THE CLINIC WAS TUCKED away in an odd corner of Midtown Memphis and was so anonymous that unless you knew what went on behind those doors you would never guess it was a focal point of the most bitter sides of the most bitter conflict in the city. And yet here I was, a place I’d sworn to myself I would never be. Before my first marriage my sexual experiences were so limited that I barely had to even ask about birth control or protection, yet I did. Before my first wife and I were sexually active I had dutifully inquired if she were on the pill or not and I had condoms in my wallet—didn’t every hopeful young man?—just in case.
Within a few years of the birth of our daughter, Marie, my first wife Katrina was told by her gynecologist that she had been on birth control pills for a maximum amount of time and she needed to get off them. Birth control procedures, including tubal ligation, were not allowed at the Catholic hospital where Katrina worked and were not covered by her insurance. The cost outside the network being prohibitive, we turned to condoms, spermicides, and all kinds of peculiar potions on the market, none of which proved satisfactory or pleasurable. So the ultimatum came down—put up with all these prehistoric contraceptives or get a vasectomy. As rare as sex was in the Graves’ household, I wanted it to at least feel good. But there was a big, big problem.
I am highly phobic of any invasive procedure. You wouldn’t believe what I put my doctors and nurses through just to get a simple blood draw. Regular hypodermic shots aren’t that bad—as long as I don’t look or I’m a goner. It’s not the pain, which is relatively minor. It’s the idea. And vasectomies are performed while you are fully awake. You get a hypo needle right in the vas deferens of both testicles. The very thought made my testicles crawl up to my throat.
It didn’t take but a few more pharmaceutically-impaired sexual outings before I decided to work up my nerve and at least talk to my urologist. My urologist was as much of a friend as a physician to me and he assured me the vasectomy would be a breeze, not to worry, and was I sure I didn’t want any more children? The truth was, I did want more children, but Katrina adamantly did not. She did not want to go through the agony of pregnancy and childbirth again. So, I had little choice.
I was way beyond scared when I put on my surgery gown. Totally exposed underneath. I was shaved, disinfected, and prepped with my full package protruding through a sterile surgical sheet made of plastic. The doctor came in and in his typical boisterous voice asked how I was doing.
“Scared shitless,” I told him.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said jovially as he prepared a large syringe to numb up my vas.
Manipulating the vas with his fingers, which was a pain in a league all its own, he stuck the needle in. Sparks and stars shot out of my groin. Then he repeated the process with the other vas. While this was going on little white meteorites were speeding across my line of vision. “You’re doing fine, Tom. Hang in there,” he said as my face turned more and more ashen.
At this point I could not see anything he was doing for all the layers of drapes. But I had been the medical copywriter for Richards Medical Company, a prominent manufacturer of orthopedic and otology products, soon after my marriage to Katrina. I had been within a few feet of many major orthopedic surgeries and knew the sounds and smells of the O.R. I was well familiar with the sound an electro-cautery knife makes as it does its business: an unmistakable sizzling combined with a crackling of electricity. I also well knew the smell of burning flesh, in this case my own, from this electronic knife that now often takes the place of a scalpel. Electro-cautery knives do not actually cut through flesh; they explode it. I came very close to passing out at least ten times. The little meteorites would not fly away.
The surgery probably lasted about 20 minutes but of course seemed much longer. I was told that I would need about a week to fully recover and had already been told to wear pajama or sweat pants on my way home and for several more days. I was not to lift a thing and was instructed to be very careful in my activities.
As I hobbled home, I was still pretty numbed-up and feeling little pain. But when the Novocaine wore off, my entire lower mid-section felt as if I had been given a mule kick to the nutsack. I had some pain pills, which I eagerly took, and lay sprawled on the sofa with an ice pack placed on my groin, something that took some explaining for my daughter Marie, who as I recall was about eight years old. A hilarious coincidence, one we still laugh about, is when I was sitting on the sofa with the icepack on my genitals and we were watching television. The show Evening Shade starring Burt Reynolds opened with a shot of Reynolds lying on his sofa with an icepack on his groin. In the show Reynolds, just like me, had gotten a vasectomy and was recuperating, much to the amusement of the characters in that episode just as my family and friends thought my predicament amusing.
