Chapter Twelve

 

Nedra

 

When Buying a Vow Doesn't Sound So Bad

“Any day now” turned into a month and a half before I received the call I had been waiting for. At seven a.m. on a warm Thursday morning in April, Danielle—my lawyer—was giddy as she told me that my divorce had been finalized and all of my terms had been approved. For the first time in seven years, I was a “legally” single woman. She reminded me that once our house sold, I would never have to speak to Chris again, and she ended the conversation by requesting that I refer her to my friends.

As luck would have it, the one lesson I had scheduled for that day was canceled and with Jermaine in California for an away game, I didn’t even bother getting out of bed. I needed some time to quietly mourn the loss of my marriage without being bothered, so I put my phone on ‘do not disturb’ and burrowed under the covers.

I didn’t realize I had fallen back asleep until the constant ringing of the doorbell jolted me awake. I shuffled out of the bed and to the front door, groaning when I looked through the peephole. I took a calming breath and opened the door to let my mama inside.

She stepped into the living room, her shrewd gaze quickly observing surroundings and falling on me, no doubt, immediately deducing my melancholy state. She hugged me tightly and kissed my cheek before passing me by and having a seat on the sofa. Instead of sitting next to her or even taking the chair, I sat on the floor. My back had recently started hurting and the floor was the only thing that gave me relief.

“What brings you by, Mama?”

Her amber eyes curiously roved over my frame. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”

I explained my recent pain to her and her eyebrows met knowingly.

“Hmm, have you taken something for it?”

I shook my head. “Not yet; I thought it would eventually go away, but it hasn’t. I’ll probably visit the chiropractor soon. It’s more than likely the bed I’m sleeping in, though.”

“Hmm. If you say so. Well, I just came to check on you.”

“Oh?” That was surprising. “How did you get here?”

“My friend dropped me off.”

I pursed my lips. By “friend”, she surely meant the man she had been living with for the past three years. He was essentially her boyfriend, but she never gave the men in her life titles, referring to them as her “friend” for as long as I could remember. Most of the time, she never even said their names. It used to me annoy me as a teenager, but now that I was in my mid-thirties, I didn’t give a damn.

“That was nice of him.”

“Tish called me.”

Whoop there it is. Tish was Chris and Ashton’s mother. If Tish called my mama, it could only be for one reason. The next words out of my mama’s mouth confirmed it.

“She said your divorce is final.”

I expelled a soft breath. “Yep. I got the call this morning.”

Shocking the shit out of me, she got down on her knees and pulled me into a hug. I was so overcome with emotion at her unexpected gesture that I burst into tears. I cried hot, salty tears into my mama’s cap-sleeved peasant blouse, but she didn’t seem to care. She rocked me back and forth, murmuring words I didn’t understand but soothed me anyway, and rubbed my back in wide, circular patterns.

Finally, the spring behind my eyes dried up, and my mama leaned back to observe me with all-seeing eyes.

“You alright, baby?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You go’ stay on the floor?”

I nodded again. It just felt better down here.

“Okay, well I’m gonna stay down here with you. He’ll be back to pick me up in about an hour so I wanna talk to you before he get here.”

I cocked my head. Now that sounded ominous.

“Nedra, baby, I hate that you’re hurting, and I know you gon’ be mad when I say this, but this would never have happened if you had listen to me in the first place.”

She was damn right. I couldn’t believe my ears. Was she really hitting me with an ‘I told you so’ on the day of my divorce? I mean, I wasn’t hurting as much as she might think I was, after all of that crying—and I couldn’t deny that it was partly due to Jermaine’s presence in my life—but she didn’t know that.

My mama continued on as if she heard my thoughts instead of correctly reading the disbelief on my face. “Yeah, I said it. I told you from the get-go that you were too young to be so serious.”

“I was twenty-seven when I married Chris! How is that too young?”

“You might have been twenty-seven when you got married, but you were eighteen when you decided that fool was the love of your life. You committed yourself to him when you were way too young to even understand what that meant.”

My lips snapped shut. She was right about that. As soon as Chris kissed me my freshmen year of college, I stopped considering other guys as anything other than a study partner. I looked away from her as I sat without a rebuttal to give. Unfortunately for me, my mama came with intentions of getting shit off her chest this morning.

