Under Abnormal Conditions (12 page)

‘Where the hell have you been?’ was my
greeting.

“I’ve been at the police station, school, and
I had a meeting at work.” I quickly returned. She relented and
stepped aside for me to enter. She examined my appearance as I
stepped in the door. I knew exactly what she was thinking. If she
didn’t know where I was, I must have been with a woman. Retaliation
for her indiscretion is what she thought. I didn’t give her a
chance to start a fight.

“Where’s Regina?” I asked, waiting for her to
run out and attach herself to my leg.

“She’s with momma. They went to the store a
few minutes ago. Just have a seat and relax.”

Their home was modestly furnished with older
tables and chairs. Though they didn’t have much, they made do with
what they had. I had been giving them a bit extra with the child
support whenever I could spare it. She managed a small restaurant
in town, and made a decent living, but a little supplement would
never hurt.

Before I sat down, I gave her the check. As
the money left my hands, I wondered to myself when I would be able
to give her more.

“I hoped we could have a little time to
ourselves,” she seduced. She was about as subtle as a hooker in the
French Quarter. I knew what she wanted, but I couldn’t let myself
be taken in by her. She sat down close to me. A bit too close, in
fact, and began her usual spiel.

“Regina deserves a real family, and you know
we can make things work this time.” I could feel her body drawing
even closer to me. Just before she could move in for the kill, the
front door opened.

“Daddy!”

I sprung from the couch to greet my baby. It
felt so good to hold her. I never had to wonder about her leaving
me or betraying me. She loved me unconditionally, and in my eyes
she could do no wrong.

Her grandmother quickly followed. “Regina!
Don’t you run away from me again! Hello, Michael.”

Celestine Burke was a sweet, zaftig, older
lady with a happy face and a sweet disposition.

I greeted Mrs. Burke with a kiss on the
cheek. She bashfully looked at her daughter. “She didn’t want to go
to the store. I told you that. You know how hard-headed she
is.”

“I wonder where she got that from,” I
mumbled.

“Oh, you just stop,” said Mrs. Burke,
swatting my arm. “You are staying for dinner?”

“I’m really drained. Maybe I can get a
rain-check?” I asked hopefully.

“We’re having lasagna,” she boasted.

“Well, I guess I can stay a little longer.”
With the way I had been eating, I needed the meal.

“Okay, you and Regina set the table and Ester
and I will bring out the salad.” She gave her daughter a stern look
as they went to the kitchen.

Ester and I didn’t talk much during dinner.
She must have sensed my relief when her mother and Regina came
home. She dared not say anything in front of her mother. We
finished dessert, and it was Regina’s bedtime. I had the privilege
of tucking her in. She wasn’t ready to go to sleep, but she didn’t
put up too much of a fuss. I read her a story and kissed her
goodnight. As I closed the door behind me, I knew Ester was waiting
in the living room for me.

“Can we finish our talk?” she asked as I
entered the room.

“There’s nothing to discuss, and I really
need to be going.”

“Did you see her face at dinner? It was like
we were a family again. You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that?”
she retorted.

“It was nice, but you know the only reason
I’m here is for her. If she wasn’t here, how long would it have
taken us to get into a fight?”

“Fine then. Just leave. That’s what you do
best anyway!” she shouted.

“This is the reason we never could get
along!” I returned.

“No, the reason we couldn’t get along was
because I could never compare to a corpse!” She screamed back. She
made it a point to say things that hurt down to the bone. I
wouldn’t allow myself to cry. I couldn’t give her the satisfaction.
She turned away in disgust and said, “I never cooked good enough. I
never cleaned well enough. I was never you’re damned grandmother!
Maybe if you had been half the man your grandfather was I could
have been a better wife!”

Ester never knew when to quit. Those words
hurt especially because of my damaged relationship with my mother.
I had only found out recently how she wouldn’t give me messages
when my mother called and did everything in her power to keep me
from talking to my family.

