Eye for an Eye

by Dwayne S. Joseph

  From thirteen to eighteen, Lisette Jones lived her life according to her own rules. Things and people that had no meaning or importance were used up and then cast off to the side to be ignored completely. People were tools. Men in particular.

  She had her father to thank for that knowledge.

  Love, which hadn’t existed in her world, was never sought, and then Jamil Parker materialized out of thin air to steal her breath, and nearly her life, away.

  2

  Jamil Parker.

  Dead now, but back then, he was the man.

  The only man.

  Lisette Jones had never known what it was to be weak. Never known what it meant to not be in control. The experience of being powerless had been one she couldn’t fathom going through. She’d always had things go her way. Nothing happened unless she allowed it to happen. No one existed unless she wanted them to exist.

  Jamil Parker.

  He’d gone against the grain. He’d broken the rules.

  Freshman year. Art Institute of New York. Second semester. Lisette Jones was having coffee at Chock Express. It was the reintroduction/reinvention of the Chock full o’Nuts coffee chain, which was the original Starbucks before Starbucks came along and moved in on every corner across the free world. That was where Lisette Jones went to study when her roommate was around. She’d wanted a room to herself, but the Institute didn’t give freshman those privileges.

  Fashion and style had been her passion. Knowing the right colors, the right combinations–Lisette Jones considered herself to be extremely knowledgeable about the dos and don’ts. She’d chosen the Art Institute of New York because she wanted to leave her mark in the fashion world. She always had. The Institute was the best place to be in order to make that happen, and the best was the only thing she would accept. Like it or not, she had to take the good with the bad.

  Despite the constant activity, Chock Express became the best place for her to study. The commotion around her became background noise that she would hear, yet not hear at the same time, and that helped her focus.

  “The Art Institute, right?”

  Lisette Jones looked up from the book she’d been reading, and for the first time ever, her heart skipped a beat.

  Denzel Washington had been the Rock, or Dwayne Johnson as he prefers now, at that time. His smile could make women wet. His charm made them shiver. His confidence made them scream and lose their minds. Sean Combs, AKA Puffy, A.K.A. P. Diddy, A.K.A. Diddy, A.K.A. the Shiny Suit Man–he was style ahead of style. Before the shiny suits and the all-white linen parties, before the clothing line and the cologne, he was baggy jeans, sports jerseys, or tank tops, with a black Chicago White Sox hat to the back. His style, along with the ultimate swagger he possessed, made women drop their panties. 50 Cent, or Fiddy, as some call him, wasn’t around back then, but a body like his was what women dreamt of touching. The chest, the arms, the abs–they made it easy to bypass the face. That and the money.

  Standing in front of her table was a combination of those three men.

  More handsome than Denzel with a close-cut fade, as stylish as Diddy in Cross Colours clothing, with wide shoulders and a broad chest, Jamil Parker caused ripples between her legs. The sensation was unexpected and unsettling.

  Lisette Jones squirmed in her seat a bit and said, “Yes,” and nothing more.

  The Denzel-Diddy-Fiddy combo smiled.

  Lisette felt a gush.

  He said, “I’ve seen you around. Studying design, right?”

  She nodded. “Do you go there?”

  “Yeah. I’m in the film and video program. I’m getting ready to be the next Spikeberg.”

  “Spikeberg?”

  “Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg . . . my favorite directors. I’ll be making movies like them soon.”

  “You’re pretty confident.”

  He shook his head. “Nah . . . not confident. Just stating a fact.”

  “Isn’t that being confident?”

  He shook his head again. “Being confident means there’s room for something to not go your way, but you’re just sure that it will. Reality is reality. It just is. I’m going to be Spikeberg. Shit . . . bigger than both of them. There’s no room for any other reality.”

  Lisette Jones nodded and felt a shiver creep up from the base of her spine. She’d encountered guys before who’d stepped to her with lines and the “I’m-the-man” bravado before. Pretty Rickys and sexy thugs who thought that a little smile and a little swag could gain them open-door access to slide into her pussy. But unless she had something to gain by giving them her time and attention, or she had simply been horny, they got about as far as the word hello could stretch, and very rarely would they make it that far.

  They may have had the looks, but the looks weren’t enough to compensate for what they had been severely lacking. Style. Charisma. True swagger. They were perpetrators.

  Most females fell for the bullshit, but that was because most females were either stupid, naïve, or pathetically desperate for a man’s attention. Lisette Jones wasn’t stupid or naïve and she’d yet to find a man who could do for her what she couldn’t already do for herself. But what had never happened before happened with Jamil Parker standing in front of her. Lisette Jones became intrigued and aroused, and that made her like most females.

  She smiled.

  So did Jamil, as he extended his hand. “Jamil.”

  She took it. “Lisette.”

  “Nice name.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Exotic. Like your looks.”

  “My mother was Puerto Rican and black. My father’s from Barbados.”

  Jamil’s thumb lightly moved from side to side against her skin. “Your parents put together one hell of a mix.”

  Lisette Jones felt hot and cold at the same time. It was an electric feeling.

