by RM Johnson
He hadn’t known where they had come from.
He was going to walk to the phone on the corner to try and call Monica again, and then someone was on him, throwing him to the ground. He tried to fight them, but there were too many, and all he could do was curl into a ball, try to protect himself as best he could, hope that he didn’t get seriously hurt.
Afterward, he lay there, falling in and out of consciousness. Then, when he finally felt able, he pulled himself up from the pavement, staggered the block home.
He went to the garage, thankful again to see that the truck was still there, fell into it, and somehow got himself to the emergency room.
There, the doctor had told him that nothing was broken. He was bruised all over. His left eye was swollen shut; cuts, scars, and scratches were all over the rest of his face and body. His ribs were badly bruised, and he could hardly breathe without pain, so they had to be taped.
The doctor gave Lewis a prescription for some pills, told him to stay in bed, rest, and move around as little as possible to avoid the pain his ribs would cause, but Lewis could not do that.
This morning he got back in his truck, drove to the phone on the corner, and called DCFS to see if anyone had gone out to pick up his daughter.
“Mr. Waters,” the social worker he had spoken with told him, “I’m sorry, but I told you we’d get out there as soon as we were able.”
Lewis slammed the phone in her face, realizing he would have to take care of the situation himself.
Half an hour later, Lewis parked in front of Selena’s apartment. He quickly, and as carefully as he could, lowered himself out of the truck, and walked toward Selena’s door.
As he got closer, he increased his pace, because he thought he heard his child crying.
Once closer to the door, he realized it was, indeed, Layla. Lewis banged on the door, yelling.
“Selena. You in there? Open the door.”
No response, just the persistent crying of his daughter.
“Selena! Open the door!” Lewis said again, pounding as hard as his injured ribs would let him.
Still nothing.
He looked quickly to his left, to his right, as if for something that would help him get in the house.
He moved in front of the window, looked through, and past the partly pulled-back bedsheet that covered the window. He could see Selena’s leg stretching from the sofa, her foot resting on the floor.
What the fuck is she doing in there? Lewis asked himself. Why won’t she answer the door?
Lewis yelled into the window. “Selena!”
Again, nothing. But Layla cried even louder, recognizing her father’s voice.
Lewis grabbed the steel bars that covered the window, gave them a tug as if he could pull them away.
Then he thought, Try the door.
He moved in front of it, wrapped his hand around the doorknob, and turned.
The door opened, and his daughter turned to see her father, her eyes pink and puffy, her face covered with tears.
She was lying in her mother’s lap, there on the sofa, but Selena wasn’t holding her.
Selena was slumped back into the sofa, her head thrown back, her mouth slightly agape, her eyelids slightly parted, as if lazily staring at something on the ceiling.
Layla turned back to her, pulling on her mother’s tiny tank top, as if trying to get her to pay attention to the child.
But that was not happening, Lewis noticed, rushing over to his daughter, because Selena’s legs and arms were stretched out wide, a belt looped loosely around the biceps of her right arm, a syringe stuck, and dangling from the vein just below it.
Lewis stood over her, brought his face close to her nose, her lips, and listened intently.
He heard nothing, felt no air against his cheek. He slapped her lightly a number of times.
“Selena. Selena! Wake up!” he ordered.
Layla started screaming, staring up at her father, as though she knew exactly what was going on. As though she knew that her mother had accidentally overdosed on drugs and was lying there dead.
“Selena!” Lewis said, grabbing her by the shoulders now, shaking her, tears coming to his face.
He shook her till his ribs felt as though they were pushing through his skin, and when he let go, when her body fell limp and lifeless back to the sofa, he knew that she was gone.
55
Last night, Tim had told her everything. He told her that Nate had planned this entire affair. That he did it because Monica could not have children. That, as opposed to being a man, and just telling her the truth, he behaved as a coward, went through all of that just to get her to cheat on him, so he wouldn’t have to lose any of his precious money.
The man was even taking pills to make him impotent, he wanted to divorce her so badly.
After she was given the news, she wanted Tim to drive her to Nate’s office so she could kill him.
“He said he’d seen the two of you,” Tim said last night.
“What do you mean, he said he saw the two of us?” Monica said, wondering when the shocking information would just stop coming.
“He saw you having sex. On the deck, outside of the town house.”
All Monica could do was drop her face into her hands, shake her head.
She felt dirty, filthy, and wondered how Nate could’ve seen them, and she not see him.
And then she remembered the position she was in, thrown over that railing, screaming how much she loved what Lewis was doing to her.
She almost let herself feel sorry for Nate, but then she immediately stopped that emotion from surfacing. He was the one that planned all of this. Obviously, he didn’t care that his wife was getting fucked right before his eyes. He had wanted it.
It was all too much for Monica to absorb. “Take me back,” she told Tim.
“What are you going to do?” Tim said, starting the car.
“I don’t know. But thank you, I guess,” Monica said.
