by Amy Watkins
I smiled but I knew separation was not an option. Not with Terrell and with Virginia law. If I was just separated, then any house I bought would legally be Terrell’s too. And, as my husband, Terrell would have the right to come and live with me in that house. And I knew Terrell would do whatever he could to continue to use me if we just separated instead of getting divorced.
“Ernesto, Ernesto,” Janice called until she found Ernesto in the neighboring aisle. “Angela just got an awesome job offer closer to us, but she doesn’t want to take it because of Terrell.”
“Leave him.” Ernesto said matter of factly. Janice gave me a head nod like all my problems were solved. I smiled. That was the first time either of them endorsed any kind of separation or divorce. Ernesto was raised Catholic and did not believe in divorce at all. Janice adopted the same ideals but refused to hold back when giving me advice.
“Hello, God? You talked to me a lot this trip. What do you say, now?” I spoke through my heart.
Silence.
I didn’t dwell on the job and decided to enjoy the rest of my vacation. Saturday was just as relaxing and enjoyable as the other days had been. Saturday night, I decided to go ahead and Facetime Terrell ‘cause I thought he may want to talk to his kids and his parents. It took a while for him to answer; and when he did, I heard a giggle in the background. Terrell sternly looked over to the side and then looked back at me. We sat in silence for a few seconds. He didn’t say a word and neither did I. We just looked at each other. I was really trying to decide if I heard a giggle or something else.
“Hi,” I broke the silence.
“Hi.”
“You with someone?”
“No. See.” He quickly rotated the camera around the room so that I could be reassured there was no one there. I was not reassured.
“Oh, you watching tv?”
“Yes.”
“What you watching?”
“SportsCenter.”
“Oh.” Then and there, I knew it wasn’t someone on TV giggling. “Well, I was just calling to check on you and to let you know that me and the kids got here safely.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Hi, Daddy!” a very enthusiastic Aaron jumped in. He had just turned three the month before.
“Hey, man! How are you?” Terrell was usually sweet to Aaron.
“Good. Look at my dinosaur. Grandma bought it for me.”
“Yeah, that’s nice.”
Terrell talked briefly to his mom and all the other kids, then we got off the phone.
“Go to bed early and leave at five in the morning. The way your house is when you get home is the truth about Terrell’s heart.” I heard God loud and clear.
“Well, goodnight!” I gave Janice and Ernesto a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“You going to bed? This early?” Janice responded.
“Yep, I’m leaving early tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she smiled.
Abigail and Aaron hopped in the bed with me. Jordan and David slept on an air mattress in the living room, and Jasmine had a room all to herself. I fell asleep quickly. Then, at three thirty in the morning, Abigail nudged me.
“Mom? Mom…you up?”
“I am, now”
“The bed is wet.”
“Oh shit! I mean shoot.” I reached over to feel Aaron’s pajama bottoms, but he was completely dry. I reached over to where Abigail had been laying and it was soaked. Abigail had not peed in the bed since she was two-years-old. “What happened? You peed in the bed?”
“I think so.” Abigail looked upset, but I knew it was God waking me up and telling me to get a move on. So, I got up and got Aaron up. I washed the sheets and Abigail’s pajamas, got them dressed, and then got the others up and dressed, too. By the time I was finished and packed, it was a quarter till five. Janice woke up amid all the commotion to see me off. She gave all her grandbabies hugs and kisses. When she went to hug me, she whispered in my ear, “God is with you.” I smiled at her and nodded in agreement. I hopped in the car and started the journey home. “Drive safe! Call me when you get there and let me know you made it home okay.” Janice called as she waved good-bye.
And God? He was still talking to me. “Hurry up! Get in this lane. Drive past that car. Move to that lane. Don’t worry about that cop, he’s sleeping.” I drove down that country road then up the highway cruising at eighty miles per hour. I passed seven cops on my way home. One pulled over the car in front of me. Another pulled over a car to the left of me. And another pulled over the car behind me. The other cops didn’t even pull out. The ride was nothing but grace, and I pulled into my driveway at nine in the morning.
The outside of the house looked exactly how I left it—calm and quiet. I pressed the button of the garage opener and, as the garaged door went up, I saw a white SUV.
“Whose car is that?” David asked.
“Must be Mr. Tiger,” Abigail guessed.
I agreed, but my heart was pounding as I walked inside the house. I knew God was about to reveal something.
The door leading from the garage into the house was locked. We never locked that door. In fact, I almost never carried my front door key because the garage door was always open. But I had my keys that day. I left the kids by the garage door and went around to the front. I unlocked the door and walked inside. The house was a mess. Nothing was cleaned. The dishes in the sink when we left on Wednesday were still there, plus a few more. Lana had apparently gotten sick while we were gone because she had vomited in our living room. The vomit was all dried and stained into the carpet, so it must have happened more than a day ago. “A dog returns to his vomit,” I thought. I let the kids in and then opened the basement door.
Terrell was walking up the steps as I was going down. He had a “who the fuck just tried to break into my house” look on his face. When he saw it was me, he let out a sigh of relief. “Oh,” he breathed heavy.
