by Jai Amor
“Make sure I am not here,” she said simply.
Bryan went outside and waited for his cab, sitting on the porch and looking at the door as if he had x-ray vision. He had been so caught up in having his cake and eating it too that he’d never thought of this occurrence, never dreamed this day would come. He’d never thought of how anyone would feel because he’d never counted on being caught. He loved his wife, and he didn’t want to hurt her; but he had done just that.
He went to Pamela’s house, and it was dark. He could hear her on the sofa whimpering and sniffling as he walked into the house and found her lying across her sofa, face down. “Pamela—”
“Why did you come here?”
“I’m getting a divorce.”
At this news, Pamela broke down, hot tears sliding down her cheeks into her pillows. Bryan sat down and rubbed her back in soothing circles.
“This is all my fault,” she sobbed.
“No it’s not,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms. “I did this too, baby.”
She sat in his lap, her head on his chest, crying her heart out and choking on her sorrows.
Pamela fell asleep in Bryan’s arms and woke up with a dry mouth and burning eyes from the salty tears trapped there. She pulled away and went to the bathroom to shower. When she got out, she wiped the mirror and looked at herself. Who was she? What had she done? She had helped to break a marriage.
When she got dressed, Pamela went to the front and saw Bryan still asleep. She kneeled down beside him, studying his face, her fingers hovering above the deep, bluish clot forming around his right eye while the left was purple and swollen nearly shut. She traced her fingers over the swell in his bottom lips, feeling the broken skin on his otherwise soft lips.
She shook him gently awake. “Go shower,” she whispered. “I’ll make breakfast.”
This was their aftermath. Now she had Bryan to herself, but at what price?
There was a knock at her door, and as soon as she opened it, Jada lunged for her, her fist connecting with her mouth in a powerful landing.
Pamela stumbled backwards and held her hands out in front of herself to try to hold Jada off, but Jada just came for her again. She just tried to push her off.
“You bitch! You stupid bitch! How could you fuck my father! You’re a whore, Pamela Torres!” she shouted, pulling her hair and tossing her into the wall.
Jada was stronger than Pamela thought. She dug her feet into the floor, willing her weight to hold her from the attack, trying to free herself.
“Let me go!”
“You stupid fucking whore!”
Pamela could feel hair loosening from her scalp, her eye feeling as if it was being pulled through her socket and out with her hair. With each blow to her body from being thrown into the wall, she could feel bruises forming on her ribs and sides. Her mouth went numb as her lips began to swell, being covered in the blood and snot trickling down from her nose and tears.
“And you fucked my father with me in the same apartment, too! You slut! I thought we was better than that. I fucking hate you.”
Jada slammed Pamela into her couch, causing Pamela’s body to flip over the piece of furniture and land in a heap on the floor.
Pamela just lie there, sobbing. She had just taken a brutal beating without a fight in her own defense.
“Every time I see you, I’m going to beat your ass,” Jada promised, her breathing labored, glowering at the girl she had called her best friend her whole life.
Bryan came out of Pamela’s bedroom, fully clothed, his eyes surveying the damage with furrowed brows and his mouth open. Jada glared at him. “Figures you’d be here. With your little harlot. I hope the two of you have fun. I don’t know either of you. Whores!”
Jada left the house, slamming the door so hard, the walls shook. Bryan went to Pamela, lifting her up off the floor. Her face looked exactly like she had just received the beating she received, bruises littering her cheeks and forehead.
When Pamela moved, a pain wrecked her side and Bryan went into the kitchen and got bags of frozen vegetables. “Where does it hurt the most?” he asked.
“Everywhere!” she sobbed, holding a protective hand over her abdomen.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Bryan lifted her up, and she groaned and winced, hissing. He tried to handle her carefully, doing his best to avoid the bigger bruises.
When they got to the hospital, Pamela had no broken bones, but her right wrist was sprained, and the doctor wrapped it, telling her to leave it alone. Naturally, police were called and they asked if Pamela wanted to press charges on Bryan.