When she got home, Monica could only imagine where her husband was, because he was not there.
She waited up for him for an hour, then forced herself to sleep, knowing that if he had come in while she was awake, she probably would’ve attacked him.
After waking up the next morning, lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, turned away from Nate as he prepared for work, she was glad that she hadn’t said anything to him yet. It was best that he not know she knew, until she decided just what she was going to do about all this.
She continued to lie there, trying to find out just what that would be, when she felt her husband lean over her.
Monica quickly closed her eyes.
Nate kissed her on the cheek. “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he whispered in her ear, thinking she was still sleeping. “I love you.”
Monica wanted to spring up at that moment, curse him out, then scratch his eyes out, she was so angry, so hurt at what he did to her. She just remained lying there, her anger all of a sudden turning to pain.
She felt the tears coming, thinking about just how much he really couldn’t have loved her. All that he had done over the past three weeks, all that he had said, everything was done to rid himself of her.
She hated Nate that moment, but realized it wasn’t just Nate that was a part of this, wasn’t just Nate that ran around professing his love for her, lying to her. It was Lewis too.
After her husband had gone, Monica jumped out of bed, grabbed the phone. Lewis was always telling her how crazy he was about her, had even mentioned that she should leave her husband for him. What the hell was that about? Monica thought, quickly punching in Lewis’s phone number.
It was about Nate paying him to say those things, things that Monica was foolishly starting to believe. Not saying that it would’ve made a difference if it was all true, she just couldn’t believe that someone would do something like that.
Monica received the same message regarding his phone’s disconnection she had gotten the last time she called him, and only then did she
remember.
She slammed the phone down, and after only a moment of thought, she started grabbing clothes to throw on.
She raced to Lewis’s house, telling herself that she would not just let him disappear, shut down shop after the mission had been accomplished.
She needed to face him, tell him how low-down, how disgraceful a man he was.
She hoped that was all she would do, feeling how intense her anger had become. She hoped she would not lash and lunge out at him, try to physically hurt him as much as he had emotionally pained her.
Monica pulled up outside Lewis’s town house, ran up the stairs, and started banging on the door.
It took him longer than it should’ve to answer, but Monica continued banging relentlessly, yelling out his name.
“Answer the door, Lewis! I know you’re in there!”
She saw movement behind the curtain, heard the door being unlocked, and she prepared herself to let him have it the moment he showed his face.
When that finally did happen, Monica couldn’t believe what she saw.
Lewis stood in front of her, his face swollen, bruised, and busted. A patch covered his left eye. Purple and deep red splotches painted his face. Both his cheeks were swollen to twice their size, and his bottom lip was split down the middle.
Monica couldn’t speak a word. A gasp escaped her lips.
Lewis limped back, held the door open for her to enter through.
Monica walked in, but stopped just in front of Lewis.
“What happened?” she said, softly, sadly.
“Just come in, please.”
Monica stepped further in.
Lewis closed the door.
“Have a seat,” he said, wincing some as he walked a little closer to her.
“I’m not here to have a seat. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t,” Lewis said quickly, almost angrily.
It was a bad time, Monica thought, to be bringing this to him, but just because he was in obvious pain, that did not discount everything he had done to her. The beating he had obviously taken probably had something to do with it.
“Then I have something I need to talk to you about,” Monica said, feeling her anger slowly starting to return to her.
“No. Not before I tell you something.”
“What?”
Lewis appeared as though he was about to speak, stopped himself, swallowed hard, then finally said, “Someone has been paying me to sleep with you.”
“What!”
“Yeah. Just sit down, and I’ll tell you.”
To Monica’s shock, Lewis confessed to everything. He told her that it was him that had wrecked her husband’s car. That was how it all started, Lewis said.
He told Monica that her husband was threatening to sue him, throw him in jail, if he didn’t go along with what he had planned, even though Lewis didn’t want to do it at first.
“At first,” Monica said.
Lewis told Monica how he saw the photos, how he became attracted to her that very moment, how it wasn’t an act when he was trying to get to know her, or when he acted so sincere when he made love to her. Lewis confessed that he had fallen for Monica before they had even made love for the first time.
“Then after you saw your husband in the Chinese food place, everything just fell apart,” Lewis said, speaking slowly, his head down as he sat on the edge of his living room chair. “After that, I don’t know what happened. Things must’ve gotten better between the two of you. He told me everything was over, and even though I told him I didn’t want it to be, that I was in love with you, he said it was.”
“In love with me?” Monica said, surprised by his admission.
“I wasn’t sure it was that, until just this moment. But yeah, Monica. I love you.”
Monica could not respond. After all this man had done to her, now he was telling her that he loved her.
“Do you have any feelings for me?
“You have no business asking me that. After what you did. After taking money—”
“It wasn’t just to sleep with you. I needed that money.”
“For what!” Monica said, raising her voice. “Did you need money that damn bad that you were willing to ruin someone’s marriage for it!”