Even when she was wrong and she knew it she
wouldn’t stop. The dark rage inside me grew exponentially as she
spoke. “All you ever did was hurt me. You never loved me. You left
me and your daughter-”

“Stop right there! I never left her! I
divorced you, not my child. You are the one that cheated on
me.”

“Like you never did anything. What about
Michelle?”

“I didn’t start dating her until after the
divorce and you know it.”

“You didn’t waste any time taking up with
her, did you? How could you even say you loved me? You wouldn’t try
to work things out! Instead you ran to some white girl!” she
screamed through her tears.

I couldn’t answer her. Anything I would say
would only antagonize her even more. Michelle filled a void in my
life, and all Ester ever did was create one, in my heart as well as
my wallet. Since I realized Regina couldn’t have gone to sleep with
all of the commotion, I gestured for Ester to lower her voice.

“You are never going to see . . . you will
pay for what you’ve done to us,” she said in barely a whisper.

I shrugged with frustration and walked to my
daughter’s room. Ester followed. I could tell she was awake when I
opened the door. Her smiling eyes looked up at me, and the whole
night was worth it. I would never, could never love anyone the way
I loved her.

“I love you, Baby girl.” I gave her a peck on
the cheek and left. I’d hoped the fighting wouldn’t give her
nightmares. She was too innocent to live in the prison Ester and I
had created for each other. Ester was waiting in the hallway for
me.

Meekly she said, “I know I said some things I
shouldn’t have and-”

“I know you want to apologize. You always
want to apologize after the fact. Be woman enough not to say those
things to begin with.” I remembered Regina’s room being right
behind me, so I walked back to the living room.

“You are never satisfied. I can’t even say
I’m sorry.”

With her submissive guise revealed as the
underhandedness it truly was, I said, “Look, there is so much going
on right now that I can’t fight with you too. I’ll call you
tomorrow to check on Regina.” I let myself out, and as I closed the
door behind me, I could still hear her mumbling about something. In
the past, I would have gone right back and begun fighting again. By
walking away this time, I felt like maybe I had finally won an
argument.

Chapter 17

If I had been a drinking man, I would have
stopped at the nearest bar. For that matter, I could have hidden
under the bed with Ricky and had something.

In a small town like Dunham Heights, there
were only two types of bars. There was the loud music blaring
meat-markets where there were at least one hundred people trying to
get as drunk as possible so they wouldn’t be blamed outright for
the asses they were surely to make of themselves.

The other type was the old man bar where it
would be so dark and smoky that you felt like a firefighter
entering a burning building. To even enter, you had to be
fifty-five years old with at least one war story to tell, and
Desert Storm didn’t count.

I thought to myself as I looked at my watch I
still needed to meet with Sharon Bryant. It wasn’t that I wanted
to, but I had to sooner or later because I gave her my word. At
least it was to be on my own terms.

As I drove around town, it didn’t seem that
long ago when I didn’t even want to breathe if Ester wasn’t around.
In the beginning, our relationship was perfect.

It was the spring after my first semester at
college. My sister was invited to a Valentine’s Day party, and she
didn’t want to go alone. I didn’t feel like going, but eventually I
gave in and decided to be her escort.

The room was decorated in a sea of red and
white. As my sister began to introduce me to her friends, I saw
Ester for the first time. I felt something I didn’t expect – the
urge to meet her.

By the time I did get around to meeting her,
my palms were soaked with sweat. I slyly wiped my hand on my pants
before I was introduced.

“Ester, this is my younger brother, Michael,”
my loving sister said.

“Hello, how are you doing?” she said in a
voice that was sweeter than my mother’s iced tea. What happen next
totally blew me away.

She hugged me.

She stood on her petite tiptoes and hugged me
around the neck. I was hooked at that point. After she released me,
I smiled, and she went back to mingling.

When she was a safe distance away, I asked,
“Have I ever met her before?”