“Terrell, whose here?”
“Okay, Angela, it’s a friend. It is a female, but it’s not like that. She’s just a friend.”
“Oh, really. Where the fuck is she?”
“Angela, I’m going to ask you not to cause a scene.”
“Okay, let me by. I’m not going to cause a scene.”
Just then, I saw this fugly girl peek up from the bottom of the steps. Her initial expression was filled with curiosity. But when she saw me standing at the top of the stairs trying to push Terrell out of my way so I could see who he was fucking in my house, she looked horrified. She had long, oily, matted blonde hair like she was trying to grow freestyle dreadlocks. She was half my height and twice my width, with colorful tattoos covering both arms. She wore a loose-fitting tank top and no bra—I could see a lot of side boob peeking out of her tank—and nasty leggings with holes in them. You could see her cellulite through the pants they were so thin.
“Oh, hell no! You gonna bring this in my house? My house? Move, let me through.”
“Angela, Angela…Please don’t make a scene. The kids are upstairs. I don’t want them to hear you.”
“Please, you don’t want them to see how trifling you are? They already know you trifling. Get out of my way.”
“Angela, please. Please don’t make a scene.”
“I’m not going to make a scene. I just want to talk.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll let you pass.”
I walked down the steps with Terrel hot on my heels. I walked over to the girl and looked at her. She was sitting on the couch that I bought. “What’s your name?” I calmly asked her.
She whispered, “Amber.”
“Well Amber, can you please get out of my house?”
“Yes ma’am” she said as she stood up.
“No! No!” Terrell yelled. “We not doing this.”
And that bitch sat her ugly ass back down on my couch.
“What the fuck you mean we not doing this? You fucking this bitch in my house and…”
&nb
sp; “No Angela, it’s not like that. She just got here. We were just planning to smoke some weed and that was it. See, look.” He showed me three freshly rolled blunts.
“Terrell, how can I believe you? After all that you have put me through. You wouldn’t believe me if it were me down in the basement this time in the morning with some guy. Look at you. You’re not even wearing any underwear.” Terrell was wearing some baggy gray sweatpants and a wife-beater. They sagged and were untied, so it was obvious he was going commando.
“Angela, it’s not like that. Look, I have a drug problem. She’s my dealer. I need help. Please help me. Help me.”
“Terrell, I trusted you,” I cried. I knew my husband was many bad things, but I never took him for a cheater. He hated cheaters. He hated his grandfather for cheating on his grandmother. He hated his ex-girlfriends for cheating on him. He hated watching movies with infidelity in them. And he feared me cheating on him so much that he got upset if I came home twenty minutes late. He confronted guys who happened to look my way if we were walking in the mall. Terrell promised me that he would never cheat on me, and yet he was.
“Angela,” Terrell got down on his knees and started crying, “Please help me. I need help.”
I got up and walked over to the girl. On the couch, bouncing her knee nervously, she slowly lifted her head to face me. She looked at me briefly with her piercing blue eyes before hanging her head in shame.
“How much does he pay you?” I asked.
“He doesn’t pay me.”
“I meant drugs.”
“The usual amount.”
“Well, what’s the usual amount?”
Terrell stepped in front of me with his arms extended. “Look, Angela. Hear me out.” He was panicking. “Angela, look. I love you. She means nothing to me.”
“Oh, I don’t give a fuck who you love.” I pulled out my cell phone and started recording. “I’m getting all the evidence I need for my divorce,” I sang. “Now, what was it you were saying about how much he pays you.”
“No. Oh, hell no,” she said, trying to hide her face and get away. I hadn’t noticed before, but her clothes were all over the basement. She grabbed her bag and began packing up her things. And yes, I was still recording.
“I come home from a weekend away with my family and find Terrell here with this bitch. Look at her,” I chanted while recording her frantic attempts to pick up her shit. “She’s not even wearing a bra and Terrell is not wearing underwear.” I said as I pointed the camera at him.
“No, no, no.” Amber begged.
“Oh yeah, what’s that? Your overnight bag?”
“No, it’s my tree,” she said.
“Oh, so your dumb ass admits, on camera, you dealing drugs.”
“No,” she hedged.
“What are you doing in my house Amber?”
Amber did not answer.
I immediately sent the video to Ronda because I was afraid that Terrell would try to delete it and all evidence would be lost. Once sent, I started recording again.
“Why are you here, Amber? Why you in my house?” I taunted her.
“She’s here because you were gone!” Terrell yelled at me. Terrell switched from begging and pleading to fury. He got in my face and slapped the phone out of my hand, then he wrestled me down to the ground.
“Get the fuck off me, asshole!” I yelled, kicked, and screamed, “Get off me.”
He got off me and grabbed my phone. He turned it off and put it in his pocket.
“Give me my phone back.”
“No. We gonna talk about this. We gonna work this out.”
“Fuck no. The only thing we working out is a divorce. Now, give it back.”
“No!”
Just then the cops made their way down the steps.
“What are you doing in my house? Who allowed you to be here? You are not allowed to be in here without a warrant.” Terrell fussed at the police.
