About a year after our son’s birth, a change takes Greg like a cold front. It’s subtle: He leaves piles of folded clothes on the floor, he cooks all the meat from the freezer, then lets it spoil in the fridge, he makes a full pot of coffee and drinks only a cup, he turns the air conditioner down to sixty-five without telling me. To compensate, he buys me sweaters, three sizes too big. He stores gallons of orange juice and leaves them to ferment in the fridge. He moves us to a bigger house, a bigger yard, a bigger city, more space to lose each other in. He plants a garden that takes up the entire yard, then lets it go to seed and weeds, green and glossy and so thick the grass underneath dies.
I tell him all this: He doesn’t take care of himself, he doesn’t take care of me, he doesn’t take care of the house, the yard’s a mess. He won’t pick up after himself, he doesn’t appreciate all I do around here, he puts too much into work and not enough into this marriage, he doesn’t know how hard I work. He paws at me constantly, wants my body, demands my body, as if he could dig into me, as if he could unearth me.
He waves me off. Tells me, “This Angry Black Woman act is getting old.”