I tried as best I could to forget that I didn’t like the woman on the other end of the telephone. It took a while, but Lisa’s words settled in my head and finally made sense. My grip on the receiver was strong enough to crush it even if it was made of cement. I was seeing colors in front of my eyes. I closed them as fast as I could so that they would not be a distraction.
“WHERE IS CRYSTAL?” I asked from behind my clenched teeth. I was thinking—where in the f**k is my daughter, did her father hit her and what was your lazy ass doing when this was happening?
“I don’t—.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW?”
I would not let Lisa finish her sentence because there was no possible answer that would suffice.
“He… I mean William just got up this morning and he and Crystal got into it.”
“GOT INTO IT?!” I forced a scream back down into my soul. “What do you mean they-got-into-it?”
“He must have asked her where her tennis shoes were and when she…”
“…TENNIS SHOES?”
“…said she left them in her locker at school; he threw her up against the wall.” Lisa ran out of breath.
I could see William with a grip on my daughter much like the one he dragged me with shortly before we separated. Lisa had relayed the details to me as if she couldn’t believe them herself. She told me how William was screaming at Crystal the top of his lungs; his screaming woke “her” baby. When she put those two sentences together, as if they were of equal importance, I wished that I was close enough to slap her silly ass.
“DID YOU TRY TO HELP MY CHILD?” I could not hold the question back because if she answered in the negative, she would be my enemy forever.
“Alice, I kept telling him to stop, but—”
“WHERE IS WILLIAM NOW?” I SNAPPED.
“I think he is out looking for Crystal.”
She is my enemy forever.
I froze in the moment like I have never frozen before in the face of fear and uncertainty. As it were, I had just gotten off the plane and it was after 10:00pm Eastern time. As fast as I could, I called the airlines to inquire of the earliest time I could get on a plane back to California. It would be the next morning and I would have to transfer planes three times.
It was the longest ride I had ever taken in my whole life. God knows that’s the truth.
As soon as the plane touched down in Oakland, I caught a taxi to William’s home. He had no choice but to take the day off from work and try to figure of what he was going to do about our missing child. He had called the police the night before, but only after it was evident that Crystal was not coming back to his house. I had William drive me home to Concord in case Crystal was there. She wasn’t.
And no— the coward hadn’t told the police that he had attacked his child.
It was three in the afternoon when I made it to Crystal’s high school. I needed to see if she was there. SHE WAS THERE. But the school had called the police to meet with me before I could see my child. What?
“A child abuse case has been opened,” the principal announced.
My whole head went numb. I had driven myself from Concord back to San Leandro in record time. I was too tired to speak. Thank God, I thought. Her father will be punished.
“Ma’am,” the officer looked directly at me as though trying to get a jump on determining whether I, too, was a child abuser.
I tilted my head to look perplexingly at the officer in front of me. “Yes.”
“I just need to ask you a few questions before you can take your daughter home.” The female officer spoke softly. “Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
Whatever the questions were, I don’t remember them. But, I must have answered to the officer’s satisfaction because I was reunited with my bruised and beat up daughter. When we saw each other, we both began to cry. I took her home and held her close to me and told her that I would never allow her father to get close to her again.
Then, I remembered William’s words when he was trying so hard to justify what had happened. ‘I barely touched her.’ And then he went on to explain— ‘My mother beat the hell out of me when I was disobedient,’ he said turning to show me all of his face, ‘and I turned out okay!’
Mutharf**ker!
William’s words stuck in my head then because I never believed it was okay to strike a child with the force of one’s anger. I squashed his beliefs as being totally invalid so many times. And the words he said stick out even more prominently now because William had convinced himself that he was “okay” even though he knew he had already raped and murdered a woman. He could not have forgotten that fact just because his crimes had not been discovered by the police.
I later learned that one of Crystal’s friend’s parents had taken my child in. She explained to them that her father had beat her and that I was out of town. They wanted to call the police, but she begged them not to. And she was afraid to page me, fearing that I would worry. I had to scold her for that later.
How quickly children forgive. Crystal refused to cooperate with the San Leandro Police. My mother and I tried to convince her to go forward. She was angry at her father, but she did not want him to go to jail.
William did have to attend court mandated counseling.
The second reason I can call William a coward is because he never put up his fists up to fight a boy or a man— that I know of. Though he had registered some serious complaints with me about the men he knew— whether they were friends or acquaintances— he never engaged any of them in an argument or a fight. I’m not implying that a man tussling with another man is a sure sign of manhood, but if he had as much anger as I believe he did inside of him, it would stand to reason that it would come out indiscriminately.
Further, I can call my former spouse a coward because he used drugs and money to lure his rape and murder victims. He would pounce on them only after he made sure they couldn’t protect themselves or until they thought he was somebody that he wasn’t. He perfected the advantage of surprise. He stalked, watched, and waited for the innocent and the weak to come his way, the way of the coward. He chose those he thought no one would look for because he was too scared that someone would come looking for him.
