Her So Called Husband

by Chenell Parker

  My phone vibrated in my hand shaking me from my troubles. Keanna was calling me, probably with more drama. I answered trying not to sound as bad as I felt.

  “Hello,” I said cheerfully.

  “Girl what’s up with y’all over there? I just saw your husband outside the club talking to Eric and he looked pissed. Y’all must be into it again,” Keanna said.

  “Yep. When you told me you saw him and ol’ girl getting out the car at Copeland’s I went around there and waited for them to come out and followed them.”

  I told Keanna everything that took place starting at the gas station up until when Dre choked me and left. As usual, she always made me feel worse.

  “Girl, you crazy. He’s probably going right to Alexus. You know that’s where he goes every time you make him mad.”

  I really didn’t need to hear that but she was probably right. There was nothing I could do about it. Even though I knew where the condo was, I didn’t know the exact one she lived in. I followed him there before but security wouldn’t let me in without an exact location. I still couldn’t believe he even bought the bitch a condo. And to make matters worse, it was in an expensive area on St. Charles Avenue in uptown New Orleans. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about Dre anymore so I quickly changed the subject.

  “So when are we going shopping for the barbecue?” I asked. Dre’s dad was on his way to a halfway house in New Orleans in two weeks so Keanna and I were planning a barbecue at my house to welcome him home. I wanted everything to be perfect. I had met Dre’s dad before, but just like his son, he was in and out of prison most of the time so we never really got a chance to bond.

  “I guess we can start getting the decorations tomorrow. I know Deanna and Erica might want come too. They’re so happy that their daddy is finally coming home,” Keanna replied. Deanna and Erica were Dre’s sisters and my girls. Most of the time when I went clubbing they were right there with me. They hated that bitch Alexus just as much as I did.

  “So Dre cool with it being at y’all house? Didn’t he say he wanted to do it at a park?” Keanna asked me.

  “Girl, we’re doing it right here. He probably just wants it at the park so that ho can come. He gon’ get that bitch hurt one day!” I yelled. Keanna laughed.

  “That’s his heart right there. You know he’s not letting you get too close to that girl. He acts like she’s fine china or something.” This was the only reason I hated talking to Keanna sometimes. I felt like she would sometimes rub Dre’s infidelity in my face. She was always making comments about how much he loved Alexus or what he did for her. Things I really didn’t want or need to hear. I was no longer in the mood to talk so I decided to wrap up our conversation.

  “Well girl it’s late and I’m tired as hell. I guess we’ll talk later. Call me when you wake up so we can go to Party City to look at some decorations.”

  “Alright then. I’ll let my cousins know just in case they want to tag along,” she said before disconnecting the call. Keanna was my girl, but sometimes I found myself questioning whose side she was really on. It was like she took pleasure in my pain. She can side with the enemy if she wants to, but family or not she can get it too. As of now, Alexus was at the top of my list. She was playing a grown woman’s game and I was determined to make sure she lost. I refuse to lose my husband to her or anybody else.

  Chapter 4: KEANNA

  I hate Cherika’s trifling ass. She walks around talking like she is the perfect wife and mother. I have so much dirt on her; I could start my own desert. She is a grimy bitch and I have the proof. Cherika is so in love withDre until it was ridiculous. Dre has cheated on her so many times, it’s hard to keep track. Most of the time, I hooked him up with females I knew.

  I was the one who hooked him up with Alexus at my graduation party. I figured it would be just like any other time. He would wine and dine her, get some pussy and keep it moving once Cherika found out. He fooled me this time. Hell, he fooled everybody else too. He actually fell head over heels in love with the girl. It’s almost like he’s obsessed with her. He has to know where she is and who she’s with every minute of the day. I only wanted to piss Cherika off, but this was even better. I am happy to do anything that causes her pain.

  Cherika isn’t used to competition. Whenever Dre cheats, he always makes his way back home. The side chick would be a distant memory until the next one came along. Cherika prides herself on being the wife. It’s like she doesn’t care if Dre cheats. She always says that once Dre gets his nut, he doesn’t want them anymore. That was before Alexus came into the picture.

  Alexus, her best friend Jada, and I graduated from the same high school. We used to hang out a lot and I really liked her in the beginning. That all changed after a while. Alexus is spoiled. She loves to shop and my cousin makes sure she stayed fly. Alexus is the youngest of six, so she always has to have her way. And most of the time she gets it. Especially from Dre’s sprung ass.

  I hate going places with her since men seems to be drawn to her like a magnet. I even caught my man Troy looking at her with lustful eyes. That was one line she better not ever cross. I have been with Troy since I was fifteen years old and now I’m twenty-two. He is my first love. He is my first everything. He is all I’ve known for the past seven years and I can’t picture my life without him in it. In the beginning, things were really good. My man was making money with Dre while I worked at a nursing home from two to ten. We weren’t hood rich, but we lived a comfortable life. Our bank account was straight so that was good enough for me.

  I knew that Troy was most likely doing me like Dre was doing Cherika. I just couldn’t prove it. He started coming in late at night, leaving early in the morning and the phone would ring non-stop. He always claimed it was business, but I knew better. My intuition told me it was another woman. I also noticed for some strange reason, he started feeling some kind of way about Dre.

