by H. H. Fowler
So much for that. You men are nothing but big talkers. You fill a girl's head with lies. I must have been giddy that night to have trusted you with my feelings.
“We had fun, girl. I miss that about us…”
Yeah, right. You sure didn’t remember that when you called me a pig in a blanket…
Several moments of silence sped by, which raised a red flag in Tayah's mind, because Phillip was never at a loss for words whenever he had control of the conversation. Her curiosity begged her to get into Phillip's mind, but she was terrified of what she might find. These days, he was too unpredictable.
“So you just gonna sit there typing with your mouth shut?” He locked his fingers together and rested them against his lips, which for him, was a sign he’d been ticked off. “Am I wastin’ my breath on a piece of rock?”
Tayah sensed a change in his mood, but against her better judgment, she stayed mute and typed away as if she’d suddenly been struck with deafness. She wasn't prepared for what came next. Phillip jumped up and snatched her Asus notebook. In horror, she watched him search for a means of destruction.
“Phillip, what are you doing? Give that back to me. All of my files are on it!”
“Phillip, what are you doing, give that back to me,” he mocked her. “You pay this stupid thing more attention than you do me.”
“Phillip, I don’t wanna play–”
“Awwh, babeeeee, don’t be a party-pooper.” He craned his neck to the left and spotted their mildew-covered water fountain he’d been promising to sanitize from the day the New Year rolled in. He turned his eyes on her again and peeled his lips back into a devilish grin. “You know, ideas cost a fortune–”
“Phillip, I’m warning you–”
“Some of them,” he continued, “are worth so much that a company would spit out twenty million smackeroos to an Urkel-looking whiz kid. Do you even care about what I do, Tayah?”
“You know I support you in everything, Phillip.”
“Oh, really? Did you ever ask your father for the money I practically begged you for?”
Tayah kept her eyes on her laptop, pleading to God that her husband would not flip and toss it in that water fountain. This was the moment she regretted not backing up her files as frequently as she should have. “I just didn’t have the time, honey. You know I’m busy planning this–”
“Lies! All you had to do is pick up the phone and call. I lost two potential investors yesterday because of you. All I needed was a few measly thousand dollars to acquire the software for my prototype.”
“Maybe it’s not too late. We can call him right now–”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Phillip kicked a chair and sent it tumbling across the patio. “You’re only concerned about your stupid job and your stupid life!”
“Phillip, you’re not being fair. Every night for the last several months, I have waited up for you, but you always found an excuse to stay away from home. What do you expect me to do? I mean, really. I volunteered to take on additional work to fill the emptiness that I feel in my life. And God knows, I’m dying to have your child, but you don’t want me to raise the issue. You don’t even want us to go and see a fertility specialist…”
Because the problem ain’t with you, darling heart. I’ve just been told I’m shooting blanks. How I’m supposed to live that down if you found out that piece of information? “Because it’s a waste of time! You’re the problem why we can’t have a child.”
Tayah swallowed hard to keep back her tears, but she was not going to let him win this one. “Phillip, that’s not necessarily true. I’ve been reading a lot on the Internet. The problem doesn’t always lie with the woman. It’s now discovered that forty percent of infertility is due to female factors and forty percent is due to male factors, the other twenty percent is…”
Read all you want, doll face, I’ve already seen a specialist. You might as well drop the bloody subject. “There’s nothing wrong with me! It’s you, Tayah, it’s you!”
“I never said there’s anything wrong with you. All I want is for us to make an appointment to–”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He tossed the laptop on the table. It landed with a hard slap before it dropped to the concrete. “You refuse to leave this crap alone…”
Tayah hadn’t heard another word after she saw what Phillip had done to her laptop. The only thing she could focus on was how to salvage her files. Rage rose from her feet and shot through her mouth. “You didn’t have to that. You really didn’t have to do that. You are so dumb and so immature!”
Phillip twisted his neck in shock. “What did you call me?”
“You’re behaving like a ten-year-old child; just because you can’t get your way. I’ve never seen a grown man act so retarded…”
It only took Phillip two jumps and he was at her throat. He careened her up against the wall, and would have choked the daylights out of her if the doorbell hadn’t rung. He released her and rushed inside to answer the doorbell. Tayah followed him, rubbing her neck to assuage the pain and burning in her windpipe.
“Mr. Paxton,” Phillip expressed with a jubilant smile. “Haven’t seen you in these parts for a while. What brings you by?”
Leroy looked like a man who’d lost all hope, but Phillip was too wired up to notice. “Where’s Tayah?” Leroy asked.
“I’m right here, daddy,” she said, sticking her head out, standing next to Phillip. “What’s going on?”
“I need to speak with you, darling,” Leroy said. “It’s concerning your mother. But if this is not a good time, I will understand.”
Phillip felt Tayah pressing her fist into his back, which seemed to indicate that if he turned her father away, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell him her husband had almost sent her packing to her grave.
“Sir, it’s not a problem,” Phillip said, keeping that glorious smile on his face. “Come in. I’ll put some cups in the microwave to make some tea.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Mother, let me in. Please!”
