His First Wife Read online

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t. But, again, my emotions were driving. I was spilling out like that hot wax and before I knew it, I was charging up the walkway.

  “Just don’t do anything foolish,” Marcy said before I hung up. Later I’d think about how crazy that sounded. How could I possibly do anything more foolish than what was already being done to me?

  The little cracked doorbell seemed to ring before I even pressed it. It chimed loud and confident, like it wasn’t past 6 AM and the sun hadn’t already begun to rise behind me. It was quiet. The only noise I heard was my heart pounding, shaking so wildly inside of me that I couldn’t stand still. I waited for another five seconds which felt like hours. My husband was on one side of the door and I was on the other. Our wedding bands and my large belly were the only signs we were connected. I looked at his truck again. It was the only piece of Jamison I could see from where I was and my heart sank a bit farther. The shine of the paint, the gloss on the wheels, it looked so happy, so free, so smug, so complete. Everything he wanted. I was tired of making this all so possible for Jamison. Making his life so comfortable, so happy. His perfect wife, carrying his perfect son. I was alone in my marriage and I was tired.

  I began pounding on the door then. Ringing the bell and then pounding some more. My fist balled up and it pounded hard like a rock threatening to burst through. Someone was inside and they were coming out. If there were children inside, a mother and father, a dog, a parrot.... I didn’t care. They were all getting up and out of that house.

  A small, light brown hand pulled back the sheet of weathered lace covering the square at the top of the door. A woman’s face appeared. Her eyes were squinting with the kind of tired worry anyone would have over a knock at the door at 6 AM. I’d seen those eyes before, and before she widened them enough to see who I was, my fist was banging at the glass in front of her face. I was trying to break it and if I could break it, I’d grab her face and pull her through the tiny square.

  “Tell my husband to come outside,” I hollered, my voice sounding much bigger than I was. She looked surprised. Like she never expected to see me or hadn’t known Jamison even had a wife. I pressed my face against the window to see inside. To see if Jamison was there behind her. The flap fell back down over the little window and I heard heavy footsteps. I was beside myself. Had totally let go of whoever I was. My baby grew lighter, as if he wasn’t even there, and a thunderbolt inside shocked me into action.

  “Jamison!” I shouted heatedly. “Jamison, come outside!” I began banging on the door again. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I knew it was her. Coreen Carter. I saw her only once before in my life. But when she came to the door that time to let Jamison in, I learned her face the way a victim does her victimizer.

  She was what most men would consider beautiful. She had short, curly red hair. From the car I thought it was dyed, but up close I could tell it was her natural color. Fire engine red, like the truck, from the root. She had freckles of the same color dotted around her eyes and her skin was the color of Caribbean sand. Really, she looked nothing like me. In fact, we were complete opposites. My hair was so black and long, most of my friends called me “Pocahontas” growing up. My hair wouldn’t dye and most days it wouldn’t hold a curl of any kind. And if the skin of the woman in the window was the color of Caribbean sand, then mine was darker than the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii. My mother didn’t like to talk about it, but my grandfather on my father’s side was half Sudanese, and while he died long before I was born, my father always said the one thing he left behind was his liquorice color on my skin and my perfectly shaped, curious almond eyes.

  My cell phone began ringing. I opened it, certain it was Marcy making sure I hadn’t killed anyone, but it was Jamison.

  “Jamison,” I said, looking again in the window to find him. What was this? What was going on? I felt far from him already. Now he couldn’t even come to the door?

  “Kerry, go home.” His voice was filled with irritation.

  “What?” I asked. “Are you kidding me? Jamison, come outside.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He sounded as if I was doing something wrong, like I was out of place.

  “I don’t want to do this here. It’s not right,” he said.

  “Not right? Not right to who, Jamison? Her? I’m your wife!”

  “I know that.”

  “No, you don’t because if you did, I wouldn’t be standing out here in my nightgown, eight months pregnant. Or did you forget about that?” I started banging on the door again. Thinking of my child made me furious. I wanted that door down. I’d forgotten all about where I was. People were starting to come out of their houses, but I didn’t care. I wanted it to stop and Jamison being on the phone from inside the house wasn’t making it any better.

