“Why?” I asked myself as tears streamed down my face. What was wrong with me? Wasn’t I enough to look at? To me, this was just as bad as finding a hidden collection of dirty magazines. Why wasn’t just looking at me enough to do it for him? At that moment my self-esteem went from ten to two.
I clicked on each and every photo of those women, trying to figure out what it was about them that Lee liked looking at so much. “They’re not me. That’s what he likes,” I concluded. I was nothing like those women. Built nothing like them. Shaped nothing like them. So if that’s what Lee liked, then he didn’t like me.
The tears came even harder. I thought I was everything he wanted in a woman. I was forty, but I didn’t look it. I was still in pretty good shape. Yeah, I had a baby pouch from giving birth to two kids, but I was still able to fit comfortably in a size ten and suck in my stomach so that it wasn’t all flabby and hanging. Still, I guess all that wasn’t enough.
Next I decided to visit Lee’s message page and check out some of his inbox conversations.
Send me some naked pictures of you?
I had to read that single sentence again.
Send me some naked pictures of you?
Lee had sent some woman that message.
Don’t have any, was her reply.
Dang her reply. I was more concerned about my husband’s inquiry to her.
The fact that he felt he could ask her that question meant that he was comfortable with her. But just how comfortable were he and this woman?
I looked through some of their past correspondence and saw a message from him asking her: What are you doing?
She replied: Cleaning my house.
Sometime later in that same day he hit her up with that initial question again and she replied: Still cleaning up.
Then he replied: But your place isn’t that big. Why is it taking you so long? Did you move or something?
That was it for me. Before I knew it I was crying tears of not only hurt and pain, but rage. “How do you know how big her house is, Lee?” I was screaming at the computer screen as if it would answer. “’Cause you’ve obviously been in her house. That’s how.”
I was in physical pain at this point. Picturing my husband with this woman tore me up inside. Trying to digest the fact that my husband would even be corresponding with another woman like this broke me down. It broke me down to nothing. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t handle it. I’d seen enough.
I went to close the computer, but being the typical woman, I wanted to know more about the woman who had lured my husband away from being 100 percent faithful to me. I clicked on her profile page and rummaged through her photos. That’s when I spotted her and a picture of Lee. His arm was around her. His arm being around her wasn’t what caught my eye because there were other people standing around them. Lots of people were hugging. It was a group photo. A work group photo. This woman worked with him.
This was too much for me to bear. I could no longer breathe. My imagination was running wild all over the place. Had I caught Lee in the actual act of cheating? As far as I was concerned I had. Whether it’s emotional or physical, to me it’s cheating. My husband belonged to me. All of him. His body and his mind. The moment he decided to share another part of himself with another woman was the moment he became a cheater.
When had my husband become a cheater? I had no idea. Was it pre- or post-FI? Had what started out to be nice friendly communications with persons of the opposite sex turned into something more? How much more? And who had initiated it, Lee or the other women? I had no idea. All I knew is that it was over. We were over. What Lee and I had was over. The sad part of it all was that more than likely it had never begun. It had all been just a fairytale, something made up in my mind. And now I had awakened from a fifteen-year dream into a nightmare.
Chapter Six
On and Poppin’
“Kammi, please just hurry up over here and pick up these kids. I’ll give you money to take them out to eat, to get ice cream, McDonald’s or something. Just please come pick up your niece and nephew, because when their daddy gets home, it’s on and poppin’.” I was in complete ghetto mode as I spoke to my sister. I was bouncing around on the couch while I talked like Tamar Braxton. One more minute and I was about to start talking in third person and adding the words “dot com” to the end of everything. My marriage was about to be over and I was going out with a bang. I just didn’t want my kids to be around. Trust me, the loud explosion would have damaged their poor little eardrums for life.
“Musik, will you calm your happy tail down and tell me what’s going on?” Kammi urged.
“I really can’t right now.” I couldn’t right now and I wouldn’t later. I’d made it a point in the entire fifteen years of my relationship with Lee to never, and I mean never, share our relationship and marital issues with other people. And even though in my mind just as sure as the sky was blue I was about to end our relationship, I still had no intention of telling anyone exactly what was going on. For one, it was embarrassing. I didn’t want anyone to know my husband was just like the next man. I’d placed him on a pedestal. He walked on water as far as I was concerned. And now to have to admit that he was on the same level as the next man who didn’t know how to love, respect, and take care of his woman emotionally—nope, I couldn’t do it.
For two, I didn’t want to put a certain perception of Lee in people’s heads. Sometimes when a woman is mad at her man because he’s done something hurtful, she can tend to make things sound worse than they are. A woman can also provoke someone else (like her sista, girlfriends, mama, et cetera . . .) to feel just as angry with her man as she is. Then if and when she patches things back up with her man, the others she ran her mouth to about him hold a grudge. They will even look at the woman like she’s crazy for still being involved with ol’ dude. Then she has her girlfriends and her mama still hating her man for hurting her, et cetera . . . It’s just too messy. It can have a chick choosing between who to kick it with: her man or her girls.
