She took a bite of the Hawaiian rib eye the server had just placed in front of her. Between bites and enjoyment of pure culinary pleasure, she pointed her fork toward me. “This is a serious one. Don’t play with this one, Michelle.” She then dug the fork into her loaded baked potato. “That’s all I have to say.”
“Delisa, you can’t just leave it like that. What do you mean by what you just said? Do you think I’m in danger? Do you think this Dawn woman would go as far as to try and kill me or something?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Delisa said as she continued to eat. “I’m simply saying don’t take a relaxed approach to this. You have a baby on the way that you have to protect. Because I think by the time this is over, none of us would have ever imagined the outcome.”
That statement sent chills through all of us, and the rest of the evening was spent with each woman talking about what she’d gone through since the week before. I wasn’t able to concentrate on what they were saying or the oven roasted chicken I’d ordered. What if Delisa was right? What if Dawn Carlton came here to finish me off as some sort of revenge for her sister? What if Daphne was secretly conversing with Dawn to concoct a sure plan that would not only end my marriage, but my life? I thought about that dream I’d had. I couldn’t help but wonder if it really was a sign to come or if I was, in Darvin’s words, just being paranoid.
Again.
Chapter Twelve
Michelle
I walked in the house from my weekly meeting still consumed in my thoughts from the conversation with the ladies. Delisa’s comment bothered me most, and no matter how hard I tried, I just could not stop hearing her words over and over.
I placed my purse in its usual place by the phone in the kitchen, took my shoes off, and headed to my bedroom to change into something more comfortable. I’d called Darvin on my way home, and we had decided to watch some old movies together.
Once in my bedroom, I glanced at the clock sitting in total darkness on the nightstand, and the bold red numbers that showed it was eleven o’ clock.
I flipped on the lights and groaned because I was tired, worn out, and no longer felt that I could watch previews, let alone an entire movie. My eyes were practically closing as it was.
I walked into the closet and placed the shoe-curses that I’d been wearing back in their respective box. As I took off my dress, I noticed a sound coming from upstairs. I knew that I was sleepy and all, but it seemed as if the sound kept getting louder and louder. I froze in a silent panic, because Darvin wasn’t supposed to be home for another thirty minutes.
The bumping was getting louder. For a second, I debated whether I’d fallen asleep and was going into another nightmare, or if I was awake and somebody was really in my house.
I quietly walked out of my closet and back toward my bedroom when the bumping turned into a crashing sound. Somebody was definitely in the house and was obviously vandalizing it.
Paralyzed by fear and not knowing what to do next, I walked to my bedroom and prayed that Darvin had left the cordless phone on the charger. He had a habit of walking around the house on the phone and leaving the phone in whatever room he was last in.
Thankfully, the phone was indeed on the charger. As I moved toward it, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Afraid that the intruder might try to come into the room next, I quickly grabbed the cordless phone from my reading table and made a dash back to the closet. My heart was pounding at a rate that was causing my breathing to be labored, and beads of sweat rolled down my face faster than a New York minute. I pressed the TALK button and dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” the nonchalant woman on the other end said.
“Yes, someone has broken into my home, and they’re still here.”
Silence.
“Hello!” I said as loudly as I could, without being heard.
“Ma’am, I’m here. Can you confirm your address?”
“Twenty thirty-five Country Lake Drive.”
Crash!
I jumped at the sound of glass breaking into pieces. “Ma’am, can you please tell them to hurry?” I was practically hyperventilating.
“Do you believe that the intruder is still in the home?” the woman asked.
“What, are you deaf and dumb? I already said that!” I yelled.
“Ma’am, just calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! You try having someone break into your house, being four months pregnant and don’t know if you’re going to make it out alive, and then tell me to calm down! Lady, you just don’t know.”
“I can understand your frustration. I have a team on their way to your location right now. Just try to remain calm and make sure you stay on the phone with me until the police arrive.”
If I could somehow reach through the phone and strangle the woman on the other end for acting as though my situation was just a number of many, I would have done so with joy. I’d only had to dial 911 a few times in all of my life, and each and every single time, the attendants were less than attending. They were almost downright rude. No sympathy or concern was laced in their voices, only impatience and aggravation.
Just as I was about to respond to the woman, the doorbell rang. Despite my disbelief that they would arrive before the intruder had a chance to get away or kill me, they made it in what seemed like record time.
“Ma’am,” the woman said, “the police should be there. Do you hear your doorbell yet?”
“I just heard it.”
“Okay, I need you to go to the door and let the police in.”
“Are you insane?” I questioned, hardly believing that she would even suggest I come out of hiding. “Do you really think that I’m about to go out there and face the intruder? Woman, please. I’ve seen plenty of movies where the police were able to break a door down, so if they want to get in tonight, they better give that door one hell of a kick.”
