Wearing My Halo Tilted (21 page)

I wasn't comfortable about singing, but when I stood in front of grandma's still body all my doubts were washed away. I sang the song with power, passion, and ease. The closing lyrics were:

“You did great,” Dillon said to me as he rubbed my back when I set back in my seat. “She'd be proud.”

My babies really didn't understand why their nana was laying there peacefully, not moving. Why those men in dark suits closed a steel, gold lid on her. Though my dad, aunts, and uncles were strong, I knew their hearts were wounded. Later when they lowered her sweet body into the ground and the wind started swirling again, we all felt refreshed and revived. We rejoiced. My grandma was caught up with Jesus in that sweet breeze.

“I
t was real,” I said to Dillon a week later as we sat atop a revolving restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, the night before South Carolina played Georgia. “I can't believe you rented a limousine to take us from Athens to Atlanta. Wow!”

“This is so unlike me,” he said. “That's what I want to change. I had to look within to what drove my wife into the arms of another.”

“Shh,” I said, placing my finger over his lips. “It's just us, baby, we gotta be real with each other, we gotta talk about this. I was wrong to do what I did.”

I shook my head and looked away. I didn't want this to turn into a nightmare. Actually, I still couldn't believe he asked me to come to the game. We hadn't talked and I'd been writing, but I certainly missed Dillon. So, I didn't want to talk about such deep issues right now. I only wanted to enjoy my husband and continue feeling like the queen he had made me feel. But he persisted and as I listened I was actually surprised at what I heard.

“The night before your grandma died, Shari, I was in agony wishing I had you by my side. Mad at myself because I allowed you to slip away. I was angry at God for not keeping us from this situation. It's around the clock work for me because it's football season. When we had free time, I just stayed in my office. There were times when I cried.”

I hated hearing he personally had been dealing with a lot. I could only imagine how I reduced him to nothing around his players. A jock letting his woman get out of control, I felt bad.

He continued, “I also talked to a few of the Christian coaches and it was interesting. Coach Nixon, you know the defensive coordinator, said he really hated that our business was out like this for all the world to evaluate. I was just ranting and raving kind of going off saying my marriage was over. Though I was saying it, in my heart I didn't feel like I truly wanted to lose you. I know my hard ways turned you against me in the first place.”

This was so amazing hearing him take on a big part of what was wrong with us. Admitting his faults meant more than he'd ever know. God was doing something.

“Another coach told me what gets him through life is knowing that when he's wronged he is not supposed to respond naturally. He is supposed to respond supernaturally. I was angry at my wife, myself, and God.”

My husband went over to the window and looked out over the capital city of the peach state of Georgia. The serene view was beautiful. I couldn't believe we were having this deep conversation.

He turned back to me and said, “When I saw the whole situation from God's perspective, He clearly showed me what I'd done to you. Not being there like I needed to be and not loving you like Christ loves the Church.”

Trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears, my husband got up from his seat, came over to me, and kissed my tears away with his sweet lips. He gently grabbed my hand and led me toward the empty dance floor. Then he held me in his arms as we enjoyed each other over the sweet music of Luther Vandross. The communication between the two of us was genuine. I didn't want the night to end, but I knew I needed to get my man back up to a hotel near Athens, Georgia, so he could get ready for a victory the next day.

After dancing to two more songs, I starting feeling dizzy, I didn't know if it was the actual room or if it was really me spinning. When the twirling did stop, I knew something else was going on with me.

“Suddenly,” I said to my husband, clutching his arm “I feel nauseated.”

He tried helping me over to my seat, but I dashed to the ladies room. I made it just in time before all the delicious dinner came up in the wastebasket. Moments later as I dabbed my mouth with water to relieve some of the distasteful duck, I looked in the mirror and saw how flushed I looked.

I said out loud to myself, “You've been awfully tired lately. What's going on?”

I didn't even notice a lady coming out of the stall. I thought I was in the restroom alone. She stared at me and chuckled.

She said, “It looks to me like somebody is expecting.”