The main reason, though, after all these years that I’d never been one to tell my business with Lee was because I knew the minute I let someone else into our business, the minute it was no longer just our business. I don’t care if it’s good or it’s bad, I had always considered my relationship with Lee just that—ours. Our relationship did not need to be the topic of anybody else’s conversation. Period.
“I’m sorry, Kammi, you know me,” I told her. “I ain’t the type who needs a shoulder to cry on. I handle mine—just me and God. Now can you swoop by and pick up your niece and nephew or what?”
She sighed. “Girl, yeah. I’m already out and about anyway, about five minutes from your house. Have them ready.”
“Thanks, sis. I appreciate it.”
I ended the call and got the kids ready to go with their Auntie Kammi. Once she had picked them up, I started watching the clock. It was 6:00 P.M. Lee had sent me a text stating that he was going to the gym before coming home. I knew he was just stalling. He knew what he had to deal with once he brought his butt home.
The waiting was killing me. I decided to get back on FI. This time I logged into my own account and just went to peruse Lee’s page. After typing his name into the search box it didn’t pop up. After several tries I decided to scroll down my friends list. Lo and behold, Lee’s name was no longer there. I scratched my head, trying to figure out just what the heck was going on.
One of Lee’s sisters had accepted my friend request, so I went to her page and searched Lee’s name. Perhaps I could click on it from there. Strangely enough, Lee’s name showed up nowhere on her page either. Had this fool taken down his FI page trying to destroy the evidence?
I immediately raced over to his laptop, where I had not logged out of his FI account at all. The account was still there on the screen just as bright as day. So why was it that I couldn’t get to it? I played around with his page a little bit until I noticed an option that would allow me to manage “blo
cked persons.”
“That Negro better not have,” I said as I clicked buttons on the keyboard. “I swear on everything he better not have . . .”
He had. Lee had blocked me from his FI page. At the realization, all I could do was bury my face into my hands. Nobody on earth could tell me that, unless Lee had something to hide, he would not have: one, defriended me; and two, blocked me from being able to view his page altogether.
First I wasn’t even a part of his life as far as FI was concerned. Now I wasn’t even allowed into his FI life. But we were married. We were a couple. We were one. I know in a relationship each partner deserves a level of privacy, but I repeat—this is a social network. There is no such thing as privacy. I could not grasp how it was okay for strangers to be privy to Lee’s life in that aspect but not his wife. I was supposed to be closer to him than anybody. If he couldn’t be himself—be who he wanted to be—around me, then he shouldn’t have felt comfortable being that way around anybody else either.
Was that what it was? With me now on FI did Lee feel that he couldn’t be himself? Post what he wanted to post? Say what he wanted to say? I didn’t want a man who couldn’t be himself around me. I needed a man who was the same around me, his mama, kids, cat, dog, whoever. I never wanted to feel like I was with a stranger—like, who was this person? Which side of this person did I marry? But that’s exactly how I was feeling, and as I heard the garage door opening, a sign that Lee was about to pull in, I was about to find out just who Lee was, how many sides to him there were. And I promise you, I was about to let each and every side of him have it.
More importantly, I was about to find out that out of all those different sides of him that existed, which one I had married. Then I would ask that side for a divorce.
Chapter Seven
You Did It to Yourself
“You blocked me from your FI page? Really, Lee? Your wife?” He’d only had one foot in the door before I started in.
“Look, I said we could talk about this and that’s what we are going to do, so just calm down.” He set his gym bag down and walked by me, heading up the steps to our bedroom.
Oooohhhh, I wanted to clobber him on the back of his big head. He should have entered the house on his knees begging for forgiveness, yet he was letting it be known with his demeanor that he was running things.
“Then get to talking,” I spat, entering the bedroom right behind him.
He exhaled and flopped down on a little bench we had at the foot of our bed. “I blocked you because you can’t handle it. You can’t handle us being FI friends. You are going to be looking into and analyzing every little thing I do on FI and I’m not trying to deal with that.” He began mocking me, using his fingers to make quotation marks in the air. “‘Why are you friends with so and so? Why did you “like” her profile pic?’ I’m not trying to deal with this every day.”
“Well, just so you know, it doesn’t matter that you blocked me from FI. You forgot to sign off of your account last night, dummy. I’ve been in your account and looking at your pages, posts, inbox messages, and everything all day.”
All I’m saying is that I wish I’d had a camera to snap the look on his face and update it to be his profile pic. He looked like he’d swallowed the canary—feathers hanging all out his mouth. Everything was dead silent as if the world had stopped spinning.
“Yeah, so you know that life you livin’, the one without me? I know all about it now.” My anger turned to hurt. How could he have had a life without me? How could he not want me to be a part of everything in his world? Virtual or reality? “Strippers, Lee? You subscribe to strippers? Why? Are you a pervert or something? Did you think for one minute how it would make your wife feel to see that you are subscribed to something like that? Did you think about me at all?
