Wearing My Halo Tilted (22 page)

We both sat in the bathroom not saying a word to each other. The five minutes we had to wait seemed like the whole three hours that he was gone. When I looked at the stick there were two lines and on this particular test that meant yes, yes, yes, I was pregnant. I showed it to him not even thinking that he didn't know what the two lines meant.

After he shrugged his shoulders, I uttered the words, “I'm pregnant.”

He smiled quickly. Then that sweet look faded. His squinted eyes and mean frown scared me.

He said, “You said,
I'm
pregnant. I really wished you had said
we.
”

“Baby, I didn't mean anything by that,” I said to him as I kneeled down on the floor, unable to figure out how I felt about it anyway.

This would be my third child. Maybe this was the boy I always wanted and that just might be my luck for doing the wrong thing. Would it be my son with Bryce? After all he did have two of them already. I was really messed up because I had to come face-to-face with the reality that if it wasn't Dillon's, it was a no brainer for what I wanted to do. For sure I'd keep the child, but could Dillon live with me.

Seeing my strong guy's weary eyes made me know he was wrestling with some of those same tough thoughts. Neither of us shared what was going on in our minds. I stood to my feet and started running my hot shower water. I saw my husband leave out of our bedroom door. I wanted to flee behind him and say it was going to be okay. But I couldn't tell him that with such certainty.

Being that my hair was dirty, I just put my head under the hot steamy water and let my mind go to a better place. One where my husband was in the shower with me, rubbing my back telling me how excited he was of the thought of being a dad for the third time. Letting me know how special I was to him. When I opened my eyes and saw Dillon standing with me in the water, he didn't have to say anything, just him coming back into our space, sharing that with me, let me know he was going to be with me. We held each other. He was loving me and it felt right. I felt God watching over us, telling us the ride might be bumpy, based on our past sins, but He'd be there to help us through the consequences.

“I love you, Dillon. I'm sorry.”

He kissed my brow. We weren't free from drama. However, even with our problems, we held each other until the steamy water turned warm.

 

 

It seemed so surreal as I printed out the last page of the first draft of my manuscript that had taken forever to complete. When all of the pages were out of the printer, I smelled the bundle and kissed the top sheet. Then I prayed over the whole stack. It was such a blessing to get to this point.

Life had been so upside down that most times things had gone wrong. But the symbolic part of the completed first draft showed me that I was getting things in my life together. Finally, I was walking where He wanted me to walk. I was finally going where He wanted me to go. I was finally feeling good, even though physically, after going to the doctor and being confirmed that I was nine-weeks pregnant, I felt sick all the time. Nothing stayed down and nothing tasted right. I had an appetite for nothing. I was truly tired of the saltine crackers and ginger ale, but I could only hope that I would continue to keep them down because I certainly didn't want to go to the hospital and receive fluids.

With Dillon constantly either at the football facility or on the road, it was easy to complete my manuscript. My husband had agreed that this was his child by faith. I accepted that there wouldn't be any more discussion about it. We were trying to find the right time to tell our family, and when my grandfather requested his children and grands to come to Thanksgiving dinner, Dillon and I agreed that that would be a good time to share our news.

Stuff was coming together, things were working out, but even if my baby was a girl, I truly didn't care anymore; that longing for a son itch had been scratched away. All I truly needed was to have this baby be Dillon's biologically. Whatever sex God had for us was cool with me. The Lord knew best.

Dillon and I didn't talk about how we were going to tell the girls. So when Stori walked in and saw my head in the toilet, I quickly stood, not wanting to explain. However, turning around I didn't realize that my bulge was growing. It was very noticeable to her. She made no bones about asking what was going on.

“Mommy,” Stori said inquisitively, as she came up and touched my stomach. “Is there another Stori in there?”

I knelt down beside her and giving her a big hug, I confessed, “Yes, mommy is having a baby.”

