by Unknown
“Where to, Mr. Stanton?”
“A bed and to sleep,” William replied.
“How ‘bout to my house and we find you some place tomorrow?”
“I don’t think that I’ll look to good should we end up in divorce court. Husband caught sleeping with his secretary. By the way, when you get the chance get in touch with your uncle. See if you can’t get Sill’s address. Contact my lawyer as soon as possible; ask him to file for divorce stating irreconcilable differences. Then I want you to find the prettiest white dress you can find that is if you’ll marry his Ol’ Man nine years your senior.”
William pulled out the largest diamond ring Melinda had ever laid her eyes on.
“Oh, William!” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared first at William, then at the ring.
“I’ll call Jazzy, tonight.” Melinda giggled.”Oh, William, I’m so happy.”
She dropped William at the Radisson Hotel, then made a beeline to Dante’s. Given Sylvia Stanton’s address, she only wished tomorrow wasn’t Sunday.
On Thursday evening of the same week, Sylvia Stanton returned from her run, picked up her mail, dropped it on the living room table and made her way to the shower. She had finally convinced Terrance to move in with her, although it had not been an easy sell. She had appealed to him in every conceivable way but was convinced that his final decision to sublet his own townhouse and move in with her, was not solely because he loved her but for economic reasons. Talk about stubborn. Still, she enjoyed his just being there for her, and was sure she would eventually win him over and make him see the light. No longer did he have to cook or clean for himself. She was at the same time learning to listen and, at least, sound concerned about his day at work, though most of the time she didn’t give a damn. She was there for him, physically, whenever he desired to have her. She tried to keep the relationship new and fresh and made a concerted effort not to wear the same negligee and heels more than once a week. How often had he come home and found her naked, except for the heels he so adored. In addition to taking care of his physical needs, she would run him a hot bath and serve him the dinner of his choice.
She transformed the guest room into a study for him and had a carpenter build shelves on three of the four walls. When she found that he didn’t have quite enough books to stock the shelves, she went on-line and purchased fifteen hundreds dollars worth of books by famous Black authors not in his collection. He had been at his family reunion when she’d come up with the idea and when he returned, she had everything in place. She had even gone so far as to find those God-awful Louis L’Amour westerns he so adored and ordered the leather bound editions that were missing from his set. She had never seen him so happy. And on those days that he retreated into his study, she made it a point, as much as she hated to give him his space and leave him alone. He had been good to her, too. He was finally starting to adjust to the fact that he’d given up his independence and the space that he seemed to value above all else. The only gripe was sexually. It was never enough. Sure, he took care of her in the evenings but when he first moved in that was all they did. Often times she had to—as much as she hated to—tell him no, so bruised was she from their last tryst. It had been wonderful. She had even gotten to the point where she stopped wearing clothes in the house because all she found herself doing was taking them off, then there was the week when she was glad he’d gone to work, so sore was she. But that didn’t work either. Terrance started popping up on his planning periods for a quickie and then rush back to school for his next class. Sill smiled just thinking about it. Damn, that man is good. Now only a month or so later, she thought about making a sign the way the homeless, do, saying: ‘Will Work for Sex.’ Well, at least, with his being there, she didn’t have to worry about Laura sneaking around. Besides, Laura was out traipsing across the country, promoting her chain of health spas. By the time she returned, Sill was confident that she’d have Terrance in check.
Terrance wasn’t home from work yet and it had been a good three days since he’d given her any. She thought about making the sign as a joke and greeting him at the door with just the sign and some heels on but thought that, as prudish as he was, he would probably be offended. Since she’d stopped teaching, she had little to do but live for him. Due to walk in the door any minute, Sill wanted to be dressed when he got home. Thursday night was the night they usually went out to dinner.
Sill hated getting in the shower when she was expecting someone. Too many Stephen King movies, she suspected. She grinned at the thought. She had not been this happy in a long time. Peeling off her sweats, she grabbed a towel all in the same motion, pulled back the shower curtain and stepped in. The water was warm and oh, so soothing.
