Man Curse (3 page)

Chapter 4

T
he arguments between Dexter and me had grown so intense, our love affair was as steady as a raft floating amid the seas in an always-brewing storm. It didn't help that I'd let him invite himself to come live with me, raising a puppy together, playing make-believe mommy and daddy. I felt as if I had no room to breathe. No place to escape. But he had no place to go. It was a codependent addiction of resentment, distrust, and lust.

The day before I left Baltimore for the family reunion, we continued to play out our dysfunctional norm.

“Whose dress is this?” I asked casually. It hung in the back of his closet as he stuffed plastic bags that were headed for my apartment. Short, green, dotted with sunflowers like yellow spots in a grassy field, it slid off one side of the hanger, in need of a body to fill it.

“I dunno,” Dexter answered, dumb and stupid. He was milling around the room, grabbing his garden of fake plants and stuffing them into a second garbage bag.

I hated those answers. The kind that knocked inside the belly, alerting me to a piece of lying shit coming from his ass.

“You don't know? How do you not know about a dress in your closet?”

“Maybe it's my brother's girlfriend's.”

“Why would her dress be in your room in your closet?” I was in full investigative mode by now. The more he lied, the more I pried. “I thought you liked to keep your door locked.”

“Yeah . . . um. I don't know,” he said nervously. “I don't know whose this is. You want it?”

“No, I don't want this ugly, cheap-looking dress,” I yelled. “What the fuck, Dex? Did you have some girl here?”

“No . . .”

“Dex. Did you have some girl here?”

“No.”

I wasn't moving until he answered with truth. My face was perfectly blank except the seething red anger in my pupils.

“Is it that ex of yours?”

“I mean, maybe. Maybe she left it. I don't care about that bitch anymore.”

“Bitches leave things behind so they can come back.” I let the sentence linger in the air like a haunting poltergeist. Then I grabbed his car keys off the bed. “Take me to her house.”

“For what?”

“So I can see you tell her that you two are done.”

“What?”

“Take. Me. To. Her. House.” I was slow, deliberate. “That's unless you're lying.”

“No! Meena. What the fuck? Why don't you just believe me?”

“Because you're lying. And if you are, you're not moving in with me. Fuck you.”

“So where am I supposed to go? My brother moved in with his girl. We didn't re-sign the lease. I have nowhere to go.”

“Oh, well.” I shrugged my shoulders, a tiny smirk on my face.

Dexter grabbed the keys from my hand and headed out the door as I followed in tow. Starting the car, pulling out of the lot, he turned up the radio, blasting a Funkmaster Flex mix tape. I turned down the volume.

“Why are you touching my radio, Meena?”

“Because you're a liar.”

“I'm taking you to her house.”

“So. You still lied about that dress. Why did you lie?”

He was quiet.

“Why did you lie?”

More silence.

So I screamed, “Why did you lie? I
hate
liars!”

Next thing I knew, Dexter had hit the accelerator. We were speeding down an empty side street. Trees, vinyl siding, everything in a blur.

“Fuck this, yo!” he hollered. “I'ma fuckin' die! You see this, Meena? You driving me to kill myself!
Fuck!
”

I screamed. Yet that only helped his foot add weight to the accelerator.

“Dexter! Slow down!
Please?
”

He swerved and let the car do a 360-degree doughnut, landing on the opposite side of the road. Tears streamed down my face, my cheeks drenched. He began to drive normally, simmering down. Pulling into an empty warehouse lot, he leaned over and kissed me in a way that led to foggy-windows sex in the backseat.

A week later, fresh from the family reunion, Dexter promptly picked me up from the train station in his shiny green Hyundai. The backseat was filled with balloons, a bouquet of roses, and an oversize teddy bear. He stepped out of the car, hip-hop blasting, smile wide, and planted a kiss on me as he picked my body up off the ground.

“I missed you,” he said, laughing. “What's up, babe? You smell so good. I miss that smell.”