  “Kerry, she didn’t do anything to you. Just go home and I’ll be right behind you.” He was whispering like a schoolboy on the phone with his girlfriend late at night.

  “I’m not going home. You come out here now or I swear I’ll bust the windows in your car and set it on fire if I have to.” I couldn’t believe the things I was saying, but I felt every syllable of them. At that moment I was willing to do anything, and Jamison must’ve felt it too. He hung up the phone.

  The door opened fast, like he’d been standing on the other side the whole time. Jamison stood there alone, dressed in a pair of boxers I’d bought him.

  “Did you really think I was going away?” I asked. Through the corner of my eye, I could see an old lady standing in her doorway next door wearing bright pink foam rollers in her hair and a flowery nightgown. I wanted to lower my voice, but I was beyond caring about embarrassing myself. “What is this? What is this?” I started crying again, but I didn’t bother to wipe my tears. I just wrapped my arms around my stomach and held tight. The baby felt heavy again, like he was feeling the weight of the moment.

  “I can explain it—” He stopped mid-sentence and reached for me. “It’s nothing. I’m just . . .”

  I stepped away.

  “Just what?”

  “Look, Kerry, I think you should go. I’ll put on something and then come too, but I need to get dressed.”

  “I’ll be damned if I let you walk back into that house with that woman,” I hollered. “Does she know you’re married? That you have a son on the way? Why can’t she come out here and face me? Don’t be embarrassed. I’m here now.” I tried to push my way through the doorway, but Jamison held me back.

  “Let me in,” I said, pushing my way in farther. “I just want to see her. I just want to see her. I want to see the woman you chose over me.”

  “Don’t do this,” he said, pulling my arms. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  I pulled back and looked my husband in the eyes. We’d known each other for twelve years. He was my first love. The only man I’d ever imagined marrying. He looked so naked standing there in front of me. So defenseless. He had pale, milky white skin, looked almost white sometimes in pictures, and the centers of his cheeks were beet red, the color they turned when he was sad or angry.

  “Don’t do what? Anything foolish?” I cried. “Foolish ? You jerk. You fucking jerk.”

  I practically jumped into Jamison’s arms and started pounding my fists into his face. He was 6’5”, well over a foot taller than me, but I was towering above him then. Every bit of anger and frustration I felt grew me taller. I was swinging and screaming and hitting to make him feel the pain I felt. I was beat down and beat up by his lies and now I wanted him to feel the same thing. It didn’t stop what I was feeling, but it felt good, like I was releasing something. Letting go, or at least loosening up my anger.

  “Foolish,” I screamed. “I’ll show you foolish.”

  “Ma’am, stop it!” I heard an authoritative voice before I felt a hand pull at my shoulder. “Ma’am.”

  My body was being lifted up. I felt two hands on both of my sides.
/>   “She’s pregnant,” Jamison said, reaching for me as the hands pulled me farther back. I turned to see two police officers standing beside me, while two others were holding me. Suddenly, I could see the flashing lights from their cars in the street, the flickering blues hitting small groups of people huddled in different places along the curb. There had to be at least six cars out there, and all I could think was where they’d come from and who they were there for.

  “He ain’t worth it,” one woman said in the crowd.

  I turned to look at Jamison. There were so many people there, so many people I didn’t know, and I felt like adding Jamison to the list. He seemed a part of this place, farther and farther away from me than I thought.

  “Do you live here, ma’am?” one of the officers asked me. She was the only woman and she was so small the blue uniform seemed to swallow her up.

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s Coreen’s house,” someone called from the crowd.

  Then, as if the person had summoned her, Coreen Carter came shuffling out the door. Her face was streaked with tears that seemed bigger than mine. Her eyes were red and she was visibly shaken. She stepped outside and stood beside Jamison in front of the door.