Evening Shade was so funny that evening that laughing was painful. Walking was painful. Sitting was painful. Everything was painful. The thought of hopping across a mud puddle was unthinkable. Ever after, when I hear tales of macho guys who have gotten vasectomies and went and coached junior football that same evening I know I’m listening to a round of utter bullshit. Ain’t nobody doin’ nothin’ after no vasectomy.
Marie had a couple of girlfriends, Kirsten and Alexandra, who lived around the corner and we got to know their parents pretty well. The father was British and quite a character. His name was Tony Hicks and he gained a sort of fame in the U.K. for an anti-smoking commercial he was in. Poor fellow was dying of cancer and he said into the camera that he knew he was dying but that he knew he’d make it until his daughter could come from the U.S. to see him. The final message of the commercial was that he died before his daughter made it. It was a very powerful message and apparently got a lot of attention in the U.K. You can find it on YouTube.
On a visit to her friends’ house one day, Marie told their parents that I’d had my tubes tied. Their mom fell out laughing telling me this.
The vasectomy did little to improve the sex life between me and Katrina. But after the divorce I thanked my lucky stars I’d had it done because both Lisa and Fatima told me they would have wanted to have babies with me. Had that happened my life would have never stopped being complicated.
I refused to pay for any part of an abortion.
I told Fatima, “This is your choice, not mine. I never said you had to get an abortion. All I’m saying is that if you choose to have this child, I can’t raise it. It’s not mine. If you want the baby, you’ll have to go back to Africa or make arrangements to live somewhere else. I won’t be responsible. But if you want an abortion, you’ll have to save your money and pay out of your own pocket. I don’t want you to ever come back on me and say I forced you to have an abortion. The decision is yours and yours alone.”
She made up her mind and saved her money. In the years to come this didn’t stop Fatima from trying to lay the blame for the abortion at my feet, but I nipped that in the bud.
“Nope, it was your decision, your money. I had nothing to do with that.”
She said, “Well, when the time comes I will have to face God on my own for what I did.” “I guess you will,” I replied.
It was up to me to find an abortion clinic, a place I tried most of my life to never think of. I fully supported a woman’s right to choose and still do. I don’t know how anyone can think they have a right to tell a woman what to do with her body. And in the case of incest or rape I think it is a form of torture to force a woman to give birth to that unwanted child. However, I am in agreement with Norman Mailer on the subject. Abortion is killing a child and everyone should admit it. To terminate a pregnancy is as serious a decision as one can make and it should never be made lightly. I do not think it moral for a woman who has birth control available at virtually every corner market in her city, and in many places for free, to use abortion as a birth control afterthought. I believe in sexual freedom but even more believe in sexual responsibility. I understand those religious people who believe life begins at conception because biologically it most certainly does.
I also think it is probably more moral to terminate a pregnancy than to bring a child into a hate-filled home or a world of pestilence and starvation. Sometimes, in my opinion, abortion outweighs a life of squalor. Zealots on both sides of the issue I think have done a lot of damage to the women who must face these hard choices.
We located the back parking lot of the almost invisible clinic, painted grey as I recall, on one of Memphis’ less traveled streets. We had our appointment. As we walked to the back door, as we had been instructed to do, two middle-aged men near the entrance approached us quietly with religious literature. These men were not firebrands or spiteful activists. They looked at us sadly and we looked at them sadly. No one was happy.
Inside it was quiet and a handful of mostly young black women flipped through magazines waiting their turn. There was only one other couple there; how sad, I thought, that most of these women had no one with them for support during this most trying of procedures. We didn’t wait long before we were ushered into a large surgical room with a surgical bench with metal stirrups and complicated-looking consoles filled with instruments. A senior-aged nurse came in and with a light smile asked pertinent questions and prepared us both for what was to come. Fatima, who was scared and as was her wont nearly silent, dressed in a surgical gown and sat on the surgical bench.