I didn't know how my little three and a half year old was going to take this. She and her sister were inseparable, but on that same note they often times got on each others nerves. So I held her and prayed she'd be excited about this. My heart was overjoyed when I gave it to God, because there He let me hear sweet words from my oldest baby.

“Wow, Mommy,” she screamed, and left my arms as she screamed out looking for her little sister. “Starrie, a baby's coming.”

Squeals came from them both. They came running full speed. Starr was so cute, not only did she have her walk down, but she was flying. This was good.

The next day I was flipping through the channels when I saw Bryce doing an interview on BET. I'd gotten him out of my system or so I thought, because I was frozen when my brown eyes spotted him. He was talking about his latest transition from Christian to R&B. The brotha' was looking good. He'd recently been in more tabloids discussing his nasty divorce. The ballads that he had on his albums talked about true love.

The interviewer asked, “Are you acting these emotions, or do you know something about it?”

“What are you asking me?” he said seriously to the female commentator.

“Well, I've got to ask . . . that lady that wrote that book . . . are you and she an item?”

Thank goodness she didn't know my name. I moved to the front of my bed, picked up one of the towels that had been before me, desperately needing to be folded, and threw it at the tube.

No part of me wondered why I cared so much about his reaction to that question. I didn't want him back, even though the brotha' was fly, he was a dog. I didn't want him to tell any falsehoods about where we stood. I had a marriage and a family to protect. This wasn't just some cheesy tabloid that could twist the facts. This was Bryce talking. Whatever he said would be consumed by black America. He had to get it right.

He said, “A brotha' never kisses and tells. Of course she and I were aversely affected by a lot of things. I can say the pictures were made to look one way and totally distorted the truth. The paparazzi seem to have it out for me. I hated that the lady you mentioned was dragged through such a scandal.”

Right away the interviewer said, “Those sleazy magazines are always misrepresenting me too.”

“Alright then,” Bryce said, “she and I are just friends. She helped me through a difficult part of my life and I only wish her the best now.”

I exhaled. He didn't do me right a few months back, but he didn't do me wrong then. Wow!

“And your ex-wife, Pamela?”

“You said it all. She's my ex. And the pictures surfing the Web with her and my brother aren't fake.”

“Oooh,” she said as she covered her mouth, “that's why I like this album. It's really true to a lot of folks' lives. Marriage isn't easy, love isn't easy, and somewhere in all that, if you let yourself go just a little bit, you will feel something good.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Hopefully my music will help you and yours get to that good place. Check out the album, it's in stores.”

I thought I had put to bed the whole issue of this baby being Bryce's, but seeing him on TV protecting me and being honest about what's going on in his family made me want to reach out to him. So without thinking and without praying, I just called.

“Hello,” I heard him say as I immediately wanted to hang up. “Shari?”

“Yeah, it's me, I hear tons of noise in the background. I can catch you another time,” I said, hating I called on impulse.

“No, I'm not busy. What are you up to?”

“I just saw you on BET. I'm sure you're swamped with folks in the green room and stuff.”

“No, I taped that last week. I've got some folks at the crib, but I just watched it too. You saw what I said about you, huh? The writing good? How have you been? You still married?”

With his questions bombarding me, I didn't know what to answer first. I skipped all his questions. Some were so personal I needed to keep our conversation at a distance. It needed to be cordial, not intimate.

I said, “I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate what you said on the air.”

“That benefited both of us. Just sorry things got so out of hand. That tabloid has been banned from publishing our picture.”

He asked me a few questions as I heard the voices in the background fade. I guess he walked away to another room. It didn't matter what he was saying, I shut him up with my next words.

“I'm pregnant,” I said. Immediately I wanted to take back my words. Shucks, I didn't even know who the father was. Why did I say that?

Bryce abruptly yelled back, “It can't be my baby. I didn't get excited until I was on my way out the door, you know what I'm saying. I came out.”

“It would have only taken a drop to get me pregnant, Bryce,” I said, before slamming down the phone when I happened to look up at my bedroom door and saw my husband glaring at me with disappointment.

