“Oh, I’m silly!” she sassed. “So how long have you had that opinion of me? You didn’t used to think I was so silly when you begged me to marry you. Chandelle, I love you, I need you,” she mocked. “Now look at you. All I wanted to do was talk, but you’d rather send me out into the cold so you can watch some stupid team who ain’t worth a bent nickel anyway.”
“Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion,” Marvin said casually as he searched around in the den for his keys. When Chandelle spotted them first, she dashed over to the end table and grabbed them. He said, “Cool, give ’em to me and I’ll head back after the game.”
“Ain’t giving you nothing until you tell me what’s wrong with you. Lately, you been hanging out with the boys, and that’s not like you, Marvin. We hardly say two words to each other when you do come home, and that’s not like us.”
“Chandelle, we can talk about this when I get back from Chubby’s. Now give me the keys,” he demanded, getting more annoyed by his overdramatic wife.
“Uh-uh, not until you tell me what’s so important out there that you can’t seem to stay away from it. What’s at the club that you don’t have here? Drink, we got that. Music?” Chandelle asked, turning up the stereo system louder than she meant to. “What? Sounds like music to me. Oh, is it sex you’re out there hunting for? Nah, I know it can’t be that, becauseyou don’t even want the good stuff going to waste up in here.” Chandelle was exasperated. She’d used everything she knew to make Marvin argue with her, but still he refused.He simply stood there with an annoyed look on his face that made her want to fight even more.
“Are you through now?” he asked finally. “Can I go, or are you not finished with the theatrics?”
“Why not, it’s obvious that you don’t care about us anymore.I don’t know why we’re moving on Friday. What we have now isn’t much of a home. Three thousand square feet won’t change that,” Chandelle concluded loudly.
“Now you’re talking,” said Marvin, with a noticeably more excited demeanor. “I’m still not sold on buying that big of a house to begin with.”
“Negro, please! The way you were running behind that real estate agent, you’d have said yes to every house she showed us if I wasn’t there to stop you.”
“Well, she was a hard worker, and I appreciate that,” he answered and not too convincingly. “It’s hard dealing with people who don’t know what they want. I ought to know. Down at Appliance World, I spend most of my time breaking down my extensive product knowledge, per the salesman handbook, and explaining the differences between products. Then the customers either go with the cheapest appliance or the one that matches what they already have. I’m just saying Bernie was a hard worker, is all.”
“Yeah, I see she did a job on you. Since when did you start calling her Bernie, Marvin? Have you been talking to her when I’m not around? Y’all got a little thing going on?” Chandelle interrogated.
“Now I know I need to bounce. Give me the keys, Chandelle,”he asked, sticking out his hand to receive them. “Chandelle, quit playing now and give ’em to me!” Instead of complying, she grabbed her sweatpants at the waist and dropped the keys down inside them.
“How bad do you want them?” she goaded. “Bad enough to take them from me?” As soon as she smarted off, Marvin lunged toward her. Chandelle shrieked at the top of her lungs, laughing as she ran around the small room to avoid capture. Marvin chased and Chandelle shrieked until he’d caught up to her. Unfortunately, Marvin stumbled over the sofa ottoman and came crashing down on the coatrack, knocking Chandelle against his prized flat screen. She tried to brace herself but couldn’t. Chandelle and the television slammed hard against the floor. Both she and Marvin watched as a big puff of smoke rose from the expensive TV.
“It’s ruined!” he shouted. “Twenty-five hundred dollars gone because you wanted some attention! I’m tired of how you act when you don’t get your way. Now look at what you made me do!” Marvin was hot. Admittedly, he hadn’t been as thoughtful as when they initially married, nor did he fully understand why. He still loved Chandelle, but she always demandedmore than he had to give. He sometimes wondered if she should have married one of the ballplayers she’d dated before meeting him. Maybe then, she’d be happy now. And then too, maybe so would Marvin. After brooding over the television, smashed beyond repair, he went over to check on Chandelle when it appears she was actually injured. “You okay baby?” he asked, sincerely concerned.
“No, I’m not okay, and why did you check on that stupid thing before coming to see about me?” she replied, more salty than hurt. “Maybe now we can talk like I wanted to in the beginning.”
Before Marvin had the time to process Chandelle’s complaints,there were three hard knocks at the door. When they weren’t answered quickly enough for someone’s satisfaction, someone beat on it again.