“Terrance, is that you?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. Are you ready to go? I thought we’d do Chinese tonight,” she yelled over the flow of the shower.
“Sounds good to me,” he replied.
“How was your day? The kids didn’t beat my baby up too badly, did they?” she asked, doing her best to sound concerned. There was no reply. Perhaps he didn’t hear me. Before she could repeat the question, the shower curtain flew back. Terrance grabbed her, lifted her dripping body from the shower with one hand, and with the other unbuckled his trousers, letting them fall to his ankles. This was even more than she had bargained for. Picking up her cue, she ripped the buttons from his shirt. Knocking her to the floor, Terrance entered her warm chasm, as he never had before, first plunging, then rising each time witty more force than the time before. Digging deeper with each pounding thrust, he heard her head bang against the porcelain tub. Time and time again, her head bounced off the tub. Ignoring this and feeling the shudder of her body as she climaxed, he grabbed her legs and raised them until her knees touched her face then entered her again, driving himself deeper and deeper inside her now dry canal. God how it hurt, Sylvia thought but that’s what she was there for, to please him. Besides, it’ll be over soon, after the third time, her insides were a mass of mushy, bleeding pulp. She bit her lip to try to conceal the pain. She finally prayed that he would stop.
Alarmed and frightened by this sudden onslaught, her body scarred and torn from the force and roughness of his assault, she couldn’t—wouldn’t endure another second. She screamed: “Stop, Terrance! You’re hurting me!” She was crying now. “Stop it! Terrance Daniels, you’re hurting me. Oh, God! Please make him stop! Dear, God! Please make him stop!”
Then there were the flashes of that horrible night back at Bennett College. “You’re raping me, Terrance. You stop it this instant! This is rape! Stop, Terrance! Oh, my God, please make him stop!”
Terrance ignored her cries. And after wrestling with her, for what seemed like an eternity, he was finally able to turn her over, onto her stomach. At which time he entered her again, this time he entered her from behind, until her screams became little more than sobs and her rigid body went limp. When he was finished, he left her like that, her buttocks pointing skyward, her head resting on the bathroom rug, one arm on the tub, the other by her side.
It was some time before he heard the shower waters beating against the bathroom tiles and an even longer time before she was able to limp down the stairs. For the second time in her life, she knew what it was to be forced—to be raped. Is this what she’d done to him? Ashamed, she blamed herself. She tried to rationalize his assault. What could she have done to warrant such anger, such hostility? This is how he must have felt our first night together, she surmised. She was confused. How could this be love? Mixed emotions filled her head, clouded her thinking and her judgment. Wrapping a towel around herself, she felt her insides throb in pain. It resembled nothing, she had ever felt before. What she could have possibly done to warrant this? Was he still angry? Whatever it was, she would make up for it. After all, she was trying. She really was trying to be compatible.
Unable to speak, she gazed at the fireplace as if it held the secret to her gaffe. When no revelation descended upon her, she somehow fou
nd the strength, despite the pain, to walk into the study. There, Terrance sat in the Lazy Boy she had purchased for him just last week so he would be more comfortable reading or watching the ballgame on television. Distant and detached, he sat, scanning the latest issue of Newsweek magazine. She knew she was in hallowed ground and really hated to disturb him by entering his inner sanctum but she was curious to know what she had done to merit such enmity. Afraid to speak, she stood there. Even with the towel draped around her she felt, for the first time, since she had known him, completely exposed—naked Embarrassed and humiliated, she turned, prepared to run if she could just bear the sharp, piercing pain long enough to make it out of the room before he could see her naked, vulnerable. But she wasn’t naked. And how could she be vulnerable with a man who loved her, a man she loved and cherished. Still, she would dress. She would feel better then but the throbbing between her legs and down her back was too great and she was reluctant to move. Without so much as looking up to acknowledge her presence, he asked rather nonchalantly: “Are you ready to go?”