Before long a doctor came into the room, introduced himself, and explained the procedure. He was of East Indian descent and spoke in near-perfect Indian-inflected English. Like the story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, I almost expected him to tell us “it’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.” The power in Hemingway’s story is in what he doesn’t say. But in the here and now nothing was hidden.
An abortion does not take long. The preparation is more time-consuming than the procedure. It’s funny; when I think back on this, in my mind I am much farther away from Fatima, the doctor, the nurse, and the whole procedure than I actually was. I was only feet away. But in my mind I see everything as if I’m at least 20 feet removed. My memory wants to be backed as far away as I can get.
The doctor inserted what appeared to be a narrow vacuum tube into Fatima’s uterus and turned it on. Fatima’s face winced into a mask of pain. Within 30 seconds it was over. The part to me that is vivid is of the doctor going to the sink and washing blood off his surgical gloves. This was my own personal moment of horror and it has never left me.
We left quietly and went to a nearby restaurant where we ate saying very little. In the future we seldom ever brought up the subject of the abortion. The pregnancy, yes, many times. That wouldn’t go away. But the abortion is something we both preferred to forget. But forgetting an abortion is not possible.
The next few months were a time of pain, chaos, and confusion. You cannot just shut off the love valve. Our intimacies were entirely unaffected by the pressures we both felt. I had until Christmas Day to decide to go through with marrying Fatima or packing her up and sending her back to Senegal. I was so hurt and angry over her pregnancy that my temper fuse was at its shortest; we squabbled furiously over the most inconsequential things.
My next-door neighbor and confidant Doug believed in Christian charity and thought I should stay with Fatima. He believed that she truly loved me—I wasn’t so sure—and would devote herself even more to me if I was able to put it all behind me. This would be my personal Sophie’s Choice. Keep her or send her back? When an immigrant comes to the U.S. on a fiancée visa, you are required to marry within 90 days, which is nowhere near enough time to truly get to know someone. My December deadline was like a Sword of Damocles waiting to swoop down and chop.
When you lose your trust in someone, no matter how hard your heart pulls you in the other direction you can never get that trust back. I surreptitiously added spyware to my computer that would track every keystroke made by both me and Fatima. If she had a lover back in Senegal I thought I’d find out sooner or later. Sure enough only weeks after I had installed the program, I saw a rash of emails to someone named Prince Kamara, Kamara being a very common West African surname. The emails were very cryptic and written in the Krio lingo of Sierra Leone. They weren’t exactly peons to love but they suggested something more than a casual relationship.
Instead of waiting until I had further definitive proof, I angrily confronted Fatima with the emails and she went ballistic. She didn’t want to address the fact of a Prince Kamara at all, but was utterly incensed that I had been spying on her, violating her privacy. I made threats in the heat of the moment, absolutely ready to get her a taxi to the airport to fly back to Africa. After hours of stalemate she came up with another of her stories; she claimed she had sensed I was spying on her and concocted an imaginary person with her sister who lived in New Hampshire. She said Prince Kamara wasn’t a real person. She had her sister call me to tell me that indeed she and Fatima had planned the whole thing.
I was having a very hard time buying this story. By this time things had gotten serious enough that I had sought counseling. If you have ever been in counseling you undoubtedly know that finding the right counselor for you and your needs is of paramount importance to the success of your therapy. Many excellent counselors just may not be enough on your wave length to be effective for you. The counselor I had didn’t seem to be able to wrap her head around my predicament with Fatima. When I let her read the print-out of emails to this Prince Kamara she was inclined to believe Fatima’s version of events.
True enough, there was no smoking gun in those emails. Nonetheless I could smell gunsmoke. In my heart of hearts I believe Fatima had a lover in Dakar who impregnated her and this Prince Kamara likely was the man responsible. To me, with Occam’s Razor to back me up, the simple version of events just made a lot more sense to me than Fatima’s convoluted rationales.