“What?” Marvin yelled as he opened the door to find two police officers, one black and the other as white as a snowy day, and neither of them appeared too happy about being shouted at. “Well, what y’all want?” Marvin asked rudely. “Ain’t nobody selling drugs here, so you might want to go and harass somebody else.”
They took one look inside the apartment, discovering a knocked-over television set, a hole in the wall caused by Marvin flying into the coatrack that stood next to it, and Chandellelimping over to rest on the sofa. Both cops stepped insidethe house then, and backed Marvin against the wall. “Miss, we’re answering a public-disturbance call. One of your neighbors reported loud screaming and fighting,” the taller, white officer stated, as if asking for Chandelle’s side of the story.
The black cop had positioned himself between Marvin and the very attractive woman who was adequately filling out those sweatpants in a way that he appreciated. “Sistah,” the black one called out to get her attention. “This your husband?”
Chandelle winced while rubbing her hip. “Yeah, we’re married,” she said softly.
“That don’t give him the right to get physical with you, though,” he told her, in a comforting voice that Marvin found offensive.
“Say, man! What do you think you’re doing?” Marvin heaved, objecting to the officer using the situation to flirt with his wife.
“Shut up!” the black officer asserted. “I bet that’s one of your problems, you don’t want to listen.” Again, he eyed Chandelle for her approval. Again Marvin objected harshly.
“Man, this ain’t even right,” he barked. “Y’all just can’t run up in here like this and talk to me like I don’t have any rights.”
“And you can’t go slapping your wife around any time you feel like it,” replied the white cop.
“Sistah, did he hit you?” the black officer asked Chandelle.
“No, he didn’t,” she answered. “It wasn’t even like that. Besides, it was partially my fault.”
“Yeah, that’s what all battered women say,” the black officecontended. “And I guess that flat screen just tossed itself on the ground ’cause it got tired of working?” His countenancehad quickly undergone a sudden shift when Chandelle seemed to be protecting Marvin.
“Look, officers, this is a misunderstanding—” Marvin tried to explain before the black cop shut him up by placing his hand on his holstered department-issued revolver.
“Nah, I understand real good how this sorta thing goes,” he assumed incorrectly. “Miss, you say he didn’t hit you but it’s obvious you’re shook up and mishandled. Now, how do you expect us to believe he didn’t put his hands on you?”
“Well, yeah he did but it wasn’t ...” Chandelle began to say before she realized those were the magic words the cops were waiting for. “Hey, hold on.”
“It’s too late now, ma’am,” argued the white one as his partner took great pleasure in doing the honors.
“Homeboy, you picked the wrong day to jump on your girl, and as fine as she is, you deserve to go down,” the other whispered to Marvin, while tightening the cuffs behind his back. “You have the right to remain si
lent.”
“Ahhh, man. Y’all taking me to jail?” asked Marvin, as he dug his heels into the carpet. “This ain’t right. Chandelle, please tell them I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“She already told us all we needed to hear to lock you up for spousal abuse. Anything you or your wife says can be used in the court of law,” he continued sarcastically as he gave Chandelle the evil eye like a jerk who had just been rejectedat a nightclub. “That means you oughtta shut up, and ole girl should have kept her trap closed too.” He shoved Marvin in the small of the back with his nightstick to prod him along when he saw that there might be a struggle in the making.
“Man, you ain’t got to be pushing that thing in my back,” Marvin snapped, as he exited the apartment. “Y’all know this ain’t right!”
Chandelle was mortified. It was all happening too fast for her to grasp. One minute they were horseplaying, and the next, he was in the midst of being hauled off. “I told y’all he wasn’t trying to hurt me. I told you that. Hey! Where are you taking him?” She chased down the stairs behind them, barefootand beside herself. “Wait. Marvin, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Go back in the house, Chandelle. You’ve said enough already,”he answered, as they shoved him into the back of the police squad car. She backed up onto the curb and watched as they drove away, wondering how something so innocent turned out to be so bad. Tears streamed down her face as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. The look on Marvin’s face, as if he’d been betrayed and heartbroken, was indelibly stamped on Chandelle’s mind. She was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get past it. However, Chandelle had no idea how much she’d be faced with letting go and getting past, once she learned that another woman had paid Marvin’s bail and taken him in to help soothe his pains, and hers.
DAFINA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2006 by Victor McGlothin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consentof the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-8560-7
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