“Crown on the rocks…make it a double.”
Benji grabbed a Newport out of the pack on the bar, lit it, and took a deep, satisfying drag before sipping the brown liquor that’d been placed before him.
He was alone at the bar. It was not like any birthday he’d ever had, and definitely not what he imagined for his fortieth. He was working on his third double of the evening…an experienced drinker, he knew he needed to slow down so he’d be able to drive home later.
The place she was.
The place he didn’t want to go.
The Black Frog was nearly empty at this time of the early evening. Benji truthfully felt much older than his now forty years as the DJ honored Benji’s birthday request to play music from his teen years. Benji was fairly uninterested in the popular singers of the day— they were all OK, but Benji still strongly preferred the music of his youth. In his mind, they sang about things that mattered. Especially the women. “Women used to sing to a man—about needing a man. Like Dorothy Moore…Patti LaBelle…Teena Marie…them women that made a man feel like one.” Benji thought. “Most women today only sang about being empowered or strong or independent or some other such crap.”
As the music played, Benji’s rapidly reddening eyes glazed over as he lit another cigarette, ordered another drink, and let his mind wander backward to a fateful evening in his younger days.
The party.
The kiss.
Benji had been about ready to do something he didn’t quite know how to do, and that was break up with Shante, but their kiss turned everything upside down. He felt a connection with Tina he wanted to explore and there was something about that dark-haired girl too. But the problem was…they didn’t like him like that. Shante did. Or at least that’s what he thought back then. Girls had always been confusing…women too.
The kiss clarified everything.
And when Shante called him the next day after their kiss to say she was going to the mall, said she would be missing him, then came back later that day with a shirt she said he’d look cute in, he was finished contemplating. As far as he was concerned, this was the one. Because that’s the kind of things girlfriends are supposed to say and do.
The teens settled into a pattern. They ate lunch together, they went to movies, they were on the phone even more than before, and Benji went over to her house and they sat outside and talked— to his surprise, Shante even came over to his house a few times, and it was funny how shy she was at first. They were comfortable, but sometimes…Benji felt a little like he was playing a part in a play— the role of being Shante’s boyfriend. The result was that slowly, over time, Benji stopped doing the things he’d done before. He walked to school less and less with Ricky and Brian until eventually, he stopped walking with them altogether— they were still best friends, but he went to school with Shante. His relationship with Tina changed as well; Shante changed her strategy of demanding Benji separate from Tina. Benji was powerless against her new found sweetness, and when she almost seductively suggested Benji should share a locker with her, Benji was incapable of refusing her. Truth be told— he didn’t want to refuse her. There was no big blow up with Tina— after Benji changed lockers, they just spoke less and less until the former friends would pass each other in the hallway with just a wave. Benji didn’t notice the next year when Tina went to a different high school— someone told him about it, but it was no big deal.
The couple stayed together as they entered high school. Shante just always seemed a step ahead of Benji maturity-wise though; she was always a little more popular, a little more in the know, and a little more knowledgeable about things important to teenagers, and at times, Benji felt like he was just along for the ride. He liked his girlfriend, but he was starting to gain a little status on his own. He made the football team, and though he was no football star, Shante and all the girls loved to wear the home jerseys of their boyfriends when they played away games and the away jerseys when they played home games. Benji was growing physically, becoming more confident, partly due to Shante’s influence but mostly due to his increasing maturity. He was starting to become more and more comfortable with his own personality and talents; he was turning into a young man, a young man who needed Shante less and less for the reasons they ‘d come together. Still— Benji was surprised to see Cookie Martin staring at him one day and out of nowhere just coming up to him, holding a conversation and telling him how funny he was…and that it was too bad he had a girlfriend.
He didn’t tell Shante, of course.