“Why would I press charges on my boyfriend?” she asked, shifting her position in the bed, her breath labored from the effort it took.
“Your boyfriend?” the female officer asked.
“Yes, my boyfriend.”
The officers exchanged looks and looked back at Pamela. That she was a teenager was immediately obviously.
“How old are you, Miss Torres?”
“Eighteen.”
“How long have you been seeing your… er…boyfriend?”
“For about three months.”
“How long have you been eighteen?”
“Four months.”
“Did he do this to you?” the male officer questioned.
“No,” she said, looking between the two detectives before she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Miss Torres, it’s crucial that you are honest with us so that we can help you.”
Pamela wanted to roll her eyes. She didn’t ask for their help. She wasn’t the one who’d called them.
“His daughter did it, and I don’t want to press charges.”
She left it at that and said that she was done answering questions. She’d done nothing illegal. Immoral? Certainly. Adulterous? Sinful? Ghastly? There wasn’t a doubt in her mind. But nothing illegal had happened.
When she went home that night, she was still in a considerable amount of pain. Bryan, on the other hand, looked much better. His black eyes were better. One bruise was completely gone, and the other was getting there. “I’m sorry Jada did that,” he told Pamela as she lay in bed with an icepack over her face, stroking her hair.
“Me too.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked. She shook her head no. “You need to eat.”
“I can’t eat,” she whined. “My face hurts.”
“I’ll make you a smoothie, okay?”
She simply nodded, and Bryan went to make her a fruit smoothie. She heard a knock at her door, and she heard Bryan answer it. “Where is mi hija?” she asked him.
“In her room.”
“You and I are going to talk later.”
Carmella brushed past him and went to Pamela’s room and sat down. She moved the icepack and saw that Pamela’s eyes were both swollen. Her bottom lip was split, and her cheeks and forehead had bruises all over.
“You’re lucky you still have your teeth. You’re lucky Heather didn’t have it in her heart to harm your person and only your car. I don’t understand, Pamela. It’s one thing to have a crush on your godfather. We all have crushes on someone that much older than at us at one point or another in our lives. I just… How could you allow yourself to betray your own godmother like that? To cause her that pain? Pamela, you don’t understand how it feels to be in real true love yet.”
“You don’t know that,” Pamela mumbled.
“You think you’re in love with Bryan? Honey, sex is not love. Possession is not love. Do you think he loves you?”
“Yes,” Pamela said with conviction.
Carmella frowned and pushed her daughter’s hair back. “How would you feel if you were married for nearly three decades and then you discovered some young girl with your husband? Worse, some young girl you had raised? Think about that, Pamela. For your whole life, you’ve grown up with two sets of parents loving you and caring for you, and Heather was always there when I couldn’t be. Your re
payment was to sleep with her husband? You hurt her heart, Pamela. You hurt my heart.”
“I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Everything done in the dark will come to light.”
Carmella looked down at her wounded daughter, rubbing her hair back soothingly. She was always going to love her daughter unconditionally. That could never change. It was what unconditional meant. She couldn’t lie and say she wasn’t disappointed, though. She couldn’t even keep her silence.
“Your father came home and called you a whore and I got really upset about it, Pamela. I hated that Jonta would ever say something like that about our very own little girl. Our only baby. And then he explained to me that you were pregnant, and even then, I thought that was no reason to get all indignant and call you names and insult you the way he did. Then he started going off about Bryan, and I understood. My heart broke for Heather. When I went to see her, there was something wrong. Her husband wasn’t there anymore. She was taking down wedding pictures. She was crying, Pamela, when she told me the only thing standing between her beating your ass like the grown woman you want to be and just letting it ride was the fact that you are my daughter. But you know what, cariña, as much as I love you, if she did, she wouldn’t be wrong; and if you were in Jada’s shoes, if Jada had slept with Jonta, and it broke my heart, and our family was being torn apart, what would you do?”