“Over my dead body! Two times in one week is enough. Go home to that man,” Delores called back.
Michelle blinked away the tears that wanted to drop. “Mother! Please! Open the door.”
“For what? I don’t wanna hear you complainin’. You females of this generation are too weak. You can’t stand pressure. You women run away from everything. No backbone. Stand up and fight for what’s yours.”
“I don’t want to spend the night. I just need someone to talk to.”
“No! Talk to Jesus,” Delores advised.
“Mother! Mother?”
Michelle felt as if her world was coming apart. How could her own mother reject her in a time when she needed her most? She knew she was not as strong as her mother was. Delores had grown up in a time when women kept their homes together with an iron fist. Nothing shook them away from their marriage vows. They had ambition and they had staying power. Michelle would be the first to admit, she didn’t think she could have survived that era. Leaning against her mother’s front door, she closed her eyes, and allowed the tears to spoil her makeup.
Abraham got out of the Escalade and left it in the street, not liking the scene unfolding in front of him. He’d had a premonition that this situation would end in tragedy if Leroy didn’t man up and get rid of Shaniece. That woman would not let up until she destroyed the church and sent the pastor’s family scurrying in confusion. He took Michelle by the arm and pulled her away from the front door. Though he was only forty years old, holding Michelle in his arms made him feel as if he were her father.
“Abraham, I’m so tired,” she kept repeating, trembling in the breeze as it picked up strands of her thick curls. “I don’t know what else to do, I just don’t know…”
“Shhhh, you don’t have to think about that now,” he told her. “Let’s get you out of this breeze.”
“Don’t take me back to that house…”
“I’ll do whatever you want,”
he whispered, as he gently patted the center of her back. “Leroy is a fool to ignore how this is affecting you.”
Michelle rose up from Abraham’s chest and managed a tight smile. “I’ve never heard you call my husband a fool before.”
“Well, Lady Paxton, there’s many things you haven’t heard me say,” he said, returning her smile. “I was simply speaking the truth.”
6:31 p.m. – Brandon, Florida
“Is that everything?” Shaniece asked Ellie, who was holding her only suitcase.
Ellie gave her bedroom one last look. “I have all that I need,” she said. “I'm not gonna miss this place.”
“What about ‘lil man's things?” Shaniece asked, as she pulled a Tampa Bay Buccaneer's cap over her nephew's head.
“They're in my suitcase. We're packed and ready to go.”
“You sure you wanna go through with this, Ellie? This is it. No turning back.”
“As long as we are with you, we'll be fine,” she said, as she shut off the lights in the room, a room that was filled with many dark memories. “You are a mother to me, Shanny. Both to me and my son.”
Shaniece swiped her tongue over her teeth, biting back her intolerance. She couldn't stand Ellie calling her Shanny, but she didn't know how to tell her about it. Her sister meant well, and possessed a heart of gold, but had a problem understanding simple logic. She was the type one would call a 'hopeless romantic', a very delicate and trusting soul indeed. Shaniece was convinced those traits drew all sorts of men to Ellie, who took advantage of her body and her mind. And her sister was too naïve to realize the damage being done to her. She was sure if she hadn't come home early that night, Leroy would have gotten away with raping her sister. She remembered that disgusting look on his face when he realized he'd been caught…
“ELLIE!” Shaniece had screamed when she saw them. They were so sexually taken with each other that they hadn’t heard her when she cracked open Ellie’s bedroom door – something she’d done every night after the death of their mother. Horrified, Leroy jumped up, and scrambled for his clothes. He was so shaken up that he’d tripped and fallen on his face.
“How could you do this to her, you sick pervert?” Shaniece ran over to him and plunged her foot into his ribs. “She’s only fifteen! You better believe that I will have your tail arrested for rape!”
Ellie’s heart-shaped face was covered in tears. She draped herself over Leroy, trying to protect him from her sister’s fury. “Stop it, Shanny, stop it! I love him! He didn’t do anything to me! I wanted it. I wanted it–”
“Girl, shut your mouth!” She yanked Ellie by her arm and swung her naked body across the room.
Ribs aching like mad, Leroy had managed to push his legs through his pants. He grabbed the rest of his belongings and made his escape while Shaniece dealt with her sister. But the distraction was short-lived.
“Oh no, you’re not getting away that easy!” She spun on her heels and rocketed after him.
Leroy burst through the front door and bolted down the path toward his ‘getaway’ car. Feeling as if she was losing ground, she called out to her ‘gang banging’ neighbors, who immediately responded to her alarm. She looked on as the two young thugs, whom she’d helped get their GEDs, sprinted behind Leroy with their pistols held in the air.
“Bring his tail back here to me!”
That image of Leroy in bed with her baby sister was as fresh in Shaniece’s head as it’d been five years earlier. It was the fuel that drove her vendetta against the Paxton family. Ellie had prevented her from pressing charges, but she would not allow anything to prevent her from flying on easy street. She and her family needed money and Leroy had lots of it. She never dreamt things would have worked out in her favor the way they did. She’d thought Leroy was dead, but several days down the road, she found out he was recuperating in a Brandon hospital. She vowed to find a way to extract revenge.