As she quickly washed her hands and gave me the eye like uh-huh. I shook my head no, and left. I thought,
No, no I can't be.
The last time I had sexual relations was with Dillon. However, a couple of days before that I was with Bryce. We were so tipsy there was no condom used. I could not be one hundred percent sure this baby was my husbands. Therefore, I couldn't be pregnant. That would be a cruel joke and I wasn't laughing.

When I got back to the table my husband had already paid the check. “Shari, I need to get you to bed. Everything with your grandmother and keeping the kids has been stressing you out. You need to get some rest. You don't have to go to the game tomorrow if you don't want. You can take a taxi to meet us at the airport after the game.”

“Thanks,” I said, realizing if I was with child I might be taking him up on his offer to rest in the hotel.

“Plus, I'm dying to hold you all night,” he told me.

I was hoping he wouldn't pry and ask if anything else was wrong with me. I didn't know if my mind was playing tricks on me or what. The whole limo ride back to the hotel, I felt sick. Thankfully nothing came up. But before getting in bed, I took a nice hot shower and when the water touched my chest my breast felt tender, so tender that I had to turn to the side. My husband made good on his promise as he held me in his arms and he drifted off to sleep. His sweet snoring that used to annoy me was comforting. This is where I wanted to be; his wife, with him on the road during football season.

Everything I held dear was in jeopardy. With my butt safely nestled in his stomach, I thought about the whole pregnancy thing. And with everything happening with grandma, and Dillon moving out and me losing a publishing deal, I realized I'd missed a cycle.

I couldn't sleep and tried not to wake Dillon. I moved from under his arms and called downstairs to the front desk and asked if the hotel store was still open. My heart hurt when the guy said no, I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to find out certainly, but I couldn't get caught leaving the hotel at weird hours of the night. All kind of South Carolina alumni might be roaming the halls. I'd just have to bear it.

As I slid under the covers once again, Dillon said, “Oh, you feel good.”

He bit my neck. That one innocent kiss led to a night of passion. I was so forceful, like something inside of me wanted to make sure that if there was a baby that it was Dillion's. How crazy was that, because if the baby was there the father was already determined. However, my psyche was so screwed up that none of that mattered. During our lovemaking, I wanted my husband to know how happy I was to be with him again.

I said, “Oh, that feels good, Dillion.”

He shook me and said, “What feels good? Are you dreaming?”

I tried to wake up. I was losing it in a good way. I had drifted off to sleep and dreamed about my man. That was a good sign that things were going to be okay. Dillon placed his hand on my stomach and I believed it had to be okay. So I told him what I suspected.

“What do you mean you think you may be pregnant?” he shouted back at me in disbelief.

I didn't know how to respond to his question. He was being facetious. He had heard what I said. I did not stutter. I made it plain. So in reality, I knew that he didn't need for me to repeat what I had just told him.

Based on his frantic actions, the way he coupled his head in his hands, started twitching his feet, sprang off the bed, and paced back and forth, I knew this wasn't good news for him. I could have hit myself in the gut at that moment for even telling him before I completely knew. Now I had opened up a can of worms that I could not close the lid on. I had to watch Dillon distraught.

I finally just said something. “Well, what's the big deal?”

As if I didn't know. I brought that one on myself. When he looked me dead in the eyes, I saw rage flare.

“I'm probably not even the father,” he said in a mean tone, reminding me of the Dillon I wanted to get away from months back.

I was so mad at that moment that steam was coming out of my ears. If my hands had a mind of their own, they would have placed themselves around his throat and squeezed until he apologized for being a jerk. Was that thought unrealistic or was I the one that was the jerk. Didn't he have a legitimate question because I had been an unfaithful wife.

Dillon and I had never talked about the particulars of my infidelity. He didn't know that a condom wasn't involved. Yet, his statement revealed he knew that Bryce being the father was a possibility. He yanked the comforter off the bed, got a pillow, and didn't even say good night. Thinking harder on all this, I realized I had no right to be mad. Everything he was thinking was justified.