“I don’t think so,” my sister responded.

“She hugged me though.”

“That’s just her.”

The phrase ‘That’s just her’ ran through my
mind for the rest of the night. I wanted to approach her, but I was
not ready to deal with the possible rejection.

We listened to music and played a few party
games before I worked up the nerve to talk to her again.

I struck up a lame conversation with her
about the music. It turned out she was a jazz fan as well. I took
that as my opportunity and said, “Look, I know you don’t know
me-”

“I do know you,” she interrupted cheerfully.
“You’re Sonya’s little brother.”

I was definitely at a loss after that. In
less than a blink I was reduced to being my sister’s little
brother, but that ranked second only to being “Sarge’s” boy.

As much as I tried to hide it, she read the
disappointment on my face like it was the New York Times.

“I meant I know who you are. Your sister
speaks so well of you I feel like I know you.”

Her sweet words relaxed me.

“I would really like to see you again. Do you
think maybe I could call you sometime?”

I winced on the inside as I waited what
seemed like hours before she answered. I was already thinking of
excuses in my head about why she wouldn’t go out with me.

She never did answer.

What she did was dig around in her handbag
and come out with a pen. Without saying anything, she gently took
the palm of my hand and wrote the number inside. Then she kissed it
and closed my hand into a fist.

I called her the very same night.

After that, everything went so fast, but I
wasn’t complaining because that was the way I wanted it. I thought
she was perfect. The process was rushed a bit when she got pregnant
with Regina, but I thought we were perfect. Everything fit.

At some point after the accident, everything
changed. I withdrew, and she became a different person. She stopped
looking at me as the man she loved and more like I was a
liability.

I tried not to look down on her because of
it. There weren’t many women around that could have handled
something like that. For the first month I couldn’t even get out of
bed to use the bathroom. I had to use bedpans that she changed
diligently. It was the most humiliating thing I had ever gone
through. I practically had to learn to walk again. I felt like a
child, and I know she didn’t feel like a wife or even a woman for
that matter.

Who knows what I would have done if I had
been in the same position? The bad part about it was the way I
found out. I heard her talking to him late one night.

She claimed she slept on the couch so she
wouldn’t disturb me. It was just by chance I noticed she would take
the cordless telephone with her to the living room every night
before bed. She explained it away by saying she didn’t want the
ringing to bother me.

It was late on a Sunday night and I had just
started using the crutches to get around. I couldn’t fall asleep
and wanted a drink of water.

Normally I would call out to her, and she
would come faithfully with what I needed. That time I wanted it to
be different. I wanted her to see I was getting better. It was
late, and I didn’t want her to hear me bumbling around. I got the
crutches and slid them under my arms. With my right leg I pushed
myself off the bed. Every time I would attempt to stand, the blood
would rush down to my injured leg. The pain was like thousands of
fire ants biting my leg over and over. As intense as the pain was,
it was better than it was the day before.

After a few seconds, it passed, and I was out
the door. I couldn’t believe how good it felt for me to get around
on my own. I was starting to feel like a man again. As I slowly
shuffled down the hall, I could hear a low murmur that I dismissed
as the television or the radio.

I was practically on top of her before I
figured out what it was. She was telling someone that she loved
him. I hoped maybe it was a relative, but what followed was a
verbalization filled with expletives and eroticism about what she
was going to do when she saw him again.

My ears burned as she told him of the
pleasure he would soon receive. I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my
body was numb. My first thought was to cave in her head with my
crutch, but good sense quickly prevailed. Besides, the aluminum
crutch was far too light for the pain equal to that in my heart at
that moment.

It didn’t take her very long to realize I was
standing there. Maybe she could hear me breathing, or maybe she
could feel the fierce rage that was steadily building behind
her.

It was obvious she didn’t know how long I had
been standing back there because afterwards she tried to tell me it
was just a friend. When I began repeating the filth she had been
spouting, she fell silent.