36
One More Chance for Daddy
LATE FALL, 1993— CRYSTAL WANTED TO GIVE HER FATHER ANOTHER CHANCE. My instincts and my heart said—don’t! She was seventeen. I listened to her and then begged her to stay with me in Concord. She was still trying to love her father in spite of all that he had put her through. She also wanted be near her new little brother again. She pushed so hard to assert her will about the matter. I prayed that everything was going to be okay.
Not!!!
The day that I dreaded came. Yet another day came that I dreaded.
William looked like he could kill me… a couple of times.
It had been a long day at work at AT&T in Pleasanton, California and on my way home to Concord when I received a page from Crystal; the code was “911”. It was something that we agreed she would use in the case of an emergency. We decided on this way to communicate years earlier when pagers became the fastest way of communicating without a cell phone. Anyway, instant fear eclipsed my awareness of the traffic on Highway 580 west. I nearly ran into the back of another car. So, I tried not to panic any further. I needed to get over to Highway 880 in direct route to her father’s house. It’s one of the most dangerous roads in the Bay Area. I had to be careful.
The whole time I was driving, I was imagining that William had viciously attacked Crystal again like he had earlier in the year.
I was an idiot to listen to my daughter’s pleas to be with her father. How could I let that happen?
I was shaking like a twig in a snow storm when I pulled up in front of William’s home on Eastlawn Street in East Oakland. When I began walking up to his door, Crystal ran out to meet me. We embraced without words for at least a minute.
“WHAT’S WRONG, BABY?”
I pushed my daughter back from me to make sure she didn’t have any bruises on her face. She didn’t, but she had dried tears.
Crystal pushed me toward my car. “Can we talk in the car, Mommy?”
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
“Yeah, Mommy.” She took a deep breath. “I just wanted to tell you what Daddy said to me.”
I could feel my face and my heart crumpling up at the same time and then a blaze of warmth flushed my whole body. I turned to my daughter, trying to hide the alarms that had been set off. Crystal’s gentle face was right in front of mine. When I pushed her chin up, I felt her trembling.
“WHAT— DID— YOUR DADDY SAY TO YOU?”
Fear swelled up in my daughter’s eyes. She must have seen the anger I couldn’t hide. “Mommy,” her voice cracked, “promise me you won’t get mad.”
“I promise.” I was a liar for the moment.
“No, mommy. Promise for real!” Tears began to come again.
It took me a minute to think about what my daughter was really asking me to do. I wasn’t sure that I could take in whatever she was going to tell me without taking her home to Concord. I knew she wanted desperately to finish school at St. Elizabeth. “I PROMISE.”
Crystal took a deep breath. “When I came home after school, daddy told me he was (Crystal began speaking faster and faster) goingtoputhisfootinmyass because Lisa told him that I didn’t speak when I walked in the door.” She was panting like a puppy.
Has he lost his motherf**kin’ mind? The words stayed in my head.
After I took the words that had entered my ears into my heart, I felt so hurt and devastated that I hadn’t fought harder to keep Crystal away from her father. But she was seventeen and I made myself trust that it was time to give her some decision-making power. After I had heard everything Crystal had to say, I told her to stay in the car.
“WHY, MOMMY?”
“I need to talk to your dad.” It was hard, but I had to keep my calm. “Is that okay?”
“Okay,” she answered right away. And then— “What are you going to say to him?” There was absolute fear in her eyes; they got wider.
I looked confidently at my child and took another deep breath, hoping it would cleanse me of the hatred that was brewing for her dad.
Hummm… “I’m going to tell him that what he did was wrong and THAT IT BETTER- NOT- HAPPEN AGAIN.”
Crystal nodded her head in reluctant approval, but I could still tell she was concerned about how things might go between me and her dad.
William came to the door on my first knock.
“YEAH?” he answered. His face was tight and angry-looking and his nose was twitching like it usually did when he was annoyed or something.
I stood still and just watched his mouth for a cue.
It seemed like it took forever for William to respond to me and when he did, all he said was: “FOR WHAT?!”
So I can kick the shit out of you… you bitch-ass coward.
“I just want you, me and Crystal to have an understanding.” I looked straight at that man, who in my mind, would have been a fool to try and act crazy with me. He didn’t know what I was thinking, but I knew that he knew that I wasn’t the same woman he had dragged all over the house that we once shared. This was before our separation and divorce. And I think he knew I was the woman who hadn’t forgiven him for hitting my daughter while I was out of town. He could probably see that I was the woman who wanted his ass behind bars because that’s where he belonged. Crystal had given him a pardon that he did not deserve.
For a good, long second, I let the weight of my stare press down on William. Then—
“COULD YOU PLEASE COME TO THE CAR FOR A MOMENT?” I spoke gently but deliberately; I denied my true feelings the right to have a way out.
“WHAT KIND OF UNDERSTANDING?” He growled.
I refused to answer because I knew William was trying to take control. I wasn’t going to let him.
William slowly closed the door behind him and we walked to my car. I moved fast so that I could beat him there. I had to give Crystal the comfort I thought she needed for the confrontation and intimidation that was about to come from her dad. She had moved to the back seat. Her dad sat down in the passenger seat and stared straight ahead, even though I was sitting less than a foot away from.
