Only my closest friends knew about our trial separation. Most of them stayed mum on the topic. Most did not include Gemmia. When I told her, she simply said, “It’s about time.” She apologized, but she didn’t really mean it. She told me not to worry about how or when or whether he would come back. What I needed to worry about was that I didn’t have a prenuptial agreement.
“He doesn’t want anything from me. He would never accept anything from me.”
“Of course not,” she said, “he already took everything he could get.”
“What do you mean? He hasn’t taken anything from me.”
“Well, I guess if your dignity and self-respect don’t matter to you, then he didn’t take anything.”
After Gemmia’s observation, there were more nights than I care to remember when I would sit on the edge of my bed and wait to see the headlights of his car coming up the driveway. It took me about nine months to get used to the fact that he was not coming home.
I have heard many times that a breakdown is an opportunity for a breakthrough. The breakdown of my marriage led to a breakthrough in my spiritual life. I had to pray to stay focused. I had to meditate to stop my mind from plotting murder. I had to read the masters, searching the ancient texts, to find some understanding of what I was experiencing. My Spirit was growing strong. Good thing! Because I was in a royal battle with my flesh. I could not accept that the marriage that I had put so much into was over. I found the last, definitive sign in the last place I expected.
Was it really a marriage? Well, maybe not. And at the same time, it was as good as—if not better than—any marriage I had ever seen. He didn’t beat me. For the most part, I always knew where he was, and when we were together and not fighting, he was always a gentleman. I could always depend on my husband to do what he said he would do; unfortunately, that wasn’t too much. But then again, that is what I had learned to expect from most, if not all of the men in my life. I did, however, feel certain that he provided a good example for my grandson. I was mistaken.
When my husband and I got married, Gemmia offered to take my grandson Oluwa and raise him. When I told him about Gemmia’s offer, he said, “Absolutely not!” Oluwa would stay with us. He wanted the opportunity to do for him what he had not done for his own sons. Raising him, like our marriage, was a blessing, an opportunity from God for a second chance. There is no doubt in my mind that my husband loved Oluwa. Unfortunately, he was so old-fashioned in many ways that his love was a more Spartan than generous love.
He would take Oluwa with him to meetings and gatherings where there were no other children and expect him to sit quietly. Oluwa just wasn’t that kind of child. My husband was extremely impatient with modern children. In his exasperation, he would box Oluwa’s ears or knuckle him on the head. Oluwa hated it! I was caught in the middle. I wanted Oluwa to be raised with a male influence, so I rarely interfered.
When we were alone, I’d suggest a kinder way to discipline him. I thought we were co-parenting. I thought we should talk about things and come to an agreement. He charged that I dropped Oluwa off on him because I didn’t want to deal with him. Oluwa didn’t see it that way and neither did I.
One day Oluwa and I were in the mall when he announced: “Yeye, I am going to find you a husband.”
“Really!” I said with some interest. “Why would you do that when I already have a husband?”
“Baba doesn’t act like he wants to be your husband. He treats you mean, and I don’t like that. He treats me mean too.”
“Really? I thought you loved being with him. Why do you think he treats you mean?”
He went into a long explanation about the ear-boxing and the head-knuckling, the long meetings and the boring things Baba did.
“But he always came to your games when you played ball.”
“Yeah, and then he stopped coming and never even said he was sorry.”
“Well, Baba loves you, Oluwa. Maybe you should tell him how you feel.”
“No. I’ll just find you another husband, one who treats you and me better than he does.”
My heart sank, but that was before he dropped the bombshell.
“You need a husband who treats you like he treats Ms. Brenda.”
“Who is Ms. Brenda?”
“She’s Baba’s friend. She always comes by the office to help him. He talks real nice to her, and he is always smiling at her. I think he likes her and that’s why you need a new husband.”
I couldn’t believe that he would take my grandson around another woman. I didn’t want to hear any more, but Oluwa had more to say.
