His First Wife (8 page)

“Don't give me that shit about no med school. He done already told me you didn't get accepted to none of those med schools you applied to, so you can stop lying to me.”

I looked at Jamison hard. He wasn't supposed to tell anyone about the letters.

“Stop putting on airs and shit,” she went on after reloading by having a sip of her beer. “You ain't got nowhere to go and you thinking you about to cash in on my baby.... But it ain't gonna happen. My Jamison is going to Cornell Medical School, where he done already been accepted, and leaving your ass right here in Atlanta. I promise you that.”

Jamison jumped up from his seat and reached for me.

“Mama, you know I'm not going to disrespect you,” he said, “so I'm just going to leave. You didn't have to do this.”

I didn't even wait for Jamison. I was in tears. I ran out of the house and walked right past the car, toward nowhere, I guess. I've seen and heard of humiliation, but never once in my life had it come at my expense.

“Where are you going?” Jamison called.

I stopped in my tracks but kept my back to him. While I was angry, both Jamison and I knew I wouldn't get far. I'd never been on public transportation and I was wearing two-inch heels.

“I want to go home,” I said with my back still to him.

“Baby, I'm sorry. I had no idea she'd act like this,” he said. “I've brought girls home before and she was always . . . agreeable.”

“I feel like crap,” I said with my voice cracking. “She made me feel like crap.” I could feel Jamison close behind me.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Why did you have to tell her?” I asked. “About my letters? That was private.” I turned to see that he was closer than I thought.

“I was confused. I didn't know how to comfort you, and I asked her for advice. I don't even know why she brought it up.”

“I know why . . . she obviously doesn't like me. She thinks I'm a spoiled little rich girl.”

Jamison was quiet.

“Is that what you think, too?” I asked, stepping away from him. “That I'm spoiled . . .”

“Well, there are some things about you that I . . . that I'm not used to.” His face scrunched up so tight, I could tell he was nervous.

“Are you kidding me? Not used to?”

“You've never worked,” he said, “and you have a brand-new car, you dry clean all of your clothes . . . and you can't cook . . . anything.”

“How is that different? Everyone I know is like that. How is it so different? It's just me . . . and if that's not enough for you then . . .” I started crying again. I knew my points were empty. I was suddenly feeling embarrassed about the things I owned, ashamed for the things I couldn't do.

“Baby,” Jamison said, cupping my face with his hands, “you are all I need, you're all I want, but we're different. You know that.”

“But how can we survive, get along if everything I am you hate?” I asked.

“What if everything I am, you hate?” He held his hands out and looked around the street. “You don't even want to be here . . .”

I was quiet this time.

“But all of that doesn't even matter, Kerry,” Jamison started. “Not this place, not the differences, not even our mothers. What matters is that I love you.” He wrapped his hands around my waist. “I love your dry-cleaning-for-no-reason, no-cooking-skills ass.”

I could see the sincerity on Jamison's face beyond my tears. It was the first time he'd ever said I love you and it came from deep within him. It was as if I'd never heard the words before, not like that. And while love had never crossed my mind where he was concerned, the fortitude in his tone, the seriousness in his eyes awoke within my young body a flame that set me on fire. I believe it was what Marcy had said was “going crazy.”

My mother had always told me that a real lady never initiates a kiss, but I heard none of this that day in the middle of the SWATS. I stepped up on my tippie toes and kissed Jamison so passionately that much of what happened after that was a blur. Suddenly I was back in his car, then in his dorm room, and then, right there on the twin-sized bed I once secretly said I would never lose my virginity on, Jamison made love to me for the first time. “I love you,” I said to him so many times that night. “I love you, Jamison, and nothing will keep us apart.”

I
t's funny how happy days can go by so quickly and sad days seem to evolve minute to minute like a perpetual Groundhog Day. By the time Marcy's house was ready for Damien's party and I was up in the guest room trying to figure out which one of Marcy's old dresses I'd put on if I decided to venture outside the room, I realized that the worst day of my life was taking forever to end. Maybe it was because it began with me in the car at 5:35
AM
. Maybe it was because my heart was breaking and drama seemed to intend for this to be a slow process. Either way, I was done with Friday and praying for the same Friday one year ago, when things at least seemed perfect, to somehow find me again. This process might not have been as difficult if Marcy hadn't had most of her “big days” when she was pregnant with Milicent in the summer. Most of the dresses were pastel and the only black one had a plunging neckline. I firmly believed that pregnant women shouldn't show cleavage and my cleavage was at an all-time high.

Now if I was my regular size, I would've tried on all of the dresses and picked the best one, but putting on one dress at eight months was a hassle in and of itself. It took way too much energy to wiggle in and wiggle out.