Oh my God, that man looked like he was on the verge of busting every blood vessel in his head. If looks could kill…
I stared straight at William, more intensely. I wanted him to feel my eyes on him. I swallowed hard. “YOU TOLD CRYSTAL THAT YOU WERE GOING TO PUT YOUR FOOT IN HER ASS.” There was such pain in my heart when I said those words.
William looked back at Crystal like he could strangle her. “DID I SAY THAT TO YOU, CRYSTAL?!” He was almost shouting. His face began morphing. It became vicious.
My baby looked at me and then she looked straight at her father. “YES- YOU -DID, DADDY!” She did not stutter. She just told the uninhibited truth with a new and big girl attitude.
The deep breath I had taken was out of my lungs. I turned to William again to say the words that came from my heart and from the courage that was overlaid with anger, which had bubbled up in my whole body and trimmed the edges of my soul.
“I’m only going to say it once, WILLIAM—I LOVE MY CHILD.”
The morphed man looked straight at me. “IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE A THREAT?”
If this fool is asking me whether I will fight him, then the answer must be, yes!
“I DON’T CARE HOW YOU TAKE IT!” I turned to look back at Crystal. “DO YOU WANT TO GO HOME CRYSTAL?”
My big girl looked out the window with a blank stare and then back at me. “No, Mommy, I just want to finish school in Oakland.” She rushed the words out.
“YOU OKAY WITH THAT, WILLIAM?” I turned to him with my anger underneath my breath. I was already making plans in my head to pack up my daughter’s things and bring her back home with me.
William nodded. I’m sure he was thinking about the amount of child support he would have to give me if I took Crystal with me. He could have kept it as far as I was concerned. He could have shoved it up his ass. I just wanted my child to get away from him. But, she wanted to stay.
I looked over at William. I was thinking that …he looked like he could squeeze my neck until my head exploded. And after my brains and blood went everywhere, he would turn to get my daughter who had just ratted him out for the first time in her life because she knew that I knew that he had tormented her in secret and that those days were forever over. She was, in an instant, an intrepid warrior up against the “big, bad daddy.” COWARD.
He should have felt so little.
I kissed my child. I left reluctantly and only physically.
No sooner than I had reached 880 west, my pager went off again.
Panic became the razor blade that gashed at every piece of my skin and flesh.
It was Crystal, but there was no 911.
Maybe she didn’t have time to put the code in.
Maybe her father beat her.
I didn’t know what to think except that I began to wonder about what I could use to fight beat the shit out of William if I had to.
He seemed so angry when I left. Why did I leave?
I got off the freeway and then got back on going in the opposite direction, towards William’s house.
It came to me that I could use the jack in my trunk. I would beat him down to the ground and his girlfriend too if she tried to jump in. He was going to feel all my rage— that was long overdue and that had been just let out of the cage.
It seemed like forever before I was back in front of William’s house. I looked up to see Crystal standing peacefully on the steps. She ran to the car. I was shaking so fiercely, I thought I would throw up my empty guts. “Thanks for coming back Mommy; I forgot my science book in the back seat.”
I looked out at the dark sky. Thank you, Jesus!
I thought I was going to have to kill me somebody.
37
“I’m not Scared of You Anymore!”
CRYSTAL WAS 18 WHEN SHE TOOK HER VERY FIRST BOYFRIEND TO MEET MY MOTHER. This was before I even knew he existed. She said that if he could pass her Nana’s Test, she would then introduce him to me. Well, Mr. Ronaldo Lige passed my mother’s test. But when I asked my mother to give me a description of the man I would soon meet, she wanted to play games. All I wanted was a heads up.
“He’s BIG.” My mother stopped there.
“Okay…what else,” I asked with my mouth wide open. I wondered why my mother gave such a non-descript answer.
“Well, he’s BIG and he’s BLACK.” She was smiling.
“C’mon, mom, stop playing games.” I was getting antsy. “Is that all you got?”
“What else do you want to know?” My mother just kept smiling.
“What I want to know is—“I was cut off.
“Just be patient. You’ll see.”
OMG!!!!
I saw. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Crystal had her boyfriend by the hand. He had come to my mother’s house to meet me. He was BIG. He was BLACK. I just stood motionless for a moment. I looked up again. No! I’m not hallucinating. My tiny, tiny daughter was standing next to a man bigger than any man I had ever seen up close.
“Mommy, this is Ronaldo.” Crystal spoke softly. She was smiling like I had never seen her smile.
I extended my hand to meet Ronaldo’s hand.
Wait!!! His hand ate my hand! Gimme back my hand!
“So nice to meet you sir.” I swallowed so hard I thought my tongue went down too.
…
I’ll make a long story, short. Crystal and Ronaldo have been together for seventeen years, and married for nine. They have given me the most beautiful granddaughter in the world. Her name is Paityn Ali. She shares her middle name with her father. When I asked Crystal why she had chosen Mr. Big, she said, he loved her…and that he could PROTECT HER FROM HER DADDY. Then Crystal got this serious look on her face.
“I know Ronaldo will also love my babies when I have them.” She looked way up at Ronaldo.
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