The Art of Deceit

by Fabiola Joseph

  Tay’von just stood there, too shocked to move. There were about six police officers in the house, with their guns drawn and pointing at him.

  “Wait. I live here. I just got here. My name is Tay’von Miller.”

  The cops weren’t trying to hear that shit. All they saw was a whole bunch of niggers, who they assumed were out of place. They saw that we were in an affluent neighborhood that was predominantly white, that we were covered in blood, and that dead bodies littered the floor. Tay was a well-known star and the owner of that house, yet they still thought that we were intruders. It made no difference what we did; we were shit out of luck. I stood up and tried to make them understand that we were the ones in need of help, not knowing that it would all fall on deaf ears.

  “No, he didn’t do any of this. She’s over there. It’s okay. We live—”

  That was all I got out. Something hot hit me in the arm. Then I started to feel it in other places. Maybe the cops had misunderstood my actions. I had just wanted to take the gun out of Tay’s hand, not shoot them. I fell back, and Tay fell after me. Carl jumped on top of me to stop any more of the bullets from hitting me, with no concern for himself. I looked over at Tay’von, and he was out cold. I didn’t know what stopped me from passing out right away, but the longer I stayed awake, the stronger the urge to sleep came over me. I just lay there, staring at Tay. I heard a cop yelling for the paramedics, but the more he yelled, the quieter it got.

  “They’re the ones who called us. Fuck! You all shot the wrong people. That’s the rapper Tay’von and his wife. They live here,” I heard what sounded like a black cop say.

  I could feel Carl getting off me before searching my body for bullet holes. Miraculously, he hadn’t been hit.

  “She was hit twice,” Carl yelled to the police.

  I was in shock. I thought for sure that the heat that I felt all over my body was from more than two bullet wounds. Carl finished searching my body, then went over to Tay. I tried to hear what he was saying, but my hearing was gone. All I got from reading his lips was that something was seriously wrong with Tay. I looked down and saw a big puddle of blood. I couldn’t tell if it was just from me or if my blood had merged with Tay’s. After a minute or two, I just stopped trying. My mind wouldn’t work right. I started to see red and pink spots everywhere I looked, and found it too distracting to concentrate. As my sight failed me, my hearing came back for a brief moment. The last thing I heard caused me to give in and not fight so hard.

  “We’re losing him,” someone said before I slipped into darkness.

  Chapter 20

  When Shit Hits The Fan Unplanned

  The next ten minutes of my life came in spurts. People, people all around, but there was only one face that I knew. Stress dominated Carl’s normally soft features. It was bleak, scared, and worried.

  Beep, beep, beep. That annoying sound went on and on. My body burned with anger and with pain. Flashes of the night’s events and the blood that hypothetically stained my hands were a constant reminder of my lost soul.

  “Tay, where’s Tay?” I asked as I pulled at the cords that seemed to be coming out of my body.

  “Tangie, we’re going to need for you to calm down. Tay’von is fine. Don’t worry about him. We have to get you and your baby stable.”

  I looked into the face of the cute, young white guy who was working on me as if he saw pregnant women with bullets burned into their flesh every day, and I realized where I was.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck me. That bitch shot me, didn’t she? Oh my God! What about my baby? Oh, God, my baby!”

  I touched my stomach and prayed that I hadn’t fucked up the mistake that I once wished hadn’t happened. I remembered cursing myself for fucking so many men with no protection. I remember the pure anger I had had for the extra person I was now carrying around with me. Why did this happen to me? I had asked myself. “He or she is only going to slow me down. I don’t want this. It isn’t part of the plan, I had once said, trying to convince myself. But in that moment, I wanted my baby more than ever. I wanted to make Tay’von happy; I wanted to make him a father.

  “Just tell me, Carl, is he dead? Did she kill him?”

  Carl had been sitting beside me the whole time, silently saying his own prayers.

  “Who is ‘she’?” he asked.