We whizzed off to the park, soundtracked to the bass of Jay Z vibrating through the streets. Chrome rims sparkled amid the gorgeous summertime sun. Reflections of Dex's herringbone necklace glistened with every cheesy grin he gave with those glistening white teeth. Back at the apartment, he'd cleaned each room to pristine perfection. Dusted. Mopped. Vacuumed. The place smelled Pine Sol fresh. Laundry washed, folded, and packed away. There was no way I could break up with him that day.

The next morning he dropped me at work and headed to his job, selling insurance door-to-door, persuading families to invest in their futures. The moment break time hit, he came searching for me. Popping up at the mall. Randomly surveying racks at my store, looking for something new to buy. Lurking.

“Why is he always here?” my store manager, Paul, asked with a furrowed brow. “Does he work?”

“Yeah, but when he gets off, he comes here.”

“Well, why? You're at work and him being here is a distraction. I mean, don't you think so?”

“Well, I can still do my job. Do you want me to tell him to leave?”

“I understand he's buying things. But it's just strange how he's always here. It's like he's watching you.”

“He just loves me, Paul. But I appreciate your concern. Thank you.”

“Just looking out for you, kiddo. Stay focused. And take your break now. I need you ready for the lunchtime rush.”

I grabbed my purse and motioned for Dexter to follow me. He grabbed my hand as we headed out of the store.

“So what do you want to eat today, pretty lady?”

“Sushi, I guess.”

“Cool, I had a taste for spring rolls and a little fish,” he said, grabbing my skirt. “Maybe we can head to the car for a quickie and—”

“Dexter,” I said, cutting him off, “you gotta stop coming to my store so much. My manager talked to me about it today.”

“Why? I buy stuff, I'm not hurting anybody. It's not like there's anybody in there. They need to be happy they have a regular customer.” He tried to grab my waist. I nudged back. My look hadn't changed. “What did he say?”

“He just wondered why you were always at the store. He said it seems like you're watching me.”

“So, maybe I am. You're beautiful. And so what, it's none of his fucking business. I'll tell him.”

“You'll tell him what?” I said, alarmed. “And get me fired?”

“You don't need that bullshit job. I got you, Meena.”

“Maybe I like that bullshit job. If it wasn't for that bullshit job, I wouldn't have met you.”

At this point we were screaming in the mall, standing in front of the food court. I swerved my neck as he circled around me.

This was our thing. Zero to one hundred in a second. One minute lovey-dovey, the next enraged.

“I'm not hungry anymore,” I said, turning on my heel. “I'm going back to work.”

“Cool, I'm going to talk to Paul.”

“No, you're not. You're leaving.”

“Why don't you want me to talk to him, Meena?” he said, walking past me, accusing me. “You fucking him?”

I was used to his jealousy by now. “What? No, he's married.”

“So, that doesn't mean anything. I remember what happened with your Jamaican fling that summer.”

I ran in front of him and put my hand on his chest. “If you talk to Paul, I will break up with you. Leave, Dex.”

Suddenly his eyes were teary. “You would do that? Why? I love you.”

“Because you're making a scene in the mall. We're arguing. This is where I work. You're embarrassing me, Dexter. Please leave.”

Then he began whining. “But I need you in my life. I love you.”

“I know,” I said, walking close to kiss him on the lips. “Pick me up at six p.m., outside the mall. Don't come inside, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, holding in his tears like a toddler. “I'm sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“It's obvious.”

Dexter was always saying how much he loved me. The problem is that love is not enough to make a relationship work. Even once we moved in together, making candlelit dinners and having loud sex every night, our situation continued to implode.

Chapter 5

Y
ou know that moment when you blow up a man's phone. Send multiple pages. Text messages. Calling so many times, hoping the back-to-back ringing beats him between the ears so hard that he can't help picking up and replying.

I could hear the exasperation in Dexter's voice. “Meena, I told you I had a meeting.”

