Gianna laughed. “I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. Your husband used to always tell me I had Ugly Nigga Syndrome.”
Gianna giggled. “He’s so rude.”
Tremaine laughed along with her. Neither seemed to realize she talked about him in the present tense. “He wasn’t wrong, though,” he said. “I could show you pictures from when I was a youngbuck. I had braces, acne, I was tall and skinny, and my hairline stayed jacked up.”
“But look at you now.” Stop flirting! she thought to herself.
“I mean, yeah. Braces are off. I bulked up in the gym. But I don’t know...it’s hard to shake your past. All those old thoughts.” He shook his head. “You know what I mean? You can’t escape what came before. Past is prologue.”
“Shakespeare.”
He pointed at her. “Right. I kinda gave up. Justin would tell me to work on my mouthpiece. He was always real good at that. Which you know. He talked you into marrying him.” They laughed.
“So you’re scared to talk to women now? Even with all that?” she asked, gesturing toward his body.
“Old habits die hard, Gianna.”
“You didn’t seem to have any issues at my wedding,” she said playfully.
“You had to bring that up, didn’t you?” He took a long drink of his beer and she tried to picture him, Simone, and Keesa. Now that was a sex tape she would watch. She shook her head at the voice inside of her that made that lewd comment.
He set his beer on the table. “I definitely want a family so I’mma have to settle down eventually.”
“Why eventually, and not right now? You’re knocking on 35 which is just up the road from 40.”
“I remember when you and Justin got married. I knew you were a good woman. He chose right. I feel like...if I could find a woman like that for myself then I’d marry her in a second.”
Gianna nodded, her mind wandering. It sounded like a compliment but she didn’t think it was appropriate to thank him. She didn’t want to call attention to it. Instead, she said nothing.
“But anyway...” he said, trailing off into an awkward silence.
“Let me ask you something else,” she said.
“Uh oh.”
“It’s not about you this time.”
“Alright, go.”
“Did Justin ever cheat on me?”
Tremaine looked surprised and she wondered if he was surprised because she thought it or surprised that she knew about it. “Where did that come from?”
“Just answer the question.”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me about it.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Come on, Gianna.”
“Guys cover for each other all the time.”
“Yeah but Justin is gone. I don’t have any reason to lie about it.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
“Where is this coming from?”
She stared at the table and debated. Might as well. “Okay, promise me you won’t look at me differently after I tell you this.”
“Uh, okay. I promise.”
“I cheated on Justin.”
She expected him to get mad, or at least look shocked, but he simply raised his eyebrows. “Wow.”
“Did he know?”
He shook his head. “Nah. He definitely didn’t know.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just...he would have said something to me. I know that for a fact.”
Gianna sighed and stared at her empty plate. “I feel like shit.”
“Wait, so you remember cheating?”
“I do now, yeah.”
Tremaine looked confused. “Well...who was it?”
“One of my coworkers.”
He finally reacted. His face was a mask of pure shock. “Fuck.” He shook his head. “How long ago was this?”
“Some time last year. That’s the stalker the detective was referring to. Although at this point, I’m not sure that’s even true.”
“I’m confused.”
“Yeah, me too. What if this is my fault? What if I got Justin killed behind my bullshit?”
“What’s the deal with the stalker? He still bothering you?”
“No, but I’ll still see him once I start back at work. The restraining order prevents him from approaching me so I’m not worried about it. I’m more concerned about what he’s gonna tell the police about me.”
“Shit.” Tremaine stroked his goatee absentmindedly. “Maybe you need to get out in front of that.”
“And tell them I cheated? I can’t do that.” Because as soon as she did, their focus would shift completely onto her, and she couldn’t afford that. The longer they looked at her, the longer her attacker would be free.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“SO WHAT ARE WE DISCUSSING today?” Dr. Ferris asked, her glasses perched precariously at the edge of her nose. The frames were tortoiseshell and very fashionable. The old broad had some style about her. Gianna liked that.
“I don’t know. It’s been a shitty week.”
“What happened?”
“Just more mess from my past. I don’t wanna talk about it. Not yet.”
“Okay, why don’t you tell me what you do want to discuss?”
Gianna crossed her arms. “I was thinking about what you said to me. The thing about the unreliable narrators. I wonder if I wasn’t doing that in my own life.”
“In what way?”
Gianna stared out the window at the tiny sliver of sky and imagined herself squeezing through the brick to get to freedom. “My marriage. People thought we were happy. They called us the Huxtables. But I don’t know if we were happy. I cheated and lied.”
“Do you remember being happy?”
“Not really. Kaya’s birth was a happy time. My wedding day was happy. I was happy when we bought our house. But beyond those moments when anybody would be happy, I just don’t know. And that bothers me.”
“Why?”
“Because Justin was a good man. I should have been happy. I chose well.”
“What was so good about him?”
