by Coco Pulliam
“Its fine, man, I’ll make sure to handle it properly.”
* * * *
Even before the curtains opened, Tammy held her breath. Once the show started, her cough was heard from around the audience. Monica rubbed her sister’s back and glared at anyone who dared to give them a dirty look.
They were attending a fashion show for Maria’s maternity line. Sun Dae and Yi Hee had gotten the tickets for them so there would be no paper trail linking Tammy and Monica to the show in case something happened. The women also sat ahead of them in line to make sure there would be bodies blocking them in case they wanted to escape quickly. Tammy had felt like escaping ever since she walked into the large room. There were chairs set across the walkway in a straight line; they had gotten tickets for the very tip of the stage. She would be able to see Maria all the way through to the end for her final walk and then the pictures.
Her stomach did not like the idea of that.
“The show is almost over…” Monica held her sister’s hand throughout the show while Tammy had her little spurts of uncertainty. She made sure that she went nowhere up until the very end.
The last model came through in a long-sleeved lace dress. Everything mirrored Tammy’s own except for the fact that the other woman had a baby bump as well. The music skipped, and then played again, faster, as the model walked off stage. All of the women came out of the back in a row.
Then Maria emerged in a flowing white dress, holding a microphone.
“Thank you all for coming. Err…this is my first fashion show here in Canada, though I’ve done a lot already in South America, but I’m still as nervous as I was at my first show.” She smiled into the middle of the crowd, catching Tammy’s eye before gazing to the rest of the crowd. “I don’t know how many of you women have come here because you are expectant mothers who will wear my designs, or if you are already mothers, or if you are planning for the future. But I made this line for my child after I realized I wouldn’t be able to give him the father he’s always wanted. I call this season’s line ‘Finally Pregnant,’ but I named my designs under the full name ‘Waiting,’ in dedication for that special person in your life who is waiting for the child to come.”
Maria gave the microphone back to the stage director and waved one more time to the audience.
“Get up now, darling!” Monica pulled against Tammy to go through the crowd pouring out of the theater. “We’ll have to wait for her in the parking lot.”
Both Sun Dae and Yi Hee posed as fans, waiting to ask Maria questions about her line until all of the production managers, models, and crews had gone without her. Then it was only Monica and Tammy waiting in their car in the parking lot, with Maria coming up the elevator to go to her own.
Tammy got out of the car with a cool head and walked toward Maria. She had in her mind what she was going to say. Everything that would come out with biting force—
“Excuse me—” Her words came out in a soft voice.
“Oh, uh, aren’t you the woman I saw with Hannah last time?” Maria had her hand attached to the door and was waiting without humor on her face for the answer.
“Yes…I’m her daughter-in-law. Well, Eric’s wife.”
“And I’m Eric ex-fiancée… I don’t really know what the handshake protocol for this kind of situation is, so let’s just skip that.” Maria closed her car door and looked Tammy over. “I saw you in the audience, but I didn’t know what your association to Hannah was or why you were coming to my show.”
“I wanted to know what the situation is now. Why did you decide to come back here right now?”
“It’s been four years since I left Eric. I was curious for a second. I wanted to know if the rumors were true and he’s still going to the church to wait for me. But I guess he got past that phase. Don’t worry about anything.”
Maria opened her door to get in the car again, but Tammy held it still.
“Don’t worry about anything?” Tammy scoffed. She’d taken in everything the other woman had said without talking back, but now it was her turn to speak out.
“What about the baby? You want to come back here and ‘check up on things,’ but you left your responsibilities here as well. Isn’t that what you should check up on?” Tammy rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what happened between you and Eric, but it’s not for me to meditate on. All I want to know is if you have any tsunamis waiting for me in your little ‘check-up.’”
Maria wiggled the door out of Tammy’s hold without hurting the other woman physically—only her pride. She got into the car and rolled down the window.