  He started saying things that made me think he was jealous of my cousin. Anytime Dre bought something new, he would complain about him being too flashy. If he and Alexus came over to our house, Troy would say how wrong Dre was for cheating on his wife. He just always had something negative to say. Whenever I checked him about it, we would always end up fighting.

  I guess Dre felt it too because he eventually backed away from him. He no longer wanted to do business with Troy and we started hurting financially because of it. I knew that Troy was wrong, but I was upset with Dre. I was his cousin so he should have helped my man out on the strength of that alone. I was ready to crawl back to Dre and beg for his help when the unthinkable happened; Dre went back to jail.

  Things seemed to get worse for us after that. Troy started selling weed with some white boys that he was hanging with. Even still, he never had any money. I was stuck paying all the bills and we were barely making it. He would stay out for days at a time. Money was missing from our savings and even my jewelry started disappearing. My family told me they thought he was using drugs. I just didn’t want to believe it.

  I toldErica about everything that was happening and she came up with a great idea. She helped me to install mini cameras throughout my house so that I could see everything for myself. The cameras recorded everything I missed while I was at work. The first week, I was too scared to view the tapes. I thought I would be better off not knowing. I knew that I wasn’t going to leave Troy no matter what the tapes revealed. I lied wheneverErica asked me about it. I always told her that I didn’t find anything unusual. The truth was that I never even looked.

  That was until Troy disappeared on me for two days. No phone calls or nothing. I called every hospital and prison in the New Orleans area, but still came up empty. I decided then and there that I owed it to myself to know what he was up to.

  My hands trembled as I inserted the disc into the computer. I pressed play and instantly regretted the decision I made. My house was turned into a drug-infested whorehouse when I went to work. I cried through two hours of heartbreaking surveillance of my boyfriend
and none other than my cousin’s wife, Cherika doing things that were only seen in a porno. They were like dogs in heat as they had sex in my bed, sofa, and kitchen counters. The bitch had the nerve to walk around my house naked like she paid rent there. The way he looked at her was the way I once looked at him, with love.

  The worst part of it all was the amount of drugs they consumed together. So much white power went up their noses; it was a miracle that nobody overdosed. I had my suspicions about Troy using drugs, but I couldn’t believe Cherika was using too. She never lost weight and her appearance never changed. They had pulled the wool over my eyes, but this tape made it all clear.

  It all made sense to me now. The way Troy defended her when she and Dre got into arguments, the sudden change in his attitude towards my cousin all made sense now. He was fucking the man’s wife. In my house, in my bed. All while she played the role of a faithful, loving wife, she was cheating too. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about what I found. I held everything in, but I vowed to make Cherika’s life a living hell. I couldn’t believe that she could consider herself my friend after all of that. I even suspected her youngest son might be Troy’s.

  He didn’t look anything like Dre or Cherika, but he bared a strong resemblance to my boyfriend’s nephews. Troy’s sister, Tara had two sons that looked exactly like Cherika’s youngest son. Not only that, the tapes showed that they were intimate up until the day before Dre was released from jail. I never saw them use protection once, so there was a strong possibility that Troy was the father of Cherika’s son Drew.

  Dre had doubts from day one and I was determined to bring the truth to light. I wanted Cherika to feel the pain that she inflicted on me and much more. Losing Dre was her greatest fear. He was her weakness. I was about to make that fear a reality. I hated Troy just as much. His day was coming sooner than he thought. I was hoping that Dre would act as his punisher once everything was revealed.

  I pulled up in my driveway after a night of clubbing and stared at the package in my hands. I stopped at a twenty-four hour Walgreens and purchased a home DNA kit. I don’t know when or how I was going to do it, but I was going to get the job done. Getting a swab of Troy would be easy. He stayed high so much, he wouldn’t feel a thing. Getting to baby Drew was going to be the challenge. He wasn’t old enough to know what was going on, but if the other kids saw, they would rat me out. I was sure of that. I would have to sit down and figure everything out later. I dropped the package in my purse as I prepared to exit my car. It was time for me to put my plan into action. It was time for me to inflict pain on others as they had done to me.

  I dreaded going inside because I never knew what to expect. Troy was sweet and loving one minute and beating my ass the next. I guess the drugs made him that way. When I walked in the house, I didn’t see Troy in his usual place on the sofa. I prayed that he was already sleeping so I didn’t have deal with him tonight. Living with him was becoming unbearable. I walked in our bedroom, turned on the light and the fireworks started. Troy jumped in my face screaming,

  “Bitch, where you been? And why you out there with that short ass dress on?”

  “I told you earlier I was going out with some of my co-workers. What’s the problem?” I replied with attitude.

  “Bitch, who you hollering at? You must want me to beat your ass in here!”

  I refused to respond. I wasn’t going to give him any reason to put his hands on me. I started taking off my jewelry, when Troy came up behind me and started kissing the back of my neck. I flinched at his touch thinking he was going to hit me. It was worse than I thought. He wanted sex.

