The Art of Deceit

The next ten minutes of my life came in spurts. People, people all around, but there was only one face that I knew. Stress dominated Carl’s normally soft features. It was bleak, scared, and worried.

Beep, beep, beep. That annoying sound went on and on. My body burned with anger and with pain. Flashes of the night’s events and the blood that hypothetically stained my hands were a constant reminder of my lost soul.

“Tay, where’s Tay?” I asked as I pulled at the cords that seemed to be coming out of my body.

“Tangie, we’re going to need for you to calm down. Tay’von is fine. Don’t worry about him. We have to get you and your baby stable.”

I looked into the face of the cute, young white guy who was working on me as if he saw pregnant women with bullets burned into their flesh every day, and I realized where I was.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck me. That bitch shot me, didn’t she? Oh my God! What about my baby? Oh, God, my baby!”

I touched my stomach and prayed that I hadn’t fucked up the mistake that I once wished hadn’t happened. I remembered cursing myself for fucking so many men with no protection. I remember the pure anger I had had for the extra person I was now carrying around with me. Why did this happen to me? I had asked myself. “He or she is only going to slow me down. I don’t want this. It isn’t part of the plan, I had once said, trying to convince myself. But in that moment, I wanted my baby more than ever. I wanted to make Tay’von happy; I wanted to make him a father.

“Just tell me, Carl, is he dead? Did she kill him?”

Carl had been sitting beside me the whole time, silently saying his own prayers.

“Who is ‘she’?” he asked.

“That fucking bitch Shamika. Did she kill him? I swear, Carl, I didn’t want it to go down this way. I had no fucking way of knowing this would happen.” I screamed out in pain. “Ahhh!” It was becoming unbearable. There was so much blood. Blood seemed to surround me, and it was too much to just be all mine. Carl was bleeding too.

“Shamika didn’t shoot you, Tangie. The cops . . . they shot you . . . me . . . and Tay.”

“Sir, sir, are you saying that you’ve been shot too?” another white guy asked frantically. “Oh my God! Okay, I’m going to cut off your pants. Just lean back for me, okay?”

It was a madhouse inside the ambulance. While the cute white guy worked on me, his partner checked Carl’s bullet wounds. As my eyelids grew heavy, there was so much I wanted to know. There was so much that I wanted to say. There were so many apologies I wanted to give, but I couldn’t. I was too tired, I was too weak, and it was too late.

“Wait. He’s bleeding from somewhere else too. Look for another puncture wound,” said the cute white guy.

My eyes closed and opened over and over again. The more time that passed, the longer they stayed closed.

“Here, I found one. He’s been hit in the chest. Alert the hospital that we have two in critical condition,” said the cute guy.

Carl let out a loud groan as they applied pressure to his chest wound. Before my eyes closed for the last time in that ambulance, I saw a gut-wrenching scene. Carl’s body stiffened, then started to shake. I couldn’t tell what was happening, but I did know that it wasn’t good. I gathered all the strength in my body and reached for his hand. And as our fingers met, I regretted everything bad I had ever done to him. His love for me was pure and without malice. He had wanted nothing from me but love and respect, and I had been too selfish to give him that.

* * *

When my eyes opened again, I was in the hospital, with a brand-new set of faces staring down at me.

“No, wait. Where’s Tay? Get all this shit off of me. I can’t breathe. Give me something quick,” I screamed, fighting the doctors and nurses as I tried to get my thoughts together.

“Tangie, we need you to calm down. We won’t be able to help you if you keep this up. You need to keep your oxygen mask on,” a doctor told me.

This was not how I had envisioned everything going down.

“I just need to know about Carl and Tay. Are they okay?” I asked while trying to suck air into my lungs.

“Just lie back and try to calm down. We have to make sure everything is okay with you,” a nurse said, trying to make it clear that it was about me in that moment.

My chest felt like a rock was lying on top of it, and it felt like it was slowly pushing all the life out of me. My eyelids started to get heavy again, and I wanted to go back to sleep.

“You cannot go to sleep, Tangie. You have to stay up for you and the babies.”