  “So how long are you planning to stay here?” Jamil asked.

  Lisette Jones took a slow, full breath, released it slowly, and shrugged. “Not long.”

  “Want to get something to eat?”

  Before that moment, the only answer that existed was, “No.”

  Before that moment, there would have never been a moment, because the opportunity for the question to have been asked would have never been given.

  Before that moment, Lisette Jones had been herself.

  Before that moment.

  She opened her mouth. Studied his full bottom lip. Imagined herself sucking on it. Then imagined sucking on him. Electric heat radiated between her thighs as she said, “I’m ready to leave now . . . if you are.”

  Jamil gave a smile that made her heartbeat stutter. He didn’t let go of her hand as she rose from her seat.

  Lisette Jones was powerless and, for reasons she could never fully understand or explain, it was an intoxicating feeling.

  3

  Two years.

  That’s how long Lisette Jones dated Jamil Parker.

  For six months, the relationship was heaven. Better than anything she’d ever experienced before. All of the men she’d encountered in the short life she’d lived had all done whatever she’d wanted them to do. They were mindless tools to her that she discarded without a thought or care after their uses were served.

  Satisfaction was never something she’d known before, at least not in the truest sense of the word. She thought she’d been satisfied whenever she’d gotten the things she wanted. She thought she’d been pleased when her needs were met. It was only when Jamil came along that she realized that hadn’t been the case. Her satisfaction had never been real. It had never been Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire. It had never been complete.

  Jamil Parker.

  For six months, he ’d the hell out of her emotionally and physically.

  For six months, he did things only the men in movies did.

  For six months, he was the man who existed only in novels.

  For six months, Lisette Jones could spell the word she never believed in, forward, backward,
sideways, and in circles.

  Love hadn’t been real until Jamil introduced it into her world. He did so without being asked. His equal and opposite reaction came before her action. He was considerate, attentive, romantic, and caring in ways that left her stunned. Flowers and cards just because. Phone calls to say hello and to let her know that she’d been thought of. He cooked for her, filled her bathtub with hot water and the right amount of bubbles. He listened when it hadn’t been the time to talk, and when it had been time to converse, he genuinely asked about her dreams and her desires. More importantly, he genuinely cared about them.

  And then there was the sex.

  Lisette Jones had never been religious. She believed in a higher being and had an occasional conversation with Him, but occasional equated to once, maybe twice a year. Religion, something her mother tried to force-feed down her throat before she abandoned her, had never been something she could get into. She never connected with the stories in the Bible. She never had a desire to know anything more than how to recite the Hail Mary. To her, things in life happened, not because of a snake or a bite out of an apple.

  Things just happened.

  But when Jamil slid inside of her for the first time, at that moment, she fully believed in a higher being, because only a higher being could have created a dick as perfect as Jamil’s.

  The size, the thickness, the way it moved. Jamil made her orgasm flow from dams tucked far away, deep within the caverns of her pussy.

  Sex with Jamil had been like an opera performance. Steady, calm, melodic beginnings. Swelling and rising middles. Powerful, explosive, climactic endings that took her breath away and left her craving more. She’d heard of women becoming dick-whipped before, but as far as she was concerned, that only happened to women who went through life being controlled and never controlling. Before Jamil, the idea of her ever becoming dick-whipped had been an impossibility.

  But for six months . . .

  For six months, Lisette Jones was hooked. For six months, Lisette Jones was in love. For six months, Lisette Jones lost the absolute and burning need to be in control. For six months, her satisfaction came from not only being satisfied, but also from her wanting to reciprocate freely without a self-satisfying motive. For six months, Lisette Jones lived in emotional and physical utopia.

  Then month seven came along and she began to die.

  Slowly.

  4

  For the first six months of their relationship, Jamil Parker had been a dream she’d never had. But in month seven that dream became a hellish nightmare that she would awaken from and then revisit time and time again over the course of eighteen months.

  Two years total.

  That was how long Lisette Jones endured love before she would die and be reborn.

  The nightmare first began on a brutally hot Fourth of July. It had been ninety-five degrees without the humidity. With the humidity, it felt like Satan’s bedroom. They’d been at a friend of Jamil’s for his annual pool party that Jamil had been going to since he’d been a freshman in high school. This was her first time attending. It was also the first time she was going to get to be around any of his friends for a prolonged period of time.

  She’d only ever questioned him a couple of times as to why they could never stay long at hangouts or why they always seemed to be going when his friends had been coming. Each time Jamil’s response had been the same.

  “I hate sharing you with others for too long.”

  Her vision blurred by love, she hadn’t been able to see through the bullshit. Jamil Parker liked to be in control. She’d known it because he decided everything they did and everywhere they went. But the pool party would be the first of one too many demonstrations of the level of control he had to have.

  Days before the party, she’d gone shopping for a new swimsuit. She wanted to look good for herself and, more importantly, she wanted to look good for her man. She wanted his friends to envy him. He had what they couldn’t. When she walked out in her push-up bikini top and string bottom, heads would turn, women would suck their teeth, and the men would, undoubtedly, call Jamil “The Man.”

