“Why?” I asked, exhaling at the same time. “You know how much that ring is worth?” I shook my head. “But thanks for not saying anything about that.”
“What kind of brother would I be if I blew up your spot like that?”
“Clearly, Samantha doesn’t agree with you.”
“Yeah, that kind of slipped out. But at least she didn’t say anything about the ring.”
“Thank God.” I paused, wishing I could end the conversation here, but the yawn that was rising up inside of me made me say, “Listen, I want to ask you something.”
“Whatever, bruh, I got you.”
“Remember the therapist you mentioned when we were at Sweat Box?” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “If you still have her number…”
Holding my breath, I waited for his judgment. But right away, he said, “You know what? I did keep her information. Hold on.”
I explained, “I’m still talking to Chastity’s father, and KJ has really been good, but I want to make sure I handle this. Not that there’s anything wrong,” I rambled, “but I want to be the best I can be for my wife.”
I didn’t need to be on a video call to know Bryce was smiling; I felt his grin. Without any questions, he said, “Her name is Dr. Daniella Escobar. She comes highly recommended. I’ll text it to you.”
“I appreciate you.”
“It’s what we do. Let’s get together soon, bruh… I mean, married man.”
After a laugh, I clicked off the phone, then swiped over to my text messages. The doctor’s name and number were there. I stared at the text for a moment, thinking about the sermon, thinking about my past, thinking I’d do anything to make sure Chastity and I would always be solid.
With a nod, I turned toward the elevators.
* * *
ALL MORNING I’D been wavering. Did I really need to see this doctor? But I finally called after I had to hide too many yawns in too many meetings. I was on the phone for less than ten seconds before I received the first sign that I’d done the right thing: Dr. Escobar answered her phone. When I told her I was surprised to be speaking with her directly, she explained her assistant was at lunch.
Then the second sign: After introducing myself, I asked for her first available appointment.
“Actually, I just hung up from a cancellation. Are you available this evening for my last appointment at five thirty?”
I was still doubtful, but then, these were signs. At least I could go and ask questions. So I agreed to be at her Turtle Bay–area office at five thirty, and after eight hours that felt like eighteen, I left my office two hours earlier than normal. Hopping out of the cab on First Avenue, I entered a gray brick building that blended with the others on the block. With each step, I asked, What am I doing here? and the question remained even as I was buzzed inside Suite 104.
The office was bland and basic, much like the building, with its industrial steel-colored carpet, eggshell-colored walls. Metal had been the designer’s decorating choice, with six metal folding chairs lined against one wall and a gray desk along the other. The bright red of the braids of a twentysomething young woman was the only color in the room.
“You must be Mr. King.” She greeted me with a smile that matched her singsong voice. “I’m Louise.”
Louise handed me a clipboard, then pointed me toward a chair. It just took a few moments to fill out the form, since I included only my name, made up an address, and left off my phone number.
When I handed Louise the half-filled-out form, she frowned. Before she asked, I said, “I’m paying out of pocket.” There was no need for me to share my insurance information; there’d never be a paper trail between me and this office, especially since one day I hoped to be in politics.
The office door opened, and Dr. Escobar stepped out. “Mr. King.” She held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” She was polite, curt, all business.
I shook her hand, then followed the dark-haired beauty into her office. I’d seen her picture from the research I’d done, but she was more striking in person. I wasn’t sure if it was her jet-black waist-length hair, which swung with her stride, or her blue eyes, which were shocking against her olive skin. It was because of her résumé that I guessed she was around my age; in person, I would have thought she was ten years younger.
Her office had been designed with a lot more care than the reception area. The stark white furniture (desk, chairs, bookshelves) and dozens of plants gave the space an oasis aura, and I got it, because right away, I relaxed.
Dr. Escobar didn’t have a sofa for me to stretch out, but she did direct me to one of the cushy chairs, and I sank into the softness. Was this how psychologists manipulated clients into revealing their darkest secrets? Readjusting, I shifted to the edge of the chair.
“So,” she began and leaned back in her chair as if we were about to just chat, “I can tell you a little about me if you’d like.”
I shook my head. “I did my research and was impressed.” I paused long enough for her to thank me, and then I added, “I’m here because I’d like to ask a few questions.”
“That’s interesting.” She smiled, letting me know she wasn’t offended. “Usually, I’m the one asking questions.”
“Well, I just got married, and I want to be the best husband I can be.”
“Congratulations. It isn’t often that a man walks in and says that, but this is something I believe. We’re all trained professionally to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, but we don’t receive training for the most important roles in our lives: being a spouse and a parent. So I commend you. Before we start, though, are you aware I do couples’ counseling?”
I held up my hands, wanting to stop that thought. “This is all about me.”
“All right. What about you?”
Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I decided to start with the one who’d been bugging me for the longest. “A good friend of mine thinks I have some anger issues.”