“What about Tay? Where is he? Is he okay? I need to see him. I have to tell him that I am sorry. Wait . . . What do you mean, babies?”

My jumbled thoughts seemed to get lighter as my eyes closed. I felt like I had nothing left in me to give. My energy was fleeing fast. I was weak—mind, body, and soul. All I could do was pray that my fuckup didn’t cost me my life, Tay’s and Carl’s lives . . . and the life of the baby inside me.

* * *

I woke up three days later in a private hospital room. It was cold and lonely. How could it all have gone so wrong? Everything had been planned to the tee. I reached down and touch my stomach. My baby still felt like it was inside me, but I wasn’t sure. I pushed the call button, and a voice told me that a nurse would be in shortly, but I need someone right away. My mouth was dry, and I got a sudden urge to throw up. As I somehow managed to get out of bed, Carl walked into my room with a hospital gown on.

“What are you doing, Tangie? You need to stay in bed until the doctor sees you,” Carl said as he rushed to my side and tried to get me back into bed.

I tried to tell him that I was about to throw up, but my words didn’t make it out. What was left in my stomach ended up on the floor and his shoes. Being the caring and gentle man that he was, he just got me back into bed and rushed to get a doctor to my room.

“We cannot have you getting out of bed just yet, Mrs. Miller.”

I looked at the young white doctor and almost asked for someone else, but he let me know that he was the one who had operated on me, so I stayed calm and heard him out. I was told that they had rushed me into surgery after I almost lost enough blood to kill me.

“What about my baby?” I asked him, still holding on to my stomach.

“While we were getting you prepped for surgery, we found two heartbeats. We were worried, because one had a very faint heartbeat. After further testing and an ultrasound, we came to the conclusion that we would have to take a chance and get you into surgery.”

“What do you mean, you found two heartbeats? I was gonna have twins?” It didn’t hit me that I may not be pregnant anymore until I said “was.”

“Not was, Mrs. Miller. You are going to have twins. You have little fighters in there,” he said as he patted my tummy.

I breathed a sigh of relief as he assured me that my babies were still inside me. He went on and told me about my surgery and how they had managed to get all the bullets out of me. I heard most of it, but my mind was more on my babies and Tay.

“Where is my husband, Dr. Cohen? Is he okay? I need to see him now,” I said. I had got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“We have you on total bed rest right now for the safety of your babies. I understand that you want to see him, but your husband is not as lucky as you. We don’t know when he will be—”

“I don’t give a shit about no bed rest right now, Doctor. I am not asking you if I can see Tay’von. I am telling you that I need to see him. Call an orderly in and tell him to bring in a wheelchair, or I’ll walk to wherever he is.”

I hated letting the bitch out while I was lying in a hospital bed, but I had to make sure that my man was okay. The doctor stood there and looked around the room like he was unsure. When he saw me move to get off the bed again, he walk out of the room and called for a nurse and an orderly. When an orderly came in with a wheelchair, I climbed in the chair. Then Carl walked behind me and pushed me to Tay’s room.

“Am I going to lose it once I step into this room, Carl?” I asked when I came face-to-face with the door to Tay’s private room.

“I don’t think that you should. The doctors are saying that he is stable. He just hasn’t woken up yet,” Carl answered.

I could tell that he wasn’t just saying that to make me feel better. But maybe he should have just held his tongue.

I was wheeled in to find a woman sitting in a chair next to my husband’s bed. I racked my brain, trying to figure out where I had seen her before. She was tall, fatter than she should be, dressed to kill, and cute.

Where, where, where do I know her from? I asked myself. The tour! It’s that fat bitch that I would see hanging around backstage.

“What in the hell are you doing in my husband’s room?” I asked, having to be held down in the wheelchair by Carl.

“I’m here to make sure that the man that I have been with for the past fifteen years of my life lives to see the birth of his child,” she answered, as if she was Tay’s wife and I was the woman on the side.

“Bitch, I know that you have lost your fucking mind. He is my husband, and I don’t give a shit what relationship you’ve had with him. The day he became my husband was the day your bullshit affair ended,” I threw her way, while using my feet to inch the wheelchair closer to Tay’s bed.