“I told you being exclusive at eighteen years old was a bad idea. I told you to date, to keep your options open, but did you listen? No! You didn’t want to hear anything I had to say because I wasn’t married like your grandparents had been or like Chris’ parents were. You didn’t respect me or my opinions because I wasn’t in a ‘traditional relationship’.”

She was in full-blown fuss mode, and even though I was grown and now divorced, I had to sit through it because everything she was saying was the God’s honest truth, even though I hated to admit it. As a teenager, I hated how my mama cycled through men. She wouldn’t keep a man around for longer than six months and back then, it embarrassed me. As a frequent visitor to the homes of friends who had what I considered “real families” with both parents in the home, I became a self-righteous know-it-all, and I’d felt like my mama couldn’t tell me anything about something she didn’t know. And to my knowledge, she definitely did not know anything about love or marriage.

Hearing her repeat the arguments she gave me all those years ago only served to piss me off and make me want to fight something or someone. Not her, though. I got my scrappiness from my mama, and I didn’t want her to put those hands on me.

“Mama…”

She held her hand up. “Don’t Mama me! I tried to save you from the heartache you’re experiencing now, and you would still rather listen to my misguided mama than to your own!”

My eyes widened at her allusion. I had never heard her speak ill of my granny, but mentioning her had me recalling the conversation I’d had with Granny a couple of months ago.

“What do you mean by ‘misguided’?”

My mama fixed me with a knowing look. “Didn’t she try to convince you to hold on to Chris?”

I nodded without hesitation. I remember that part vividly.

“Of course, she did,” she muttered, sarcastically. “Let me tell you why I never married and just know it wasn’t for a lack of prospects, that’s for damn sure. Shoot, even your daddy proposed to me before and after I had you, but I turned him down. I didn’t want to be married. For years, I watched how miserable my mama was, being married to my daddy, and when I was old enough to understand why I knew that I didn’t want to live that life.”

I sat forward. “Wait, wait, wait. Granny said that you begged her, along with Granddaddy, not to leave and break up the family. If you knew she was miserable, why would you do that?”

“Nedra, I was ten when my mama tried to leave my daddy. Up until that point, she had kept me in the dark about a lot of things that went on between them. All I knew was that she was trying to tear up the only home I had known. When I was a teenager, I learned different. Daddy might have loved me, but the only thing he felt for Mama was possession. He treated her like a piece of property that he owned instead of like the loving, stupidly loyal woman that she was.”

“Oh wow,” I breathed. My family had more secrets than I could have imagined. “So the misguided comment…?”

“Oh, Mama encouraging you to fight for your marriage even though she knows first-hand that marriage ain’t shit? Please, please, listen to me this time. Stop trying to conform to what you think is tradition. All of that stuff is made up by controlling men, and all it serves to do is make you lose yourself. Only do what feels right in your gut—not your heart, because hearts can be swayed—and screw anyone who says that it’s the wrong thing.”

The earnest look in her eyes brought another round of tears to mine. Why did I have to experience some bullshit like divorce in my thirties for my mama to start making sense to me? I tried to think of a way to articulate how I was feeling but I kept coming up blank. This advice was even more valuable to me than my mama could know.

I had been struggling with the depth of my feelings for Jermaine for the past six weeks. Every day that passed, I fell deeper and deeper into something I was hesitant to name, but for the life of me, I couldn’t ignore. How was it possible for my soul to connect with someone so soon after I ended a marriage to a man I had known since I was a teenager? It felt insane and unbelievable, so I told myself it wasn’t. Now, hearing my mama basically call me out for something she couldn’t possibly know anything about was even more astonishing. My gut had been telling me that Jermaine was the one ever since he called me back after I literally hung up in his face, but I didn’t want to trust it. Then, there was that small kernel of fear I had of being judged harshly for moving on from Chris so quickly, into something new that was undoubtedly so intense.

I pulled her back in for a hug and squeezed her as tight as I could in an attempt to communicate what I didn’t know how to say. My mama and I never could positively communicate with one another—mostly because we were both hotheads—but I loved her like no other.

The chuckle I basically squeezed out of her voiced the surprise I know she felt at my affection. “I take it you ain’t too mad at me, then?”

I huffed a laugh and shook my head, releasing her. “Nah, Mama. You only said what I needed to hear, and I can’t be mad about that.”

“Hmph, that sounds like music to my ears.”

I laughed loudly. “I just bet it does.”