The prom saw Benji razor sharp in his baby- blue tux, replete with ruffles, and there was no doubt who his date would be— Shante…the same girlfriend he’d been with since the ninth grade. Benji was excited, but not just about the prom. He was now nearing eighteen years old, and though his grades were average, his excitement stemmed from being accepted to an out-of-state university, and he knew soon he’d leave home for the first time. Shante was uncharacteristically moody and upset though— though Benji was maturing, Shante’s feelings for him seemed to remain unchanged. She’d even taken to calling him her “Boo Boo Bunny,”…it was a name he despised and thought was stupid— but he didn’t say anything. Shante was a little upset at the prospect of him leaving, but Benji knew it was his opportunity to go a different direction. He thought he might even love her, but four years together as teens seemed like a lifetime. Going off to college seemed like an exciting new adventure.
And there were more girls looking at him like Cookie did. This was a change from Benji’s early teen years, however subtle. Girls were beginning to take notice for an unlikely reason: his poor eyesight. Similar to when he had been challenged for fights but remained cool because he didn’t realized he was being challenged, his interactions with girls starred following a similar pattern. He was often unaware of the subtle clues sometimes sent by teenage girls. Since he was unaware of the clues, he could not acknowledge or respond to them, an act that seemed to indicate a young man’s calmness and confidence.
I knew the truth.
It was really just poor eyesight all the time, but the effect was the same.
Things were not always what they looked like. It was odd how that worked sometimes.
Benji sensed the shift though, and he thought he was ready to explore the possibility of filling different roles other than the role he’d played as Shante’s boyfriend.
Angela lived at home, while Nikki went to City College and lived at home too. Marcus received an athletic scholarship to play baseball up north, so Benji’s parents were extremely proud to have a fourth child in college. He often heard them discussing how to pay for it, but Benji was unconcerned…he knew his parents would find a way to pay for…whatever it was they needed to pay for. Sure enough, envelopes started coming regarding something called a Pell Grant. Angela sat with him to explain what he should do when he got to the campus, how to get his room, how to register for classes but Benji scarcely listened. He was just excited to be going to college out of state. He was the first one too. Not even Marcus went to college out of state.
He was lost from the first minute he arrived.
He didn’t know how to get anywhere, he forgot how to register for classes, he got lost trying to find his dorm, and once he registered, he was lost trying to find where the classes were…he basically wandered around all day for the first week, following different crowds until slowly but surely, he got to where he was supposed to be, although it was substantially later than everyone else. He did find the parties, though. All he had to do was follow the music. And with the parties, he found alcohol— more beer, wine and liquor than he’d ever drank before and nobody to tell him not to drink it. Many nights, for the first time, Benji found himself vomiting outside, in the grass, in strange bathrooms, passed out on the ground at times, unable to move. One time, Benji dimly remembered one of the senior football players, a hulking young man, later drafted by the New York Jets, carried him home on his shoulder like a sack of laundry and dumped him in his room.
And he missed Shante desperately. Especially when he was drinking.
He was lost and alone, and the college campus was huge. If Benji felt like he sometimes didn’t fit in at home, the place where he’d grown up and enjoyed the regular presence of his longtime girlfriend, now he truly knew the pain of not fitting in—the loneliness, the homesickness, and the depression. And the worse he felt, the more he drank…which made him feel worse…which made him drink more. It was a never- ending cycle. Benji arrived at college looking forward to a life outside of being Shante’s boyfriend, but now her letters from home were the only positive thing he had to look forward to. Now he craved her…he wanted her…he needed her.
When he went home for Christmas break, he spent almost every second with Shante. To his delight, she was still all his…the absence apparently made both of their hearts grow fonder. After high school, Shante advanced to a supervisor position at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but she had applied for a job with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Benji was flabbergasted when she told him of her plan to enlist in the Navy; this was a slightly different Shante than the one he left a few months before. She seemed to have eschewed her “popular girl” image and instead, embraced young adulthood; her plan to enlist in the Navy bothered him; he couldn’t quite figure out why. He half expected her to add something about getting stationed somewhere and getting married, but she didn’t say that or anything like that. He’d never heard her talk like this…she had her own plan, was excited for her own future and though the now young adults were still seemingly tighter than ever, Benji took note of her failure to mention him or them after her planned enlistment in the Navy. Though Benji was unaware of doing so, he started talking Shante away from joining the Navy and almost imperceptibly began showering her with more attention and affection.
But I saw something else.