I looked over at Carl. “Carl, you need to get back on your job and get this crazy bitch out of here. As if her relationship with my man matters at this point. She’s probably making this shit up, anyway,” I barked.

“Oh no, honey. This is not a made-up relationship. Isn’t that right, Carl?”

We both looked at Carl, waiting to see whose side he was going to be on.

“Connie, what are you doing here? I thought that they weren’t letting anyone in?” Carl said.

“Oh, so now I’m just anyone? What, you don’t know me now, Carl? Damn, you must be fucking that ho too, since I’m just anyone now. Y’all niggas kill me. Start fucking a ho-ass bitch, and boom, next thing you know a nigga is turning her into a housewife. But we all know what they say about trying to turn a ho into a housewife, don’t we?” Connie said, with her face screwed up, as if had she smelled something awful.

That bitch had to be out of her fucking mind speaking of me that way. The only thing that saved her from getting the taste slapped out of her mouth was the fact that I couldn’t get out of that wheelchair fast enough to do it. I was trying to stay as calm as my temper would allow me to be, but she was pushing it, and I was running low on calm.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, you know what they also say? Maybe the better ho won . . . And it looks like I did. Just because you get fucked by a star, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be the one to marry him. Remember that next time you find yourself under another woman’s man.”

She turned to me and leaned forward. “Better? I wouldn’t say that. You just made all the right moves to hook a dumb, pussy-whipped nigga. But this isn’t all about you right now. Although I must admit that I was a little stupid to have gone along with his stupid-ass plan to use you as arm candy in the first place.”

What was this fat bitch talking about? First, she was in there talking about a relationship that I was pretty sure never existed. Then she was insinuating that she went along with something. All I knew was that my head was starting to hurt, and I could feel my blood pressure going up.

“Do you know her, Carl?” I asked.

I watched him shuffle his feet around before he looked at me blankly.

“Answer the fucking question, Carl. Do you know her?”

She answered for him. “Don’t look so uneasy, Tangie. I know that this has got to be hitting you a little hard, but I’m sure it’s not as hard as hearing on a show that the man that you have been with since middle school just up and asked a bitch who was just supposed to be his arm candy to marry him. But you know what? I’m sick of being in the background just because I don’t look like you. Fuck a record label, fuck a magazine, and fuck whoever feels that just because I’m not a size two, I can’t be around or spend time with my man in public. I don’t care if he is a rapper or not. Shit, he wouldn’t even be where he is today if it wasn’t for me working my ass off and giving him studio money when he was shelved by the first label that ever signed him.

So yeah, Carl knows me. He knows who I am and why I’m here. It’s ’cause my man is laying up in the hospital, and I got to make sure that he pulls through for me and his baby.”

The word calm had gone out of the window now. My face was bloodred and hot. I was ready to kick a new hole in that girl’s ass. I jump out of the wheelchair so fast that Carl was unable to hold me down. I staggered toward her fast. My heart was pumping a mile a minute as the palm of my hand slid across her face. Before she could react, Carl was between us.

“Fuck you, bitch. My man isn’t tryin’a live for you. I am his wife, and I am the one who is pregnant with his children. Even if what you are saying is true, it’s too damn late. I have the ring, so now I have the all the rights,” I spat at her.

I waved my ring in her face. I could see the hurt in her eyes, and I stood proud in my wifely glory. Once a woman realized that she had lost the race to another, she knew that there was nothing else that she could do but pop her gums.

“Bitch, that ring doesn’t mean a damn thing. I have his heart and always will.”

I cock my head back and let out a long laugh. “His heart? You think that you have his heart? Girl, please, I have had that since the first time I fucked him, and my marriage license proves it,” I shot back.

“That’s what he lets you think, since he needed you to stay around and look good on his arm. You ain’t nothing but a high-priced ho that should have been shelved, like Tay was the first time around.” She looked like she was really trying to believe the words she spoke, but the weakness in her chest showed itself in her eyes.

