“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WILLIAM?” I asked time after time like it was my routine.
He wouldn’t even look back at me. “OUT.”
One night, William asked me to watch one of “his” movies with him. My first thought was to refuse, but then I thought there might a shimmer of hope where I could engage William in some meaningful dialogue about what was going on in his mind; I wanted to know what was making him so reclusive and bitterly angry. I wanted to know how he felt about his mother and whether he had forgiven her for betraying him by tearing up his grandmother’s will. The other thing I wanted him to explain was his super-fascination with pornography.
“So,” I started the conversation as we prepared to watch “his” movie. …what am I supposed to get out of watching other people have sex, Honeyboo?” I used the pet name we shared.
He laughed. “Can’t you stop being the good girl for a few minutes?”
“Very funny,” I fake chuckled. But I followed William into the bedroom which I hadn’t slept in for weeks. He was looking at me from behind; I could feel him.
It was almost totally dark in the room; the blinds and curtains were closed. When I looked back towards the head of the bed, it was clear that it hadn’t been made it up in days, maybe more. I made a mental note to take care of changing the sheets while William was at work.
Then…LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!
The film began with creepy and offbeat music. Although I can’t remember every little detail, I do know that the setting was Hell— where the Devil reigns. Women could be heard screaming in the background. I just sat still, watched and waited.
Then the camera came in close to one young woman lying down on her back.
She was strapped to a long, black slab of steel or something. She must have been the star. A close up of her face made it possible for me to know that one, she was a horrible actress, and two, she was not in control of anything.
I kept watching. There was a man in every possible hole of the poor woman’s body.
One man was in her mouth with his penis. She seemed to give him most of her attention. Another man was in her rectum, humping a hundred miles an hour. There was a third man in the woman’s vagina; he was ripping and gyrating, panting and sweating.
The men were dressed in black leather and their faces were covered with ugly mask which made them look sadistic and demonic. I think the plot— if I could call it that— was that women, who were virtuous in their mortal lives, were sent to this special Hell, as punishment and for rehabilitation.
What tha—!
The whole time I watched the movie, I could feel William’s energy and breath consuming the room. But it was hard to tell whether he realized that I was still there with him. He was getting excited like I had never seen him get excited. I felt pain and sorrow that my husband could even watch a film so tortuous to women, but I refused to criticize him because my head was so full of confusion. I couldn’t devise a proper response to make him try to understand why something seemed abnormal about what he was doing. He was so deep in his own world of sick delight.
When I got up to leave the room, WILLIAM GRABBED MY ARM.
I jumped because I was startled.
He was aware of my presence after all. I knew he was horney and wanted to have sex; he had that kind of look in his eye. And in that moment, it was hard to distinguish his lust from that of the male actors in the video.
He put my hand on his p***s. I cringed.
My hand seemed to pull itself back.
Repulsion. That had been my internal feeling since the first time William cheated on me with another woman. I would cringe when I thought he wanted to have sex with me. It didn’t help that almost every time I slept with “my own husband”, I contracted some funky kind of sexually transmitted disease. It just got to the point where he repulsed me so, and I couldn’t do anything to take that feeling back.
I looked down at William as he sat on the bed. He had an erection. His eyes pleaded, but for what? He looked desperate too, almost scared in a strange sort of way.
“C’mon Honeyboo… You aren’t going to leave me like this are you?”
“Like what, William?”
He pulled my hand again. “Like this girl…damn!” He pointed to his p***s again.
Darkness fell all over my soul.
I walked out of the room feeling ill and saddened. I actually thought that if William wanted to get his hard off, he was going to have to do it with someone else. Not me. But I had no idea at that time that he was seeing close to five prostitutes a week. I learned this during his trial. I guess the porno movies must have been a little something to tide him over between the times when he couldn’t live out his sick fantasies with a real woman.
My God! The man had to be a beast! How could I not know?
Something else I didn’t know that I learned during his trial—William continued to sell drugs to subsidize his clandestine habit of having sex with prostitutes. He had lied to me. I was so gullible and worse; I was in denial. It was my straight jacket.
The pornography, the strange habit of secluding himself in a dark room, the pumping irons like it was an obsession, and the going out at night with a gun in his pocket was just dress rehearsal. I could not have known that William was cultivating his paraphilia, or his desire to inflict pain, torture and rape upon a female victim for his own sexual satisfaction.
21
Revelatory Note
Sunday, January 30, 2011
I HAVE TRIED TO BE DONE WITH THIS WRITING FOR THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF—maybe longer. And before today, it seemed unfathomable that I would ever finish. I just wanted to forget about my former spouse and everything connected to him. But I kept on believing that this book was going to be more than a project that I could abandon when the going got rough. And I hoped that it would help me explain the parts of my life that overshadowed my peace and that held me captive in a darkness rivaling, in my imagination, some of the blackest holes in the universe.