“Oh!” She scooted across the floor and grabbed the blood-red duffel bag she called a purse. The thing was so big, when she dug into it, she sank down to her shoulder. After rifling around in the enormous monstrosity, she pulled out a white paper bag with the familiar red and brown logo of my favorite donut shop.

“I brought you some kolaches. He insisted we stop and get you some breakfast since it was so early, and I agreed since you tend to eat your feelings.” She handed me the bag nonchalantly and I had to stop myself from snatching it out of her hand.

I did eat my feelings, so, once again—even though her little barb was fucked up—I held my tongue. Whenever I got too comfortable and sappy with my mama, Rose always knew how to bring me right back down to earth. I sucked my teeth instead of saying anything—forgoing my thanks since she wanted to take shots—and pulled out a still warm kolache. I took a hefty bite and immediately spit it back out as I gagged.

Confused, I poked at the doughy breakfast treat, thinking that it might have been old or spoiled. The bread felt too soft to be anything other than fresh, so I squeezed the sausage to see if it was what my mouth had instantly rejected, but as soon as I saw a few clear beads of juice appear on the broken piece of meat, I felt bile rise in my throat. I scrambled off the floor and ran into the kitchen, barely making it to the trash can before everything I ate the night before came out of me as I heaved violently.

When I had nothing more but bitter, orange spit to give to the trash can, I felt a cool cloth on my forehead. I tried to look at her but a dry heave kept my head over the can.

“Thank you.”

She pressed a glass of water into my hand, and I quickly rinsed my mouth of all traces of vomit, spitting the water out when it got warm.

“Ned?”

“Huh?” Finally feeling like it was safe to do so, I stood upright and look at my mama.

“When was your last period?”

My eyes fluttered closed as I realized immediately what she was asking me. “I haven’t had an actual period in years because I had the IUD, but I had some light spotting last month.”

She gave me a knowing look. “Have you taken a test?”

I shook my head. “No,” I whispered. I’d been afraid to. This wasn’t the first time I had succumbed to nausea this month, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and get my hopes up before I felt sure. I had been wanting a baby for so long that if I rushed to take a test and found out that my nausea was just food poisoning, I would be devastated. I’d been puking regularly for two weeks but hadn’t said anything to anyone.

“Does Chris know?”

My face morphed into confusion so fast that my mama frowned at me. That was when I realized that I hadn’t told her about Jermaine. I guess there was no time like the present.

“Mama, I haven’t slept with Chris since December. I’m…seeing someone, though, but he doesn’t know. Hell, I don’t really know.”

To my mama’s credit, she didn’t even blink an eye. She whipped out her phone and called her “friend”, instructing him to head our way after making a stop at the pharmacy to pick up two tests.

“Why two tests, Mama?”

She winked at me. “The first one don’t count.”

Forty minutes later, I sat on the floor in front of the bathroom, nervously chewing on the skin of my nail bed while my mama checked both tests.

When she emerged from the bathroom, I saw the results all over her face. I burst out crying, and she dropped to her knees to envelop me in a hug tighter than the one she’d given me earlier. I guess she could tell I was about to float up to ceiling, and I needed an anchor.

“You’re making me a grandmama,” she whispered in my ear, and I sobbed my joy into her shoulder.

“I’m proud of you,” she declared.

“You can do this,” she affirmed.

“You’re not alone,” she reminded.

“Mama!” I cried, “I’m having a baby!”

She rocked me back and forth. “I know, baby. I know. I checked the pissy test, remember?”

I laughed through my tears. On a day that I just knew was going to be one of the most depressing of my life, I was blessed with the best news I could have possibly received. Nothing could top or deflate the elation I felt. I knew that the next steps I made had to put me in position to be the best mama to this baby that I could be. As soon as I finished crying, I got up off the floor and went to get my phone.

I shot a text to Shanice, requesting the assistance of her and—if possible—her PYT in officially moving out of the house Chris and I shared. It was beyond late notice, but I wanted to sever all connections with him, like yesterday. When she hit me back with an affirmative, I immediately started to call Jermaine then I stopped. I couldn’t tell him something this important over the phone. I needed him in front of me, so I could see his face when I informed him that he would be a father. It would also be a good time to see if he meant what he said about his actions if I were to ever become pregnant.

After another half an hour that was mostly filled with her reiterating the need for me to take it easy tomorrow, my mama finally left. My veins were pumping with the adrenaline I received from my news, and all I wanted was to bounce around and announce it to everyone, but Jermaine had to hear it first. Now, I was suddenly exhausted. It was still early, not even noon, but I bounced my behind into my bedroom, under the covers, and into a nap.