I sat back down in my wheelchair, knowing that when it was all said and done, I had the upper hand. There was no point in me engaging in a fight that I had already won. As soon as I saw the tears in her eyes, I knew that she had lost, and so did everyone else in the room, including her. But I was sure she would continue to fight. So I didn’t let up.

“Where was his heart the day he asked me to move in? Where was his heart when he asked me to go on tour with him . . . ?” I said.

“From what I hear, he didn’t ask. You begged,” she said, standing up.

I wondered if this was said to make herself feel better, because her words weren’t hurting me at all. Facts were facts, and she couldn’t change history.

“Where was his heart when he asked me to marry him? Did you have it then? Or, let me guess, his reps told him to do that too? Girl, don’t fool yourself. This may have started because he needed ‘arm candy,’ as you put it, but please know that it ended with him forgetting about you and loving me. Tell me, how can you say that you have his heart when you had to hear about the wedding on an entertainment news show? That’s not love, honey. He just didn’t know how to tell you that he is over you. He has found something better, and you are just going to have to deal with it,” I said, adding to the tension in the room.

“Okay, ladies. I think that we all need to calm down and try to talk about this without all the insults,” Carl said, seemingly still feeling the heat from my earlier question.

I shook my head and frowned at Carl. “What we need to do is get this shit straight. She needs to stop walking around here thinking that she and Tay still have something. And you still didn’t answer me. Do you know her, Carl?”

I already knew the answer because of how he was acting, but I wanted him to look me in the eye and say it. That time, his feet didn’t move. He just left his head down and answered.

“Yeah, I know her, and most of what she is saying is true. She has been with Tay since they were young, and he was still with her while he was with you.”

“And what about the ‘arm candy’ statement? Is that true too?” I asked, wanting to get up again and slap his ass too.

I could tell that he didn’t want to answer that one, but we both stayed quiet until he did.

“I can’t really speak for Tay’von, but I know that he does love both of you—”

“That’s not what I asked you, Carl. Is Tay only with me so that I can be his arm candy?”

“It started out that way, but he really did fall in love with you. And, Connie, well, he just didn’t know how to tell you,” Carl answered, finally telling the full truth.

I got some satisfaction from Carl’s answers, but I was already planning on giving Tay hell when he got better.

Carl’s words hit Connie hard. She pulled out the chair that she was once sitting in and fell into it. She went on to speak to Carl as if I wasn’t in the room. She said she wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions until she talked to Tay, but she also knew that if anyone knew the truth, it would be Carl. She said she had been sitting at her “man’s” bedside, praying that he had a good explanation for what he had done. She had been there for three days. She had played this fantasy she had constructed over and over in her mind. He would wake up, tell her that he was sorry for everything he had done, tell her that she was the only one that he loved, and beg her to marry him as soon as he got a divorce. She had been through too much with him for him to do otherwise.

“What am I going to do about the baby?” she asked.

I looked over at Carl and gave him a “What the fuck?” face.

“It’s babies. I just found out that Tay and I are having twins. Plus, they or we will have nothing to do with you, so you don’t have to worry about us or them,” I informed her.

“Who gives a shit about you and yours? I am talking about my baby, Tay’s baby,” she answered, staring me in the eye.

“Now, if there is one thing that I know, it’s that Tay has no kids, so don’t even try to pull that shit,” I said matter-of-factly, getting heated all over again.

“I wouldn’t go off of what I know right now, because it seems like you don’t know too much. I’m talking about our baby that is still in my stomach,” the fat bitch proclaimed.

I got a sharp pain in my chest. I knew she didn’t just mention a child that was still in her stomach. That bitch was really trying to steal my shine. I should be the only Mommy to be.

She continued. “He was over my house three nights ago, when I told him. If only he had stayed when I asked him to, he wouldn’t be in this mess he’s in now. I told him that fucking with you wouldn’t bring him anything but pain, but he just wouldn’t stay. I should have known then that something was wrong. What was I thinking? I saw all the signs a long time ago. Hell, I’ve been the chick on the side for a long time now. I was just in denial. I saw how he was with you when we were out on tour. He kept on telling me that it was all for show, but I knew—”

I really was not interested in her sob story, so I cut her off. “He was over your house three nights ago?”