In her best effort to ignore the callousness of the remark, she tired to sound indifferent as well. “Ready to go? Why, Terrance Daniels, what do you think I’m made of? Five minutes ago, you tried to go through me. I honestly thought you were digging for gold. Now, you want me to jump up, get my groove on, look good and be good company. I’m sorry, hon, but my recuperative powers are not that great. I’m hurting. All I’m looking for now is a double shot of Jack and a Tylenol or two, and some sympathy from you.” There she’d done it. She’d played the whole incident off nicely. She could handle it. She had screamed rape but it wasn’t, really. She was probably just having flashbacks.
She knew that, despite all the time she’d spent in therapy after the incident, as she liked to call it, that she wasn’t in denial any longer. She had only slept with two men since the incident, one being William and the other, Terrance. In fact, she could count the times she’d slept with William in the six years of marriage on both hands and still have fingers left over. And Terrance was the only other man and he was too good to her in bed for this to be rape. She didn’t know enough about sex to know the difference between rough sex and rape anyway. Truthfully speaking, the only real knowledge she had on the subject was from the dirty movies she and her sorority used to watch in the dorms late at night, back when she was in college. And aside from tonight and up until this point, Terrance was, undoubtedly, the sweetest, most gentle man she’d ever know. No, it wasn’t rape at all, just her silly inadequacies raising its ugly head again. She just hoped he wouldn’t be angry with her and the way she had reacted. It was after all, new to her.
It had taken her some time to get dressed and it really was too late to go anywhere, being that it was a school night and Terrance usually reviewed his lesson plans each evening in preparation for the upcoming day.
At dinner, there was little conversation. Terrance seemed to be in another world. Sill noticed that he didn’t appear to be in the best of moods. In fact, he seemed almost morose. In an attempt to raise his spirits and, for the sake of conversation, she asked:
“Why in God’s name would you want to contest it, if he abused you? Please, make me understand. The man beat you and you want more. I guess I wasn’t entirely out of line. Come on, let’s go back to the bathroom so I can finish what I started. Is that it, Sill? You haven’t had enough. You want more?” Terrance was visibly upset and it showed.
“William was good to me, Terrance. He was very good to me. I attacked his inner person, his ego. I tried to force his hand. I got bored with the daily routine, tired of marriage, afraid of commitment. The night he hit me, I was out with another man. I’d never gone anywhere without his knowing it and especially at night. He was crazy with worry that something had happened to me and when I got home I was pretty flippant and, well, I guess I brought it on myself.”
“You need to take your little raggedy ass right back on upstairs to the bathroom. Sill, women, abused women, make excuses everyday for their being beaten when there’s no excuse. Truth is, he’s less than a man if he puts his hands on you. That’s the bottom line.”
“And what if I thought that of you, Terrance? Trust me, he’s a good man. The last two years of your marriage, I can count the times I slept with him on two fingers and still have one left over. And not once, not one single time did he try to force his hand. I sleep with you on a regular basis and, for all intents and purposes, you raped me. William has never beaten me the way you beaten me tonight. Never! My butt feels like it’s on fire and I can barely walk.”
“Tell me you’re not going there, Sylvia. What occurred between you and me has nothing to do with any of this. What’s happening here is that the last little puppy you had running around, chasing your apron strings has probably found someone else to spend his time and money on. Someone, I am willing to bet, is more loving, more “What possessed you to be so damn aggressive, tonight?” She promised herself, while she struggled to get dressed, that she would let the whole affair drop but as she squirmed in the dining room chair, pain shooting up one side of her body and down the other, she couldn’t help but ask. When he finally answered, she was sorry she had.
“You’re not serious. You can’t possibly be. I though I was bringing something new to the table. Thought you liked it rough. Thought you had some date rape fantasy or something. That’s how you introduced me to lovemaking. I just naturally thought—.”
Sill began weeping, gently.