  Seeing the cops had brought me back to reality, but seeing Coreen stand beside my husband sent me into what I can only call an out-of-body experience. Baby and all, I twisted out of the police officers’ hands and charged after her. The word “nerve” was echoing in my head and if I had my way, I wanted to cut it into her chest with my bare hands. I was filled with rage. With disbelief. My life wasn’t supposed to be like this. My marriage wasn’t supposed to be like this. And love wasn’t supposed to feel like this. All I could do was blame her for all three.

  The female cop and another tall, white cop caught me and pulled me farther down the walkway, away from Jamison and Coreen, who were standing together.

  “Ma’am,” the female officer said, standing in front of me. “I’m Officer Cox. What’s your name?”

  “Kerry . . . Kerry Taylor.”

  “Ms. Taylor, I can see that you’re upset, but I need you to calm down, so I can talk to you and figure out what exactly is going on here.” Her eyes were soft and brown like my Aunt Luchie’s. The look on her face was sincere, kind, like she was the only person out there who understood what I was feeling. “Now we don’t want anything to happen to your baby. You understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wiped a tear from my eye and looked over at Jamison. He was talking to two male officers, a fat white one and a black one who seemed like he was in charge. Coreen was standing beside him with her hand over her mouth.

  “You don’t live here?” Officer Cox asked me again.

  I shook my head no.

  “Were you sleeping here?”

  “No,” I said, looking at Jamison. He was looking back at me. Tears were in his eyes. The other officer was telling him not to come over to me.

  “Is that man with you?” the other, tall officer asked me.

  “He’s my husband.”

  The weight of my words must’ve surprised both of them. Officer Cox stopped writing on her little pad and looked at the other officer.

  “Yes,” I said, confirming what they were both thinking.

  “Hum,” she said and looked over at Coreen. “He’s here with her?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “Should’ve told us that first,” the tall cop said. “We would’ve given you more time on him.” They both exchanged glances and a short, nervous laugh.

  “I know what you’re feeling. We see this all the time,” Officer Cox said, writing again. “But you have to control yourself.”

  “And not let the cops see you hit your husband,” the tall cop said.

  “Cox,” the officer in charge called, coming toward us as he adjusted his holster.

  Jamison turned toward the house when the officer walked away, but I could tell he was crying. He punched the door so hard it sounded as if a gun had gone off.

  “Ma’am, I need you to go on in the house,” the white officer said to Coreen. “We’ll come in and speak with you after we’re done out here.”

  Coreen turned and looked at me quickly, her eyes still wet with confession. She went to walk into the house, reaching first for Jamison, who stepped away from her immediately.

  The older officer signaled again for Cox to walk toward him.

  “You just stand here, calm, and I’ll be right back,” she said, stepping away.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I could see some trace of dread in her eyes.

  “She’s just talking to our captain is all,” the other officer said. “Standard procedure.”

  “Am I in any trouble?” I watched as Officer Cox talked to the captain. Her eyes dropped and she placed her hand over her mouth just like Coreen had.

  “Probably not,” the officer said. “They’ll probably let you go.”

  “Let me go?”

  I looked back at Jamison.

  “Baby,” he tried, his voice filled with desperation.

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to stay where you are,” the fat officer said, putting his hand over his gun.

  “Jamison?” I called. “Jamison.”

  “She’s my wife. You can’t take her.” He kept coming toward us. Two other cops ran to him and held him back from either side. Suddenly, there were at least ten cops between us.

  “Take me? What’s going on?” I asked. I looked back to Officer Cox. She was obviously pleading now with the captain, but he kept shaking his head, and then finally she looked me right in the eye and mouthed the word “sorry.”

  “Just be patient, ma’am,” the officer beside me said timidly. “They’ll be back over in a minute.”

  “Can’t I just speak to her before she goes?” Jamison yelled. “She’s pregnant. She can’t go to jail.”

  “Jail?” I said. The word slapped me so hard my bladder dropped and urine came flowing from between my legs, wetting the front of my nightgown. “Jamison!” I cried. “Stop them!”

  The female officer came toward me, pulling handcuffs from her hip.