The next day, I felt worse, but sucked it up to go to the game. Carolina won the game beating Georgia 40–3. I hoped, as we flew back on the plane with the team, my husband would be in a good mood. First of all, they were underdogs, and to practically kill Georgia was huge for my husband's career as a defensive coach. The Gamecocks had been winning all season and mainly because the defense was awesome. Dillon was coaching his tail off.

When we flew in silence, I got nervous. Though other wives and players were cordial, I knew they all thought I was a slut. What would folks say if I were with child? Nervously scratching my hair at that thought of isolation and embarrassment, the flakes underneath my fingernails made me sick again. I headed straight to the bathroom in the back of the plane and threw up.

When we got home hours later, the first place I went was to the toilet. Dillon's footsteps grew louder and louder. I didn't even have to rise up from the toilet, I knew he was towering over me.

“You are pregnant, Shari. You always get sick at first. Oh my, gosh, what have you done to us? Why did you even let me make love to you that night, you knew you had just come back from getting busy with some pretty boy? I was trying to let all this blow over, just get past it. I was trying to own up to what I'd done to you to get you to fall in the first place. But now you're pregnant. You know when you're ovulating. Why didn't you tell me that night?”

He flung a fake plant across the bathroom. I could see where he was going with his tacky accusation. But he was concluding the wrong thing.

“You didn't tell me because you wanted to make sure we had sex to cover yourself. You never even knew I'd find out you were with someone else. I never thought you'd do this to me.”

Grabbing the toilet tissue off the cold holder, I wiped my mouth from left to right, flushed the toilet, stood, and looked straight at my husband.

“I did not set out to trap you or try to cover up anything. I was never intending on being intimate with you. Think back. You came on to me. You know how I dream. I didn't even think the first few moments were real, we had such discord. Did I seduce you? No. Did I come on to you first? No. If I'm pregnant, and you know I might not even be, I pray it's yours.”

“So you didn't even use protection. Do I need to get an AIDS test?”

Though he had another good point, I walked around him and sank to our tub. This was hard. I was losing it. The more I tried to make sense of all that was happening the more consequences began to show themselves, reeking havoc on my life.

He turned to me and said, “Come on, let's prove you are.”

Washing my hands with soft soap, drying them quickly on a white T-shirt, I leaned over the sink.

“I'm goin' and getting a pregnancy test,” he said.

“Drug stores are closed,” I said in a frustrated voice, wishing he'd let me handle this with a doctor's visit.

Not phased he said, “That's fine, I'll drive a few extra miles to Wal-Mart. They are open twenty-four hours. We need to solve this tonight. You need to get out a calendar. Calculate out the timing and show me the probability of something. What's the likelihood that I'm the Dad. Forget what you say you want, what are the facts.”

He should have been gone only an hour or so, but my husband was gone for three. I tried to figure out the whole timetable thing, but all the dates were so cloudy in my mind. Being on tour I hadn't tracked my period, my cycle was so irregular I was everywhere. I was on such personal highs and lows that I didn't remember any of that stuff. I didn't even realize that I hadn't had my cycle.

Ever since Starr was born, that time of the month for me had been irregular. Dillon was right, some months I did know when my egg released from my ovary because it was sheer pain. But I didn't remember feeling it this time.

What I did know was that in my heart, my husband wanted me so that our moment together was much more passion filled and perfect than my time with Bryce. Hopefully, that counted for something. Thinking of Bryce as my child's dad was a farce.

On edge, I called Dillon's cell phone a few times. Only his answering machine picked up. He was dodging me. That fact alone burned my core, but what could I do about it. I knew he was somewhere driving, furious that I had put him in this situation.

Issues always seemed to plague Dillon and me. We could never be truly happy for long. There was always something job related, sex related, task related, or just stuff always between us and now it was baby related.

When he finally came through the door, I was so happy he hadn't had an accident. Before, I'd held off going to the bathroom because I knew I'd be required to give a sample for the test. However, I was about to explode. So I quickly grabbed the box, tore open the wrapper, and peed so hard on the stick that I didn't care what color it was. I felt relieved that the test was finally done.