“And you know what else?”
“No, Oluwa, what else?”
“He always buys her lunch. He never buys you anything. Do you know that Baba has never bought you or me anything at all?”
“That’s not true, Oluwa, he has bought you things, and he always takes you to breakfast.”
“No, he doesn’t take me to breakfast. He goes to breakfast because you are not home to cook. If you were home, he wouldn’t take me anywhere.”
“Why do you say that? I think he would take you places even if I was home.”
With that, he stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his innocent little ten-year-old face to me and said with a maturity far beyond his years:
“Yeye, I thought you were a smart lady. You help people everywhere all of the time. People you don’t even know, like you. I’m telling you that Baba doesn’t like you, and you need a new husband.”
As we walked on through the mall, I explained that he should talk to Baba about his feelings. He said it wouldn’t matter, because Baba never listened.
“Yeye, I belong to you not him. He puts up with me but he doesn’t want me. You do everything for me and Baba. If I had to wait for him to do anything for me, I would die. Trust me. I would be dead.”
I imagined the headline: “Best-Selling Author Has Nervous Breakdown in Suburban Mall.” In order to save myself, I suggested to Oluwa that we go have pizza. The truth? I needed to sit down.
Was it a marriage? As hard as it was to admit, it was not. It was a co-dependent entanglement. Maybe it was an addiction. Addiction means that you knowingly engage in behaviors that are destructive or harmful. In many instances, it is described as an obsession or compulsion. I was obsessed with making the marriage work. I did many compulsive and impulsive things to try to make it work, including ignoring all of the signs that it was not working. But was I going to spend the rest of my life trying to prove that I was worthy of this man’s love?
I could do for my grandson what I could not do for myself: I could break the pattern of exposing children to dysfunctional relationships. The next time I saw my husband, I told him about my conversation with Oluwa. He thought it was funny. He asked me why I was listening to Oluwa. I said that his behavior was not only inappropriate, it was without integrity. He said that I was not one who should speak about integrity. I recognized the bait. He was trying to drag me into the valley of what was wrong with Iyanla, and I refused to take the trip.
Instead, I asked him for a divorce.
He asked me if that was what I wanted. I told him no, but I didn’t see how anything was going to change. He let me know that I was what needed to change. We had a very brief, very nasty exchange before he got up to leave. My normal addictive behavior would have been to call him and apologize. Not that day! On that day, I decided to go cold turkey. I refused to allow myself to want somebody who obviously did not want me.
The television had become my new lover. After doing my prayers and bedtime intentions, television was the way I subdued my mind, the way I kept it from conjuring up distorted images of what he was or was not doing in his apartment or elsewhere. Most nights, I would take a long hot bath, lotion my body down with some lovely scent, put on my grandma nightgown, crawl into bed, and let my lover cover me with colors, sounds, and pictures. I would watch things that I had seen 20 or 30 times as if it were a first-time experience. The Color Purple was one
of my favorite foreplay exploits. The Fugitive was another. Unfortunately, the climax did not leave me exhausted or wanting more. When it was over, it was simply over. No kissing. No hugging. No giggling under the covers. Instead, I would roll over and grab the remote. I was usually asleep by the third act, waking up just in time to see the credits roll.
This particular Sunday night was no different. None of my favorites were playing, so I watched something that was sure to take me down quickly. I was awakened by what felt like an incredible weight being dropped on my chest. My eyes flew open. Then I realized I couldn’t move. Flat on my back, I was pinned to the bed by something or someone that I could feel but could not see. Oh Lord! Someone is robbing my house! They must have given me some type of drug! I tried to listen for movement in the house, but the only thing I could hear was my heart pounding. I tried to move my legs. My arms were at my sides. I imagined that they had been strapped down, but there was no belt, no rope, nothing I could feel. Maybe I’m having a stroke or a heart attack! I must get to the telephone. That thought led me to the discovery that I could move my head. Craning my neck as far as it would go, I looked toward the nightstand where the telephone was resting, but I still couldn’t move my arms. What I could do was see the clock. It was 12:41 A.M. My mind was racing. My heart was still pounding. I tried to take a deep breath to calm myself down. As soon as I did, I felt the overpowering weight again; this time it was pressing deeper into my chest, my stomach; now it was all over my legs. I needed to get my hands moving to that telephone!