“He was really smart, but not in a nerdy way. And he was good on paper.”
“Good on paper?”
“You know. Degree, good job, loved his mama, et cetera. And I knew he would be a good provider. He was working on a degree in business when I met him. And he was ambitious.”
“What made you fall in love with him?”
Gianna stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. He was just...he was a good man. Everybody said so.” She was quiet for a moment. “This might sound crazy but I think I was a little jealous of him.”
“Jealous? Why would you be jealous?”
“Because everybody kept telling me how lucky I was, and what a good man he was. At first, it was cool because yeah, he was a good guy. But eventually, I realized nobody was saying that about me.”
Dr. Ferris was nodding along as Gianna spoke. “You felt inferior,” she said.
Gianna shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just couldn’t understand why nobody saw any good in me.” Gianna turned her head to stare out of the window. “Maybe I wasn’t good and they saw it.” She continued to stare at the sliver, which was especially bright today. “But anyway, Justin treated me well. I guess you could say he spoiled me.”
“I see. Was he similar to other guys you dated?”
“Kind of. I know they say black women only want Tupac in a business suit but I was never into that. I’ve always dated straight-laced guys who like to spoil me.” Gianna laughed. “Even in junior high school, the guys knew they had to come correct. My grandmother taught me that.”
“Was your father a good provider?”
Gianna snickered. “Um, no. He never paid a dime of child support. But he would occasionally send me money for important things.”
“That’s good. So he took it upon himself to—”
“No, let me stop you right there. My mom would tell me to call him. Her
exact words were always ‘ask your daddy for it.’ Sometimes he would say he didn’t have it but most of the time he came through. But no, he never, ever took anything upon himself.”
“Did you two talk at other times or only when you needed money?”
“Now that you mention it, not really. I called him all the time at first but after a while, I could tell he didn’t wanna be bothered. And when we did talk, he never initiated the calls.”
“Was that painful for you?”
Gianna took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I never thought about it, but yes. It hurt my feelings.” Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. “I don’t like to think about it.”
“I understand.”
“So is something wrong with me? I mean there are thousands of women in Atlanta who would kill to find a good man and I had one and still found a way to be unhappy.”
“Frankly, Gianna, I’m concerned about the way you talk about the men in your life. The way you talk about men in general.”
“Why?”
Dr. Ferris pushed her glasses up her nose. “It just seems to me that all of your relationships with men are transactional. What you describe is one-sided. Very pragmatic, but not necessarily loving. Or reciprocal.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“I think a better question would be: were you fulfilled in these relationships? Did you feel like an equal partner or a dependent?”
Gianna frowned. “Dependent is a strong word. I don’t see anything wrong with making sure that when I share my time, I’m getting something in return.”
“And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Boundaries are important, especially for women because we’re often afraid to create them for fear of losing out on...whatever the thing is. But I’m concerned because what I’m hearing from you is you placing boundaries on yourself as well, limiting the amount of yourself you’re willing to give.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what any of this has to do with what happened. Aren’t we supposed to be trying to recover my memories?”
“Well...yes.”
“So what does this have to do with that?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
Gianna was quiet. She tried to make the connection in her mind but it wasn’t there.
Dr. Ferris continued. “You mentioned your grandmother a minute ago. Would you say she played an integral part in how you view and relate to men?”
“Oh, definitely.” Despite the seriousness of the moment, Gianna couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s an odd duck. Four husbands and a failed engagement.”
“And how did that affect you?”
Gianna wasn’t sure. What she did know for certain is that Emily Dash never had a single problem getting or keeping a man. The only reason she wasn’t married now was because, according to her, “after a certain age, you don’t become a wife, you become a nurse.”
Nobody knew much about Emmy’s first husband, Rodney. The story Emmy told was a bit of a black Scarlett O’Hara tale. Like most black girls in the South in the early 1950s, the only work a teenage Emmy could secure was cleaning in white folks’ homes. She hated every second of it, she’d told Gianna, “and as God as my witness, I was never cleaning up after another white person again.”
Gianna would never forget the time she was going through her mother’s boxes—after Beverly left her the second time—and found an old faded photo of Emmy as a young woman, wearing a white uniform, sitting next to a white baby. Emmy flew into a rage and threw that picture in the fire. They never spoke of it again. Years later, Beverly told Gianna that Emmy was deeply ashamed and hated to be reminded of her past as a domestic.
She met Rodney, got married, and still struggled. She was 17 and he was only 20, and both had less than a high school education. She didn’t have to clean up after white folks anymore but she still had to work. She got sick of the scraping and scrounging for every single dollar just to keep the lights on. She got pregnant, just once, and nearly died getting an abortion. She told Gianna that tale when she was in junior high school.