Benji was unconsciously upset with Shante’s plans—way more than he even knew. Because in his mind, somehow, she was one step ahead of him once again.
Benji did not want to return to college after the Christmas break, but when he did, his feelings about both Shante and school flip-flopped. This time, he was fully aware of how much he needed Shante, and he genuinely missed her…at first. Strangely enough, when he returned to school this time, he was ready for it. He knew where to go and what to do. His comfort with the process was increasing, and although he was still drinking too much, he didn’t find himself lost or vomiting in the dorm parking lot anymore.
And he was making friends.
Sam Outlaw from New York was his roommate and was outrageously funny. Freddie Stedman was from Detroit and the best basketball player Benji had ever seen in person, even though he was trying to make the college’s varsity team as a nonscholarship walk-on.
And then there were the girls.
One was a senior who thought Benji played on the football team—because that’s what he told her when they met at a party. Benji had forgotten her name, he didn’t want to see her anymore anyway. But Delphia…she was interesting, a beautiful, curvy, brown-skinned girl from Atlanta with the longest, straightest hair he’d ever seen. Stina was a small- town girl from some little city in Arizona—Vail or something like that. She was very studious, a point guard on the womens basketball team and very pretty; his roommate was shocked when she knocked on the door and asked for him. Little Amy was from Pennsylvania - small, petite, perfectly proportioned; she loved laughing, was extra cute and the type to offer a back rub if you said you were tired. Benji knew because he’d said that one day and had fallen asleep in her room during a back rub and only awakened by her gentle whisper: “It’s almost curfew…you have to go now, OK?”
When Benji went home for the summer, he felt like a new man…a college man. Shante was still his girlfriend though; he considered her his hometown girlfriend— his real girlfriend. The other girls at college? He just liked their company, that’s all…he figured it was just something to do; he rationalized that he couldn’t just sit in his room. For her part, Shante got the job at the Department of Motor Vehicles and started at City College herself. But after her initial fervor to enlist in the Navy, she slowed her thinking on that. Though he never came out and said it, her boyfriend clearly did not want her to join the Navy—that meant something. She recognized that she and Benji were growing together; she loved the man he was growing into…she loved him. Shante herself had gone out a few times, but mostly with girls only. Men flirted…she’d ate with a couple of them, but she never considered being with anyone but Benji. She didn’t give up on her idea to enlist in the Navy entirely, but she envisioned a future now…Benji was nothing like the ninth grade boy she’d sweetly danced with all those years ago. He’d changed.
She didn’t know how right she was.
As Benji went back and forth to college, his grades were almost an afterthought. What was clear was his affinity for women—there were more and more, not enough that he ever thought of himself as a “ladies’ man” but enough so that Benji regularly thought, “This would have never happened to me in high school.” The actual truth was— Benji still thought of himself as a charcoal-black, nappy-headed, Coke bottle glasses wearing, skinny kid from Southeast Dago. So when he got attention from attractive women, he didn’t turn it down…it always surprised him a little. Shante was just Shante; of course she liked him. She always had; who knows why…but the others? That was something different.
Over time, Benji started developing his own rules for dealing with women. “I’m like Marcus now,” Benji would think with a grin. “Now, I’m who should be giving advice.”
“Treat the beautiful queens like average girls; treat average girls like beautiful queens. Either way, they’re not used to that kind of treatment, and it makes you interesting,” Benji repeated to himself one evening as he prepared for a fraternity party.
“Know when to walk away.”
Benji surmised if he walked away too soon, he would lose their interest because they might determine he wasn’t interested. But if he stayed too long, he would seem too easy, too desperate, not exciting and definitely not a challenge. So the timing on the “walk away” was crucial. And when you left, you had deposit something mentally or emotionally memorable first.
But not a smile.
Smiling seemed disingenuous to Benji; smiles were great toward mothers and sisters and aunts. But for women? Grinning or no expression at all was better…and you could combine it with a little “eye conversation.” Benji mastered the art of talking with his eyes, a talent especially important because he thought he couldn’t speak that well to women. So less words were better; he preferred to let his eyes and his grins do the talking for him.