If I had heard her right, that meant that Tay was with her the night of the shooting. I looked from her to Carl. If Tay was really over at her house, then Carl would know, since he was with Tay that night.

“She’s not lying, Tangie,” Carl said quietly. “We went over there so that Tay could talk to her about the wedding, and to let her know what was really up with you and him, but she had some news of her own, and that’s when he found out that she was also pregnant.”

“You mean to tell me that as I was at home with that crazy bitch Shamika, who was holding a gun to my head, while you and Tay were over that bitch’s house? I could have died, and Tay would have been spending time with the other woman, who happened to be having his baby too? Oh, hell no! This mothafucka needs to wake up and start answering some questions.”

I rose from the wheelchair, walked over to Tay’s bed, and stood over him. I held him by the shoulders, and I shook him hard. It had just hit me that I had been in the dark the whole time. Not that I hadn’t been running game on Tay and sleeping with other people, but I had always been the one with the upper hand. All that time I had spent thinking that I was running shit was a lie. My plan with Carmello hadn’t even gone down right. Was I slipping?

I sat back down once I started to feel light-headed, and I let it all sink in. I looked around the room, and my vision seemed foggy all of a sudden. I wasn’t sure if it was my anger or the fact that I had just been shot. One thing was for sure, and that was that I needed to get my shit together and step up my game. Tay had a whole other life that I knew nothing about. I had always known that he was fucking around, but this nigga damn near had already had a wife when he married me. If my game had been tighter, none if this would have fallen through the cracks.

To deal with Tay, I was going to have to wait until he was up and walking. Carl would be put on the back burner until I was healthy enough to really get in his shit for keeping all that info from me. But Miss Connie . . . she was about to get taught a tough lesson. The lesson went, “No matter what, always make sure that you are the one standing with the ring on that left hand when it is all said and done. If not, you’ll be fucked.” Just like she was about to be.

“Carl, I want you to get me and my husband twenty-four-hour security. No one—and I mean no one—will be allowed to see us unless I say they can. From here on out, if anyone gets into this room without my knowledge, not only will they be removed by force, but you will also lose your job. Do you understand me?” I said, speaking directly to Carl.

All that soft shit I felt for him in the ambulance had flown out the window the minute I found out he had been holding out on me. That nigga had had the chance of a lifetime, and that was fucking me. The least he could have done was to warn a bitch about who her man really was.

“You can’t keep me away from Tay’von,” Connie objected. “I am carrying his child—”

“Bitch, so am I . . . and that doesn’t make anybody special but me. I am his wife, and what I say goes. You will be placed on a no-visitation list. If you even come close to this room, I will have you arrested. And, Connie, you do not want to fuck with me, because if you do, you will end up having that little bastard child of yours in a jail cell.”

Connie stood up and put her hands on her hips, as if she had found a new jolt of strength. I looked her up and down before settling for the “I don’t give a shit about what you’re thinking” expression.

“You can’t keep me away from him. I love him.”

“Honey, your love holds no weight over here. Your time has been up with Tay for a while now, and your time is up with me now. Carl, do your fucking job and see to it that I do not ever see her around here again. Please let the nurses know that she is not to even be on this floor.”

Both Carl and Connie waited to see if I was serious. All he had to do was look into my eyes and he knew that his job was on the line. He got up and walked over to Connie. She seemed as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing or seeing.

“You gonna put me out, Carl? I have known you too damn long for you to just put me out because that coldhearted bitch is barking out orders!”

Damn. If I had had a heart, I would have felt bad for her. She looked broken and hurt. Someone should have told her not to try to go toe to toe with me, but it was too late. Maybe if she had gone a different way about things, I would have been a bit nicer. She should have known that if I walked in there and found everything out the way I had, not only would I bark, but I would bite her ass too and leave a goddamned mark.

“Carl, you have ten seconds to get this fat bitch out of here,” I said, meaning every single word.

Carl took her arm and tried to lead her to the door without a fight, but I already knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, especially with Carl being hurt.