“Damn, I’m tired of you walking around here sniffling and crying all the goddamn time. The only time you’re happy is when I’m—. Oh, to hell with you. I knew I should have never given up my house and moved in with you. What was I thinkin’?”
And then just like that he changed the subject. “Did you get the mail today?” he asked.
Sighing, she answered: “It’s on the table in the living room.”
Terrance divided the mail, handing, Sill hers.
“Oh, Lord, no!” Sill screamed in a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“William’s located me which means he knows I’m living with you,” she said.
“So, what’s the problem?” Terrance was having difficulty understanding.
“He’s asking for a divorce.”
“And? I’m still trying to understand.” Terrance was truly at a loss. “I thought you’d be happy. You made it seem like that was all that was standing between us.”
“Don’t you see, Terrance, I can’t contest the divorce if he has evidence that I’m living with someone.” appreciative, more giving, than you will ever be. And you, Miss Thang, who’s always been afraid of giving of yourself, now finds herself with someone who is equally as selfish. You see, I’m not one that likes to give up my time or my space and if you didn’t know before tonight I was tired of you taking up my time, my freedom and my independence so I treated you like you do me on a regular basis and took something back. Doesn’t feel too good does it, when someone takes something from you that’s very close to you. You didn’t even have the guts to say you were raped until now. You would’ve denied it just to keep me around just to ward off that one thing you fear more than anything else, more than being raped or beaten. You’ll suffer abuse at a man’s hands any day just as long as he doesn’t abandon you. Your greatest fear, Sill, is of being alone. You’ve got issues that are far too complex for me. I don’t know what to tell you or how to resolve them but I’m used to a peaceful existence and being involved with you is far too much drama for me. I’m outta here.”
“And where will you be? Shack up with Laura, I suppose.”
He ignored her remarks, choosing not to get into another spat if he could avoid it.
“If you need to reach me, leave a message at Jazzy’s.” he said. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Sill. I love you. I always will. But you’ve never learned to love. When you do, you’ll learn that you can’t buy or own people and when you get tired of them, trade them in like a u
sed car.”
“Don’t do this,” Sill implored. “There’s no need for you to do this, Terrance. We’ve come too far, made too many strides. You know I’m good for you. And it’s just a waste of time. You’ll only be back tomorrow. Look, I’m signing the papers. I’m consenting to the divorce.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she signed the divorce papers, sealed the envelope and handed them to Terrance. “Does this confirm my commitment to you?”
“I’m sorry, Sylvia. I saw your reaction when you opened the letter. The only reason you want me to stay is that your pride won’t allow you to be walked out on—abandoned. But you’re just not ready for a relationship, Sill, and I guess I’m not either.”
Terrance gathered his suitcase from the storage and packed a week’s worth of clothes.
“I’m ready, Terrance. Please don’t leave,” she begged on her knees. Ignoring her pleas, Terrance made his way to the study, Sylvia rose and still limping in a great deal of pain grabbed his arm. “Terrance, I’m asking you not to do this,” she cried.
As far as he was concerned, the conversation, like the relationship was over. Grabbing his attaché case and his lesson plans from the desk in the study, he made his way to the door. Outside he threw the briefcase in the front seat of the Volkswagen and returned for the suitcase. Sylvia, still pleading, started emptying the suitcase. She was desperate now and on the verge of breaking down again. Tears welled up and spilled out of the corners of her eyes.
“Terrance, please don’t leave me. What do you want, baby? Just tell me what you want, baby, and I’ll get it for you. I know I can make you happy, baby. Just tell me what it is that you want. Do you want me in the bathroom, baby? Do you want to rape me again, baby? Just tell me what you want.”
And then, right there in the doorway, Sylvia began stripping, tearing at her clothes with both hands until she was naked. Terrance pushed her into the hallway and grabbed his bag, pushing the clothes back as quickly as he could while Sylvia grabbed and pawed in attempts to first kiss him and then hold him there. “Look, baby, I’m nude and I’m yours. Do whatever you like.”