“Well, where are you?”

“I told you,” he said, sucking his teeth. “I had to go to the office.”

“But it's Sunday,” I whined. “Why are you at the office on a Sunday?”

“Meena, I can't do this right now. I have to call you back.”

“But wait . . .”

“What?”

“Just . . .” I sighed, and elongated an exaggerated pause as I strained to hear something in the background.

“Hello?” he asked, tense and impatient.

“Call me when you're leaving.”

“I might be a while.”

“You didn't say that earlier. I thought we were having dinner.”

“Meena, I will call you back.”

I threw the phone down, screaming, “Asshole!”

Brooding on the couch, face turned up, I stared at Grandma Fey's picture on the mantel. All the yelling Dexter and I did reminded me of Grandma telling one of her stories at the reunion.

The life of the almost-retired side of the party, she talked at an escalated volume, cracking up at her own jokes. With a tendency to recount the details of a family fight involving knives, cussing, and screaming, Grandma Fey and her happy giggles brought contagious laughs and discomfort.

“I watched Mama pull a knife on my daddy. Yeah, Daddy hit her while she was cookin'. And Mama grabbed a butcher knife, put it to his neck, and said, ‘If you hit me again, I'll kill you.' Mama didn't take no crap.” Grandma laughed loud and boisterously, swaying back and forth. Her bright purple dress swept the ground with each move. A gold tooth glistened as she opened her mouth extra wide. “Uh-huh,” she'd add with a nod, before taking a finger to scratch the dry scalp flaking under her curly tight wig.

Grandma Fey's mother, or Ma Betty, as we called her, had died like her daddy, Great-Great-Grandpa Marcus. Like her father, Ma Betty passed with no memory of who she was and what she'd been born on earth to do. The Alzheimer's was so severe that she was placed in a nursing home where visits from family members became as uncommon as married black women. She died alone, under covers stained by infected bedsores oozing puss. Her death caused a rift in the family between those who'd regularly visited and ones who hadn't.

As usual, the family curse had touched her. Decades before Ma Betty became sick, she was an upbeat go-getter, proud voter, skilled baker, and soul food chef. Traumatized by disappointment and heartbreak, Betty decided to spend the rest of her days without a man. Ironically, her three younger sisters followed this same path, remaining single till their deaths.

When random family reunion time came and they all got together, the matriarch Mitchell ladies would find themselves on familiar relationship ground.

“Want a man, but don't need one. Probably won't get one,” I remembered hearing Ma Betty say during one of our holiday family visits to her home in Brooklyn. “Hand me that towel,” she'd instructed my mother, who was in the kitchen, watching her drizzle lemon glaze frosting over a moist, bundt-shaped pound cake. “Mitchell women are cursed. Gon' be all alone, forever.”

Sitting at the kitchen table next to me, sipping a tall cup of Pepsi while watching an old Western, Grandma Fey yelled without taking her eyes off the TV, “Don't put those things in Deena's head.”

“Well, it's true,” Ma Betty snorted. “
I
know.”

“It is not,” Grandma spit back. “I been married.”

It was the first time I'd ever heard that Grandma Fey had married. As I found out, she was eighteen when she'd met a charming, light-complexioned man with curly black hair—Bill Boone. They dated two weeks before jumping the broom. Six months later, she was home pregnant when a woman knocked at the door.

“Hi, does Billy Boone live here?” A short, plump woman waited for an answer. She wore a large sunhat with a daffodil pinned to the side.

“Yes, Bill lives here,” Grandma Fey said. “May I help you?”

“Who are you?” the little lady asked, putting her suitcase on the steps. “Do you live here?”

“I'm his wife, who are you?”

“His wife.”