  “That fucking bitch Shamika. Did she kill him? I swear, Carl, I didn’t want it to go down this way. I had no fucking way of knowing this would happen.” I screamed out in pain. “Ahhh!” It was becoming unbearable. There was so much blood. Blood seemed to surround me, and it was too much to just be all mine. Carl was bleeding too.

  “Shamika didn’t shoot you, Tangie. The cops . . . they shot you . . . me . . . and Tay.”

  “Sir, sir, are you saying that you’ve been shot too?” another white guy asked frantically. “Oh my God! Okay, I’m going to cut off your pants. Just lean back for me, okay?”

  It was a madhouse inside the ambulance. While the cute white guy worked on me, his partner checked Carl’s bullet wounds. As my eyelids grew heavy, there was so much I wanted to know. There was so much that I wanted to say. There were so many apologies I wanted to give, but I couldn’t. I was too tired, I was too weak, and it was too late.

  “Wait. He’s bleeding from somewhere else too. Look for another puncture wound,” said the cute white guy.

  My eyes closed and opened over and over again. The more time that passed, the longer they stayed closed.

  “Here, I found one. He’s been hit in the chest. Alert the hospital that we have two in critical condition,” said the cute guy.

  Carl let out a loud groan as they applied pressure to his chest wound. Before my eyes closed for the last time in that ambulance, I saw a gut-wrenching scene. Carl’s body stiffened, then started to shake. I couldn’t tell what was happening, but I did know that it wasn’t good. I gathered all the strength in my body and reached for his hand. And as our fingers met, I regretted everything bad I had ever done to him. His love for me was pure and without malice. He had wanted nothing from me but love and respect, and I had been too selfish to give him that.

  * * *

  When my eyes opened again, I was in the hospital, with a brand-new set of faces staring down at me.

  “No, wait. Where’s Tay? Get all this shit off of me. I can’t breathe. Give me something quick,” I screamed, fighting the doctors and nurses as I tried to get my thoughts together.

  “Tangie, we need you to calm down. We won’t be able to help you if you keep this up. You need to keep your oxygen mask on,” a doctor told me.

  This was not how I had envisioned everything going down.

  “I just need to know about Carl and Tay. Are they okay?” I asked while trying to suck air into my lungs.

  “Just lie back and try to calm down. We have to make sure everything is okay with you,” a nurse said, trying to make it clear that it was about me in that moment.

  My chest felt like a rock was lying on top of it, and it felt like it was slowly pushing all the life out of me. My eyelids started to get heavy again, and I wanted to go back to sleep.

  “You cannot go to sleep, Tangie. You have to stay up for you and the babies.”

  “What about Tay? Where is he? Is he okay? I need to see him. I have to tell him that I am sorry. Wait . . . What do you mean, babies?”

  My jumbled thoughts seemed to get lighter as my eyes closed. I felt like I had nothing left in me to give. My energy was fleeing fast. I was weak—mind, body, and soul. All I could do was pray that my fuckup didn’t cost me my life, Tay’s and Carl’s lives . . . and the life of the baby inside me.

  * * *

  I woke up three days later in a private hospital room. It was cold and lonely. How could it all have gone so wrong? Everything had been planned to the tee. I reached down and touch my stomach. My baby still felt like it was inside me, but I wasn’t sure. I pushed the call button, and a voice told me that a nurse would be in shortly, but I need someone right away. My mouth w
as dry, and I got a sudden urge to throw up. As I somehow managed to get out of bed, Carl walked into my room with a hospital gown on.

  “What are you doing, Tangie? You need to stay in bed until the doctor sees you,” Carl said as he rushed to my side and tried to get me back into bed.

  I tried to tell him that I was about to throw up, but my words didn’t make it out. What was left in my stomach ended up on the floor and his shoes. Being the caring and gentle man that he was, he just got me back into bed and rushed to get a doctor to my room.

  “We cannot have you getting out of bed just yet, Mrs. Miller.”

  I looked at the young white doctor and almost asked for someone else, but he let me know that he was the one who had operated on me, so I stayed calm and heard him out. I was told that they had rushed me into surgery after I almost lost enough blood to kill me.