But when he went home, he always wanted Shante. By now, all the reasons for being Shante’s boyfriend or staying with her seemed to evaporate. Even so, he wanted her available when he came home…he did not want her with anyone else and he did not want her joining the Navy— but every now and then, she’d bring it up. It stopped for a while, but lately, she started up with it again.
Until 1984.
The year Benji and Shante welcomed their daughter into the world.
Benji and Shante were always very careful but less and less so as they traveled the path of their now six-year relationship. Neither professed any real nervousness or regret when they found out she was pregnant. Where as once she was the life of the party, popular and always in the middle of things, she’d matured into a thoughtful and determined young adult. She viewed impending motherhood with joy, and she had no doubt Benji would take these important steps with her. Deep in her soul, she suspected there was a possibility Benji let himself be less careful with her because he wanted to ensure she would not leave him by joining the Navy. She had not intended to leave him, even if she enlisted, though she recognized what the possibilities would have been. Now everything changed— the Navy did not allow recruits to enlist if they had children unless they surrendered their parental rights. Signing over her child was a plan of action that never crossed Shante’s mind; it was an impossibility. The change in plans did not anger her…babies were blessings, and if this was the path she was on, she was glad she was on it with Benji, who, though changing, was still the genteel, loyal and caring soul of her teen years.
Or so she thought.
For his part, Benji was in fact pleased, though extremely nervous about telling his parents — especially Mama. Benji was proud…he felt like he was more of a man now, but his thoughts on the matter were curious. One of his prevailing notions was “I got her now…she’ll never leave me,” and from the moment she told him the news, he immediately stopped worrying she would leave him. And though Benji had matured and grown since their first kiss at the party back in the ninth grade, some of his thoughts on fatherhood were decidedly immature, notably his belief he could return to school and all would be as it was before. As Pops intimated with a smile and a strong hand on his shoulder, “Everything has changed now, but you’ll be fine—just be a good father to my grandchild; that’s the important thing now. It’s the only thing.” Benji agreed but still made plans to continue his life at school. Deep in his soul, he suspected there was a possibility that Shante let herself be less careful because she saw he was on the path of success and she didn’t want another woman on that path instead of her. It did not anger him— Shante was a steady, and he planned to spoil her and his new baby whenever he was home from school.
But the realities of fatherhood soon hit. When Benji left school to return home in June, he did not fully realize or understand that he would never again return.
Three months later, his daughter Jade was born.
And as much as he loved being a father, he could not admit to himself he missed being at college, particularly the social aspect. And neither Benji nor Shante recognized the real resentment, small at first but growing ever larger over time…in Benji.
Because fatherhood was hard. Really hard.
Even before he left school, Benji felt Shante had become more demanding about things she felt her their unborn child needed. The list seemed endless, and now Shante seemed to assume Benji was going to somehow provide all these things. He didn’t understand yet that his parents would help some…Shante’s mom would help some…but Shante, her mom, and his parents all seemed to put the primary responsibility on him to provide, and it felt overwhelming. The light-hearted days of college were like a dream…had it really happened? And Mama seemed to have an expectation…she was never angry, but she always seemed to start sentences with “When y’all get married…” or “If you were married, then…” Benji heard the message loud and clear: marriage should probably come next; marriage would somehow make everything better.
So they married in 1986. And Benji proceeded to work harder than he’d ever worked in his life. Janitor and cook at the school on Forty-Seventh…McDonald’s…gardener at Balboa Park…and others. He tried the very best he could, but he was fighting a losing battle— Shante became more and more demanding with things Jade needed, and Benji was stung by one of her common refrains: “You have to step up and be a man now, Benji,” a comment which never failed to anger him. What did she think he was doing? He left everything to take care of her and provide for both her and the baby. The weight of the responsibility was an anchor to Benji and threatened to avalanche him every day, it seemed.
And their second daughter, Jayla, was born later that year.