  “Mrs. Taylor,” she said, her voice deep and throaty, as if she was forcing it to be stern. “I’m going to have to place you under arrest—”

  “No,” I hollered. “No! I didn’t do anything. I was just here to get my husband. He’s my husband.” I began crying again. My adrenaline was wearing thin and the thought of being arrested for the first time in my life suddenly made me feel desperate and ugly. Not who I was. Not Kerry Taylor who’d grown up privileged, on the right street, in the right part of Atlanta. Not me. Jail? I looked at Jamison, for him to do something. To stop them from taking me away. This thing wasn’t for me.

  “Baby,” he said, still being held by the officers, “just go with them and I’ll come get you. I promise.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “Mrs. Taylor,” Officer Cox said, “because we all saw you assault your husband, we’re going to have to take you in for domestic violence.”

  “Domestic violence?” I couldn’t trust the echoes vibrating through my ears. “But he’s here with that woman cheating on me.” My spine began to twitch as the baby shifted, panicking, from side to side.

  “I know. But because we saw you and our captain is with us, we have to do this. If the captain wasn’t with us, we could let you go, but we have to protect ourselves. You understand?” Her voice turned to reason for a second and she slid the cuffs on and began to read me my Miranda rights. The crowd, which had grown even larger, stood silent in fear and amazement.

  “That ain’t necessary, officer,” one woman said, “She’s pregnant. Just let her go.”

  “Yeah,” other people agreed. But it was too late. My hands cuffed on top of my belly, I watched them all desperately as the officer began walking me to the car. I turned again to see Jamison still standing there, looking at me helplessly. He’d done this to us, to me. I was being sent to jail fo
r hitting a man who had beaten my heart to a pulp.

  “You’ll be out quickly,” the female officer said, helping me into the car. The rainbow of lights went shining again and we were off.

  Inside Out

  Classical piano. Ballet and tap. Etiquette. Jack and Jill. Private school for thirteen years and four years at Spelman. It seemed that my mother had spent my entire life trying to ensure that I’d never see the inside of a jail cell, yet there I was, her perfect little girl, sitting in a muggy, gray room that at once defeated all of her hard work.

  I want to say the jail was like a nightmare, but really it wasn’t. It was dark, musky, cheerless, and filled with every design no-no I’d ever observed in Homes & Gardens, but really the place wasn’t anything like what I’d seen on television. Beside the fact that I was being held there against my will, it seemed like a regular office. There were computers and people on the phone. Folks eating breakfast at their desks and pictures of ugly children on the walls. Besides the “Most Wanted” signs, bars, and drunken prostitutes, you could pretend you were at a part-time job—one you never wanted to go to.

  It’s funny how when you’re in a situation like that, when you feel you’ve completely lost yourself, all you can seem to do is think of who you are.

  As a chubby-faced black woman with fake gold rings on every finger took my picture and fingerprints, I thought of how far I’d gone in my life, how far I thought I was from ever being booked into a jail, sitting beside prostitutes who had track marks up the insides of their starved arms, drunks who could hardly sit up, and just plain wild women who cursed and spit at their own shadows.

  I was Kerry Jackson-Taylor, army brat daughter of a retired Desert Storm veteran. I’d been raised by a socialite and army wife who had old Atlanta money and a name that opened doors wherever we went. I’d had the best of everything in my life. Hadn’t ever wanted for a thing. Had been taught to play by the rules: say your prayers, obey the law, love your country, and be a good citizen, wife, and mother. When I went to college, everyone called me “Black Barbie.” Even my professors. Girls groaned in envy when I pulled up in front of the dorm freshman year in my black Corvette. They wanted to ride with me, borrow my designer clothes, study with me at the library, go with me to the hairdresser where my long black hair was perfectly pressed, do anything and everything I did, because they all thought I was so perfect. I could lie and say I didn’t feel the same way about myself. But it was hard. Things just came to me then. I’d never had a pimple in my life, had gotten straight A’s throughout prep school and college, and by the time I saw my picture plastered in Ebony magazine when I won Ms. Spelman, my head was so swollen I actually went out and bought a T-shirt that said “Black Barbie” across the front. The back, of course, read, “Perfect 10.”