Going Down (33 page)

“I just told you—because I don’t want to.”

“Come on, Angelique, but there has to be a reason why you don’t like making love to your husband.”

We went back and forth about it like we usually do, and then I asked her the question that had been on my mind. “Is it that you like women?”

“What?”

“Do you like women?”

“No, Zack, I don’t like women. I am not a lesbian. I love you, not woman. I don’t believe you had the nerve to ask me that.”

“Then what is it? You say you love me, but you don’t like making love with me.”

“It’s not that I don’t like making love to you.”

“You coulda fooled me, because sometimes it’s like it’s killing you to do it. And when you do, you don’t wanna try anything different. We do it the same way every time.”

“Is that all this is about?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?” Angelique yelled.

“I just wanna know why my wife doesn’t wanna make love to her husband!” I yelled back, and regretted it right away. We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“I sorry, too, Zack. It’s just hard for me, that’s all.”

“But why, Angelique. I just need to know why.”

Angelique rolled over and hugged her pillow. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, baby. I need to know.”

She turned around and looked at me. “I was molested by her stepfather,” Angelique said, and the tears began rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh my god.” I immediately feel bad for the things I was thinking and all the shit I was doing. “I’m sorry,
 
baby. I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

“Why would I think less of you? It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, and I’ve tried to convince myself of that for years. I’ve read a lot of self-help books for sexual abuse survivors. They all say that same thing: that it wasn’t my fault. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully accept that.”

“You could have told me.”

“Zack, I have never told anybody about what happened.”

“Why not.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mother. We were doing bad those days after my real father died, she needed my stepfather around.”

“You could have told somebody.”

“He used to tell me if I told somebody that they would think I was lying and doing it for attention. And everybody liked him. So imagine me, this ten-year-old, little girl—”

“You were ten when this happened?” I said louder than I should have, but hearing that made me mad.

“Yes,” Angelique said meekly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.” I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for her, being so young. “I just can’t believe that somebody could do that to a little girl, but it happens.”

“Right. So, imagine me saying that about this person who everybody thinks so highly of, doing something so bad; but he did,” Angelique said, and began crying again. “He would beat me when I tried to resist him. Threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I believed him, so I didn’t tell anyone.”

I took her in my arms and held her. “How long did this go on?”

“Two years.”

“What happened then?”

“He started hitting my mother, so she divorced him. But by that time it was an everyday thing. It finally got to the point where I wouldn’t even fight him anymore, I would just let it happen.”

“What about Connie?”

“He never touched Connie, thank god. I always tried to protect her as best I could. When he started looking at her the way he looked at me, I’d send her to her room and he’d take me instead.”

“What would he make you do?”

“All the things you try to get me to do. Then, when he was done, he’d say that he loved me and that’s why he did it.”

“I feel like shit, now.”

“That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s how I felt, less than shit. When he was finished, I would run to the bathroom and wash myself. I would scrub myself until it felt like my skin was raw. I felt so dirty, like I was dirty.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“But that’s how I felt. How I still feel.”

“You mean you felt that way when we did it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I have a huge fear of intimacy. I know that his abuse has had a huge impact on my relationships with men. And especially with you. You are the kindest, most understanding man I’ve ever met, and I love you so much for that.”

“I love you, too. And we’ll get through this, I promise. We’ll get through this together.”

“I know we will. I feel a lot better finally telling you. I’ve wanted to tell for so long, but I was afraid you’d stop loving me.”

“I’ll never stop loving you. We’ll get some help for you to deal with this.”

“No, Zack. You got to promise me that you’ll never tell anybody about this. We can’t talk about this. Please, Zack, promise me.”

“No, Angelique, I can’t promise you that. And you have to talk to somebody who can help you talk about what happened to you. That’s the only way you’re gonna get past it, is to deal with it. You can’t hide from it anymore. You gotta let it out. You just said you feel better now that you told me.”

“That’s you. I can’t talk about this with a complete stranger. It’s too hard.”

“I’ll be with you every minute, baby.”

We sat up for hours talking about what he did to her and how it made her feel. How she couldn’t believe that her mother didn’t know what was going on. Angelique became withdrawn and fearful. She would cry for no reason. Her mother never questioned why Angelique had an intense dislike for him and was afraid to be left alone with him.