  “What about my baby?” I asked him, still holding on to my stomach.

  “While we were getting you prepped for surgery, we found two heartbeats. We were worried, because one had a very faint heartbeat. After further testing and an ultrasound, we came to the conclusion that we would have to take a chance and get you into surgery.”

  “What do you mean, you found two heartbeats? I was gonna have twins?” It didn’t hit me that I may not be pregnant anymore until I said “was.”

  “Not was, Mrs. Miller. You are going to have twins. You have little fighters in there,” he said as he patted my tummy.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as he assured me that my babies were still inside me. He went on and told me about my surgery and how they had managed to get all the bullets out of me. I heard most of it, but my mind was more on my babies and Tay.

  “Where is my husband, Dr. Cohen? Is he okay? I need to see him now,” I said. I had got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “We have you on total bed rest right now for the safety of your babies. I understand that you want to see him, but your husband is not as lucky as you. We don’t know when he will be—”

  “I don’t give a shit about no bed rest right now, Doctor. I am not asking you if I can see Tay’von. I am telling you that I need to see him. Call an orderly in and tell him to bring in a wheelchair, or I’ll walk to wherever he is.”

  I hated letting the bitch out while I was lying in a hospital bed, but I had to make sure that my man was okay. The doctor stood there and looked around the room like he was unsure. When he saw me move to get off the bed again, he walk out of the room and called for a nurse and an orderly. When an orderly came in with a wheelchair, I climbed in the chair. Then Carl walked behind me and pushed me to Tay’s room.

  “Am I going to lose it once I step into this room, Carl?” I asked when I came face-to-face with the door to Tay’s private room.

  “I don’t think that you should. The doctors are saying that he is stable. He just hasn’t woken up yet,” Carl answered.

  I could tell that he wasn’t just saying that to make me feel better. But maybe he should have just held his tongue.

  I was wheeled in to find a woman sitting in a chair next to my husband’s bed. I racked my brain, trying to figure out where I had seen her before. She was tall, fatter than she should be, dressed to kill, and cute.

  Where, where, where do I know her from? I asked myself. The tour! It’s that fat bitch that I would see hanging around backstage.

  “What in the hell are you doing in my husband’s room?” I asked, having to be held down in the wheelchair by Carl.

  “I’m here to make sure that the man that I have been with for the past fifteen years of my life lives to see the birth of his child,” she answered, as if she was Tay’s wife and I was the woman on the side.

  “Bitch, I know that you have lost your fucking mind. He is my husband, and I don’t give a shit what relationship you’ve had with him. The day he became my husband was the day your bullshit affair ended,” I threw her way, while using my feet to inch the wheelchair closer to Tay’s bed.

  I looked over at Carl. “Carl, you need to get back on your job and get this crazy bitch out of here. As if her relationship with my man matters at this point. She’s probably making this shit up, anyway,” I barked.

  “Oh no, honey. This is not a made-up relationship. Isn’t that right, Carl?”

  We both looked at Carl, waiting to see whose side he was going to be on.

  “Connie, what are you doing here? I thought that they weren’t letting anyone in?” Carl said.

  “Oh, so now I’m just anyone? What, you don’t know me now, Carl? Damn, you must be fucking that ho too, since I’m just anyone now. Y’all niggas kill me. Start fucking a ho-ass bitch, and boom, next thing you know a nigga is turning her into a housewife. But we all know what they say about trying to turn a ho into a housewife, don’t we?” Connie said, with her face screwed up, as if had she smelled something awful.

  That bitch had to be out of her fucking mind speaking of me that way. The only thing that saved her from getting the taste slapped out of her mouth was the fact that I couldn’t get out of that wheelchair fast enough to do it. I was trying to stay as calm as my temper would allow me to be, but she was pushing it, and I was running low on calm.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, you know what they also say? Maybe the better ho won . . . And it looks like I did. Just because you get fucked by a star, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be the one to marry him. Remember that next time you find yourself under another woman’s man.”