“The same thing,” Pamela acknowledged. “I was wrong, Madre. I know I was wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong alone. All I can say is that I do, and I will always, love you Pamela. You’ll never stop being my baby, no matter what you do. My love is the next most powerful to God and He’s who you need to talk to.”
Pamela nodded. Carmella leaned down and kissed Pamela’s forehead. She left the room as Bryan entered it with Pamela’s smoothie. “I need to talk to you Bryan,” she said, and he made sure Pamela was okay with the smoothie before he followed Carmella.
They sat on the sofa on opposite ends, and Carmella just stared at him a long time. Her gray eyes bored into him, her face impassive as she studied the man she had called a friend for thirty-six years. The man she had known before her husband was a thought in her mind, before Heather existed in either of their worlds. The man who had been her best friend for years before either of their spouses had come into the picture.
“You held that little girl as an infant. Watched her grow up. Helped her grow up. Called her your daughter for years on end. So what changed? Your wife got a little older, and Pamela got a little curvy, and that slipped your mind, didn’t it? I’d like to really cut your dick off and force feed it to you; but everything intended for you, you’ll receive. I’m having a hard time even taking this disgusting shit in. You’re more than twice her age. She’s barely even a woman, Bryan. If Jonta was with Jada in any type of way, where would that put you? If you had put your trust in the wrong man’s hands? We trusted you, Bryan. Your wife trusted you. I won’t swear that Pamela didn’t know better, because she did. You’re both wrong; but her family isn’t the one being torn apart. She is not the one facing divorce. That girl has her whole life ahead of her. You took advantage of her crush… Now my daughter thinks she loves you. She thinks you love her; and I feel bad for my poor, oblivious, young, child because when she falls out the clouds, she’s going to bust her ass; and what are you going to do, Bryan? Marry her?”
“If she wants it. What can I say to you, Carmella? Anything I do will just be bullshit to your ears.”
“You’re damn skippy.”
“So I won’t waste my breath on it. All I can say is that I did fuck up. I betrayed a lot of trust. My heart would bleed if I was in Jonta’s shoes. Jada is eighteen now, though, and I wouldn’t be able to control what she does. Would I want to kill him? No doubt. I can’t blame him.”
“My first grandchild has a father older than I am. Ain’t that some shit.” Carmella shook her head. “I knew Pamela had a crush on you. I knew it for a few years; and if you had left her alone, it would go away and she could have been with a nice, young man. Someone with something in common with her. In twenty years, when you’re in your late sixties, retired, and living your old life, what are you going to do with a not forty-yet woman? How will your child explain to people its mother is thirty-eight and its father is sixty-eight? How will it explain that its sister is also thirty-eight? His maternal grandmother is sixty-six and his grandfather its father age? And his paternal grandparents? Forget about it. Geriatric, if not dead. That shit sounds pleasant,” she said, shaking her head.
Carmella wasn’t sure how she’d gone this long without crying for her poor child. As she spoke to this man now and looked at his face, she could feel her eyes stinging for what her daughter was losing out on behind this man. The youth that was slipping through her fingers to explore and be.
“Jonta and I really had our hearts set on seeing Pamela with Jordan. A nice kid. You know he is. So much better for her than you could ever be. What can you honestly do with Pamela? She’s thirty years your junior. You ain’t Hugh Hefner.”
“Carmella, what more can I say but that I am sorry and I fucked up? What I did, it was foul. But what can I do now but face the consequences of my actions? I can’t make Heather stay if she can never trust me again. I won’t hold her back. Do I love my wife? Enough to let her go. I got Pamela pregnant. It was stupid on my part; but I’m going to handle what needs to be handled.”
“She’s still a child, Bryan. That’s the worst part. She hasn’t fully discovered her womanhood. She hasn’t lived her life. She hasn’t done enough stupid shit. You’re her only and biggest mistake.”
With that, Carmella got up and let herself out of the house, swiping away tears. Bryan stayed on the sofa and dwelled on that. Her only and biggest mistake.