Connie waved a fist in the air and yelled, “Shamika should have killed your ass when she had the chance. She used to tell me that you were an evil and worthless bitch while you were out on tour with Tay, but I . . . I just didn’t think that Tay would stoop this low. You have no—”

“Get her the fuck out of here now!” I said, my voice raised slightly.

Carl had to damn near drag her out as she kicked and screamed. I had had enough of her lip, and I was happy to see her go. I waited for Carl to get back into the room before I spoke again.

“I need you to get on top of the twenty-four-hour security now. Make sure that there is a no-visitation list drawn up, with that nutjob at the top it,” I said as I looked around the room. “And one more thing. I need to be moved in here with Tay. It seems to me that I haven’t been at the top of my game, and that’s going to change starting today. Me moving in here is the first thing that I need to do. And remember that no one, not even a nurse or a doctor, can come in here unless I say so.” I “barked,” as Connie had put it. I gave a couple more orders to Carl and then waited for him to leave me alone in the room.

Well, I hadn’t seen that one coming at me, but I thought that I had handled it okay. I looked over at Tay and watched him sleep while I thought about things. I really wished he had been up while the whole Connie thing went down, but most of all, I just wanted him to wake up. If he died because of me . . . I wasn’t even going to think that way. I knew that Tay had just as much fight in him as I did, and his babies did too.

As I got settled beside my man in my new hospital room, all I could think about was how I was going to deal with the Connie situation. If she really was having his baby, I was just going to put a plan together to make sure that my kids, my man, and my whole life were better than hers. And it would be on every level. The boss bitch was back, and I was going to make sure that nothing got past me from that moment on.

* * *

Another week would pass by before Tay woke up. I didn’t bother bringing up Connie right away, since I hadn’t heard from her or about her since the first day I walked into this room. The first thing Tay did when he woke up was call my name. And that bitch thought that she still had his heart. I was half asleep when I heard him softly call out, “Tangie.” I jumped out of bed and sat beside him.

“Baby, I’m here. How do you feel? Let me call for a doctor,” I said as I pushed the call button.

My baby looked so out of it. I didn’t know how long it was gonna take him before he was back to his old self again. For a couple of days while waiting for him to wake up, I felt like I was well enough to go home, but I wasn’t leaving my baby alone. I needed to be the first face he saw when he woke up, no matter the time. I was still very upset about Connie, but that wasn’t the main focus in that moment. I remembered what it was like to wake up in that cold-ass place by myself, and I didn’t want that for him.

When the doctor came in, I stepped to the side, and he checked everything out. Whereas I had been shot three times, Tay’s unlucky number was five.

I couldn’t wait to get out of here, just so I could start the paperwork and sue those fucking policemen. The news had been pretty much on top of their shit. All the entertainment news shows, along with the major networks, had been reporting on the shooting, Tay’s condition, and my progress. I had made what seemed like fifty calls to magazine and TV reporters. You couldn’t let anything die down in this business. It didn’t matter if you got shot, stabbed, or killed. People would want to know the when, how, and why. If you were the lucky, one of those things would push your career even further, especially in the rap biz.

While the doctor examined Tay, it hit me. I didn’t have to wait to do an interview. No. I was going to call Evengeliza Moore and ask her to come out to the hospital with her film crew. Tay and I would give interviews right there in our hospital beds. Not only would the world show sympathy for us and direct anger at the cops who had shot us, but I would drop the Connie bomb and turn her into a monster.

The world would look at her as the side chick who came to the hospital to antagonize Tay’von’s wife while both her life and his hung in the balance. Not to mention, dropping my baby news would have the world talking, and it would also make me look like even more of a victim. They were going to drag her for filth, and I was going to use the public uproar to my advantage. I was going to ruin her, while allowing our situation to soften the blow of another woman being pregnant by my husband at the same damn time as me. It wouldn’t matter what she took to the press after that. The court of public opinion would have already judged her and sentenced her to shame and humiliation.

Oh yes, the bitch was certainly back, and I had some new missions to accomplish.