“He’s not Eric’s child, if that’s what you came here to figure out. You heard the speech. I named the line after a father that my son couldn’t have. I meant that literally.” Maria put the key in the engine. “Even at this stage, you might be going around looking for reasons to avoid happiness with Eric, fine…but don’t make him wait now.” She looked Tammy up and down. “It seems like he’s a man who knows how to move past love.”
Tammy walked back to Monica’s car slowly after Maria left. The other woman’s words resonated through her body. She took the passenger’s seat as Sun Dae and Yi Hee talked in Korean in the backseat.
Monica drove onto the highway before finally looking back at her sister. “Did you have a hard time hiding her body?”
Tammy smiled.
“No, it wasn’t even like that. She told me the baby isn’t Eric’s, so we’d been worried for nothing.”
“That’s even better news then. She doesn’t have to go see Satan, and you can live peacefully with Eric. But how come your face hasn’t changed from that ‘I lost the won’ expression ever since you came into the car?”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking over something she said.”
“What? Just forget all the insults that woman told you. If I knew it was like that, then I would have gone myself and attacked her for you, baby.”
“There wasn’t any insulting from her, Monica,” Tammy said. ‘What she said was closer to: ‘I don’t have to destroy you. You’re destroying yourself.’”
Tammy left her words at that. Saying any more would be confirming her sister’s suspicions of her relationship with Eric. She would become another cliché, a black woman hesitating in finding happiness with a white man. But no, her reason for hesitating wasn’t race. Marriage itself can’t undo the pain of being abandoned by someone. New love can only erase the scars of old love if the scars were healed beforehand.
“Drop me off at home.” Tammy waved her hand.
Even before she opened the front door, she knew Eric was not in the house. There wasn’t his familiar scent in the air to signal his presence. The house felt a little colder on days when she came home before him. She locked the door and went over to the living room. He had left a note on the coffee table.
I’m going to go out for a trip after meeting Thomas. I’ll be back in a little while. Don’t wait up for me.—Eric
Tammy went into the bedroom and went straight under the thick covers. She wanted to be ready to face Eric when he came back home.
***
Eric had been driving all day, but finally something brought him back to the church.
It had been so long since he had come, but once he’d gone up the stairs and knocked on the church doors, they had let him in immediately.
“I guess news travels fast when it comes to these things.” He nodded to the choir boys and went into the church, sitting across from the altar. It was the first time he had come wearing casual clothing, so he felt a little out of place.
“I’m finally the one waiting for you to come over.” Eric looked up and saw someone he hadn’t seen in almost four years—at least not in his waking life.
Maria looked older to him. Her brown hair was shorter, and the skin on her face looked a little worn out. She walked over to a seat beside him. She sat close to him but not too close.
“So why are you back here on January twenty-eighth? Isn’t it some kind of a
nniversary now?”
“Well, are you back here to pray for your sins…?”
“I’ve already finished paying for them.” Maria looked over her shoulder. “Your new wife showed up at my fashion show and asked me whether my kid is yours. Still keeping your women on the edge—”
“—woman. And she’s not on the edge. I’m here out of nostalgia.”
“Ah, that’s what it was…sentimentality.”
“There’s nothing to be sentimental about. You chose what you wanted when you left me waiting that day.”
“I had a little case of Vertigo a day before the wedding. I found a six-foot something else, blond, with a huge bank account and thought I might as well upgrade. I didn’t know that he would be the one to run away.”
“Oh.”
Reasons for Maria not showing up to the wedding had invaded his mind over the years, but now the only one he couldn’t think of was realized.
She had left him for another man.
If he had found out about this three years ago, he would have broken down. Right then, he looked over to see the woman he’d once loved, but no words of venom could come to his lips. No matter what she said, there was nothing waiting on the other side of her mouth that would comfort him.
He got up first.
“Donate some money to the church before you leave,” he said. She let out a laugh as he walked away from her.
He walked through the church that he’d married Tammy in, realizing there would be no reason to come back without her any longer. He didn’t stop walking until he reached his car.
The night brought him in as he drove, not knowing where he was going. Then he remembered Maria’s words.
“‘So why are you back here on January twenty-eighth? Isn’t it some kind of anniversary now?’” he repeated.