I tried my very best to put it all behind me and get on with what at most times was one of the best relationships I’d ever had. I had more fun with Fatima, more laughing and joking, better sex, and an undeniable closeness than ever before. If I could just black out the dark side of Fatima, I’d have the perfect woman. I wanted to be optimistic.
But it was hard. Very hard. Fatima was highly sensitive and very high strung. She took offense easily. When angry she had a vicious tongue and when very angry would get within a fraction of an inch of my face and yell. The yin and yang of our relationship kept me mentally exhausted and on constant edge. But my counselor and my neighbor both encouraged me to go through with the marriage. As I’ve said, my love for her was still there. However, there were enough red flags there to think I was in a Chinese parade. I was deeply conflicted and taking things one day at a time, the only way I could cope.
One big reason I was willing to forgive Fatima and get on with the marriage is that I had my own sins to atone for. Up until the week before her arrival from Senegal, I was hitting up ladies all over town. In fact, just the week before she flew in to Nashville I had met a gorgeous light-skinned black woman at then-Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton’s tailgate party and taken her home with me. I had just wrapped-up a brief affair with a black woman I had met at Wild Bill’s blues club. Before this woman and I had even started seeing each other, I told her I had a woman in Africa who would be coming in October. I thought that might discourage any relationship but the woman surprised me by thanking me for my complete honesty—she said she was sick of lying dogs—and was willing to go along with my timetable.
So, I was feeling some guilt myself and not especially eager to cast stones. My counselor, a woman, was quick to remind me of my faults and failures.
Although I wanted to live with Fatima, it wasn’t really my wish to ever get married again. The divorce from my first wife made me wary of going through that whole horror again. But the U.S. government gave me no alternative if I wanted Fatima in my life. I had exactly three months to marry her. That’s it. Even though the pieces were by no means put back together yet, I made the decision to marry her just two days before her time was up, December 23.
Memphis has no justices of the peace. You either get married by a licensed pastor or by a judge. I tracked down a judge in Juvenile Court and we were quietly, just the two of us, married in his office. When the judge told me to kiss the bride Fatima hugged me and wept for many minutes. Later, even years later, she told me she did not think I would go through with marrying her. She was certain I was going to send her back to Africa. Wisely on my part, I had insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement drawn up by my family attorney. In case of divorce, what was mine would stay mine and what was hers—nothing—would stay hers. There would be no 50/50 split in properties. Had she refused to go along with the pre-nup, as her trouble-making sister had advised her, I would not have married her, and she was well aware that was the case.
Fatima experiencing her first snow, shortly after we wed.
We celebrated our marriage by going to a favorite restaurant, Jim’s Place, which was nestled in a scenic grove of trees in the far suburbs. As we dined, something spectacular happened; it began to snow profusely, quickly blanketing the ground and surrounding trees. Fatima had never seen snow in her life and was enchanted. She believed it was a good omen for our marriage. I wanted to believe that as well, but as I would find out, it is almost impossible to right-side something thrown so topsy-turvy.
Our marriage was on crutches, and so it would stay. Fatima’s temper at times bordered on violence and finally she began to get physical. During one argument she got in my face and began to push her forefinger into my forehead. I remained cool enough during that situation but warned her not to ever do that again. Some length of time later she blew up over something and picked up a nearby coffee cup and pressed it forcefully into my right cheek. It hurt. I told her quietly but with the warning abundantly clear in my voice to stop. When she kept on I lashed out with my hand and grabbed her by the throat and pushed her down into a chair. Her eyes were wide with fear.
I squeezed and said, “Goddammit I told you to stop! Now fucking stop!”
She slowly got up, went into the next room and dialed 9-1-1. I could not believe what was happening. I wasn’t afraid that the police might take me in. We didn’t speak until the doorbell rang. I answered the door, and a very young and very menacing-looking short cop stood at my door asking me what the problem was. I let him in and Fatima was practically hiding behind the living room front wall. I explained that we’d had an argument and she had pressed a coffee cup against my face. To back her off I had grabbed her by the throat and pushed her down in a chair. Other than that I’d done nothing.