I couldn't even finish the call. I was so into the chat that I didn't even hear Dillon get in from work. Based on the steam I could see shooting from my husband's ears, I knew I was in trouble. I knew he knew who I was talking to and what I was talking about.

He yelled, “I want a paternity test done, Shari.”

Those horrific words sent chills up my spine. This was a nightmare. Regrettably, the moment I was living was not even close to a blissful dream.

W
ith anger in my gut, heavier than Santa Claus's stomach, I got to my feet and went to my husband. “A paternity test? What in the heck are you talking about? You told me it didn't matter whose child this was, that you were ready to love and accept this baby as yours.”

Quickly, putting his hand on his face and walking around me, I knew I needed to give him a little space. The brotha' was trying to calm down. He huffed for a few seconds.

Then Dillon said, “That was before you decided to tell the other man you were pregnant. I can't believe you were on the phone with that Negro who gave me doubts in the first place. Why would you be talking to him and how often have you done it? Does he have our number? Shari, I thought we had built something again. I thought we had trust. What in the world would you have to say to him? Why are you telling him about the baby? I'm not being a fool no more. I want a test.”

I couldn't cry. I was too annoyed to cry. I couldn't hit him, as mad as he was, I knew he was capable of hitting me back. And then we'd have even crazier drama. Tapping my foot and placing my hands firmly on my hips, I tried to calm myself down. Like in the airplane, you have to put your mask on yourself before you can help someone else. Since I had a baby in my stomach, I didn't need to get myself all worked up. I was already weak from not being able to eat. I had to get this under control, but it wasn't working. I was tapping my foot faster and faster.

Dillon wasn't even looking my way. He was staring out the window. I don't know what he was getting from all those stars up in the sky. They didn't even really look beautiful or spell out any meaning. They were just haphazardly up in the sky.

Then he turned and faced me. His eyes held a distant cold stare. It made me grab my chest with one hand and prop up my back with the other to pay attention.

“I thought I was okay with not knowing for sure,” he said to me, “but now I want a test. How soon can you get one?”

I walked over to him and turned his face toward mine and began pleading my case. “Listen, Dillon, you don't understand. Please.”

“You're right, I don't understand why my wife told me she was through with any communication with the dude she had an affair with. But then, stupid me giving too much trust, comes home to catch her on the phone rapping with the guy. How can you explain it?”

“For the record we never discussed Bryce. But to set things straight, this was the first time I called him. I saw him on TV and he put the whole affair thing to bed on national television.”

Moving to the other side of the room, he said, “Well, this is just great. My players are going to flip out about this when I go to practice tomorrow. I can't believe he was confessing his love for you on TV.”

“No,” I said, “it was just the opposite. He said the tabloids changed some images and made some stuff look like something that it wasn't.”

“Oh, so he lied on TV and you were grateful.”

Dumbfounded that he didn't think this was good, I said, “Well, I mean, I know he was doing it to save his own neck too. But this is a good thing, yeah. So I thought I owed him a bit of thanks.”

“You owed him, I thought you owed me, your daggone husband. You forgot about that. Have you forgotten about me? Or forgotten about our family? Seems like you have to me. I just came upstairs to tell my wife I'm here and give her a big hug. Trying to do what she says I don't do.”

I was so sick of him referring to me in the third person. I was right before him. Why not shoot direct?

“I was going to change all that and try to be a better man. I come upstairs and find my wife on the phone with the man she scr . . . know what? I can't even go there. When can you get the test, Shari? The rest of this is bull.”

“Okay, I'll have the test,” I said to him. “And if the test proves that you're not?”

Dillon didn't respond. He just gathered his toothbrush and night clothes. He basically sent my heart into a rigid freeze as his answer to my question was to walk out the door. He didn't have to tell me that was his way of saying, if the kid wasn't his we'd have severe trouble. His actions said more than his words ever could.