“We were called about a disturbance, so we are investigating,” the first officer replied. “Now, what’s going on.”
I sat on the coffee table saying nothing while Terrell tried to lie his way out of this mess. “See, I was here with my friend here and she came home early.”
“She? Who is she?”
“Angela, my wife. She came home early. She saw my friend here and they got into it. They started wrestling and what not. I got in the middle of it and tried to break them up.”
I laughed and shook my head. Another officer came over to me. “What happened?”
“His ass is lying, I never hit that girl. I came up in here after my vacation and caught him with his little girlfriend and now he’s mad ’cause I want a divorce. He threw me on the ground. I didn’t lay a hand on anybody. Look, there she go,” I said as I pointed to Amber. “Her name is Amber. You can ask her if I hit her.”
Amber was scared. She was huddled in the corner, trying to hide her face. She had tons of drugs in her bag and she was selling, so she must have known she was going to jail. “No. Oh, no,” was all that Amber could say.
“Well, why is he all sweaty?” I looked over and Terrell panicked and was sweating bullets.
“I don’t know. Maybe because he was running around after me trying to plead his case? ’cause he tackled me? I’m not sweaty. I’m calm.” And I was calm. God had been preparing me all weekend. I knew this was God’s work.
“Well, what do you want us to do?” the officer said to me.
“I want them out of my house.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Well then I want to leave. Fuck it. Can I at least get my phone back? Terrell took my phone.”
The officer nodded in agreement. “Sir, sir,” he said to Terrell who was anxiously trying to plead his case with the other officer. “Can you please hand her back her phone?” Without thinking Terrell reached into his pocket and handed it to me. He was still talking to the officer and I walked right on by him and went upstairs.
“Come on, kids. We’re leaving.”
“Mom, who’s that girl?” Abigail asked.
“Ask your father” I said, “Come on, let’s go. Get in the car.”
Terrell ran up the stairs after me and blocked the door. “No, wait. Angela, please don’t do this.”
“Terrell, get out of my way.”
The officer chimed in, “Sir, you can’t prevent her from leaving.”
Terrell stepped out of my way and I walked out of the garage door past the white SUV and toward my own SUV.
“Please, Angela, don’t do this. I love you. I need you. You’re my life.” Terrell stepped between me and my car door.
“Terrell, get out of my way.”
“Sir, you cannot prevent her from leaving,” the cop repeated.
“I’m not.” Terrell held up his hands so that the officers could see them. “See? Look, I’m not touching her. I’m not blocking her.”
“Sir, you are in her way. Move. Now.”
Terrell reluctantly stepped aside, allowing me to pass. The kids and I got in the car and drove off watching a broken Terrell in the rearview mirror. Finally, FREEDOM.
Chapter 5 – Ethan
On Black Friday 2017, I decided to take care of all the bills before going home from work. I only had a hundred dollars left over. I used fifty dollars to open a savings account. That gave me fifty to spend. On the way home, I received a few texts from Tracy:
Tracy: Where you at? You shoulda been here 10 minutes ago? RU out fucking some bitch?
Me: No, I had to stay at work a few minutes late. I’m around the corner.
Tracy: Whatever.
Attached was the eye-rolling emoji.
Tracy: Pick up some condoms on the way home. And wine too.
Me: Condoms?
Tracy: Yeah, I don’t know who you been with. I need to protect myself.
Me: Tracy, I have never cheated on you. I shouldn’t have to wear condoms with my
wife.
Tracy: No condoms, no sex.
I really didn’t want to get condoms or wear them. We didn’t wear them when we were dating. Why should we wear them while married? I knew I wasn’t cheating…but was she? No, she hated cheaters. I had been trying to prove to her that I would never step outside our marriage. “Maybe I just won’t have sex with her, then.” I thought. But I knew if we stopped having sex then she’d really think I was cheating.
Me: Ok, I’ll pick up some condoms and be home soon.
On the way home, I thought about my life and how it sucked worse than ever. My first marriage wasn’t so bad, but my marriage to Tracy was painful. I tried everything to work it out; but nothing I did mattered to Tracy.
Maybe she never healed from her first marriage. They were together for sixteen years and he cheated frequently. I tried to be understanding and patient with Tracy. I tried to show her that I was not like her ex; but her words, actions, and accusations all took a toll on me.
The next day, we got into another heated argument. She was mad that I did not bring my check home to her. I drove to the park to calm down and hoped that she’d cool off, too, while I was gone—but she didn’t. She sent text after text filled with vulgar accusations and pictures. She sent pictures of two men having sex and said that one of them was me. I was tired of playing nice.
A few days later, while I was at work, she called requesting I transfer money into her account so she could get her hair done. I responded, “Hell no.” So, she got more aggressive. She began calling me ten times a day while I was at work, sometimes more. If I didn’t answer my office phone, she’d call the front desk or a coworker’s office. It got so bad that my coworkers started to complain, and I received a reprimand because of it.
I went home and talked to her about how her actions were affecting my job. She didn’t care. She started calling my boss, too.
Then she started to accuse me of molesting Devin.