The woman sighed in frustration. “Okay. Let me try to reach the police on the radio. Hold one moment, please.”
I heard her mumble to the police officer something about having a difficult pregnant woman on the phone that was refusing to leave her hiding place in order to let them in. Well, I didn’t care one way or the other what she or the police officers thought about me. I was not about to leave my closet for all of the diamonds in Tiffany’s.
The woman came back on the phone. “Ma’am, is there any other way that the officers can gain entry to your home without having to kick down your door?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes. I can give you the garage door code and they can come in that way.”
“That would be great. May I have that code, please?”
“Two-nine-seven.”
“Okay. One moment while I relay that information to the officer.”
Once again, I heard her tell the officer the information that he needed to come in and arrest my intruder.
By this point, my head was spinning. Reality had finally set in that somebody had actually broken into my home. Could that somebody be Dawn? If so, how did she get into my house? Was she here to kill me? Look for something? Destroy my property? My thoughts were interrupted by the voices of the police officers, who had now gotten in and were taking down the intruder. All I could manage to hear one of them say was, “Stop right there!”
After a couple more minutes of me straining to hear what the officers were saying, the 911 attendant came back to the phone and said, “Ma’am, they’ve caught the intruder. Can you please tell me your location in the home? The police would like to speak to you.”
“I’m in the closet inside of the master bedroom just off of the kitchen.”
My voice was trembling. It was over.
She relayed the information to the police.
“Okay. Someone is on the way to your location.”
Sure enough, an officer shined a flashlight inside of the closet and saw me hiding behind several pieces of luggage.
“Mrs. Johnson? Are you all right?�
�
A single tear slid down my cheek in relief. “Yes. I’m fine. Did you catch them?”
“Yes, ma’am, we did. We have the intruder in the patrol car. If you’re up to it, we would like to see if you can identify this person and then help us complete a police report for what happened here tonight.”
At that moment, Darvin came rushing into the closet.
“Baby! Are you okay? The police told me what happened,” he said, sounding extremely worried. “I didn’t even stop to notice who it was. I wanted to get in here to you.”
I immediately came out of my hiding place and leaped into Darvin’s arms, the place where I felt most safe in the entire world. “Yes. I’m fine.”
The tears that came rushing down my cheeks proved otherwise. I released all of the terror, fear, and trauma that I had experienced since coming home.
Darvin held me until I had no more tears to cry, and the police officer, definitely being more sensitive than the woman I’d spoken to on the phone, simply just walked away and gave us our space.
I pulled myself together. I wanted to—no, needed to—know who had broken into our home, the place that was supposed to be my refuge. The place that was meant to keep me safe from harm.
Darvin smoothed a loose strand of hair away from my face and brushed away the residue of the tears with the back of his finger. “Baby, are you sure that you’re ready to go out there?” He paused and turned my face so that I could look him directly in the eyes. “Because you don’t have to do this now. We can go down to the police station a little later.”
I looked in the depths of Darvin’s eyes, trying to find the strength I so desperately needed. I looked away. “No, I’m fine. I would rather get this over with now so that I can go to bed and relax.”
We walked into the kitchen and found glass sprawled all over the floor. The crystal frame that was given to us as a wedding gift and that once held one of our honeymoon photos, was now broken into several tiny pieces.
That explained at least one of the crashes I’d heard. Why would somebody break a frame? The police motioned for us to step outside to try to identify our uninvited guest. The more steps I took toward the police car, the more weak my legs became. My feet froze like the ice in Alaska when I got close enough to see who was sitting in the back seat.
With her head held down, it wasn’t the woman I was expecting to see. It wasn’t one of the Carlton sisters, as my gut had anticipated. I closed my eyes and opened them again and again, greatly wanting to make the image of the woman vanish. No matter how much I tried to will her away, the woman sitting in the back seat of the police car was still there.
I looked over at Darvin, who was standing in disbelief. We were both thinking the same thing: Why would Twylah Andrews, my armor bearer of the last two years, break into our house?
Chapter Thirteen
Michelle
It was well after 2 A.M. before I was finally able to even think about getting into bed. After accepting the fact that Twylah had broken into our house, and going to the police station to give a formal statement, I was beyond the normal level of exhaustion. I was still in a state of shock, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t understand why Twylah would invade our home when she could come in whenever she got ready.
Twylah had moved to Atlanta a few years ago, and we’d met in one of the aerobics classes in the gym. We’d hit it off instantly. We became friends and spent almost every Saturday shopping, getting manicures and pedicures, and eating Mexican food until heartburn forced us to stop. She had grown up as an only child, just as I had, and in our minds, we were to each other the sister that neither of us had.