I fell to my knees and prayed. I so wanted to operate in God's will and not my own. If I wasn't here for the Lord, I needed to surrender more so that I could. After praying, I got off my knees and went over to the window where my husband stood moments before. I too looked out and saw that the stars were still all over the place. Usually that was a beautiful sight, but maybe tonight, because of my mind set, the sky looked crazy. I wanted to bring order to it. Maybe the test was my key.

The next day I made an appointment with my doctor. God was so good I didn't have time to stay down long, after the appointment was confirmed my phone rang again. It was Tina.

She said, “I'm loving this manuscript, there are a few changes we need to make here and there, the chapters are way too long for instance but that's easy to fix when you do it in three sections. We can just break it all apart, and instead of fifteen chapters we can have say forty-five. Oh, this is going to be a great story, so much about your life. No, you don't even have to say it, I know its not about your life. But the way you made it read even more dramatic is fabulous. Oh, this is just great, this is your best work yet. I really think you hit the jackpot. I'm going to find a mainstream publisher that's going to eat this thing up, it's hot. Oh, the only other thing I think you need to change is the ending.”

Tina was good at taking my work to the next level. I was waiting for her to say you need to fix this and that.
You just need to have a little bit more yumph, a little more zazz
. After the affair she makes up with her husband, yup; it ends a little to quickly for me. You need just one more hard bump, how about I make it so that's she's pregnant? And, of course, Tina chimes in and said,
We don't know who the father is
. Then what we find out in the end is that it's her husband's. No, we find out in the end that it's the guy she had the affair with but, because of love, her husband expects that and they all lived happily ever after. Oh my, gosh, perfect;
make the changes send it to me
. I can shop it from the first three chapters and the synopsis. And you know I've been making notes as I've been writing this thing; it's hot.
Uh, this is great, but wait,
she said before getting off the phone. I knew she had picked up on so much of this book it really could almost be a parallel to my life. I thought I'd get away with her not asking me questions when I mentioned that about the ending, just on the—

“You're not pregnant are you?”

“Let me just get the changes back to you,” I said.

“Oh my, goodness gracious, I'm praying for you, sweetie. Our actions do have consequences that's the one thing I do like about this book.”

The next day as I sat in the doctors office waiting for her to come in and administer the test, I knew Tina's words rang true.

Bad actions did have nasty consequences, but I could only pray for grace. I knew I had to turn this whole thing back over to God. If my husband needed to know, he'd have proof. This was the last thing I had to do for us to move on the right way. Even though God didn't get me into this mess, I had faith He'd show me the way out. My out might not be a golden fairy tale but as long as the Lord wouldn't leave me it felt good. I felt peace before having to get the long needle stuck through my belly, I knew I'd be okay. God wouldn't have come with me this far and leave me. He'd give me strength to make the few days until the results came in.

 

 

As if I hadn't gone through punishment enough for my sins, I had to sit at Thanksgiving dinner nauseated. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents were digging into the food. Even my little girls and especially Dillon, everybody but me. Oh, I tried to play the role, but I didn't want to put too much on my plate and not be able to eat it all. Dillon and I had planned to tell my family that we were expecting, but because of the whole testing thing, we decided to just hold off a bit.

However, the candied yams were a little too creamy for my stomach, and the green beans just didn't mix. Before I knew it, I was headed to the bathroom, and unfortunately I didn't make it before green and orange gook hit the bathroom floor.

My mom had cooked the bread we were eating. My dad was so proud to show off their place in Columbia. In Greenville, they lived a modest life, not wanting anyone in his school district that worked for him to see. When he got a raise, the folks in the town were mad. He was mad too, because somehow the newspaper got a hold of his salary and posted it. It wasn't like he was the highest paid superintendent in the country, but a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the bus drivers salary of only fifteen grand, well, I could see why folks would be a little angry here and there. However, when he came home to Columbia no expense was spared.

My time would have been comfortable had he left his coarse joking in Greenville and not rushed into the bathroom, touched my stomach I was trying to hide with larger clothes. “What's going on with you, baby girl, you pregnant?”