I didn’t wake up until the next morning and when I did, I was starving. With the first week of puking, I discovered that the only thing I could keep down—and my number one craving—was fried eggs with cheese. I cooked, ate, and promptly cooked a second serving. Sated, I called Shanice to confirm her help that morning and then got myself ready to completely remove myself from my house.

When I pulled up to the two-story home I hadn’t lived in or visited for almost three months, I was surprised that I didn’t feel anything but disappointment. No overwhelming sense of sadness, no joy, not even relief. I was simply disappointed. It supposed to be a one-and-done situation; married one time, to the one man I would grow old with, and never have to worry about learning someone new ever again. My mission this morning was vastly different from the last mission I’d had concerning Chris, and I felt nothing but disappointment.

Sliding my bag over my head, I rubbed my belly, took a deep breath, and headed up the path to the front door. I’d parked on the street, leaving the driveway empty for the moving truck that the storage company would be delivering in about an hour. It would be a small, fourteen-foot truck that could back into the space easily. I’d decided not to take any furniture with me, intent on starting fresh with pieces that wouldn’t resurrect years of memories at a glance.

Chris hadn’t cared either way, so he was keeping a few pieces and would sell what wouldn’t fit in his new place. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he had already signed a lease on a condo in a nearby neighborhood, even though the house hadn’t sold yet. It appeared that he was as eager to escape our marital home as I had been.

As soon as I stepped over the threshold, the scent of cinnamon and sugar bombarded me. I held my phone in one hand as I dropped my purse and keys on the side table and followed the smell into the kitchen. My usually pristine kitchen was a mess; there were bags and canisters of ingredients, mixing bowls, and more all over the counter. I was genuinely shocked at what I saw. What the fuck did Chris call himself doing? The entire time we were married, he had never stepped foot in this kitchen except to grab a plate, but now he wanted to “make” something that required him to leave shit everywhere like this? If his intent was to piss me off, then he’d succeeded.

The kitchen was one of the few rooms I was emptying. Aside from leaving a single pot and pan each for Chris, the entire contents of the kitchen were coming with me. I loved to cook and bake and had purchased almost everything myself. Chris had not objected, so I assumed everything was cool. The scene before me told a different story, however. I walked to the counter nearest me and picked up a melamine mixing bowl. The lumpy brown substance inside smelled like cinnamon but was questionable to the eye.

I heard a door slam, and my clumsy ass dropped the bowl which, thankfully, didn’t break. All of its contents spilled out onto the tile floor and splattered the bottom of the cabinets. I groaned loudly. Of. Fucking. Course.

I stomped across the kitchen, muttering to myself while also feeling genuinely surprised that the sight didn’t make me nauseous, and grabbed a couple of rags and a bottle of cleanser from the laundry so I could rid the kitchen of my and Chris’ mess. As I was bent over on the floor on my hands and knees, Chris’ ringtone started playing on my phone. Months ago, I had changed it from Love Of My Life by Common and Erykah Badu to Resentment by Beyonce. It occurred to me right then, that this was the first time I had heard this song since I’d made the change. Not once had Chris called me after he announced he wanted a divorce; instead, he sent all correspondence through our lawyers. Instead of getting up to answer my phone, I put some extra elbow grease into my cleaning as I sang along with the chorus.

I have no idea how many rings sounded on Chris’s end but I was going hoarse from the emphasis I put in as I repeated “You lied!” over and over when a pair of feet appeared next to my elbow. Startled, I sucked in a breath and fell backward, one hand clutching at my heart and the other clutching my lower belly as I took in the body attached to those feet. Chris frowned down at me for a second, his eyes flicking to the hand on my abdomen, before bending down and pulling me up into a standing position.

“My bad, Ned. I called your phone when I came in, but you were really into the song so I guess you didn’t hear it ring.”

I patted my chest a couple of times then rubbed my belly and shook my head. He must not have realized that the song was the ringtone.

“I heard it, but I was jamming.”

He pointed to my phone on the counter which was now silent.

“That was your jam?”

I nodded and bent to pick up the rag I had dropped. “You know I love Queen Bey, and that song speaks to me on a spiritual level.”

He frowned again. “Since when?”