Aside from my clothing obstacles, the other important factor slowing me down was the fact that I wasn't sure I wanted to see anyone at the party. In addition to being sad and in an utter state of shock, I just didn't feel like talking to anyone and hearing them ask, “Where's Jamison?” This question alone would send me into tears, for sure. But, a master of gossip, Marcy was right . . . appearances were everything and absence would be just as bad. While normal people might think that I was not there because of the baby coming, everyone knew that we wouldn't miss it—Damien and Marcy were our best friends. And that was enough for them. In this world, people love to contrive their own renditions of reality, and it was better to be there to catch poor gossip in the making. I learned that the hard way with Marcy in college. When we lived in the dorm our first year, I'd sit on my bed across from her and listen to people come into the room telling story after story about this girl and that girl. The stories would change several times throughout the hour and by the time Marcy got on the phone to spread the word to the next dorm, it would change again. I'd had my share of this in prep school, but Spelman was on a whole different level. Gossip shaped and shredded lives. It was the undercurrent that pushed college life along. Luckily, I had the wave maker in my dorm room.

“You gonna come out?” Marcy said, poking her head in the room.

I'd managed to pull the black dress over my head, but as I predicted my breasts looked like I was expecting an entire litter of babies to feed.

“Whoa, stripper lady!” Marcy joked.

“Very funny,” I laughed. “I don't know; I'm still contemplating it. I think it might be too soon.... But I also need something to take my mind off of everything,” I looked in the mirror at my puffy eyes, “so I can stop crying . . .”

“Well, how about you make an appearance and then come back up here? I'll tell people your feet hurt or something.”

“Hum . . .” I put a dab of concealer beneath my right eye. “I guess so . . .” I started but didn't finish my thought. I wanted to say I wished none of this was happening, that I hadn't carried my behind over to that woman's house this morning, and that I still had my husband by my side, but this would only send me back into hysterics. “You think he'll come?” I asked.

“Jamison promised Damien he wouldn't come by,” she said firmly. “Look, Kerry, I don't see why you should be the one hiding in this thing. You didn't do anything wrong. Let his behind sit in the house and think about the fact that he's messed up his marriage. Let him be the one forced out.”

 

 

As the crowd grew, the chatter coming up the stairs escalated from a few spurts to what sounded like a mob of two hundred or so. Hiding my cleavage with a pink sash I found in the closet, I stood by the door of the bedroom practicing my entry: how I'd smile and say Jamison had a stomach virus. He really wanted to be there. But I had to come to share in our best friends' glory. I'd smile again and change the subject. Perhaps I'd bring up the new exhibit at the High Museum, that always shut up the fakers.

When I finally found the nerve to open the door and make my way down the stairs, I could see from the third step down that the foyer was full of people. Laughing and smiling as if not one person was missing, they seemed so content and full of themselves. There were men in black suits and women in knee-length cocktail dresses in the appropriate seasonal colors. Real pearls and diamonds sparkled from the women's extra-slender necks as the men held their hands in the smalls of their backs. Everything was so fixed, so on key with how things were supposed to be. They'd learned well.

But who were these people really? I couldn't help but think this as I questioned my own existence. Climbing farther down, I noticed a senator I'd been to college with. She was the first in her family to go to college. Her husband was the same. You'd never know it by how they laughed and traded secrets in the circle of spectators. They would never have been accepted at one of my mother's gatherings. They had no name, and even in politics, little money. Like most of the people there, they were new to this crowd and had no clue that they'd never be accepted elsewhere. Mixed in here and there were a few of Marcy's sorority sisters—all skinny, all light skinned, all married, all exceptionally successful in their careers. They were the girls at Spelman everyone had to know. When we were there, they ran all of the student organizations, and when I didn't run, they were nominated for homecoming titles. I'd never really clicked with these women. There was something about the competition between us, the way they seemed so surprised at my beauty that just rubbed me the wrong way. They insisted on complimenting me about my dark skin, fingered my hair but seemed surprised that it was so long and not extensions, and always seemed to follow up compliments about both with “. . . to be so dark” as in “You have such a nice complexion . . . to be so dark” and “Your hair is so long . . . to be so dark—I mean, you're not even mixed.” To make matters between us worse, they knew that my great-grandmother and mother had pledged their chapter and perhaps wondered why I wasn't signing up. As one girl put it, “I was a paperwork shoo-in.” But I wasn't hearing any of this. I'd grown tired of the old color thing when I was a child and my mother made it seem as if my skin, which was much darker than both hers and my father's, was some type of genetic experiment gone wrong. It was the '90s, for God's sake. We had to get over it someday.

“Is that you, Kerry Ann?” Piper Muck, one of Marcy's line sisters called when my eyes caught hers. A former big bitch on campus, she was now a big somebody in the room. She was a third-generation attorney and had just made partner at her grandfather's firm.

“Yes,” I said, smiling as I wobbled down the last step.

“I thought so.” She smiled and as she made her way across the foyer to me, five or six other sisters came along cooing.

“The baby,” one said, touching my stomach—I hated that. “When is it coming?”

“Soon,” another said who I knew was a gynecologist. “I'd say in three weeks at the most.” She placed her hand on my stomach without asking and nodded her head “yes” to the other ladies.

“Well, that's it,” Piper said. “When Wilma says the baby is coming, it sure is.”