And Benji continued to miss being at college. Not just the social life, but now twenty-four, he was recognizing he didn’t want to work in the post office or try for the Police Academy like Shante suggested. Toward the end of his college days, he realized what he really wanted to do was be a lawyer. And when he thought back, the pleasant and exciting reality of the past had changed to “She trapped me with these babies, and now I can’t do anything.” And his resentment grew as the number and level of the couple’s arguments increased.
During one of those arguments, Benji let it slip out he always wanted to be a lawyer. He claimed that Shante didn’t realize that he’d given that up for her, but Shante recognized her young husband’s hard work; she was appreciative, but she was working just as hard— perhaps even harder because the job of being a mother to two young children was never ending. Still, upon finding out Benji was angry about not being able to finish college, she was surprised, primarily because she’d never known Benji to be such an angry person…it was a side of him she was not used to seeing. In search of peace at home, she felt Benji finishing college was good for them all. First Benji would finish…then she would finish. Then they could both provide for their children much better in the future. So Shante advanced the idea that she would return to her work at the DMV and her mother agreed to watch the children during the day. Benji could take classes in the evenings and finish his degree; then later, Shante would take classes to complete a degree as well.
Benji was overjoyed. He signed up and began taking classes. He also discovered soft contact lenses. So college wasn’t the only thing Benji resumed.
His womanizing also resumed.
Benji hadn’t been listening to me for some time now, but I was constantly in his mind and his psyche. You see, I love Benji, and no one on earth knows how good a man he can be better than I do. But Benji was not acting like himself…he was almost unrecognizable. I asked him often, “Why, Benji? Your relationship is sound— your father was not this way! Why, Benji? Do you remember who you are?” But for Benji, apparently the grip of outside women was too strong. By now, I knew it wasn’t even that “poor Benji was traumatized by being teased”—no, I was not going to let him off the hook that easy. By now it was clear…he was making bad choices, he knew he was making bad choices, but he just didn’t want to say “no.” But with a family depending on him, I needed him to learn how to say no to certain people and certain situations…and learn it quickly.
Before it was too late.
By 1988, Benji had earned a bachelor’s degree, and the couple welcomed their third daughter, Janiya, into the world. But this pregnancy was much more difficult than the first two. Shante was in significantly more discomfort, and her weight gain was significantly higher than normal, accumulating mightily on her hips and thighs. For some reason she could not fathom, she found it difficult to get out of bed in the aftermath of this delivery; she was constantly sad and would burst out in tears for no reason. She ate continually, as if she were powerless to control it, and the ultimate result was a weight gain that seemed permanent. The normally confident Shante felt worthless and hopeless and could not shake the sense of guilt because of her seeming inability to care for any of her daughters. The doctor prescribed medicines and told Benji to remain patient; he said Shante would probably be OK after a couple of months, but her condition stretched on with no end in sight.
As Shante’s condition slowly started to improve, despite my urgings for Benji to forgo it, Benji decided he needed to begin law school. I was constantly in Benji’s ear, telling him Shante needed him to go with her to the doctor, she needed more support than ever before, she needed him to do more than just ask, “What can I do?” I told him he was a husband and the father of three beautiful girls and it was time for him to just do what he knew was necessary without being asked. I knew Benji had only one chance to do this the right way.
And Benji was loving, caring, and attentive…for a month.
Then he started law school.
And he’d taken up with a fun-loving, light-hearted, attractive young woman named Robin.
Shante completed the rest of the slow process of postpartum recovery alone. The only remnant of her condition were the excess pounds she was still unable to shed.
But she recovered a lot smarter than she’d been before.
There were things she should have known before, things she refused to see, things she refused to believe…but now she knew. For the sake of their three children, she still hoped beyond hope…but she knew. Thereafter, she demonstrated that tricky relationship that often exists between hope and faith. Her hope that her relationship would right itself enabled her to eventually resume work while fulfilling her duties as wife and mother just in case her relationship righted itself. But her faith in the man sleeping beside her had eroded to the point that she silently began making plans of her own…just in case her hope didn’t pan out.
It was her hope that resulted in the birth of their fourth child in 1993.