She didn’t even blink when she asked, “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I’m any different from other black men. We live in America. We’re angry.”
“Is your friend a black man? Living in America?”
I shifted, looked away. “Yeah.”
“And even with that, he thinks you have anger issues.” Her tone, sounding as if she was surprised, was part of her point.
But her tactic didn’t deter me. I said, “He’s known me for a long time. Since I came to New York from Mississippi.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About sixteen years. Came here when I was eighteen.”
“Did you come here for school?”
That made me chuckle. “No, I came here to get away, and I was actually homeless for a while.” I paused, waiting for her reaction. But there was none, which surprised me. Being homeless wasn’t something I often shared because of the reactions. People’s opinions always changed (not in a positive way) with that revelation. Keeping on, I said, “I came here knowing no one, and when I got off the bus, I didn’t even know where I was. But I was here with a duffel bag filled with clothes, almost a thousand dollars, and enough street smarts to get a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant where I was able to wash up and change clothes. When the restaurant closed at two in the morning, I hung out on the streets, like a whole bunch of other people.”
Even with all of that, she had no reaction. Just another question. “What made you want to get away from Mississippi?”
A plethora of Gran’s attacks rushed me, and I shook my head to silence her voice. “Sleeping on park benches was a step up from where I’d been. I met Bryce a few weeks after I got here; his father was one of the restaurant’s owners, and Bryce hung out there after school. We became friends, his dad found out I was homeless, and after a few months of wandering the streets at night…” I shrugged. “Good things started happening.”
“Bryce is the one who said you had anger issues?”
“Yeah, and it doesn’t make sense, ’cause he knows what I’ve been through.”
“When he says you have anger issues, what is he speaking about specifically?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” After a pause, I added, “Sometimes, I raise my voice.”
For the first time, a reaction: her eyebrow inched up slightly as if she was telling me that was bull. “Anything else?” she asked, giving me another chance for a better answer.
“There may have been times when my anger escalated from there.”
“Turned violent?”
Her tone was nonchalant, but my reaction wasn’t. “No!” I shook my head. “I’m not a violent man.” Her blank expression made me add, “I mean, there have been times when maybe I’ve gotten a little, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
I inhaled. “I’ve never been violent with a woman.”
“Interesting you said ‘a woman.’ ”
“I’ve never been violent with anyone. I mean, there’ve been people around when I’ve lost control.”
Her head bobbed, almost as if she were listening to music. “You’ve used the words escalated, lost control… would you say you’ve gone beyond the boundaries of anger?”
“I don’t know.” This time, her expression was filled with surprise. As if she couldn’t believe I would lie right to her face. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to know what constitutes anger issues, what are the boundaries, and if, by some chance, I have a few issues, how would I fix that?”
She rolled her chair closer to her desk and leaned forward as if she was ready to get to work. “I wish it worked like that. I wish I could define anger for you, then we could determine if you had issues, and finally, I could give you a prescription and send you home. But it’s much more complicated.
“You see, anger is one of the core birth emotions.” She sounded as if she was about to give me a lecture. “We’re all going to get angry; in fact, that’s one of the first emotions we display as newborns. However, we learn how to handle that. Most of us learn to get angry and then let it go. Others have learned what is called chronic anger. That’s anger that lingers, and, to use one of your words, it’s anger that escalates.”
Chronic anger—was that me?
“So starting with the basics, what did you learn about anger as a child?”
I chuckled. “I didn’t have to learn a thing, because I lived it,” I said. “My grandmother was in a perpetual state of anger when it came to me.”
When she asked me to elaborate, I told her (almost) everything about life with Gran and how she’d never spoken a kind word to me.
“Not once,” I reiterated to Dr. Escobar. “Every word she ever said was filled with something just short of hate. She told me I was unworthy, I’d never amount to anything, no one loved me.”
“What did you do with your feelings when your grandmother spoke to you that way?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything because I was a kid and she was an adult in search of a reason to…” I stopped, but I could see in Dr. Escobar’s eyes she knew I’d feared a beating.
“So you held it inside,” she said.
I shrugged. “What else could I do? I even stopped crying when she beat me. Which only made her beat me harder, but holding my tears was my victory. I became strong because I held it in.”
“But the mind isn’t designed to hold anything like that inside. We aren’t meant to be beaten, especially not as children. So whatever you held within had no choice but to one day come out. And,” she continued, “I’d venture to say when all of that anger was finally released, it was an explosion.”
She spoke as if she’d been there the night Gran told me Mama had died. The night my anger first found its way through a wall.
She continued through my silence, “And it exploded over and over, year after year, because it’d been repressed for so long.”
My fingers flexed at her description.
“That’s what you’ve learned,” she said. “To never show your anger. To hold it until it bursts out as rage.”
“Or wrath,” I added.
She raised her eyebrows. “Yes.”