Grandma says she almost passed out when those words came from that woman's mouth. But still, Southern hospitality was upheld as she invited her inside for tea. Over sips of Earl Grey, Grandma found out that Bill had disappeared from his
other
home in Raleigh, North Carolina, leaving behind a pregnant, penniless wife. This lady, Peggy, had eventually found out where Bill lived by tracking a postmarked envelope he'd sent containing five dollars and a handwritten letter with three words: “For your troubles.”

Fey and Peggy cried together, sharing dates, experiences, similar occurrences, anguishing over their pain. And when the meeting was over, Fey prepared for the confrontation.

“I'ma kill his ass,” she said, as Peggy smiled and replied, “I understand.”

Hours later . . .

“Motherfucker, where you been?” she asked as her drunken mate faked a smooth swagger through the front door, before tripping over the edge of the living room rug. He held himself up by digging his nails into the plastic coating on the arm of the couch.

“I been out, I told you,” he slurred. “Why you worrying?”

“'Cause I smell your breath. And you said you'd be home by ten. It's three a.m.”

“Damn, you always questioning me, woman. I don't question you when you out at your church events all day long. Let me be.”

SMACK.

The slap across his face caused sideways slobber to fly across the room, splattering against the window. Stunned, he pushed himself up off the chair to receive a beating of words.

“What kind of man leaves his pregnant wife home without a call? You ain't shit. I knew I shouldn't have married you,” she screamed, right hand steady on her hip. “And you got the nerve to bring my church into this? You need Jesus.”

“Bitch,” Bill replied slowly, stumbling up straight. “I don't care who the hell you are, the mother of my child, my wife, whatever, don't you touch me.” He balled up his fist and punched her so hard that she fell into the living room shelf. Family photos in their frames tumbled to the floor. Blood-soaked tears streamed down her face as a gash oozed from her forehead.

“See what you done made me do?” he said. “Damn!”

“I hate you,” she screamed back, one hand rubbing her pregnant belly. “I hope you go to hell for what you did to me and your other wife.”

Bill paused, shaken, before saying, “I don't know what you talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Peggy? Your
other
wife?” His mouth opened slightly. “Yeah, the one from Raleigh. She came to visit today. You left her pregnant and had the nerve to send her five dollars ‘for her troubles,' ” she said, holding a porcelain angel that had slipped off the shelf. “You remember that, don't you?”

“I don't need this,” he said, waving his hand in the air. Stumbling toward the front door, Bill stopped before leaving, staring through the screen in shock at a woman walking quickly up the sidewalk, grabbing a boy's hand. The four-year-old tried to keep up as his tiny legs dragged behind. His mother clenched his fingers and the straps of a large black purse, holding it tightly to the side of an oversize pregnant stomach.

Turning to help Fey stand, he caressed her arm, easing her up off the shelf, lifting his woman high. And with the angel figurine, she bashed him on the side of the head.

“Owww!”

Grandma Fey always laughed when she told this part of the story. “Owwww,” she'd say in a high-pitched voice, mocking Bill's pussylike whimper. Continuing the saga, she told the parts where he cussed and held his throbbing head. And then the final moment, when he stared at Fey's bloated belly, turned without a word, and left. Decades later, my mother, who was a fetus at the time of the fight, had yet to meet her dad. And the story, as it always did, left an awkward moment of silence, which Grandma Fey broke by looking up and yelling at me.

“Meena, don't you bring no crazy boys home. Get you a nice one,” she said, pointing at me. “Smart. But don't let him hit you. Or I'ma beat him.”

I'd never had that problem, I thought, sitting alone on my couch, staring through the blinds. The sun dipped behind clouds casting shadows across the horizon that opened up to torrential rain showers. I picked up the phone to dial, pausing to look at the numbers, before throwing the cordless back on the couch. Glancing out the window for signs of a green Hyundai, I grabbed the phone again and dialed Dexter's number. Once. Twice. Voice mail a third time. The anxiety strangled my stomach, tightening muscles into gassy contortions. I decided, as I tossed the phone down a fourth time, I was ready to do something about this situation.