The first preliminary hearing, I attended alone. I attended this hearing all on my own with myself as the defendant and my mother as the plaintiff who had emergency custody of my son. I cannot even describe the hatred, the pure, evil, livid spoil that I felt. My body physically hurt. My mind was sharp and keen yet still lost and confused. I spoke to only those who spoke to me. I did not speak to Gem. I could hardly look at her silhouette, let alone her face. How could she be taking me through this? She had to know this was killing me. She had to know this was killing what little hope I’d had for our relationship.
The truth was Gem knew little of who I was as a person. She had only known me as her daughter. Gem knew little of what I believed in. She knew little of the life that I was leading. Gem knew little of my struggle because she had not ever walked in my shoes.
I am my mother’s daughter, however strictly out of genetics. Gem and I could not be more different in our similarities. The biggest difference was I had chosen to raise my child while she chose to curb her major responsibility. Gem was just turning eighteen when she had become bewitched with me. She was young but not too young to raise a child.
It was almost as though I had exceeded her in that regard, and she’d do anything in her power to keep me from being a better parent than her, but in doing so, I’d really need to prove to be so.
So the story goes like this. Mema’s mother passed a few months after I was born, now thirty years ago. My grandmother, Nana, convinced my mother Gem to allow me to stay with Mema so as to ease her healing process. I was to be some type of balm or glue or companion; I do not know. A few months or years went by of me living with Mema, but my mother finally wanted to man up to raise me herself, but Mema told her if she tried to come get me now, she would take Gem to court for custody—a threat, the same threat Gem made to me as if to scare me. I was not afraid of Mema. Mema did not intimidate me. Mema did not abuse me, so a threat such as that from Mema would not scare me. The threat from Gem did not scare me. The threat from Mema to Gem scared Gem. She thought the outcome would be the same. It would not be the same.
What did scare me was that Gem would actually take this to this extreme and sacrifice her character and relationship with me for no reason and no gain whatsoever. That was what scared me. She’d concede to the threat. She’d let me stay. She sacrificed our relationship from the moment she did not fight for me. This realization haunts me to this day. It answered plenty of questions about my upbringing. It made a lot of uncertainties and a lot of sense, but it was not fair that I got no choice in the matter. Who doesn’t want to be with their mother? Who does not want that bond with their mother? True story: everyone wants that bond. I sympathize with those who do not have that relationship. It is significant to interpersonal relationships with everyone’s life and development. It’s called trust. And I have trust issues.
Facing my fear, I did stand up, and when Lyulle was released from prison, he stood with me too. Now this scared the hell out of the magistrate because she was told that my child’s father beat me. He wanted to kill me, and he might hurt the baby. But here I was, maintained, composed, and with Lyulle—every time!—objecting to false allegations and extremes and dissecting bullshit theories. We were smart. Lyulle was anyway. I was a basket case, but I’d shown up every time for my son with tears in my eyes.
When Lyulle came home from prison, he’d stay over at the apartment with me from time to time. I’d still considered our apartment to be his home too, but he didn’t.
He had gotten out of prison looking spectacular. He had muscles everywhere. His hair was nice, and his skin looked good. He looked very healthy. He’d been chipped up too, stacking his chips while locked up, networking using various schemes to stay connected. Again, I was totally clueless. We slept together. We still did a lot of things together. He was still my man in my mind. In reality, he was not. He’d come around me to fuck with me, to fuck me, and to beat the fuck out of me.
I returned home from work to find Lyulle at the apartment. He’d been waiting for me to arrive before going out. While at the apartment, he’d met the neighbors who had moved in below us, and they mistook him for someone else. He automatically thought they meant Dion. He was furious all over again.
They invited him over to their set. He attended. Lyulle lived for that type of thing. Lyulle loved to socialize, but he thought they knew something about me that he didn’t. So he tried to get as cool with them as he could. He said that he mentioned me to them and that I was upstairs in our apartment. They urged him to come get me.
I already knew there was some bullshit going on. Already, I did not want to go, but I went to avoid any other unwanted fights. I got dressed. I went downstairs with him. He introduced me to everyone.
The most ridiculous-looking guy in the room approached me to talk to me. He was just being friendly, but he was talking to me. Lyulle lost it. He thought this guy was trying to holler at me and got in his face. I couldn’t believe it. He looked like Sasquatch on crack, but Lyulle was acting out of pocket in someone’s house whom he had just met, and fighting this guy’s friend … I was not sure what the hell I was supposed to do. I got the other guys to break up the fight, and we left.