It happened just as Benji was graduating from law school— a son she allowed her husband to name Benjamin III, primarily because she’d come to adore her father-in-law so much. Nevertheless, for the first time, Shante experienced a level of regret regarding the birth of one of her children. It was an unintended pregnancy, the result of a moment of weakness, and she fought against the unnatural urges and feelings she experienced in the aftermath of what she vowed would be her last pregnancy. She loved extra hard on her son, and eventually, as it had after her third pregnancy, her mind cleared. Confusion and despair were replaced by focus and purpose: Jade was nine now, Jayla had turned seven, Janiya was five, and she had her beautiful baby Benny to care for. She called him Little Benji in front of her husband…but Benny at all other times when he wasn’t there…which was often. Benny’s birth delayed her plan, but it did not end it. Shante was tough in a way Benji had never really been…she thought him gentle, sweet, caring, and loyal for the past fifteen years, and that was why she loved him. And he had been once…but since it was clear he was no longer any of these things, Shante knew she would have to act, and like any lioness on the hunt, she lay low and patiently waited for the right time to act.
My concern was for Benji, of course. I was assigned as his guide, whether he was right or wrong. All human beings are flawed, so I loved Benji no less. But I was sad and couldn’t help feeling I had somehow failed him because I failed to convince him to return to the Benji we all knew before it was too late.
Now it seemed it was already too late. I sat back now and waited for the inevitable.
He would need me in the future.
I hadn’t given up, but I was resigned to Benji’s future. I wasn’t the only one to see what was unfolding. Benji’s father had also taken note.
“Robin called my house for you.”
After law school graduation, Benji rapidly found high-paying work as a general counsel attorney. He needed every dollar to care for Shante, his four children…and Robin along with her infant son Brandon, a secret no one was aware of, not even his brothers. Though he saw Robin infrequently now, she had turned into a bitter and vengeful woman. Shante seemed pretty content doing whatever it was she did, but for Benji, when he wasn’t taking his girls to Girl Scouts, going to school plays and track meets, or taking care of his clients’ legal needs, it was now the beautiful Sonja who took up the majority of his free time. He was annoyed to learn Robin had called his parents’ house; he wasn’t aware she even had the number. But here was Pops, visiting him in his office, informing him she’d called. Benji’s heartbeat sped up a bit as he rose from his seat to close the door and find out what his father knew without revealing his secret.
“Oh, that must be Mrs. Little, Pops…she’s a client that…”
“Stop.”
His father cut him off and peered at him.
“This wasn’t no client. This was a lady looking for you.”
“Pops, I…”
Benji’s father cut him off again with a wave and a stare before continuing, “I don’t know what’s going on, but you wasn’t raised like this, Benjamin— this just some foolishness. All this education and money and your name on the door and your big office don’t impress me none and it don’t make you no man. You got a wife and four children, and being a man mean you gotta put them first. Where did you learn being a man got anything to do with embracing the softness of a woman? I slung people’s garbage and made my money off of other people’s rottenness and trash for forty years, and I still walked like a man because your mama and my children came first. Not me…not my comfort… my family. A man sacrifices for his own, and if you gotta bathe in filth, be dog tired, or go without, that’s what a man do for his babies! You can teach them with your mouth, but a man like me teach by example!”
The way Pops looked down and shook his head made Benji wonder if perhaps his father was ashamed of him. His father took a deep breath and swallowed before continuing.
“I thought I taught you this.”
Benji was quiet through his chastisement but relieved at the same time: his father didn’t know about Brandon. His father was from the old school and he would have lost his mind if he knew there was another Frazier child that wasn’t of him and Shante, a daughter-in-law who doted over him as much as Angela and Nikki did; and he loved her as his own daughter.
“Your mama don’t know about this, and she don’t need to. It’d break her heart. You fix it.”
Pops’s final command before he got up and left needed no further explanation. Benji knew he needed to fix it so Robin would stop calling his parents’ home. He needed to fix it so whatever was happening at home that made Robin relevant got turned into a happening that ended her relevancy. He needed to fix his marriage with Shante.
He needed to fix…himself.
