LAURA strongly believed in Grant’s musical talent and thought that with a little help he could hone it into a remarkably successful music career. She actively marketed him to various venues and lined up bookings through Rare Breed Entertainment Agency, whose only client appeared to be Grant. She also encouraged him to keep working on the development of his natural artistic talent.
Grant, however, behaved like a man who wanted more than a supportive partner; he acted as if he wanted someone he could control at all times and in every way. In no time, Grant had taken charge of Laura’s life. It was too easy for him to dominate and manipulate the younger, naïve woman with low self-esteem. He attempted to establish control over all her activities and associations.
The honeymoon was over. Among his more outrageous requests, he asked her to talk to his fans about their sex life and brag about his penis size. When she objected and was horrified at that prospect, he said he didn’t understand why she had a problem with it. He said that it was obvious to everyone that she was “trash” because she was a white girl in a relationship with a black man.
Grant shocked Laura in a different way one evening a few weeks later at Jack Astor’s Bar and Grill in Cary. Another musician rebuked him for arriving late for a gig and Grant pulled a knife on him. He told Laura he was justified because the guy had used the word “fuck” when talking to him.
Laura experienced other incidents that caused her to be fearful for her personal safety. From time to time, Grant slipped into what he described as his “blackouts” or “lost time.” In the midst of those disengagements from reality, he acted odd and violent, and then he would fall suddenly into a restless sleep for many hours, twitching throughout as if he were engaged in an unceasing nightmare.
On one particularly bad occasion, Grant, fueled by cocaine, wrote a nonsensical autobiography that he posted on Myspace. After finishing that task, he pulled out an air pump BB gun and began shooting at Laura. The pings weren’t causing any serious physical harm, but they were very painful.
She pleaded with him to stop but he just kept pulling the trigger and staring at her with empty, hawklike eyes as if she were prey waiting to be torn asunder. She held up a kitchen towel to block some of the BBs as she made her escape from the room. Laura was never certain if these episodes were all drug-induced or not.
He attempted to indoctrinate her in some of his peculiar beliefs. He told her he believed he was a “time traveler” and that “beings” from other planets followed him around and often talked to him. He thought that those same beings ran the United States. Not only did he believe a government collapse was imminent, he said, “The world will end on December 31, 2012,” and he needed “to get enough cash to make it on one of those alien ships at the end of the planet.” He believed that very rich, famous, necessary individuals would either be in an underground system of tunnels or on the ships while Armageddon raged across the earth. It sounded as if he had read a piece of Scientology literature and appropriated bits and pieces for his own personal religious doctrine.
Laura would have liked to have believed it was one big joke, but Grant seemed dead serious about his delusional belief structure. The more she learned about these ideas, the more disturbing it was to her. But she had grown more under his control once she was pregnant with his child. No matter how crazy he acted, no matter how nutty his beliefs sounded, he was the father of the baby she carried and she was totally dependent on him now. She had entered the relationship without a strong sense of self and Grant eroded what little she did have. She was stranded in a volatile relationship with none of the needed self-confidence to strike out on her own.
A few months after their wedding, Grant had also asked Laura to be in a polygamous relationship with him. When she refused, he went outside of the marriage and hooked up with a girl named Kristen that December, a mere seven months after his matrimonial ceremony with Laura.
Laura learned about the woman’s existence when she was in the second trimester of her pregnancy. The grin on Grant’s face while he talked to Kristen on the phone with Laura was in the same room made it seem as if he was delighted to keep Laura’s insecurity at the highest level possible. Knowing she could hear him, he asked Kristen to marry and run off with him. When Grant hung up from the call, Laura confronted him. He justified his behavior by pointing to her polygamy refusal. He then added that he wanted to have sex with Kristen because she had a “large butt.” Although Grant obviously needed the company of adoring females, it seemed as if he had no respect for any woman.