Too many times I wondered whether I would ever feel comfortable handing a manuscript off to anyone other than my beloved daughter, this pseudo-½ orphaned child who shares with me in the immense pain and agony of being connected, though tenuously at present, to a man who has harmed the world a bit well. But, I think I’m okay now. I know I have to be done (once and for all) with being afraid of anything. This world of ours is a much scarier place, on some levels, than it was when my parents were young. Today, we live in a world where even the “safest place” can hold scary encounters and consequences for women. That’s real, and it is something I think I can talk about with a degree of competency. However, I do not claim to be an expert. But— who better can talk about living with the Devil, sleeping in his bed, cooking his food, and watching his evil grow from a retrospective lens that is totally unclouded, at this new point, by the issue of denial, as once was profoundly so? Yes, I was blind, but, hallelujah, now I see.
WHY, WHEN, WHERE AND HOW DID WILLIAM BECOME AN ALLY OF THE DEVIL? He even said to me, as he waited to serve his initial plea-bargained sentence for two rapes, that it was the Devil who had a hold of him when he was committing crimes against women. He knew that I knew the crime was rape for which he had been charged. We did not have to say the word aloud. And when he uttered that confession, indicting the Devil as his co-conspirator, I had no idea that there were other crimes, including murders which had yet to be discovered. Only William knew, but he did not give up a hint.
I wanted desperately to know the moment that William realized he could fully carry out the horrible deed of KILLING. What was the catalyst that sent him over the edge? Why did he choose Easter Sunday? Where was his Christian upbringing? For, if he could tell one of his victims— after he was through torturing her— that he was going to kill her, as though he was giving her the time of day, then he could not have remembered God, his faith or his baptism. And, if he even thought about me and his daughter, why, then, wasn’t that enough to stop him?
I beli
eve that there are good and bad forces dwelling inside of every human being, and that these forces are somehow anchored in one way or another to the concrete realities of our lives, that include but are not limited to the people we love and those who love us. When William’s grandmother died, his world was turned upside down, but nobody knew; he was so quiet about his suffering.
What I also believe is that William’s grandmother was the person anchored to the good in William. She had an intrepid spirit and the undeniable ability to make good on her word; this was so important to William. She was, I believe, the person who he would go to when he felt the presence of the demons from his abusive childhood. His grandmother also had to be the one he went to when he sought comfort from the temptations of an impoverished neighborhood, which was growing more violent by the day. All the while pimps and prostitutes owned a whole territory just a few blocks away from where William and I lived. And whether people wanted to accept it or not, there was a seething allure coming from the notorious 7th Street. And William was but one of the young, black men I grew up with that got caught up in the fungal malaise of West Oakland. This was the other demon pursuing him.
I remember William being so very happy to tell me that he had a bedroom at his grandmother’s home while he was in the military. I think it represented a sanctuary for him. So for a while, he had the little comfort that so many other young men in the neighborhood did not have. And so, the streets took them one way or the other. I remember Frankie Howard, his brother Ronnie, Jeffrey Davis, and Ronnie Campbell. They all fell to the violence of the streets. And when William’s grandmother was gone, the streets came back for him, but it would send him out to be the “life taker”.
22
War of the Choyce’s, november, 1985
AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT, I TOOK WILLIAM AT HIS WORD. I believed that he would get off the dangerous path he was on. He promised me that much after I bailed him out of jail for having a concealed weapon in our car. And yet, only a short time had passed before he began going out at night again. Yes, he was toting the .38, his constant companion when he was away from home. On top of that, one of my previous suspicions was confirmed; I uncovered actual evidence that my husband was dealing drugs. I saw drug paraphernalia and some of the same drugs I had seen in his coat pocket a month earlier. I confronted him. He lied again, claiming that what I had seen was a dietary substitute. Oh, my mistake! I fell back and I remembered some words my mother imparted to me. She said …nothing done in the dark that won’t come into the light. I waited and trusted my instincts— those that William kept squashing with his lies.
Irrefutable proof of my husband’s criminal dabbling came when I wasn’t even focused on busting his ass— I got everything I needed. I’ll never forget that day; it was another one of the darkest days of my life.
Things jumped off when I came home before William expected me. I heard voices on the other side of the door, but I still used my key to unlock it. I had never done that before. Instincts at work, I guess. Anyway, Crystal walked inside first; then she abruptly stepped backwards. She landed on my shoes; I had on sandals. Ouch! She was trying to back out of the house and …it got crazy after that.
When I walked through our front door and into the living room, damn, I caught William red handed. Speculation became confirmation. He was selling drugs to a member of MY FAMILY. My eyes spun around like marbles. I began to boil beneath my skin. Screaming was not an option because I didn’t want to startle Crystal any more than I had to.
“WHAT’S GOING ON, WILLIAM?” I looked straight at him. Deep breath…
He didn’t look up at me. I knew he didn’t want me to challenge him in front of my brother.
“Ain’t nothing going on.” He was calm.