Life Now
Bryan went to work without Pamela for a week and a half until she felt better to come. She was nauseated a lot though. When they were in the office, she spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Bryan eventually started to just keep ginger on him, but Pamela had a hard time with eating the ginger, so he started giving her ginger ale. That helped a bit usually. Pamela accompanied him to meetings, trying to keep her symptoms under control.
When Marc came into the office from Brazil a week later, he smiled seductively at Pamela. She rolled her eyes. “You have nothing to hold over us, asshole. Everyone knows. So take your non-fucking ass on somewhere and learn how to lay it down. You ain’t putting that thing in me.”
Bryan had come in from getting himself a coffee and Pamela chocolate milk because she couldn’t drink her “pretty coffee” while she carried his child. The doctor told them it was okay to a certain extent, but he wasn’t having it at all.
“Hi, Marc,” he said coolly, giving the little cup to Pamela. “How was Brazil?”
“Hot.”
“That’s nice. Did you want something, son?”
“He just came to blackmail something else outta you,” Pamela informed him, rolling her eyes, flipping through her magazine. “But everyone knows already. So make him leave.”
Just looking at Marc was making her sick. His cologne was doing nothing to help, causing her stomach to turn over. She just wanted him to leave.
“She’s right,” Bryan informed him.
“Ruined all my fun.”
Marc left, and Pamela continued flipping through her magazine until she had to take a call. Now that she and Bryan lived together, she didn’t really expect a paycheck, but he still gave her one. He told her he wanted her to have her own money.
The only two people in the world who Pamela was sure didn’t hate her were Carmella and Lila, and even Carmella had been angry at her daughter. But she was still her daughter, and she didn’t shut her out. Of course, it was hard for her to look Heather in the eyes and know the part her daughter had in the demise of her marriage.
Lila tried to keep a friendship with both of her best friends, and Jada didn’t make her pick sides. It was
n’t fair to Lila. She did, however, refuse to speak to Pamela. She might beat her down again if she did so.
Pamela had once thought she might get up the nerve to go and try to speak to Heather woman-to-woman, but several fears held her back. She didn’t want to be beat up again, she didn’t want to have to look in the face of the godmother whose husband she’d taken, and she didn’t want to have to admit that she had actually done something that repugnant.
*** ***
Pamela woke up and sprinted into the bathroom while Bryan showered, sliding in her socks over the toilet and using it to stop herself, falling to her knees before expelling her stomach fluids into the bowl. “Pamela—”
Bryan could hear her heaving and he got out of the shower to try to help her, holding her hair away from her face and rubbing her back.
She got up and rinsed her mouth before she brushed her teeth and put a cold, wet cloth over her head.
“Pamela—”
“Leave me alone,” she groaned and went to lie back down, motioning for him to return to his shower.
When Bryan got out of the shower, he looked down at his lover, formerly known as his goddaughter. He stroked her cheek, and she moved his hand away. “I just want to sleep,” she said. “Please go away.”
“Do you want me to make you breakfast?”
“No.”
She turned her back on him and he went into the front room, getting the message.
As she stared at her wall, she heard a knock at her door. “Hey, Mr. Valdez,” she heard Lila. “Is Pamela here?”
“Yeah.”
Soon, Lila was sitting there beside her, leaning over to rub her friend’s arm. “Mela, are you okay, sweetie?”
“I hate being pregnant. All I do is eat, sleep, puke, cry, repeat,” she whined, holding her pillow. “I lost seven pounds.”
“It’ll get better.”
“My baby will have a sister eighteen years older than it.”
“Happens all the time.”
“And a mother the same age.”
Lila said nothing to that one. She just rubbed Pamela’s arm. “All you need to worry about is being the best mother you can be for this baby. Nothing else matters. Jada. Mrs. Valdez. Mr. Torres. Not even Mr. Valdez. Worry about what Pamela is going to do for her unborn.”