Suddenly, my nostrils were filled with the smell of sandalwood. It was the scent my husband wore every day. Oddly enough, the fragrance ws comforting. Whatever was going on had something to do with him.
Then it began. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. It felt as if his hands or someone’s hands were stroking and caressing my body. The pressure would increase and then decrease. Then I heard a woman’s voice. She was moaning. Now he was moaning. What is going on? Am I having a wet dream? I turned my head again. It was 12:58. The stroking and the moaning were beginning to intensify, and I could swear the bed was moving up and down in a very intimate way. I closed my eyes, determined not to die and not to succumb to the panic I felt in my body.
It felt as if I were floating, maybe time traveling. Then the pictures began to flood my mind. I could see him and her, caressing, kissing, making love. My heart stopped pounding and sank into my stomach, setting off an intense wave of nausea. Whether my eyes were opened or closed, the images did not disappear. It all began to make sense. He was somewhere, making love to another woman, and I had inexplicably tapped into or fallen into their energy. As disgusting and unsettling as the thought was, the realization brought me to a state of calm. It was bizarre, but at least I wasn’t dying.
I laid there for what seemed like forever, checking the clock every other minute. 1:07, 1:14, 1:36. The images were floating in my mind and in front of me as if they were on television. Finally, the pressure was released first. My hands flew up to my eyes on their own. My body was my own again. I screamed and rolled onto my side in a fetal position. The images stopped as quickly as they had begun. The nausea subsided. I could still detect the lingering scent of sandalwood. I looked at the clock. It was 1:57.
Shaking and shaken, I reached for the telephone. My hands were trembling, but not so bad that I couldn’t dial. I called his cell phone. No answer. Before the message played out, I hung up and called back again. Still no answer. Tears were falling violently from my eyes. Between screaming and wailing, I kept dialing the number. By the tenth or eleventh call I decided to leave a message.
“I don’t know where you are, but I know what you are doing. I felt it. I saw it. I could smell you and her all over me. You need to call me.”
I waited several minutes, somehow believing that he would get the message and hoping that he would believe what I had said. Hell, I didn’t believe what I had said. A wave of sandalwood blew past my nostrils and made my stomach turn over. I ran into the bathroom. Should I go to the toilet to vomit or to the shower to wash this mess off of me? I voted for the shower and jumped in still clad in my granny nightgown. Grabbing soap, shampoo, and whatever else I could get my hands on, I scrubbed my body and the nightgown feverishly. It was only when the scent on me had changed from sandalwood to lavender and then to lemongrass that I dared to rip the nightgown off, allowing it to fall in pieces into the tub. The sound of the shower did not muffle my screams well enough. I heard Oluwa crying out to me.
“Yeye, Yeye, what’s the matter?”
The sound of his voice brought me back to reality.
“I’m okay, sweetie. You go back to bed. I am sorry I woke you up. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what I was actually sorry about— what had just happened, or making so much noise that I woke a sleeping ten-year-old.
I checked on him when I got out of the shower, smelling as if I had taken a nose dive into a perfume vat. He had gone back to sleep. I went back to the telephone. This time, I called my Yoruba godfather, Bale, in Panama. He too was having a sleepless night and answered the telephone on the third ring. As calmly as I could, between weeping and screaming, I recounted my experience. When I got it all out, he told me to make myself some tea and call him back. Chamomile. I settled for three bags of chamomile tea without any sweetener. I sat at the kitchen table and called my godfather again.
