me up, and kill me again.

“What did you say?”

A groan was my only response to her question. Why hadn't anybody invented the time machine yet? I needed one—right now.

“Ma...” I trailed off. I had nothing else to say. I’d already put my foot, my ankle, my calf, all the way in my mouth, and there was no way for me to undo the damage that I had just inflicted.

“Ma,” I pleaded, “you can't tell him that you know.”

“What do you mean I can't tell him? I'm not supposed to know that my son has been prostrating himself before an ungrateful hussy?”

Chuckling, I drew a hand down my face. “A hussy, Ma? That's what we're going with?”

“Well, what else could she be? My sweet baby has gotten down on one knee more than once and asked her to be his wife and she said no? Every time? And has the nerve to smile in my face when I call her my daughter-in-love?”

Her words turned into shrieks, and I wished I was back home to calm her down.

“Ma, please. J will kill me. It will hurt him to know that you know about his rejections. You know how sensitive he is.”

“Of course, I do,” she snapped. “That's why I'm so upset about this. I can't believe that damn girl has sat her loose behind up in my face, knowing that she shut my baby down when all he wants to do is love her and provide for her. The nerve!”

Oh, god. She was working herself up into a fit, and it would only be a matter of time before she went on a rampage. “Ma, seriously,” I tried again.

“I heard you the first time, Jereth!” she shouted. “I'm not going to say anything to him but goodness, you can't drop this kind of news on me and expect me not to react to it. I'm not a robot.”

“I know, I know. I'm just saying.”

“Well, you don't have to say. You have said enough, actually. Now, I have to go see what's going on with that situation.”

Panic seized me and I shot forward in my seat, knees banging against the rails of the metal table. “What do you mean? You don't have to do anything. J and Lisa are going to figure this thing out. Leave it to them.”

She huffed. “I have left it to them. They've had all this time to make the situation right and look at them. Obviously, they're too stupid to figure it out on their own, and they need some divine intervention, so that's what I'm going to do. Don't worry, Jer; I won't tell your brother that you told me.”

Then she hung up without saying goodbye, and I sat there, staring at the home screen of my phone, wondering what the hell I had just done. In an attempt to conceal my own secret, I threw my brother so far under the bus that he might as well have been a spare tire. Shit.

The worst part is if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.