Grant certainly didn’t have any for Laura’s close friend Heidi Schumacher—in fact, he despised her. He told Laura what he thought of that woman and insisted that she cut off contact with her, but the two women kept communicating despite Grant’s disapproval. When he was at a band meeting, prepping for a show or performing, they’d get together somewhere for a cup of coffee or dinner.
Despite those efforts with Heidi, however, Laura would later admit, “I allowed myself to be alienated from my friends and family. Everyone I knew was either ‘really dumb’ or ‘too fat’ or ‘not good enough to be around us,’ according to Grant.”
In her third trimester, Laura was once on the phone with Heidi, who could hear Grant yelling in the background, “Heidi is a bad influence on you! I forbid you from seeing her ever again.”
When Laura tried to hang up the phone, Heidi begged, “Please don’t, Laura.”
“I have to,” Laura said between sobs, and disconnected the call.
Worried about what might be happening at her friend’s home, Heidi immediately hopped into her car and drove twenty minutes to check on Laura. As she arrived, Heidi saw a big black sedan pulling away with Grant in the passenger seat.
Laura opened the front door as Heidi approached. Laura was sobbing, her nose was bleeding and Heidi thought it appeared to be broken. One of Laura’s eyes was swollen nearly shut, and the area around it was deep red. Heidi was certain that Laura would have a black eye by the next morning if not sooner. It didn’t take a detective to reach the conclusion that Grant had physically assaulted Laura.
She suggested that the police should be called, but Laura said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to press charges.”
“Laura, you need to go to the hospital. You’re pregnant. You need to go to the hospital to make sure everything is all right.”
“No, no, no. It’s okay. We’re going to get through this. He’s never done this before but it’s okay.” Laura was shaking all over and crying, as she pleaded with Heidi, “Please. I don’t want anybody to know.”
“Just come out to my car and I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Heidi said.
Laura continued in her stubborn refusal. Heidi stayed with her for an hour and a half trying to break down her friend’s resistance to seeking medical treatment but to no avail. She finally left after Laura’s tears dried and she had calmed down. When Heidi saw her again a couple of days later, it was clear that Laura had tried to cover up her injuries with makeup, but the swelling and dark coloration were still quite obvious.
Laura’s first child, Grant Ruffin Hayes IV, was born on May 2, 2008. Heidi visited Laura’s home as soon as she returned from the hospital. With the birth of their grandson, Grant’s parents completely embraced Laura as a member of the family. They often chided Grant to be as supportive of his wife as she was of him. Laura probably would have done well to rely on them a bit more, but she showed no inclination to turn to them about any of the problems she was having with Grant.
By the time little Grant was two months old, another conflict erupted—this time over immunizations for the baby. Grant said his son would absolutely not get shots. He repeatedly told Laura that the chances of an African-American boy getting autism were far greater than the rest of the population. Laura was in turmoil over the issue. She wanted the protection from childhood diseases for little Grant but she was afraid that her husband might be right. Again, this was a battle Grant won.
—
LAURA’S brother Jason met Grant Hayes for the first time when his nephew was about six months old. They had dinner together and hung out for a while, and Jason left thinking that they’d had a good visit.
Occasionally, after that evening, Jason would go with Laura to bars or clubs to see Grant perform. On one of his subsequent visits to their home, little Grant had been fussy for a while. Laura made sure he wasn’t hungry or in need of a clean diaper, so then left him upstairs to cry, believing the old wives’ tale that it would strengthen his lungs.
Grant grew progressively more agitated and angry as his infant son continued crying. He snapped at Laura, “Shut him up, whatever it takes.”
Jason coaxed Grant outside to remove him from the situation, and talked him down into a calmer state of mind. Soon Grant acknowledged he was being too emotional, and matters settled down.
Not long afterward, Grant, Laura and the baby moved over to an apartment in the Camden Crest complex in North Raleigh, located very close to Jason’s place of employment. He started coming to see his sister every week, either on his lunch break or when the work day was over. Usually when he arrived, Grant retreated to the back bedroom and never came out. The rare times he did emerge, it was only to go to the refrigerator and then back into hiding.
