Priceless Inspirations (12 page)

Shawnte would want me to tell her story, in hopes that it might help someone.

Please listen and don’t let her story become yours.

Shawnte and I had known each other for years, but for the first few years, we didn’t like each other. Now, I would call it silly stuff. It was some drama over some guy I had dated for a minute that she started seeing and we went back and forth over him. Back then, that boy-drama was enough to keep us from having much to do with each other.

Just before I left New Orleans for Atlanta, and a little before Hurricane Katrina hit, we started seeing each other more. She was living at the same apartment complex I was, and we ended up hanging out more and more. We’d see other at school games, call each other “cousins,” and things like that. By then we’d both grown up a bit and we were over the silly, jealous girl stuff. She was doing good in her life. She’d bought a condo and car and she had a good job. I had Reginae and was married and was doing my best to get myself straight, too.

When I moved to Atlanta, Shawnte promised to come see me. I hoped she would. She had become one of the friends who I really enjoyed spending time with. By the time I left New Orleans, there were only a few of them left. You remember I wrote about it earlier. New Orleans had become nothing but drama for me and there weren’t too many people I thought I would miss by leaving. Shawnte was one of them.

I left and got myself settled in Atlanta. I hadn’t talked to Shawnte in a while because I was busy trying to get my life together once I knew Dream and I weren’t going to make it.

Then Katrina hit and for all of us who are from New Orleans, nothing was ever quite the same. I heard from Shawnte a few months after the storm and she wasn’t doing so good. Katrina had destroyed her car, and though her condo was still standing, she felt like it was time to leave the city. She told me she’d already found a tenant for it and that she’d like to come start fresh in Atlanta.

“Can I stay with you for a minute?” she asked.

I didn’t hesitate.

She moved to Atlanta, stayed with me for a while, and I helped her to get herself together in a new town. I was pretty familiar with the city by then, and I remembered how it had felt to get there and not really know anyone, so I was glad to help. Mostly, I was happy to have a friend from home with me in Atlanta. We hung out and had fun. We double-dated---a guy named Zach for me, his friend Al for her. It was good, but just fun. Nothing serious.

Then Shawnte and I had a falling out.

She was hooked on some guy back in New Orleans (I don’t know how they met) who told her he was separated, but he wasn’t. I knew he was married and living with his wife (a cousin told me), but I didn’t know how to tell Shawnte that. She was so happy with this guy. He gave her a ring and sold her a bunch dreams about marriage, family and home. Meanwhile, another friend back in New Orleans was telling me about how this same guy was going around telling everyone how he had Shawnte hooked on him, how she thought he was getting divorced, but he wasn’t, how he found some ring in some wreckage after the storm and gave it to her, and how she was stupid enough to think he bought it and that it meant something.

I was torn. My friend in New Orleans was telling me one thing, and Shawnte was with me in Atlanta saying something else.I didn’t want to tell her the bad news that her “relationship” was a sham and I didn’t want to put my friend on the spot for having told me. It seemed smartest not to say anything, but I hated seeing Shawnte fall deeper and deeper in love with a man who didn’t care anything about her.

I didn’t know what to do.

I ended up turning to one of our mutual friends for advice That was a mistake. Instead of advising me, that woman told Shawnte that she was being played, and worse, that I knew all about it and had just let it go on! Shawnte was furious with me.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you go and tell someone else my business like that and not tell me?”

She was so angry, and I felt really bad. I hadn’t meant for her to find out like that and I couldn’t believe the woman I had turned to for advice had stirred up this entire mess.

Shawnte was distant for a while after that, and when things thawed out again, she had changed.

Strange Men

She met the guy that killed her at a local park during an event called “Glenwood Day.”

We weren’t as close as we had been, but I was glad she wasn’t mad at me anymore. She kept talking about her new boyfriend but some of the things she said sounded weird to me. She said he kept comparing her to his mom, saying stuff like, “You’re like my mom. I don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t met you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

It just didn’t seem like something most guys would say, but the guy’s mom had just passed, so I thought maybe he was just missing her.

When I met him, though, I thought he seemed strange. I’d usually liked her guys. I didn’t feel much more than that about him, though. It wasn’t anything dramatic. He just seemed a little odd. However, they were happy, so I was happy. It was okay. He moved in with her and for a while, it seemed like they were good. They seemed to be doing well.

Before too long, though, he started doing little crazy stuff. He didn’t want her to go out without him. He wanted her only around him. He didn’t want her to have any friends. He’d be tripping when she did come out to hang with us. Shawnte didn’t like how possessive he was and she was getting tired of it. Worse, he’d lost his job. She ended up working two jobs while going to school, while he sat at home, counting how many minutes late she was running and jumping all over her as soon as she walked in the door.

She started feeling like,
“If I’m doing all this by myself then I should just be by myself Why am I taking care of this man?”

She stopped telling her friends about what was going on with him. Later, I heard some terrible stories. For instance, I heard that once he locked her in a trunk to keep her from leaving. I also heard that he put his hands on her when she tried to break up. She was bartending part-time at night at a strip club, and working by day at Loomis Fargo, the armored car and security company. Loomis Fargo was a great job, with a good salary and benefits and she had been really happy there. She suddenly quit. No one could understand it because she really loved her job and had been proud that she got it. We learned the reason after she was dead:

Her man wanted to hit a lick on one of the trucks and use her inside knowledge to keep from getting caught. Shawnte wasn’t going to let him rob an armored truck, so she quit before he could finalize any plans and she ended up working full-time bartending at the club.