They all laughed and Piper, whose oddly thin body was the reason so many women became bulimic, shifted the wineglass she was holding from one hand to the other.

“A boy, I bet,” she said. I could feel Jamison's name coming up in the next sentence. There was only one way to handle the attack.

“Yes,” I said smiling. “His name will be Jamison. . . . Oh, you're probably wondering why he isn't here. He's sick. He sends his best.”

They all sighed with a look of fake desperation. One could only wonder why in the hell they even cared.

“The poor thing has a stomach flu or something. . . .” I went on, beating them to the punch. “You know that bug has been going around up North.”

“Aunt KeKe,” a sweet voice called. It could only be my goddaughter.

“Milicent,” I said, turning to find her cute face. A complete replica of a young Marcy, Milicent had dimples and the most adorable little bow tie nose. She was eleven and nearly taller than me, but in my eyes the girl would always be five. She was standing beside another little girl who was the same height, but she was white with blond hair and light green eyes. They were both dressed in ballet leotards.

“Look at your belly,” Milicent squealed, touching my stomach with the other little girl. While most of the black families I knew insisted on connecting to their culture with a kind of shrewd militancy—attending black art shows, seeing Alvin Ailey every year and attending a small list of HBCUs—this was not the case for Damien's family. We were both of the same position, but his family was a bit “bluer” than mine. With a fourth-generation European education and a blue bloodline that led right to the front steps of a plantation, Damien still held ties in the black community, but like many in his lineage, he believed in maintaining close ties to whites. For this reason, Milicent attended a white private school where she was one of eight black students, played with mostly white children, and didn't belong to Jack and Jill or the Debutantes.

“It's a boy, right?” Milicent asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh, I wish it was a girl . . .” she moaned.

“We all want girls, but we all get boys,” Piper said laughing with the other ladies readjusting their configuration around the two girls.

“You didn't introduce your friend,” I said.

“Oh, this is Iris. She's my new best friend.”

The girls smiled.

“Wonderful, how nice to meet you, Iris.” I shook her hand.

“She has such beautiful blond hair,” one of the other women said. “Like wheat.”

“Thank you.” Iris smiled and flicked her hair over her shoulders as Milicent looked on in silence. The sharp smile was fading from her face as the other women attended to Iris's golden locks.

“I wish my hair would perm this straight,” another woman said.

“Please, there isn't enough lye on this earth to relax your nappy hair that straight,” Piper said to another round of fake laughter. The wineglasses shifted from one hand to the other.

“And Milicent has lovely hair, too,” I said to wash out their well-dated exchange. While Damien had soft, curly hair that begged to be played with, Marcy's thick, short mane was what Milicent had inherited. I'd watched as Marcy brooded over Milicent's head when she was a baby, praying it wouldn't
change
from its newborn curly state to the tightly curled naps all these women seemed to despise. Marcy even pointed out the dark circles around Milicent's fingertips and said they were even darker than hers. How could this be? She seemed to be asking. It reminded me of my mother.

These conversations grew along with Milicent and it always annoyed me. She was beautiful and I didn't want the same pain that separated me from others as a child to befall her.

“There you are, Milicent!” Marcy said, rushing over. “Why didn't you come find me? I need you to go upstairs to get changed for Daddy's party.” She tugged at the little curls that had gathered around Milicent's temples.

“Okay,” Milicent said. She hugged her mother. “Can Iris stay over?”

“Now is not the time,” Marcy hushed her. “You see Daddy is having company.”

Milicent groaned.

“Now go upstairs and clean up and I'll be up in a while to talk about Iris staying over,” Marcy said.

Milicent tossed her dance bag over her shoulder and headed toward the staircase I'd just walked down.

“And do something to that head,” Marcy said sharply, turning back to us. “So, are you ladies having a great time?”

“Everything is lovely,” Piper said. “And Damien seems to be having a great time.”

We all turned to see Damien laughing it up with a crew of men I recognized from Morehouse. They'd all grown up. Boys who'd become doctors and lawyers and politicians.

“You're so lucky, Marce,” another woman, Mattie, said, that I knew from Marcy's baby shower. “The perfect husband and marriage. What more could a girl want?”

They all laughed and gazed at Damien like everyone in the circle didn't know that Damien was less than loyal to Marcy. Gossip bubbled amongst these women like boiling water. If I knew, they knew. And if they knew, the entire last statement was nothing short of an admission that Damien's behavior was perfectly acceptable to them. This was where and how I split in opinion with these women. I never expected nor accepted that my husband would cheat. It was not something I ever wanted to deal with. And this little circle they were building was not where I wanted to be.

Marcy looked over to me and smiled.

“He sure is the perfect husband,” she said. “If only I could be the perfect wife!”

They all laughed.

“I know,” Mattie said. “Now, that's impossible. All they have to do is bring home the money, but we have to work and take care of our homes.”

“And our children,” someone else said.

“And have sex with them!” another woman said who was married to a councilman that had put on about seventy-five pounds during his election.

Even I had to laugh at that one.