We went to our apartment, where he began again. He lay it into me. I could not speak. He was too furious. Now in the wee hours of the morning—three or four o’clock—he was beating my ass. He pushed me into the window, and I fell into the blinds as I was thrown off balance. I wanted to gather myself, but any sudden move could be costly. He was talking big, mad shit to me now. I was taking it all in and watching him. He unscrewed the attached stick on those blinds, the mechanism that turned to open them, and began beating me with it. Getting hit with that thing actually hurt. It hurt badly, but it did not hurt me bad enough for Lyulle’s satisfaction. He took off his belt. Anyone who knows Lyulle knows he dresses his ass off, and that day, he’d worn a thick leather belt of some expensive-named brand. He took it off while simultaneously throwing me to the ground.
I moved to rise, and he threatened me, “Stay down. If you get up, I swear I’ll break your face.”
I stayed down. Smack across my backside went the leather belt, and then another, and then another smack, smack, slap. He was furious, I was shattered. My skin began to rise and rip from the leather whip. I could feel the belt tearing into my skin as he beat me hard. I thought I would die that day, but then he stopped. I stayed there, doubled over in the fetal position on all fours, praying that he was finished. I do not remember getting off the floor that day. I cannot even remember shedding one tear.
That weekend, I was scheduled to go see Brooklyn in Akron. Lyulle had come over before I was to leave. We’d slept together to maintain the peace. It was three in the afternoon. I needed to head up the highway. He’d passed out from the sexcapade. I was so tender to the touch. My skin had bruised badly. I had literally turned every color in the rainbow, literally—orange, black, purple, yellow, and red. The veins in my flesh had risen to the surface, and nearly every part of my body was in pain. I’d deserved it, and I’d gritted my teeth and borne it.
Now in Akron, my family was still in church. I’d run into a family friend who was more like an aunt to me. I broke down as soon as she saw me. I was hurt, and I was hurting badly. All I could muster to say to her as she hugged me tightly was, “I think I’ve really messed up now.”
The next fight was just as bad and could have possibly ended worse. He tied me up, filled the bathtub with water, turned the iron on, and began interrogating me about Dion and my actions while he was gone. I told the truth. Out came everything. I did not want to, but if he was going to torment and then kill me, at least he’d know why he was doing it, and it really did not matter what I had said. If he felt like fucking me up, he did, and I’d submit.
I had not spoken to Dion. Lyulle had been stalking him though. He’d made me take him to the club where Dion and I frequented. He’d made me show him where Dion and his family lived. Of course, I knew all of this information about Dion. I’d also known Lyulle was not gonna leave the money situation alone. One day, he’d made me pack my shit. He was gonna drop me off at Dion’s house and leave me there. He made me call him. He’d forced me to go to his house one evening to knock on his door, and so I did.
I knocked hard, and Dion came outside. I’d come over his house before. His girl had been home, and he was not. She hadn’t come to the door, but she’d called him. He threatened to call the police on me. When I told Lyulle about what was said about the money and about him calling the police if I came back to his house, Lyulle just laughed. He had been on speaker phone the whole time I was talking to Dion and thought the whole scenario to be extremely hilarious. I laughed along. Inside, I was fearful for Dion and for myself. I’d gone over and asked Dion for the money again face to face. He’d told me to wait again. The pressure was on me though. I told him he had to give me something. Whatever he could give me, I needed it.
We went to the ATM. I took him. Something like $249 was what he had given me. Dion had bought a new SUV that summer while I had not been communicating with him, and he showed me. I had met with him a time before that, and I’d rode with him to someone’s house. I stayed inside. Rummaging through the glove compartment, I saw the registration. It was in Macy’s name, but no other real information did I get from that.
I took that $249 back to Lyulle. He was pissed.
“This is what that nigga gave you?”
Scared, I began to count it, but the money was all jumbled and crumbled up.
“Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty …”
“I am not Big Worm, and you are not Smokey. You can take that shit back to him. I’ll throw that shit out of the window,” exclaimed Lyulle.
“This was all he had to give me.”
“That’s not even 10 percent of what he was supposed to give you.”
I remained silent. This was something I could not fight. I was already defeated, so I did not even try.
That very same night, a fire was set to that SUV Dion had bought. It went up in flames. He called me.
“Are you ready for me to pick you up to go get the rest of that paper?” I asked him as he was crying to me about his car. I was confused. Why was he crying?
I did not see Dion much after that. I never got the money, and I did not speak to him. I had heard he moved out of the state. Maybe I was not the only one he owed a debt to.