A month before he killed her, she called the police because she wanted to put him out. The police wouldn’t put him out because he was on the lease, and they suggested that maybe she should leave until things calmed down.

She came to my house and wanted to sleep there. I knew something wasn’t right, something more than just her wanting the police to evict the guy, but she wouldn’t say anything more than that. She wouldn’t say how bad it really was. All she said was, “I want him out.”

A few days later, it looked like they had worked it out. They took a trip to Mexico for a long weekend and when they came back it seemed like they’d reached an understanding. I guess she must have told him he could stay, but they were just roommates. I don’t really know what happened. All I know for sure is that she started dating again.

Her ex-boyfriend/roommate stalked her.

She didn’t know he was watching, but he was.

Last Night, Last Words

I talked to her on the night he shot her.

She was going on a date with one of the guys she met while bartending at the strip club and she called to say she was going to miss a karaoke night with us girls.

“Be safe,” I said.

“I will,” she said.

“Love you, friend,” I said.

“Love you, too,” she said.

We hung up. The next time I heard anything about her, she was in the hospital, fighting for her life.

She went on her date, not knowing that the whole time, her ex was following them, watching. After she said good night to her date, her ex walked up on her and shot her right in the head.

Then went to his mother’s grave and shot himself.

I got a call from the police. I’ll never forget it. I was driving a friend to the airport and I nearly lost control of the car. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t understand it. I was like “Why? Why her?”

As the details started coming out, I finally understood just what she’d been going through over the last few months. She’d told little bits to different people, a bit to her mom, a bit to this friend and that, but it wasn’t until we all got together, sitting in the waiting area at the hospital, praying and praying that she would make it that we started to get the full picture. The guy had been violent, abusive and crazy. He was so crazy in love with her that he’d decided to kill her if he couldn’t have her.

You don’t want anyone to love you like that.

I couldn’t see her in the hospital. She lived for two weeks, fighting the whole way, but I couldn’t bear to go in and see her. It had been explained to me how she looked, how the bullet had torn up her face and how the surgery had swelled her head, and I just couldn’t do it. I wanted her to remember her the way she was--a beautiful girl with a body to die for, the tiniest waist and big pretty hips and the brightest, happiest smile.

I couldn’t stand to see her all swollen and torn up, but I went to the hospital every day, praying and waiting and the whole nine.

She didn’t make it.

She died at the age of 24.

I cried and cried.

It was a crazy, crazy, situation and the whole thing just broke my heart.

Years later, I met a girl who worked at the doctor’s office, and she reminded me of Shawnte. It wasn’t just her face, but it was something else I couldn’t put my finger on. When I got a call a few months later from the doctor’s office, telling me about this girl’s funeral arrangements and learned that she, too, had been killed by her boyfriend when she tried to leave, I understood. She was sending off that same vibe, that same energy. She was another victim of domestic abuse.

Shawnte’s Mistake

I feel bad saying that my friend did anything wrong. She was a victim who didn’t deserve what happened to her. If there was anything I wish she had done, and that I hope would have saved her, it would be that I wish my friend had spoken out. I don’t know if we could have saved her, but we could have tried. We would have gotten her to one of the women’s shelters that specialize in abuse. There are listings for them in your phone book and online if you need help. We would have called the police and other people who are experts in how to handle men like this. We would have used our resources to help her get away, as far away as she had to go to be safe.

Did you know that women are more likely to be killed by a boyfriend, husband or ex than by a stranger? When he says he’ll kill you if you leave, look out. Get help. Tell someone. Don’t be afraid to go to a shelter or the police. The statistics say that if he says he will, he really just might.

Don’t laugh it off. Take it seriously. For real, it could happen to you.

Don’t laugh off verbal abuse either.

I’ve seen so many women just shrug it off when their men call them out of their names. My cousin’s baby’s father can’t call her anything but “bitch” or “ho”. He tells her to “shut the fuck up” right in front of the kids.

I’d never let a man talk to me like that. In front of my kids? No, baby. That’s
not
love. It’s disrespectful and it’s teaching the children that it’s okay to talk to their mom that way. I don’t know why she tolerates it, but she does. She just laughs. I guess she thinks it’s okay. I guess she thinks it’s just talk.

I’ve noticed that some women seek out that type of relationship. They simply love abuse. Don’t be one of them.

As for me, I hate that kind of relationship and I won’t be a party to it. In some of the homes I lived in as a kid, the man and the woman would go at each other like it was a boxing match.

I’d call the police every time. They’d be fighting, and I’d be hanging out the window yelling “Help!” When they start swinging licks, I’m out. Sometimes, they’d get mad because I’d be calling the police, or yelling my head off for someone to come. “Don’t be putting our business in the street like that,” they’d say.

“Then don’t fight in front of me,” I’d say. And I still say that. You fight in front of me, I’ll put everyone in the house on blast. I’ll tell all your business. I won’t stand for a man hitting on a woman or a woman hitting on man, especially in front of children. I just won’t.