  Troy and I weren’t intimate very often and I hated the times that we were. When he was high, it would last forever. Other than that, it was over in five minutes. He was always rough with me and I never enjoyed it. he didn’t appear to be high Tonight so I was looking forward to a quickie. I guess he thought kissing my neck was foreplay, but that was worse than the sex. His saliva dripped down my back and made my skin crawl. He raised my dress up to my waist, pulled my underwear to the side, and forcefully entered me from behind. He never bothered to see if I was wet, which I wasn’t.

  “Shit,” he grunted while power driving himself into me. I held on to the dresser waiting for him to be done with it.

  “You like that baby?” Troy asked me. I knew from past experiences to tell him what he wanted to hear, so I did.

  “Ooh yes daddy. I love it. Fuck this pussy!” I moaned. My fake screams of pleasure must have motivated him as he went deeper and harder. I tried to speed up the process as I threw my ass back at him just as fast. I guess my plan worked because two minutes later he pulled out and shot cum all over the back of my dress. I was disgusted. I wanted nothing more than a hot shower and my bed. I needed time to think of a master plan.

  “Come take a shower with me,” Troy said while entering the bathroom. This was not what I had planned. I undressed and went to join him in the shower where he brutalized my pussy for the second time that night. I replayed the tapes of him and Cherika in my head over and over again. It was crazy how he wanted to fuck me, but make love to another man’s wife.

  I climbed in bed once our sex session in the shower was over, but sleep was nowhere on my mind. Troy came out only to grab his “feel good” box from under the bed. That was the name I had for the cigar box he kept his drugs in. I knew he couldn’t go a night without it. This would be the perfect time for me to get the sample I needed. Troy would sometimes sleep for twelve hours straight. I only needed thirty seconds to do the swab. I just had to make sure it was really lights out before I made a move.

  I lay in bed with my eyes closed waiting for the right time to move. Troy had been out of the bathroom for over an hour. I knew he was in the living room because I heard the TV. I got up slowly and made my way down the hall to the living room. Troy was sprawled out on his back with his mouth hanging open.

  I made a mad dash to my bedroom to get the DNA package from my purse. I opened the box with shaky hands and got the items that I needed. As I crept back into the living room, I was careful not to make a sound. Suddenly Troy coughed, causing me to drop to my knees. My heart was beating out of my chest. I stayed on the floor silently praying that he didn’t wake up. After about ten minutes of quiet, I peeked up from my crouching position to see Troy in the same position as before. It was now or never. I had to move fast before I lost my nerve.

  I crawled over to where he was and pulled out the cotton swab. I gently swabbed inside his mouth and cheek area while counting to thirty in my head. When I was done, I raced backed to my room and sealed the swab in the bag that was provided. I wrote in the required information and secured everything in my purse once again. I was relieved that I had at least got one part of it over with. I just needed to figure out a way to get the other swab. I was hooking up with Cherika later in the day. I was hoping to get her son alone for at least a minute.

  I went to sleep with a smile on my face. I knew that it was only a matter of time before Cherika’s world came crashing down.

  Chapter 5:ALEXUS

  I braced my hands on the headboard of our California king sized bed as I rotated my hips to the sensation Dre was giving me. I straddled his face and moaned in pleasure while he licked my love box expertly. Dre held my hips firmly in place to keep me from running away from his tongue-lashing. My eyes rolled back in my head as I released and fell over on my side, unable to sit upright any longer.

  “I know you didn’t tap out on me,” Dre laughed as I scooted away from him.

  Dre and I had been holed up in our condo for the last two days sexing each other like rabbits. I was drained. I needed to get out of the house and today was the day. I felt like I was suffocating. Jada and I made plans to hit up the mall, but I had yet to run it by Dre. He seemed to always have a problem whenever I went somewhere without him.

  He had been so pre-occupied with his dad’s homecoming and I hoped like hell he had something planned for today. There was no way he
was coming with us. I had my own agenda so I wasn’t going to offer. I had recently started talking to my ex-boyfriend again. I ran into him the night Cherika and I had the fight at the gas station, and we have been talking ever since.

  When Jada picked me up from my sister’s house, we went to the daiquiri shop and I saw Malik there. We talked for a while and he ended up coming back to Jada’s house with us. Talking to Malik felt good. We didn’t have a bad break up. He went to school in Virginia and we decided that a long distance relationship wouldn’t work. He probably would have stayed the night at Jada’s if Dre hadn’t been blowing up my phone. I called him back and pretended to be asleep, but that didn’t work. He still ended up coming to get me after two in the morning. Malik was meeting us at the mall and I needed to get a move on. First, I needed to let Dre know of my plans for the day.

  “Jada and I are going to the mall for a little while.”

  “Yeah?” Dre asked. “What you need from the mall? You got shit in the closet with tags on it.”

  “I know that, but I still want to go to the mall,” I replied. “I might see something else I like.” He just looked at me and I know he was looking for something else to say. He was so predictable.

  “You need some money.”

  “Nope,” was my simple reply.

  “What you mean no?Where you get money from?”

  “I have money in my savings, Dre. You put money in there every month, remember?” I was feeling like I was talking to my father and not my man.