The next thing I knew, I had about ten family members around me. The ones not around me were around my husband congratulating him and hitting him on the back. When Dillon didn't smile the room grew silent, and as I came out of the bathroom while my mom got a mop and tidied up my mess, I got all kinds of crazy looks from my relatives. They didn't have to say it, I knew what they were thinking.
Whose baby was this?

My dad was such a sarcastic man, but I knew he loved his little girl. Every time I got backed into a corner, someway, somehow, he'd pull me out. That's kind of what he did then. When he got back to his seat, he asked for the greens to be passed. As he piled more and more on his plate than we all knew he could eat, he diverted attention to himself.

He said, “I was just so thankful when that singer dude got on TV and said those pictures weren't real. Taking back all that they said about my baby.”

My aunt, Velda, who was still here visiting, said, “I can't believe people can do some amazing things to pictures, putting folks heads on other people's bodies that's crazy.”

I'd already confessed to a few of them that the affair was legitimate. However, they wanted to protect me. Or at least they wanted my husband to be comfortable enough to believe that they thought beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was his. I winked at my dad and smiled at my aunt.

I was thankful for a lot of things. I was thankful for the Thanksgivings that I'd spent with my grandma. I looked at my grandfather at the other side of the table and felt sad that he looked lonely and out of place. I knew that I had to soak up every bit of life, the good and the bad, because it was short. I needed to make it sweet. I was thankful for my family who cared enough to turn my crazy situation into one that made a little sense. I was thankful that the writer's block had gone.

But when my husband got up and came over to my side, placing one hand on my tummy the other hand around my waist, he pulled me closer to him and said, “Yep, we're having a baby.” I was overjoyed and cried worse than I had the week of the funeral.

“I love you.” I didn't have to wonder what turned his heart or what changed his mind. I knew God did it, just like He said He would in the word. In the Bible, He says in the book of Matthew,
“Come into Me all ye who labor and who are heavy laiden and I will give you rest.”

I could have collapsed in my husband's arms at that moment, just hearing him say what he said was comfort, was peace, was joy, was serenity, and it was rest. God did it, but as we drove back to our house my husband confessed.

“I saw the last chapter of your new book lying on your desk when I went to get some paper, and I couldn't find any, the desk was a mess.”

“You saw the chapter?” I said.

“I more than saw the chapter, babe, I read it, and I don't know. I was shocked to kinda see our life story sitting on pages of your next book. But the character, the ending, the husband, the forgiveness, and his actions were Christ-like. He'd responded naturally, he responded supernaturally, and they're going to raise that baby. It honestly brought tears to my eyes. I repented because I knew I was operating out of God's will. No different from you and your own faith in me. God led me to read that, to show me how I needed to change. Your book spoke to me.”

“But you seemed so angry earlier in the evening, you hardly said anything.”

“I know, I wasn't just wrestling with myself, but actually the spirit and the flesh. When a lot of your family basically looked at me insinuating this might not be my kid, I knew it was time for me to stand up and let them know this is my kid.”

I was more excited than a tennis player winning Wimbledon. I leaned over and hugged him so hard the car swirled to the other side of the road. Thankfully no one was there. I guess the roads were empty because people were still eating their Thanksgiving turkey.

When I got home, I went to use the telephone to let mom know that we were back at our place. Before I dialed her number, I scrolled through the caller ID box. My mouth formed a grin when I saw that my agent, Tina, had phoned me on a holiday. She had to have good news from a publisher. This day was going great.

When I went upstairs, my husband was already pushing play on the answering machine. Tina's voice said, “Hey, Shari, the three editors I pitched it to turned it down. I just wanted to let you know as soon as I got word. Don't be upset. Don't feel dejected. I still love this story. I know it will get placed. It might take us a little longer, but we'll find it a home. I'll be in touch next week. Oh, and happy holidays to you and your family. Dillon congrats on the baby, oops, am I not supposed to know?”