One day, Laura called Jason and asked if he could come and hang out at lunchtime. About an hour later, Jason arrived and knocked on the door. He could hear arguing and loud commands delivered by Grant to Laura. “He doesn’t need to come around. You don’t need to be hanging out with him. He’s a bad influence.”
While Grant yelled, baby Grant cried. Laura struggled to calm both of them down at once. And Grant continued ranting. “You don’t need him in your life. I’m all that you need.”
Jason stayed at the front door for about ten minutes, knocking again and again. He went around to the sliding glass door and tried to look inside. He couldn’t see anything, but by that time all was quiet.
Jason left, but he kept trying to phone his sister all day. She finally returned his call the next day and said, “In order for us to see each other, it has to be private, when Grant isn’t around. He doesn’t like you.”
Jason didn’t like the situation, but he realized as long as Laura was in this relationship, she needed contact with family more than ever. Thereafter, the siblings continued to meet in secret, either when Jason came to Laura or when Laura met him at his work.
Grant continued his attempts to cut Laura off from all family and friends, from anyone who would provide her with support—the pattern of controlling spouses who desire to isolate their partners in order to make them more dependent and therefore more compliant.
—
DESPITE his desire to have Laura at home alone, however, Grant didn’t seem to be capable of being alone himself. Whenever Laura left little Grant in his care for even the shortest amount of time, she always found other people with him when she returned. Even with his child present, Grant invited anyone and everyone into his home, from other musicians and groupies to pimps and drug dealers. Most worrisome to Laura was how Grant would pass little Grant around to total strangers. He even offered one convicted felon “godfather status” in order to solidify a business transaction.
One evening in the fall of 2008, Grant and Laura went out to dinner with their baby and eight of Grant’s friends. They sat outside at a table, but within the first thirty minutes, Grant disappeared inside the restaurant and stayed gone for quite some time.
One of his friends went in to see what was up and found Grant in the men’s room snorting and selling cocaine. When the friend returned to the table, he turned to Laura and said, “You should leave Grant and take your son.” Knowing that Grant was an avid believer that immunizations caused autism, the friend added, “Get your boy immunized. He’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
—
IN February 2009, Grant Hayes’s family staged what they called an “intervention” on Laura’s behalf at their house. With Grant’s mother, Patsy, and sister, Tina, gathered around, Grant’s father told Laura that his son had “a crazy world-takeover plan. He wants to have fifty kids with different women of all races in order to build his empire,” Grant Jr. said, adding that his son had told him he anticipated being about seventy years old before he achieved his goal. Her husband, they told her, believed this was the old way of building a business—like in the Bible.
Her father-in-law also warned Laura that Grant III “is the type of man who will pimp you if he needed to.”
Suddenly, she saw the truth behind one of her husband’s strange habits. He would always provide a “party favor” (aka a woman) to keep the host “company” at promotional parties for his new recordings or for a new artistic venture. Now she understood exactly what those phrases meant.
Her in-laws gave her the phone number for Grant’s first wife, Emily. Emily’s advice to Laura was: “Run—run as fast as you can.”
When Laura walked out of the Hayes’s home, she took little Grant and spent a couple of weeks with her friend Heidi Schumacher’s parents. When Laura returned to Kinston, Grant’s sister, Tina, took her to a magistrate to file assault charges against Grant. That same month, she contacted the Safe Alliance, an agency in Charlotte that ran a shelter for abused women and their children. She wanted to know if what she was experiencing was typical of abusive relationships. She wanted to know of any options she could use to correct the destructive path she traveled.
But Laura never followed through with any of it, fearing her little family would never recover—and she so yearned to provide her son with the cohesive, intact unit that she never had growing up.
She would come to deeply regret her naïveté at this point in her life.