“Did you think about how your wife would feel not to see a single picture of herself on your FI page? Two years is plenty of time for you to have thought about me just once and posted a pic of me—us. How do you think it made me feel not to see you mention my name or that you even have a wife? When someone else has a birthday, you made a solid effort to give them a birthday shout out on your page. Never once did you give a birthday shout out to your wife. No ‘today is my anniversary’—nothing.”
I had not wanted to break down crying in front of him. I mean, a part of me kept saying, Girl, listen to yourself; all this over a social networking site. Fifteen years ruined over FI?
But then there was that other part of me that just felt erased—nonexistent.
In less than a week my value as a wife had depreciated just as much as the houses in our subdivision.
“Musik, just let me explain,” Lee started.
“What in the world is there to explain? My eyes don’t need an explanation for what they read and what they saw. My heart would like an explanation, though, because it’s completely broken. I’m broken, Lee. You have broken me.”
I actually keeled over in half as if I had literally been broken in two.
“Baby, I’m sorry.” Lee went to touch me, but I didn’t want his touch. I needed his touch. I needed to be comforted, but I didn’t want him to touch me. He was the one who had me in so much pain, so how crazy was it that I wanted him to be the antidote to the pain? I pushed his hand away.
After finally finding the strength to straighten myself out, I stood and looked into Lee’s eyes. “Do you see me, Lee?”
“Of course I see you, baby. And I could kick myself for some of the decisions I made. I wasn’t thinking on that level. I can honestly admit that—”
“No, I mean do you see me . . . or do you see those women? Those women whose pictures you subscribe to? Those women whose pictures you like? Because I look nothing like them, Lee. I got a pouch from carrying your kids, not to mention the stretch marks and the little bit of cottage cheese on the back of my legs. So is that why you subscribe to that type of thing? Because you don’t like looking at this?” I allowed my hands to run down my body. “So I ask you again. Do you see me, or do you see them . . . when you’re making love to me?”
It killed me to ask Lee that question. It killed me to make myself so vulnerable to Lee. On one hand I hated that I had to reveal to him just how much all this bothered me, but on the other hand I felt he needed to know. If a person doesn’t know that something they are doing is hurting you, how can they fix it? That was my logic anyway. But why didn’t Lee know this would hurt me? Why didn’t he just know? And now that he did know, would he fix it?
“I can’t believe you asked me that,” Lee said as if he was shocked that I’d asked that question; as if he hadn’t given me reason to ask it. “When I’m making love to my wife, I’m making love to my wife. I don’t need to visualize another woman.”
“Then why do you need to sit and stare at your computer at other women?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just like that kind of thing. I’m a man.”
“A married man. Some things are supposed to change when you take on a wife. You become one with that woman, Lee. We are supposed to be one person. We are supposed to be a ‘we’—an ‘us.’ But you have made me completely obsolete from your world.”
“Baby, will you stop it? You are acting like I won’t be seen in public with you. It’s just a social networking site.”
“A social networking site is public. It’s a place where you share your life with other people. I’m supposed to be a part of your life, but where am I at? Huh, Lee, where am I at?”
“Where am I at?” he shot back. “I’m here with you.” He then mumbled under his breath, “Where am I at,” like I had the audacity to ask that question.
“You’re at Juanita’s house, that’s where you’re at.” Once again, I wish I could have taken a picture of him with that cold, busted look on his face.
“Wha . . . wha . . . what are you talking about?”
“Ya . . . ya . . . you know what I’m talking about,” I stuttered, mocking him. “I saw the inbox messages, Lee.
You asked for naked pictures of the woman. You know what size her house is, where she lives. Why do you know these things, Lee?”
He put his head down and shook his head. “It’s not what you think, Musik. It’s really not.” He thought for a moment and then said, “She stays over there on the east side in one of those apartments. You know, the one your cousin used to stay at.” He started snapping his fingers as if trying to recall something. “You know—something Creek. One of those places. Next to the Dairy Queen.”
“Save that stupid mess for the next chick!” I shouted. “Because I don’t even know why I’m bothering to talk to you. I’m not going to get the truth from someone who has been living a lie.”
“I haven’t been living a lie. I love you. You are my wife. Everybody who knows me knows I have a wife.”
“I don’t just want to be your wife on paper, Lee. I want to be your wife physically and emotionally. Emotionally more than anything. I need to feel important, wanted, needed, and valued. You have devalued me. A car and a team jersey is worth more to you than me. And you may think it’s petty, but it’s my emotions and I’m entitled to feel any way about this situation that I want to.” I threw my hands up. “How crazy is this? I’m more concerned about how you feel about me—about how important a role I play in your life—than the fact that you’ve obviously cheated on me with another woman. And that you’ve cheated on me emotionally with a number of women.”
“But I haven’t cheated on you.”
“Lee, don’t frickin’ patronize me. Even if you haven’t been to Juanita’s house, you know her on an intimate enough basis to ask her to send you naked pictures of herself.”
“That was just a joke, Musik. I didn’t mean it.”
A Woman's Revenge Page 19