Emmy’s second husband, Dalejohn Terry, was Gianna’s grandfather. He died long before Gianna was born, and while Emmy and Beverly didn’t agree on much, there was no argument about Dale. They both described him as a good man. A stand-up man. When she was little, Gianna would stare at his picture, the one clear picture that existed. Even in a photo, goodness radiated off of him. He towered above Emmy and their kids with a proud smile on his face like he had nary a care in the world other than making sure they were happy. Emmy gave him five children, Beverly being the oldest.
Life with Dalejohn was infinitely better. Not because he was wealthy, but because he was loyal to his family and devoted to making a good life for them. That would have been a hard row to hoe for a black man in the Jim Crow South but Dalejohn clawed his way out of the fields and secured a job as a Pullman porter, a respectable and middle-class profession for a black man. In the picture, the family stood in front of what would now be classified as a row house, but they were regal, proud, and beautiful in their suits and dresses. Uncle Anthony even wore a little top hat. Black excellence.
After Dalejohn died, Emmy remarried quickly to Alfred Selby, with whom she had three more children. Emmy seemed to love being pregnant and having babies. “Don’t ever get your tubes tied,” she’d told Gianna. “If something happens to your husband, you might need to give your new husband some babies.” She certainly held to that mantra in her own life.
Alfred died of a mysterious illness and Gianna had never been given a straight answer on that. She didn’t press it.
Randall Dash was Emmy’s fourth and final husband. “We were ‘black folks rich,’” Emmy had said. They were too old for children of their own but Randall treated Emmy’s children like his own, even putting them in his will. He passed when Gianna was about ten years old, and that death had been a bit questionable as well. His children from a previous marriage contested the will and fought hard to keep Emmy and her kids from getting a dime. In the end, the judge upheld Alfred’s final wishes and Emmy walked away with an untold amount of money.
Gianna smiled at the memories. “I think maybe I got the transactional thing from her. Other than my granddaddy, I don’t think she loved her husbands. She married them when she needed to, not because she wanted to.”
“But you do think she loved your grandfather.”
“I know she did. When she talks about him, it’s just...different.”
“Who in your life do you talk about in that way?”
It was quite a question. She didn’t have an answer. In fact, she ate up a good five minutes of her therapy time trying to come up with one. Finally, it came to her. “My grandmother. My daughter.”
“What about your mother?”
Gianna shook her head.
“What do you think you learned from your mother about love??”
“Nothing.” It was a knee-jerk response, as easy and rote to say as “thank you” when someone pays a courtesy. It seemed to surprise Dr. Ferris. “Actually, no. My mother taught me how horrible it is to put a man before your children.”
Dr. Ferris seemed to want to say more, but their time was up. Gianna stuck a mental pin in that thought and decided to bring it up next time. She wanted to know what Dr. Ferris had to say about her mother’s antics.
“Gianna, let me leave you with this: your grandmother wasn’t wrong, necessarily, as long as you aren’t operating in the extremes. You absolutely should prioritize your practical needs when choosing a partner. However, you should also not be afraid to really let yourself feel and love. I want you to sit with that and come back next time with some insight.”
Gianna nodded. That should be easy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE POLICE CALLED AGAIN the next morning. Debreaux called, to be specific. They needed to speak to Gianna immediately. They requested that she meet them at the office—their turf—so she knew it was serious. She wore her f
igure-hugging blue skirt suit and black flats. Sexy, but about her business.
“How are you feeling today?” Williams asked, just as he always did.
“Same as the last time I was here.”
His eyes drifted upward. “Your hair looks nice.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. It came to our attention that you recently spent a day at the beauty salon getting your hair done.”
Gianna rolled her eyes. “Came to your attention or was brought to your attention?”
“It doesn’t matter. Answer the question, please.”
She was seeing red. “Well first off, you didn’t ask me a question. And second, have you ever even dated a black woman?”
“I’m married to one.” He held up his left hand and flashed his ring.
“Huh. I never would have guessed.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Why is that?”
“Because you’re sitting up in here acting brand new about me getting my hair braided. Braided. It’s not like I went to the spa. I’m still grieving over my dead husband and trying to take care of my daughter. The last thing I wanna be thinking about is doing my damn hair. And since you’re married to a black woman, I think that’s something you should already know.”
Williams’ expression softened. “It wasn’t an accusation. Just an observation.”
“Yeah, I bet. Let me guess who observed it: my in-laws.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve explained it, let’s move on.”
“Yeah, let’s. This is some bullshit.”
“Hey!” he yelled, pointing his finger at her. “You watch your tone when you’re talking to me. I’m just here trying to do my fucking job. I don’t know how you get down at home but you ain’t running shit in here.”
Gianna sighed and crossed her arms. “Sorry,” she retorted, not meaning it even a little bit.
Debreaux looked at Gianna, then Williams. “Alright, okay. Let’s not get upset. We’re not accusing you, Gianna. And as a black woman, I definitely understand.”
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