We would spend countless hours talking about Rodney Landers, the man who had stolen and broken her heart all in the span of one year. She’d waited all twenty-three years of her life to give her virginity to a man, and when she decided to take that step (against her moral beliefs), she did so with the wrong man. Rodney had chased her, wined and dined her, wooed her, and everything else that would make a woman fall in love. And Twylah had fallen hard. Real hard. She became so depressed when their relationship ended that not only did she have to leave Charlotte, her birthplace, but North Carolina altogether. She couldn’t even bear to be in the same state with him. Especially not with him and his new wife—a white woman.
So, initially all of our conversations were about the life and death of Rodney Landers and Twylah Andrews.
Finally, one day over cheesecake, she swore to never let another day go by crying over a man who didn’t care about her in the first place. She decided to move on with her life and on to better things.
Reflecting back on all of the things that we’d shared, it was hard to imagine, yet alone grasp, Twylah doing something like this. She was the prime example of what my grandmother used to refer to as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. No matter how hard I tried, I could not think of anything that she ever did that would point to her doing something like this. Sure, she had little bouts of jealousy when it came to me asking Chanice for more than I asked her, but that certainly was not enough to justify this behavior. But one thing I’d learned in my thirty-one years of living: it’s common conduct for the devil to sneak up and catch you off guard. First, Daphne. Second, Dawn. Now, Twylah. Who and what was next?
Shortly after we acknowledged to the police that we knew who she was, I’d gone upstairs to survey the damage. Just as I’d imagined, she’d broken several of my crystal vases. Not just any vases, those vases had been heirlooms in my family, and Twylah knew that they were dear to my heart.
Tears had slowly begun to fall as I surveyed what used to be my great-grandmother’s fiftieth wedding anniversary vase and the matching diamond-encrusted plate that it sat on, broken into pieces finer than sand and strewn on the floor of my office. In searching the other rooms, I found one crystal heirloom after the other, demolished from the brutal attack of Twylah. The thing that baffled me most was that she had also broken every frame that held a picture of Darvin and me.
I was too tired to put any more effort into thinking about it. I resigned to deal with it later, and headed to the bedroom. Shortly after, Darvin walked into the room with the evidence of stress residing underneath his eyes and fatigue claiming his body. Darvin was unlike most men. He had a heart for people and a genuine concern for even those who abused him. I knew that he would wrestle for the remainder of the night, trying to determine what was going on in Twylah’s mind when she decided to raid our privacy.
Unlike me, he’d been leery of her from the beginning because of her baggage, but, I’d reassured him that her baggage was going to remain with her and would not have any bearings on me. After some time, he began to trust her, and his initial suspicions had been replaced with an authentic love for her and her well-being.
As much as I didn’t want to, I knew that I had to talk to her in order to get some answers. Something had to be wrong. The woman that I’d grown to know was not the woman who would do something like this. There had to be some sort of explanation.
“Baby, you still awake?” Darvin asked as he began to shed what was once a neatly starched shirt and creased dress slacks.
“Yes, honey. Can’t seem to fall asleep.”
He sighed. “I feel you. I don’t know how I will sleep tonight myself.” An understood silence lurked in the room as Darvin took his place next to me in our bed. It wasn’t long before he broke it. “Baby, I’m going to look into hiring twenty-four hour security for you. I know that’s not something that you’re fond of, but I just can’t trust anybody anymore. You could have been hurt tonight, and considering all that we’ve been through, I think it’s time to take another approach to our safety.”
I didn’t even have the energy to fight him, even though I’d always said that pastors with security were just going overboard.
Before marrying Darvin, I’d had my share of gossiping with my fellow hair salon associates about pastors and their wives and how arrogant—not to mention, unreachable—they w
ere. I’d always complained about how you had to go through a secretary to get to talk to a pastor, when in the old days, it was common to see a pastor hanging out and having dinner at a member’s house on any given day. But things had changed, and it took me wearing the shoes to understand. After stretching ourselves from one end to the other trying to get around to every dinner, every funeral, every hospital, every birth, every family reunion, and every other social event in the lives of our congregation, we soon realized that we couldn’t do it all. We realized that if we wanted to live long, productive lives and see our children grow up, we’d better slow down and allow some things to be delegated. Now, every appearance request for us had to go through our respective assistants, and “our” time was “our” time. No matter what. Darvin called it “First Church.” After all, God created the institution of marriage before the church was created.
So, regardless of what I previously thought about pastors, their wives, and their methods of doing things, here I was staring their same mountains in the face. And like it or not, this was the life we had to live.
“Darvin?”
“Yes, baby?” From the sound of his voice, it was obvious that sleep was trying to settle in.
“Do you think that God is trying to tell us something with all of these things happening to us?”
“I don’t know. Why do you think that?”
“Well, I can’t help but wonder why it seems that we can never just find peace. It’s like when we get over one thing, something else comes along.” I paused. “It’s like we’re cursed.”
Diary of a Mad First Lady Page 9