He took a look at me and a look at her and said, “I can see the imprint of that cup on your face. I (talking to Fatima) don’t see anything on you. You want me to run her in? (talking to me). It’s obvious to me what happened.”
I told him no, that I thought we had things under control.
“If I have to come back here one of you is going downtown. Do you understand me?”
We both nodded.
When the officer left she couldn’t believe I’d turned the tables on her.
I said to her, “You know if they had taken me downtown and charged me with domestic abuse I probably would have lost my job? Then I would have lost my house. And where would you be? If they charged me I sure as hell would have divorced you. You don’t think for shit before you do something do you? I hope to hell you learned a big lesson.”
We struggled on. I never loved a woman as I did Fatima. Yet I never had the problems with a woman I did with Fatima. My neighbor Doug’s prediction that Fatima would be a better wife to me because of the forgiveness in my heart was not borne out. I had read numerous complaints on the internet from men who had married foreign women and wound up supporting them as the women sent all their money back home to their families. The man’s money was for both of them, but the woman’s money was for her alone and it went straight back overseas. I made it abundantly clear to Fatima that we would need to work together as a family unit to prosper and that I wouldn’t put up with all her money going back to Sierra Leone. A tithe, yes, but the whole paycheck, no. I also agreed to file papers for her daughter, who at the time was about six years old, to join us in America and we would become a family. I would raise her daughter as my own. As I write this, Fatima has yet to send for her daughter who is now 20 years old. One of the biggest puzzles in my marriage to Fatima is why time after time she stonewalled her daughter from immigrating to, or even visiting, the U.S. She would on occasion call her daughter and on occasion send her money for birthdays and school clothes and supplies, but I never saw what I would consider a burning desire to reconnect with her only child. I have never laid eyes on Adama.
Paul Theroux in some of his travel books recounted stories of Americans who married Asian women who would wait on their husbands hand-and-foot, supplicating themselves and never leaving their side. However, once they got to the U.S. and began to see how American wives behaved, their manner changed overnight and they often turned into screaming, henpecking harpies. One story I read elsewhere about marrying Russian women really struck a nerve. The writer said that no matter how poor or how rich, Russian women were never satisfied that they had enough material possessions. If a man bought a woman a beautiful home, she would want a home even bigger, grander. If he bought her a Rolls-Royce she would want to know why he didn’t buy her two. The takeaway was when the writer was asked by a friend what these women ultimately wanted. The answer was “everything.”
Within a few months of Fatima’s arrival in Memphis she had a closet full of new shoes. Packages would arrive from USPS, UPS, and FedEx almost daily. She had wanted a credit card—foreign women find credit cards and the ability to get it now and pay later irresistible. I full well knew the shark-infested waters of credit cards and I refused to sign her up for one. No way was I going to be on the hook for her shopping addictions. When we divorced in 2012 we had to list all our debts for the court. Fatima had 12 credit cards as I remember, most of them maxed out, and a cargo ship full of debt. I hadn’t signed for a single one of those cards so I was in no way responsible or liable for the amounts owed. Even now I occasionally get a call from one of her creditors in spite of our divorce papers being signed years ago.
The one sanctuary for our marriage, where there were no problems, as I’ve mentioned was in the bedroom. For that I shall remain eternally grateful. There were periods where we got along fine, but something would always re-spark the buried angers. As a lover, I had no complaints with Fatima. As mentioned, she was also the funniest woman I have ever been with. We could make each other laugh (and still do) and I have never seen another woman so quick-witted. She never missed a beat. The peaks were Himalayan, the valleys Grand Canyons. Everywhere we went together people would come up to us just to see who we were. Obviously we made a scenic couple. We were both constantly amused at how little old white ladies would find an excuse to talk to Fatima. They could tell at a glance that she was different, that she wasn’t a black from Memphis. They loved her accent. Fatima had been a champion track and field star in her high school days, enough so that the French Olympic team wanted her to come to France. However, her father did not want her to leave the family nest and refused. Fatima’s very long legs and graceful body movements attracted everyone.