Lewis just sat there, looking apologetically into Monica’s eyes.
“Answer me, motherfucker! Well, did you?” she screamed.
“Yes,” Lewis said, his voice very low, and then all of a sudden, the sound of a baby crying could be heard from upstairs.
Monica whipped her head in that direction, then quickly looked back to Lewis. “What was that?”
“The reason why I needed the money.”
56
Nate was happy with himself. He was certain that he had taken care of the situation with Lewis. Unless the man had a death wish, he would heed Nate’s warning and leave his wife alone from now on.
Early this morning, instead of going to work, he went by his travel agent and picked up the two tickets to Barbados.
But that wasn’t why Nate was proud of himself. At that very moment, he was sitting in the office of a Mrs. Wolcott, from the True Home Adoption Agency.
After Nate had gotten out of bed, and Monica was still sleeping, he scoured the living room and dining room till he found the folder of information Monica had shown him.
When he went to the agency this afternoon, was greeted by Mrs. Wolcott, and taken back to her office, the first thing Nate said to her was, “Is this boy still available?”
He was holding up the photo of the little infant boy Nathaniel.
He had told Mrs. Wolcott who he was, that his wife had come in some time ago, looking to adopt, and this was the boy she was interested in. Mrs. Wolcott definitely remembered Mrs. Kenny, had Nate fill out some paperwork, and said, “I’ll be right back, find out if he’s been adopted yet.”
As Nate completed the final page of the three forms, he was hoping, praying that the child was still available.
His wife would be so happy, so surprised and excited if Nate came home and told her that they would still be able to get him.
He laid the pen down when he was finished, and couldn’t believe it, but found himself starting to get excited as well, and really began to look forward to the idea of this possible adoption.
Nate didn’t know why he wasn’t open to this earlier, instead of going through everything that he had put himself through.
Forget it, he thought. Just be happy that it wasn’t too late to save his marriage, and he still had the opportunity for this to happen.
When the door opened, and Mrs. Wolcott came back in the office, she wore a huge smile.
“Mr. Kenny, little Nathaniel is still available.”
57
Lewis brought Monica upstairs to see the baby. She was a beautiful, chubby, brown-skin angel, with curly black hair all over her head.
When Monica and Lewis walked into the room, from behind the bars of the crib, Layla immediately stopped crying.
When they walked closer, Layla reached up and out for them.
“Can you pick her up? It hurts when I…my ribs,” Lewis said, placing a hand against his side.
“Lewis, I can’t.”
“Please. I want to take you somewhere.”
They went to where Lewis used to live.
“The Ida B. Wells projects,” Lewis said, looking out from the passenger seat of Monica’s car while holding Layla in his lap. “I lived there with Layla’s mother, but she’s dead now.”
“Dead?”
“Found her early this morning.”
“This morning!” Monica gasped.
“She overdosed on something. I don’t know if it was by mistake, or on purpose. But I know she wasn’t very happy,” Lewis said, still looking out that window. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s better off where she’s at now.”
When they pulled up back in fro
nt of the town house, Lewis said, “Can you come back in? I want to give you something.”
Monica waited in the living room, holding Layla, as Lewis walked out of the kitchen with a brown envelope in his hand. He held it out for her to take.
“What is it?” Monica said.
“It’s the money that your husband paid me. I took some out to give to Selena so she could take care of my daughter, and I paid her rent up for the rest of the year so she wouldn’t have to think about that. But this is all of what’s left.” He held the money out to her again. “Here.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“Because I don’t want it. Because it was wrong for me to take it. And…and like I said, I love you, was hoping you’d forgive me.”
“Forgive you!” Monica said, wanting to blow up, but the baby was still in her arms. “You thought that?”
“I was with Selena because she got pregnant, and I ain’t want her aborting my child. I stayed there because of Layla. She was the only reason. Selena wasn’t a good woman, don’t ever think I had one. But you…you’re everything I could ever want,” Lewis said, walking closer to her.
“Your husband didn’t want you because you can’t have children, and like a fool he paid me to be with you, not realizing that you’re so beautiful, you’re so wonderful, that I could’ve fallen for you.”
“Lewis, you shouldn’t be saying all this,” Monica said, feeling herself softening only slightly by his words.
“Yes, I should. Because when I walked into the place and saw Selena dead, I realized we only got one life, and my child shouldn’t have to live it without a mother,” Lewis said, looking directly into Monica’s eyes.
“What are you trying to say?” Monica said, feeling a zillion different emotions racing through her, from flattery to rage. That this man could think that he could do what he had done to her, and believe that…that…
“I want us to be together. It ain’t right, and I’m sorry that it happened to you, but the fact is, you can’t have children, and you’re holding one right now that needs you. I love you, Monica,” Lewis said, walking up to her, wrapping his arms around her, his baby in between the two of them. “I think you’ve known that for a little while now. I don’t think there’s any other way for us to be, but together.”