But it wasn’t easy. For one thing, there was Brandon, the baby no one knew about. That was problematic enough but the other thing was—Benji just didn’t truly need Shante anymore. When they were teens, she attached herself to an insecure teen and gave him confidence. When he went to college, she was there when he was homesick, lost, and lonely; she gave him a reason to keep going. When they were young marrieds, she went to work and took care of their children so Benji could finish college and law school. But now? Her teenage beauty had changed to the slightly overweight body of a mother of four. She worked, but Benji made plenty of money now. Insecurity and a lack of self-confidence were no longer issues he needed her to assuage, and she always seemed busy doing whatever it was she did. He just didn’t seem to need her for anything…not anymore.
Until one day…he did.
Benji had been suspended from practicing law. Though he was extremely well paid, it was a financial strain to take care of his family, Robin and Brandon, and romance Sonja too. He developed a practice of borrowing from client trust funds and then repaying the “loan” before it was discovered. It was an unethical practice— he knew it was unethical but he needed the extra money. And he thought since most of the clients were either too old or too young to vigorously check— and he was the manager of the trust— as long as the balances were correct and he always repaid the trust, no one would ever know.
But under a routine audit, it didn’t take a genius to figure out something was amiss when a trust that required only one payout a year had a dozen transactions of differing amounts tied to the account.
And he hadn’t had time to pay back three of the trust accounts at the time of the audit.
His firm was sued, Benji was fired, and the bar association suspended him from practicing law pending a hearing. He was crushed by losing his job and status, but he was really concerned about the money and how they would replace it to care for his family. Shante always came through in situations like this though; she’d figure it out. First, Benji had to come up with a plausible explanation for being fired, though— he obviously couldn’t tell her the truth. But once he had his story straight, he’d tell her whatever lie he came up with and they’d make a plan together. He didn’t know what to do about Robin and Brandon, but he decided to figure it out later.
When Benji went home to tell Shante, the house was strangely quiet, but he didn’t recognize it at first. He came home earlier than he normally did, extremely talkative, laying out his fabricated story of what happened, how it wasn’t his fault, how unfair it all was and how he knew they were going to be OK anyway, they didn’t need anybody anyway and wanting to know what she thought they should do.
And then…the unconscious invaded his conscious mind…and a realization hit him.
“Where the kids?”
Shante had not moved from her position sitting on the couch and did not answer his question. It was only then he became aware of the unnatural quiet, a silence violated only by Millie Jackson’s soulful voice singing in the background.
And almost as if on cue, outside…the rain began to fall.
There was no food cooking in the kitchen. The window shades were drawn, and the house was unnaturally dark. Benji was keenly aware of the rain coming down harder against the windows as his focus shifted to the bags packed…and sitting in the hallway.
She knew.
And outside - it thundered.
The situation left him speechless as she got up without a word and walked out of the door and into her sister’s car that just appeared in his driveway.
As it had been for what seemed like their entire lives…Shante was one step ahead of him.
They divorced in 1999. The judge took no pity on Benji’s employment status and in fact seemed angry as he mandated he pay Shante nearly $3,000 a month in alimony and child support. Benji remained motionless through it all. When the proceedings were complete, he unintentionally came face to face with Shante.
He did not intend it, but now that it was here, there was something he wanted to say…something he needed to say. But as he looked into the eyes of his now ex-wife, he recalled the times in college and when he first started his legal career, when he took so much pride in being able to talk to women with his eyes alone and how effective it was.
But even more so, he remembered an evening over twenty years ago, when in the middle of a slow dance, Shante had looked at him through the darkness of a house party with eyes that spoke without saying a word.
Her eyes said “I’m sorry” that night.
It was the same message Benji’s eyes were sending now.
And I knew he meant it.
And so did Shante. Her eyes responded in turn, also without saying a word.
Her eyes responded…
“I know.”
And as she embraced her ex-husband and kissed him softly on his cheek, for a brief moment in time…Teri and Shante were running the halls of their junior high school, with Teri screaming to everyone within earshot that Shante Clay liked Benji Frazier…and in that moment, the now ex-spouses were fifteen all over again.
Then the moment passed. Shante turned and exited the courthouse.
She did not look back.