Okay, there was my professional diagnosis. “So what can I do about it, Doctor? I mean, maybe it’s true what you’re saying…”
“Maybe?”
“I just want to know if I do have any… anger issues, how can I fix them?”
“There are no quick fixes. If this has been brewing inside of you for as long as you described, it’s going to take time to work it through.”
That was fine for someone who had time; I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to have another outburst. Couldn’t lose control again in front of Chastity.
“There are several things we’re going to go over in the next few weeks,” Dr. Escobar said, “and at some point, it would be good to include your wife so she can help with your triggers and learn actions to help you gain control.”
I nodded, though there wasn’t a single chance of me bringing Chastity anywhere near this place… or my issues.
“Between today and our next appointment, it would be great if you kept a journal so we can come to understand your triggers. Most of us have the same things that set us off, but I want you to focus particularly on which situations escalate the anger within you.”
“Sure, I can do that,” I said, though I didn’t have any intention of following through, since I wouldn’t be seeing her again.
She added, “Journaling is also a good way to deescalate a situation. Rather than exploding at someone, you can write down what you’re feeling. Everything that you want to say to them.” She chuckled when she added, “Even the bad words.” The expression on my face made her hold up her hand. “But you’re never going to give anyone what you’ve written. The paper is just the place to release the rage without harm being done.”
If I had that kind of time in my life, that might be a good thing. But I couldn’t stop my workday, couldn’t tell a business associate to hold on while I wrote a letter.
She added, “And exercising is another good tool. It doesn’t have to be anything planned or strenuous. The point is to remove yourself from a situation, even if you have to do it abruptly. Go for a walk or run…”
That worked, I knew for sure.
“Those are good actions that will help between sessions. And then, as we work together, you’ll learn more internal things to do. Do you have any more questions?”
“No”—I shook my head—“you’ve really helped.”
“Great. Well, speak with Louise to set up your next appointment.” She pushed back her chair, though she didn’t stand. “I’d like to see you once a week in the beginning, and then after a few months, we’ll ease back.”
I nodded, then followed as she stood. I shook her hand, told her I’d see her soon. But by the time I was outside hailing a cab, I’d all but forgotten the doctor’s name. She’d given me enough to work with—I’d exercise my anger away. I’d work it out, literally. In fact, I decided to head over to Sweat Box right now.
38 Chastity
I wanted to savor this moment, so I closed my eyes, then after a couple of seconds, pushed the key into the lock, and stepped over the threshold. Standing at the door, I took in the bare space. How long had I lived here? Seventeen, eighteen weeks? So much had changed since the end of July… and the remodeling of my life made me smile.
Walking through the condo, I relished this space, though I hadn’t spent much time here since I’d met Xavier so soon after returning home. Still, giving up this apartment was like turning in the keys to who I’d been. My life as a single woman had come to an end.
I smiled all the way through… until I entered the master bedroom. Standing in the doorjamb, I stared at the reason for this visit. For the last six weeks, I’d been living out of a suitcase, with trips here every other day to grab another suit or pair of shoes. Our schedules were too busy for us to make that final move, but with Thanksgiving next week, I had to just s
top… and do this. Packing up and moving most of my things to storage was how Xavier and I had spent the free hours of last week, though today, I was here alone, handling this.
Stepping all the way inside, I glanced at the mark of Xavier’s aggression. Today was the first appointment I could schedule to have the spot repaired.
I did what I always did when I faced this wall: I closed my eyes, remembering how he’d stormed toward me, eyes bulging, red with rage. Then the sound of his fist and how I’d been so afraid.
But I needed to finally toss that aside, because since then, there had been nothing but beautiful days. We’d made time for each other—a quick lunch here, a dinner rendezvous there. And then inside our bedroom… Married, guiltless sex was the best. I needed to keep my thoughts in the present; I needed to forget those three times.
Three times.
I was grateful when I heard the doorbell. The painter would keep me occupied and away from those thoughts until I met Melanie uptown for lunch. But when I swung the front door open, my best friend bounced into the apartment.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Melanie after she hugged me. To my ears, I sounded like a robot. “I thought we were going to meet at—”
“Yeah,” she interrupted, “but it didn’t make sense that you were here to inspect the place and I wasn’t. I mean, I know it’s immaculate, but I wanted to see if we needed to paint or anything.” She sauntered past me into the living room.
“Uh… you didn’t have to come,” I said, wondering how to keep her from the bedroom.
She waved her hand. “Now I won’t have to do it during the week. So”—she glanced around the living room/dining room/kitchen area—“anything I need to repair?”
She spoke so fast, and moved even faster, that she was in the bedroom before I could keep her out. I was behind her when she stopped and stared at the fist-size indentation in the wall. “What happened here?”
“I’m getting that fixed; a painter is on his way.”
She spun around, facing me. “Not one of those words answered my question.”
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