I could see the veins popping in William’s neck. It was a sign that he was getting quietly angry. He was going to try and play it cool so I wouldn’t front him off like I wanted to. My brother left. I did not address him as he walked out the door. I hoped he knew how disappointed I was.
Of course, keeping true to his pathology, the consummate liar, William tried to deny everything, even though our daughter and I witnessed the transaction, or the exchange of money for drugs. WE SAW WHAT WE SAW. There was a hand to hand exchange of white powder in a tiny plastic bag. It was as clear and definitive as anything I had ever seen.
My heart was broken but not my determination to get away from William, from our home, and from East Oakland. I packed an overnight bag for me and Crystal. Where are we going? I didn’t know at first. I must have processed a million thoughts until I realized where I might find sanctuary for me and my child. We walked out the door. The “hurly burly” was done.
I drove quietly through the Alameda tube; it was, after all, away from Oakland. Crystal and I stayed the whole weekend at a hotel near the beach. We had anonymity. It was peaceful for us. We were discreet when we went out to eat because I was paranoid enough to think that William might look for us where we least expected him to.
Strange, but I hadn’t realized how disruptive our lives were at home until we weren’t around William. He was a busy body. After he would come home from work, his pager would start going off, and it wasn’t long before he was in and out of the house as though it were a revolving door. And when it got dark outside, he would put on his overcoat and disappear into the night When he came back home after being gone for hours, he would go into the guest bedroom to do whatever it was he was doing. He had requested that Crystal and I not go into “his” room. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. Why not? IDK!
When I put 2 & 2 together, I got 4. He was dealing drugs; there was never going be another ounce of doubt about it.
After our weekend away from William, things were really quiet in our home. William was trying to be cunning; he wanted me to believe he was no longer dealing drugs. I was through being the resident dumb-ass. When it became evident that William was going to continue his life of crime, I put our home on the market. It sold in nine days. William had no choice but to accept the loss of his family. I went back to my mother’s home, and William allegedly went to his parents.
I wasn’t going to believe anything he said… Ever?
23
Mr. “Baby, Baby Please”
Then, keeping true to his ever- changing personality—
MY ESTRANGED HUSBAND CAME TO MY MOTHER’S HOUSE ONE NIGHT. We had been separated nearly two months. He begged, ‘I WANT MY FAMILY BACK.’ I didn’t know what to make of his plea because up to that point, we hadn’t seen too much of William. He was supposedly staying with his parents, but every time I called, he was not there.
Come back to what?
We sold the house.
I’m trying to move on.
What, if anything, has changed?
I had to ask myself these questions because William’s plea wasn’t making any sense.
Point #1: There was no house to come back to.
Point #2: He had turned into a drug dealer and a criminal, and had basically forced me to make a safe decision for me and my daughter.
Point #3: Had he forgotten the damage he did?
Point #4: How could he forget the cheating, giving me Gonorrhea, verbally lashing out at Crystal, the mood swings, the going out all times of the night with a gun, the…?
As it were, our separation was cementing in my mind. We weren’t meant to be together.
For many nights after we sold our home, I stayed up trying to convince myself to forget the comfort of the fireplace I so enjoyed in the winters, or the kitchen where I really learned the art of cooking— to nourish the body and soul. It was a difficult thing to miss a place that I had come to love. It was also a difficult thing to try and forget that I had married someone I did not know.
So, after William made his case for me and Crystal to come back to him, it was my turn to let him know how I felt.
Where should I start?
I let him know how horrible it was for me to find out that he was doing something wh
ich would negatively impact generations of people. I told him that selling drugs in our community was the same as poisoning them. I let him know that he was a thief; when he sold drugs to the women in West Oakland, he was taking food out of the mouths of their babies. I was screaming inside…all the way to my soul.
It seemed possible that I could go all night indicting William for the harm he had caused me and Crystal as well as other innocents. I turned to my husband to see his expression. There was no remorse, no sign that he understood the magnitude of my angst and resignation. HE WAS SMILING.
I put my hand on my hip and tilted my head to take a closer look at my husband’s face. I did. It confused me. Why is his ass smiling?
“YOU JUST TRIP OFF OF EVERY –LITTLE- THING.” William’s voice was soft, strange.
Me…trippin’? I became indignant. “GUNS AND DRUGS AND YOUR MOOD CHANGES ARE NOT LITTLE THINGS!”
“C’mon, baby,” William kept going, “I need you and Crystal.” His voice softened even more.
Damndamndamndamn….. What should I to do with this fool?
…
But William’s startling appearance at my mother’s door, and his request to get his family back, had at least afforded me an opportunity to get something off my chest that was bothering me. Get back together? That wasn’t on my agenda.
I waited a few seconds for William to wipe the smile off his face. He was scaring me. He sat down on the sofa and asked for a glass of water. I wanted to tell him to get it himself, but I didn’t want to be mean. When I came back with the water, I also came back to what appeared to be a different man. William was no longer smiling. I studied my husband very carefully. Yes, something was different.
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