So many black men in Memphis would sidle up next to our car as we drove in the city and would make eyes at Fatima with me sitting right next to her that I had the windows tinted, which ended that problem. Other than that rude behavior, we never got one ounce of hostility in the city where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Only once did I see a negative reaction: a redneck-looking white lawn service guy was mowing a yard in the neighborhood behind one of those big industrial self-propelled mowers. Fatima and I were out for a walk and I noticed the guy looking at us and slowly shaking his head.
I got Fatima her first job in Memphis even before she arrived. I paid a visit to a Midtown African braiding shop and the owner—a Senegalese—told me by all means to bring her by when she arrived. And so I did and Fatima was hired on the spot. At first Fatima would give me all her money that she earned. I took a small percentage to apply towards our family bills and let her have the rest. It wasn’t too long, however, before she wanted her own checking account and to maintain her own separate finances. We sat down and worked out a family budget and she paid a percentage based on her income versus mine. I paid about 75% of the bills, as I recall. Many Africans work seven days a week. Fatima wanted to do this. No matter how much I implored her, she insisted on working every day. She did not drive—teaching her to drive is something I hope to never repeat with anyone else in my lifetime—so in the first years of our marriage I was constantly having to drop her off, pick her up, worry over supper, and the strain, on top of the severe problems we were having, made me a nervous wreck.
Through a Senegalese contact she had made at the braiding salon, she got a much better job as a medical records clerk at a company that provided medical check-ups for students in the city’s schools. She was very proud of her job and advanced there, eventually putting in 12 years before resigning over a trifling issue with a supervisor. Throughout the whole 12 years she continued to work every weekend at the braiding salon.
In 2010, six years after we had met on Match.com, we separated because of money. She told me she couldn’t pay her share of our bills that month, even though I knew she had savings that would more than cover the amount she needed to pay. She told me she needed to send a large sum of money to her mother in Sierra Leone and would be short. This was exactly the sort of thing I had already warned her I would not tolerate, and when it comes to money Tom Graves means business. So I gave her an ultimatum—either pay your share of the bills or leave. In a great huff she packed her bags and left. Inside I felt a tremendous sigh of relief. The ten-stone weight on my back was lifted.
For the next couple of years we still saw each other frequently and were still romantic. Living apart actually improved the relationship…for a time. We still had our share of rows and soon after she returned from a two-month trip back to Sierra Leone we agreed to go on and go through with the divorce. It was not long after this that without either of us speaking of it we simply stopped any activity between the feathers. Two years ago she went for a three-month stay back in Freetown. She called and asked if I could pick her up at the airport when she returned. I did and as we were driving to her apartment I jokingly asked if she had gone and gotten married while in Freetown. She held up her hand and showed me some sparkling rings on her wedding finger.
“Yep,” she said.
I thought she was joking and didn’t give it a second thought.
Within a few days I saw her postings on Facebook. Wedding pictures, Fatima dressed like a bride in a Walt Disney fantasy. I was incredulous. I felt a spear go straight through my heart. My hurt after all this time we had been separated surprised me. I felt oddly empty for many days.
Fatima is now married to Ishmail Kamara, who she claims is the Customs chief at the Sierra Leone-Gambian border, which means he oversees a lot of money. I wish them well. As I write this Fatima resigned her job in Memphis, has been in Freetown for months, and is due back in Memphis within a few weeks. She says she will be moving to New Haven, Connecticut after her return. (Update: She did in fact move to New Haven. On rare occasion I hear from her.) (Update number two: She confided in me that her marriage had not worked out and she would be filing for a divorce from Mr. Kamara.)
I do not regret my marriage to Fatima or my time in Africa. I still consider my ten days in Dakar the greatest ten days of my life. However, it is not a safari I wish to re-explore. Fatima’s African friends in Memphis have all dropped me. Just like that. I have made some new friends in Botswana and plan to visit there some day. I also hope to teach in Swaziland. It is possible I may teach on a Fulbright in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Now that would be interesting.
Fatima’s daughter as I write this has still not set foot in the U.S.A.
The sad truth is, despite it all, I still love her.
And I will never know if she truly loved me.
—THE END—