He began with an apology. He was sorry it had happened to me. Bale was also my husband’s godfather and spiritual mentor. He had taken us to Africa to be married. When you are spiritually joined to another person by ceremony and ritual, he told me, you cannot conduct yourself in any manner you choose. You must respect what you have been given. He reminded me that my husband and I had not just gone to the justice of the peace. We had gone into an ancient village and been united in a very sacred way, by people who carried thousands of years of tradition in their DNA. He asked me if I knew where my husband was. Of course I did not. He told me to call him and leave a message that he was to call his godfather as soon as possible. As soon as I hung up, I did. Three days later, when I hadn’t heard from him, I called him again.
I could hear the hesitation in his voice. He asked about Oluwa. I asked him if he was crazy! Had he gotten my messages? He remained silent. I asked him what was going on. He said he didn’t know what I wanted him to say. I went into a rant about the sacredness of how we had been joined. I reminded him, as our godfather had reminded me, that we were not just married. I was a priestess and he was a priest. If he wanted to end our marriage or invite someone else into it, he needed to do it the right way. He needed to call his godfather, our godfather, and get some clear instructions. He said he would and then fell silent. I slammed the telephone back into the cradle.
The nighttime incidents continued, sometimes more intense than others. I was afraid to go to bed, and the lack of sleep showed on my face and in my body. Two weeks passed and he had not made the call to Panama. I was reluctant to share my experience with anyone because it was so bizarre. How do you tell someone that you can feel your husband making love to another woman? How do you explain that you can not only feel it, but you can hear it, see it, and smell it? You don’t. You keep it to yourself, wondering if you have been possessed by something evil.
I prayed for relief and release but there was none to be had. Sometimes three or four nights in a row, I was made to be an interloper in the sex life of my husband and some other woman. Most nights I put the Bible in the bed with me. It didn’t help.
One night, in desperation, I remembered the ways of the oldtime church. I stripped myself naked, and lying face down and prostrate on the floor, I begged God, the angels, the ancestors, all of the prophets and guardians to deliver me from whatever this was that had taken over my body and my bedroom. In the old church, it is called “pleading the blood of Jesus.” I did it. I pleaded and confessed and repented. I said all of the things I had ever been taught or told about the sovereign mercy of God. I laid on that f
loor, praying, crying, pleading with a mouthful of carpet fuzz until I could feel the release in every fiber of my being. In that moment, I didn’t care to be a Yoruba priestess, a Christian, or anything else. I simply needed a Higher Power, something greater than me to lift me up and out of the experience. And it did. Something shifted. I got up, put on my pajamas, and got in the bed. For the first time in weeks, I slept like a baby.
It was several days later before I could feel the energy again. As soon as it started, I began to pray. I began to call out for divine intervention. As soon as I did, it stopped. The energy lifted. As horrible as the experience had been to endure, it took me to a deeper realization and experience of the presence of God. It deepened my faith. It opened my heart and mind. It sent me on a deeper exploration into the mysteries of relationships and sex. It helped me to understand the interconnectedness of all things and people. It also sent me to divorce court.
I filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and adultery. I felt almost indifferent as I handed the papers to the clerk. She stamped my form and sent me on my way. It wasn’t until I was back in my car, about to turn the key in the ignition, that I broke down. I felt absolutely defeated and depleted. It felt so unfair. But then again, everything happens exactly as it needs to happen in order for us to grow. Damn it!
I knew he would get the papers in the next two or three days, and I wondered what he would do or think or say. But I didn’t hear from him for a week, and when I did, he didn’t mention anything. Then I remembered. I was supposed to send him a certified copy of the paperwork and take the delivery notification back to the court. Great! It was all on me again.
However, the morning I woke up planning to do just that, I got a clear message. Be still. Let him take the lead. You have got to be kidding me! Let him take the lead? He was leading me into his sexual exploits! Where was he going to lead us to?
Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through Page 20