I always wondered, and could never understand why a man would do that to a child. How anybody could betray that trust children naturally have.

I was glad that she was finally able to tell me about this. At that point, I felt closer to Angelique than I have at any time in our relationship. I thought about Tyhedra and Maritza and what I had done, and it was then that I realized that my dream wasn’t to have wild sex with two women, my dream was always to have wild sex with the woman that I was so in love with—my wife.

I didn’t know how I got down here, and at this point, it didn’t matter. The real question was how I was going to get up. I could figure out how I ended up in my empty bedroom, lying flat on my back, later.

I tried to get up. Every time I raised my head it hurt, and the room started spinning. “Okay, bad idea.” Maybe if I could roll over, I could crawl over to the door and pull myself up by the doorknob.

Slowly.

I rolled myself over and started crawling. But what if the doorknob isn’t strong enough to support my weight. I looked around the room.

“The window ledge.”

It was close enough to the door that if one didn’t work, I could try the other. If all else failed, I’d crawl into my bedroom and pull myself up on the bed. I felt like such a fool down here on all fours. So drunk that I passed out in here. Which reminds me, what was I doing in here anyway? I had no idea. Finally, I made it to the window and pulled myself up.

That wasn’t so bad. I leaned against the wall and looked out the window. I felt my head, there was a good size bump on the right side of my forehead.

“Probably from hitting the floor.”

A brilliant bit of deductive reasoning.

Even though my head hurt, my legs seemed to be okay, so I made my way into my room and headed for the shower. I turned on the shower, got undressed, and got in. The water was cold, but I didn’t care. It would warm up soon enough.

The cold water did me some good; it cleared my head. Now I remembered how I got in that room. I was thinking about what to do with that empty room. I thought about putting a home theater in there and went in to look around, when the phone rang.

“That’s probably when the floor came up to meet my face.” I got a plastic bag and filled it with ice. It felt good. On my way back to the bedroom, the doorbell rang. I opened the door. “CJ?”

“What happened to you?” I guess she noticed the bag of ice. “You are all right?”

“It’s a long story, CJ. Come on in.”

I let CJ in and went into the living room. CJ followed me in and sat down on the couch. “What happened to you?” she asked.

I plopped down in my chair and turned on the lamp. I looked over at CJ. “Forget what happened to me. What happened to you?” Her eye was swollen almost to the point of being shut. Her bottom lip was swollen, too, and she had a bump like mine, only hers was on the left side. “Did Manny do that?”

“Yeah, we got into it again.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He needs help, Chris, not jail.”

“Muthafucka needs to die.”

“I know how you feel, Chris, and don’t think I didn’t think about killing his ass, but then I’d be no better than him. He has a problem and he needs help.”

“That’s mighty white of you to feel like that.” I laughed a little, but I didn’t mean to. “You want my ice bag? Looks like you need it more than I do.” She grabbed the bag out of my hand. CJ smiled. She has such a pretty smile, but not today. She could take that liberal attitude if she wanted to, but I was thinking about callin’ Zack and Tee and rollin’ by there. “So what set him off this time?”

“You.”

“What?”

“It started over you.”

“How?” A chill came over me to think that I was responsible for the beating she’d taken. “What did I do?”

“Well, since you decided to disappear today, I was worried. I had been calling you all day; you didn’t call me back and that’s not like you. I knew something must be wrong. So when I got home Manny was drunk, as usual. I told him what was up and told him I was gonna ride by here to check on you. I told him he could ride if he wanted to. So he starts yelling, talkin’ ’bout I don’t need to be gettin’ all up in your business. And he’s gettin’ tired of hearing about Chris this and Chris that. He said I spend too much time with you, callin’ myself working, but he knows what’s going on. I told him that nothing was going on, that we are just working.”

“That is all we’re doing and it ain’t even that often, anyway.”

“I know that, but he doesn’t see it that way. He just knows what he knows. We kept going back and forth about the usual things we argue about—money, his drinking, and whatnot. Then he got back around to you.”

“What now?”

“He wanted to know if nothing was going on, then why was it so important for me to check on you.”