She frightened Ellie into telling her everything that had gone down, from how they first met to how he’d manipulated her to have sex with him. Ellie told her they’d communicated on the Internet for months and that he was a very important man (Leroy had left out that part of him being a pastor), who held an elite position in the community. Obviously taken with this man, Ellie arranged the set up. But Ellie didn’t expect her sister to return home early that night, as Shaniece’s second class in Journalism had been cancelled.
Ellie had told Leroy she was eighteen and that she lived alone. Back then, Ellie could have passed for eighteen, with her big breasts and curvy form, but Shaniece believed Ellie only said that in an attempt to protect a man she barely knew. That alone piqued her curiosity. Why was Ellie so smitten with Leroy? And why was she so determined to be with him?
For weeks, Shaniece kept an assiduous eye on Leroy’s progress, learning about him bit by bit. She discovered that he had a wife, who was at his side at every waking moment. She learned that he was the pastor of a fast-growing church in Tampa that was undergoing a transitional change in their leadership. The man even had bodyguards. That spelt money. Ellie had been accurate in her description of Leroy Paxton. That’s when the idea smacked Shaniece upside the head. With her natural ability to command the English language, both in written and oral expression, and after enrolling in a six-week Bible course, she convinced herself she was capable of stabilizing a congregation in mourning over their wounded pastor.
“Auntie Shanny! Look!” Her nephew's squeaky voice jerked her back to reality. They were ten minutes into their commute back to Tampa.
“What is it, honey?”
“The cows! Look at them!”
Ellie rubbed his head, beaming at his excitement. “This is the first time he's really seen them this close,” she said.
“Oh really?” Shaniece raised her brows in surprise. “Well, he's gonna have a fit when we take him to Busch Gardens. That place is packed with animals. Lions, tigers, elephants, you name it, they've got it. You’ll see, life will be different.”
Life would certainly be different, Shaniece thought. Ellie hadn’t any idea what she was getting herself into, and if she knew the real reason why Shaniece was bringing her to Tampa, she would crop out from heart failure.
“Thank you, Shanny,” Ellie said, her eyes twinkling with appreciation. “We could always depend on you.”
Don’t thank me just yet, little girl. I hope you have the guts to face the music. “Of course, Ellie. I told you that I would take care of you two. You haven’t any idea of all the fun that we’ll have together.”
“I love you, Shanny. I really do.”
Shaniece cringed. Her sister insisted on calling her by that silly name. She must find a way to tell her about it. “I love you too, Ellie,” she said, and then smiled at her nephew. “I love you too, buddy. A whole new life awaits you in Tampa.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tayah awoke with a throbbing headache, which pained her so badly that she was tempted to call Ian and tell him that she couldn’t make it to the MLK Leadership Breakfast that morning. She sat up in bed, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She’d spent the first half of the evening fighting with Phillip and the other half comforting her father, the two men who were, at the moment, treating their wives like pieces of strap meat.
She adored her father, but she didn’t have the time, or the patience, to work on both of their marital relationships. The least that she could do was talk to her mother, which she had been doing, but it seemed as if her mother had a problem with being aggressive. She literally ran away from situations that appeared more powerful than the fight within her. With that mentality, Tayah thought, she didn’t expect her mother to ever get what she wanted. Yet, she wondered, as she climbed out of the bed and pushed her feet into her bedroom slippers, how could she separate her problems from her parents’ problems, when everything seemed to have meshed into one huge burden? It was not easy to neglect the pain of her loved ones.
The surrounding silence told her that Phillip had long gone, even though i
t was only six in the morning. He was sending her a clear message and she didn’t like it one bit. If you don’t want to be with me, Phillip, why the heck don’t you give me my walking papers? I didn’t leave my daddy’s house to be subjected to this foolishness.
Tayah was a discombobulated mess. She couldn't explain what was going on with her life, and not being able to do that upset her. She didn't remember her life being this complicated before she married Phillip. As matter of fact, most of her problems started after she married Phillip. And she couldn't help but wonder if she'd been in her right mind when she accepted his engagement ring…
“Tonight marks a year since we decided to see each other exclusively,” he'd said. They were dining at CK's, one of Tampa's finest restaurants. It had a revolving, 360 degree panoramic view of Tampa Bay, accentuated by nightly sunsets over clear blue waters. “How do you think we're doing after the first year?”
She'd looked into his eyes, dazed by the champagne and smitten by the picturesque view. “It went by so quickly,” she'd told him. “And I'll be honest. I didn't think we stood a chance, because we are so different. You love the night life and dancing and having a good time. I'm a home body, and love my quiet time. Truthfully, I'm an extremely boring person.”
He grinned, licking those juicy pink lips as she loved to see him do. “You're not boring. You're disciplined, but not boring. I can see myself spending the rest of my life with a woman like you.”
“Oh really?”
“You don't believe me?”
“It's only been a year–”
“Which is enough time for me to know that I love you and I would be honored to have you as my wife. You put balance in my steps and I don't know if I would ever feel this secure with another woman.”