  She wanted that for him and she’d been determined to have that happen. Unfortunately for her, Jamil cared less about being the man and more about everyone staring at her. He hadn’t seen the outfit prior to her putting it on, but when he did, all hell had broken loose.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  They’d been in his friend’s guest bedroom, changing. Earlier plans in the day had prevented them from being able to show up already dressed.

  “What do you mean?” His harsh tone had caught her off guard.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?”

  “You . . . you don’t like it?”

  “You’re practically fucking naked.”

  “Naked? Jamil, it’s just a bikini. Relax.”

  “Relax? With you trying to parade your ass and tits around for my boys to stare at?”

  “It’s just a bikini, Jamil. Were you blind when we got here? I’m not the only female wearing one.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the other bitches here!” Jamil yelled, his eyes dark with anger. “You’re not walking out that door in some shit like that!”

  “But, Jamil–”

  “Bitch, what the fuck did I just tell you! Take that shit off. You ain’t wearing that.”

  “But–”

  She hadn’t been able to say anything else because before she could, she was backhanded viciously across her mouth.

  As she stumbled and fell back against the dressing table, Jamil said, “Bitch, don’t you know how to follow directions? I told you to take that fucking thing off. I didn’t tell you to say shit else!”

  Her bottom lip split, she stared in stunned silence as she tasted her blood, while the man she loved stood menacingly, his eyes slit, his nostrils flared, his teeth bared, and his hands balled into tight fists. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think or to do.

  He’d hit her.

  No one ever had before.

  For the first time ever, she was scared and that fear knotted up in the middle of her throat.

  Tears began to well up and fall from her eyes as Jamil’s chest heaved up and down.

  “I can’t believe you were trying to embarrass my ass, looking like a fucking stripper.”

  She shook her head slowly as the tears cascaded down her cheeks. She could barely utter, “I . . . I wasn’t . . .” before she was cut off again.

  “Get your ass dressed, Lisette, and then go and wash your fucking mouth. We’re leaving. And quit with the fucking tears.”

  Lisette Jones wiped at her eyes and pushed away from the dressing table, but her legs felt like rubber and she had to place a hand down against the edge of it to keep from falling down.

  He’d hit her. It didn’t seem real. He wouldn’t do something like that. He just couldn’t.

  She gathered her clothes and began to get dressed. As she did, she trembled, the shocking reality of the situation chilling her to the bone.

  He could hit her.

  After making a silent and quick exit from the party, they drove home in silence. Without a good-bye, Jamil dropped her off and then drove away, not bothering to make sure she’d gotten inside as he usually did. That night she lay in bed, wondering how she could have been so wrong in the way she wanted to please him.

  He’d hit her.

  For him to have flipped out on her, she surmised that it had been her fault. It had to be. She cried herself to sleep, certain that she’d lost the only person she ever truly connected with.

  But things were different the next day.

  They always were.

  5

  “Baby, please forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to lose control like that. It’s just . . . it’s just that I love you so much. I’ve never loved anyone the way that I love you. No one has ever made me feel the way you make me feel. I can do anything with you in my life. Pleas
e . . . I’ll stop drinking. I’ll learn to control my anger. You’ve got to believe me. You’re my world. My everything. I love you with all my heart. I . . . I don’t know what I was thinking. I just didn’t think.

  “I swore I would never be anything like my father. He . . . he used to hit my mom so much. I hated him when growing up. I still hate him. Just give me one more chance to prove that I’m different from him. Give me another chance to show you how special you are. You’ll never have to go through something like this again. Let me prove it to you. Let me show how sorry I am. I love you and I need you.”

  Over the course of eighteen months, those words or different variations of them were spoken to Lisette Jones. It all depended on how Jamil lost control in order to control.

  Slaps, punches, kicks, choke holds, verbal abuse. Then came the apologies with roses or expensive gifts, with promises to do and be different.

  After that, there was the sex.

  Mind-blowing sex. Sex that made her knees weak. Sex that caused God’s name to be called over and over. Sex that made her body overflow. Sex that was repeated in multiple positions. Sex that had been better than the time before. Sex that accepted the apologies and made everything all right. Sex that made her believe there would be no next time. Sex made her think that she was special, that he did love her, that he did need her.

  Eighteen months.

  She was a fool devoted to love and trapped by fear.

  She was weak, pathetic, pitiful. Different words, all meaning the same thing. She was a sorry excuse for a woman, controlled by a man who was far weaker than she had ever been.

  Eighteen months.

  One too many wake-up calls, until one too many became just that.

  One. Too. Many.

  One night. Lights dimmed low. Luther Vandross, singing “Always and Forever” from the CD player. Lisette Jones died and was reborn.

  One too many.

  Jamil had been promoted to assistant editor on the set of the soap opera he’d been working for when he graduated. He was still determined to become the Spike Lee/Steven Spielberg love child, but he had to earn his stripes. The promotion had been a very positive step in that direction.