I shrugged slowly as I realized what he was getting at.

“Since I had to learn the hard way what she was talking about.”

He scratched his head, and I noted that he needed a haircut. His usually low cut was starting to kink up, and he always used to hate when I would try to comb it out into a neat afro. His shoulders lifted then fell.

“I didn’t cheat on you, Ned, and I never lied about anything.”

Now, it was my turn to frown. I held up a hand and started to tick off fingers as I proved him wrong.

“You said you would “have me” forever. Lie. You said you would “love me” forever. Lie. You said “until death, do us part”, and unless you are hiding a terminal illness from me, that was a muthafuckin’ lie.” I stood there, staring at the man I was convinced was my soul mate since I was eighteen years old. He stared right back at me, the pain in my eyes reflecting in his own.

“Nedra, I still love you; I keep telling you that it’s not about that—”

I tossed the rag back to the floor and threw my hands up to stop him from saying the complete and utter bullshit I definitely didn’t want to hear.

“Save it, Chris.” I backed away from him. “The damage is done. We’re divorced now, and there is no going back from that. Just stop trying to act like you didn’t fuck up.” I turned to leave him standing there, but he caught my arm. I stared at his hand like it was a parasite, but he didn’t remove it.

“You’re right; I fucked up. I’m not denying that. What I’m saying is stop looking at our situation like it’s the same as everyone else who has ever had to divorce.”

I tried to yank my arm from his grasp, but his grip was firm.

“We didn’t have to divorce Chris. You made that decision because you were too cowardly to admit you weren’t happy.”

His eyes blazed at me. “Or maybe I made the decision because one of us had to stop pretending that everything was okay.”

I gasped and tried to pull away even more.

“Let me go; I don’t have to listen to this! You aren’t my husband anymore, so I’m not obligated to hear anything you have to say!” I pushed against him, but instead of releasing me, he grabbed my other arm and pulled me toward him.

“You love to keep throwing our vows in my face, but you never list them all. You forgot how we said we’d be a friend to one another and that we’d push each other to be the best we could be. Are you going to stand here and say that you were at your best with me? That I was?”

I stared up at him, speechless at what he was saying.

“I filed for divorce because we’d reached our peak about ten years ago, and if I had to continue to go through the motions on this plateau—feeling stagnated—then I would have been no good to anyone, including myself. I love you, Nedra, just not romantically anymore. As your friend, I want you to achieve everything you ever wanted in life, but realistically, I understand that it won’t happen with me by your side. This isn’t about betrayal or infidelity; this is about realizing what we said seven years ago so that we can do what ya girl Oprah be saying and live our best lives. Don’t you want that?”

He stared at me openly, allowing me to see the hope and earnestness he felt in his amber eyes. I hated to admit it, but what he said made sense. Just as I had acknowledged months ago that even though he knew my passion, Chris wouldn’t invest in it. I knew that what he was saying was true. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about it, he just didn’t understand its importance to me. The same could be said for how I felt about him and his coaching football. All I saw was him spending ungodly amounts of time at the high school, but maybe he saw something bigger that I couldn’t fathom because I wasn’t meant to take that journey with him. Damn, I hated it when Chris was right!

I released the tension in my shoulders and dropped my chin to my chest. Being a divorcee still hurt, but it was now the reality that I was a divorcee and not that I felt like I was losing. I nodded and Chris crushed me to his chest in a hug. When he released me, I stepped back and looked down at the mess still on the floor. Chris’s gaze followed my own.

“I got this. I’m going to clean this whole kitchen.” He chuckled at the sight before us. “I know you about had a damn heart attack when you walked in here.”

I nodded. “Hell yeah; I thought I was going to have to pistol-whip your ass.”

He laughed hard at that. “Damn; pistol-whipped because of some bowls on the counter? That’s harsh.”

I giggled, glad for the lighthearted teasing between the two of us. Chris waved me off.

“Go ahead and do what you came here to do, I’m going to take care of this and listen out for Niecy and Byron to get here.”

With a nod, I spun on my heel and grabbed my phone from the counter.

“Okay, I’ll be upstairs.”

As I walked back through the home I had built picture-by-picture, trinket-by-trinket, I wondered if it was as crazy as it sounded that I was no longer upset about my divorce and even anticipating the things to come. Instinctively, my hand came up to cradle my belly, softly rubbing over my tank top. I smiled to myself as I climbed the stairs to the second floor.