  She turned to me and leaned forward. “Better? I wouldn’t say that. You just made all the right moves to hook a dumb, pussy-whipped nigga. But this isn’t all about you right now. Although I must admit that I was a little stupid to have gone along with his stupid-ass plan to use you as arm candy in the first place.”

  What was this fat bitch talking about? First, she was in there talking about a relationship that I was pretty sure never existed. Then she was insinuating that she went along with something. All I knew was that my head was starting to hurt, and I could feel my blood pressure going up.

  “Do you know her, Carl?” I asked.

  I watched him shuffle his feet around before he looked at me blankly.

  “Answer the fucking question, Carl. Do you know her?”

  She answered for him. “Don’t look so uneasy, Tangie. I know that this has got to be hitting you a little hard, but I’m sure it’s not as hard as hearing on a show that the man that you have been with since middle school just up and asked a bitch who was just supposed to be his arm candy to marry him. But you know what? I’m sick of being in the background just because I don’t look like you. Fuck a record label, fuck a magazine, and fuck whoever feels that just because I’m not a size two, I can’t be around or spend time with my man in public. I don’t care if he is a rapper or not. Shit, he wouldn’t even be where he is today if it wasn’t for me working my ass off and giving him studio money when he was shelved by the first label that ever signed him.

  So yeah, Carl knows me. He knows who I am and why I’m here. It’s ’cause my man is laying up in the hospital, and I got to make sure that he pulls through for me and his baby.”

  The word calm had gone out of the window now. My face was bloodred and hot. I was ready to kick a new hole in that girl’s ass. I jump out of the wheelchair so fast that Carl was unable to hold me down. I staggered toward her fast. My heart was pumping a mile a minute as the palm of my hand slid across her face. Before she could react, Carl was between us.

  “Fuck you, bitch. My man isn’t tryin’a live for you. I am his wife, and I am the one who is pregnant with his children. Even if what you are saying is true, it’s too damn late. I have the ring, so now I have the all the rights,” I spat at her.

  I waved my ring in her face. I could see the hurt in her eyes, and I stood proud in my wifely glory. Once a woman realized that she had lost the race to another, she knew that there was nothing else that she could do but pop her gums.

  “Bitch, that ring doesn’t mean a damn thing. I
have his heart and always will.”

  I cock my head back and let out a long laugh. “His heart? You think that you have his heart? Girl, please, I have had that since the first time I fucked him, and my marriage license proves it,” I shot back.

  “That’s what he lets you think, since he needed you to stay around and look good on his arm. You ain’t nothing but a high-priced ho that should have been shelved, like Tay was the first time around.” She looked like she was really trying to believe the words she spoke, but the weakness in her chest showed itself in her eyes.

  I sat back down in my wheelchair, knowing that when it was all said and done, I had the upper hand. There was no point in me engaging in a fight that I had already won. As soon as I saw the tears in her eyes, I knew that she had lost, and so did everyone else in the room, including her. But I was sure she would continue to fight. So I didn’t let up.

  “Where was his heart the day he asked me to move in? Where was his heart when he asked me to go on tour with him . . . ?” I said.

  “From what I hear, he didn’t ask. You begged,” she said, standing up.

  I wondered if this was said to make herself feel better, because her words weren’t hurting me at all. Facts were facts, and she couldn’t change history.

  “Where was his heart when he asked me to marry him? Did you have it then? Or, let me guess, his reps told him to do that too? Girl, don’t fool yourself. This may have started because he needed ‘arm candy,’ as you put it, but please know that it ended with him forgetting about you and loving me. Tell me, how can you say that you have his heart when you had to hear about the wedding on an entertainment news show? That’s not love, honey. He just didn’t know how to tell you that he is over you. He has found something better, and you are just going to have to deal with it,” I said, adding to the tension in the room.

  “Okay, ladies. I think that we all need to calm down and try to talk about this without all the insults,” Carl said, seemingly still feeling the heat from my earlier question.