Over the next few years, Robin sued Benji for child support. Sonja left. And Benji was alone in his struggles. He considered moving to Wisconsin, where there was no bar requirement and only a law degree was required to practice, but Wisconsin seemed too foreign to Benji, and moving there would have required a relentless determination that seemed to have left Benji. He found work as a paralegal and augmented his salary by working at 7-11, driving a cab, performing work as a security guard, and with his father’s words ringing in his ears, doing anything he needed to do to pay his child support obligations.
He did not see his children much, though. The stress of his situation, poor habits, waning discipline, and an increasingly severe drinking habit resulted in a weight gain of his own. As his weight climbed over 280 pounds on his six-foot frame, he stopped weighing himself…when he went over three hundred pounds, he did not want to know. He was not suicidal yet—but his depression was deepening, he’d just stopped caring about what was going to happen; it reflected in his demeanor and his appearance. He did not want his children or Shante to see him like this. He’d rather just pay his child support and have them remember him like he was. He’d seen Shante, though—he’d seen her by chance as he aimlessly wandered a shopping mall one day…and she looked fantastic. She’d lost fifty or sixty pounds and looked like the Shante of their younger days. He’d heard she was working as a real estate agent and doing very well for herself.
He’d wondered though…when did she find the time to get that level of training and set up her new life?
Still…it was another reason to just pay his child support from a distance and remain a ghost. Every now and then he’d call and lie about how good he was doing. But as he ran out of lies and reasons he couldn’t see his children, the calls just stopped. His father was right…he should sacrifice for his family. And the best thing he could do for all of them was pay what he owed and let them all remember the strong, handsome, confident, accomplished man they once knew…and loved.
As he drank alone on his fortieth birthday, Benji could not lie to himself…and he couldn’t lie to me. We both knew he was a dangerously obese alcoholic, flat broke, and alone. Not completely alone, though— he’d met an older woman named Alyssa, a slovenly, annoying, negative woman with too many children that she didn’t take good enough care of. Though he could barely contain his disdain for her, at least she gave him a place to live.
And she was pregnant. Or so she said. Maybe he was going to be a father again. Maybe not. Who knew? His baby? Someone else’s?
None of it mattered anymore.
Benji started on a fifth double as the bartender warned him he would not serve him another— which was OK; he had a bottle of cheap whiskey stashed under the seat in his car. In any case, Benji barely heard the bartender through the alcohol-engendered haze he now found himself in. This was a comforting place for Benji now—everything was fuzzy, but he was engulfed by the warm comfort of his own alcohol-infused world, a world where he was always happy, a world where he could forget his numerous failures, a world where he wasn’t a disgraced, morbidly obese, disgusting, pathetic alcoholic—a world where he still reigned supreme as its king.
I could not see this twenty-five years ago. I suspected continuing a relationship with Shante might not be the right road, but all I knew during their dance and first kiss was that Benji was at a crossroads. I suspected Shante would be a negative influence on Benji.
What I didn’t realize was it was Benji who would have the negative influence on Shante. Not the other way around.
I knew there was a path to redemption for Benji. His failures were numerous, but he was a good man underneath it all. I tugged at his his conscience and whispered, “Let’s go home, Benji…let’s go home. We’ll sober up and plan our way ahead.”
Benji nodded as if he could hear me and fumbled for his car keys.
“No, no, no,” I warned him. “Call your father…Angela…or one of your brothers. You’ve had too much to drink. It’s not safe to drive. I know you know this. Call someone.”
Benji knew he shouldn’t drive. But he ignored me.
But I was right. The flashing red lights almost magically illuminated behind his swerving car as he proceeded from the Black Frog.
“Body and Soul” blared from the car speakers as he drunkenly pulled onto the sidewalk and a police officer sidled up to his window. Benji’s head was back and eyes were closed; the alcohol transported him backwards in time.
“Sir…do you know why I stopped you?”
After a while, Benji opened his bloodshot eyes and gazed blankly at the officer. After what seemed like an eternity of staring, his response was heavily slurred and barely understandable:
“Because that’s the way it’s got to be.”
And then I knew he would never listen to that song quite the same way ever again.