January twenty-eighth.
The meaning of the day had changed completely. It was no longer the day he went to the church to wait for Maria to show up. Now it was the day that he and Tammy would forever remember as their wedding day. He didn’t know what was worse: the fact that both he and Tammy had to meet Maria to find peace of mind, or the fact that both of them forgot their wedding anniversary.
He turned onto a street with a lot of shops. There had to be a store that was open. Either way, he knew he couldn’t go home empty handed.
“Here we go—an open cake shop.”
* * * *
Tammy heard the front door open without waking up. Eric opened the bedroom door even more lightly, coming in with muted steps so as not to wake her. But her eyes fluttered open the moment he felt her watching him. He came to the side of the bed and ran a hand over her forehead; he dropped a package to the floor before getting onto the bed over the covers.
“You didn’t change into your lingerie yet. Were you waiting for me?”
“How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”
“You are too well behaved. Do you know how many kicks in the crotch I get when I sleep with you—?”
“It’s because you’re always trying to take off my clothing.”
Tammy pulled herself out of her covers to attack him, but he had bent down to the floor, taking something into his arms.
“We’re one year old now, baby.”
Eric pulled down the covering to reveal a fruit-topped, vanilla-icing-covered sponge cake.
“The only shop I could find open on the way home was this Chinese bakery.”
“The cake is so beautiful, Hubby C.” Tammy took a strawberry off of the cake and put it in her mouth slowly, smiling at the way Eric observed her.
“You make that cake look even more delicious than it already is, you know that…?” Eric kept watching as Tammy took another strawberry from the cake and placed it in her mouth. As she tried to take the third one he grabbed her hand, almost dropping the cake, but he held it strong with one hand.
“If you want me to feed you too you just have to ask, Hubby C.” She placed another strawberry in his mouth. He sucked all the whipped cream off her finger. He finished eating as he looked into her face. She looked less worried than she had in the previous days.
“Happy anniversary, baby…” Eric sang to her.
Tammy shook her head. “Correction—happy first anniversary to us and many more to come, Hubby C.”
They ate as much as they could before Eric put the rest of the cake on the table.
“I feel like we should change out of our clothing before we fall asleep, but today is too much of a special day for clothing…”
“Is that how you lost your virginity? Talking your way out of your pants and into hers?” She slipped off her shirt, her bra and then her pants. “Ah, it seems like I’m going to have to take off the pants in this relationship…”
She put his hand over his to take off his clothing. Then she hugged him around the shoulders and then around the legs, pulling her closer to him.
“You said you would take care of me, but your responsibility isn’t over yet.” Tammy wrapped her limbs tighter around him. He ran a firm hand up and down her back.
“What should I do to make up for it, then…?” He lined kisses against her collarbone. She moaned as he dragged his lips down to her breasts, nibbling her dark nipples. “You know what they say. Once you go Scottish you don’t go back.”
She reached down and bit his lip playfully.
“I’ll go back if I want to; don’t test me.”
* * * *
It had been hours since Eric had left the house for work, but the phone was ringing with force. She placed the pillow over her head and covered her ears with it. It had been ringing on and off for the past few days, but only after her husband was out of the house. But whenever Tammy went over to answer the phone, the person on the other end hung up. She was getting frustrated, but it kept ringing. Unwrapping herself from within the soft white sheets, she finally reached over to answer the cordless phone.
“You’d better answer the phone this time. Or else stop calling my house, you jerk—”
“Crazy baby, you finally picked up the phone—GET AWAY FROM THAT, YOU ASSHOLE!”
Tammy could recognize her sister’s voice, but she pulled the phone away from her ear as the screams came through the phone.
“I’m rushing there now, Monica!” She was running around trying to get her clothing on so she would be able to leave quickly.
“Fly, don’t run! I already called Thomas—AHHH! GET AWAY YOU CRAZY JERK!”
She put the phone on the receiver, rushing to get her keys and lock the front door. It was the first time Monica had ever called her for help, so she half dove into the street to get a taxi. She told the driver the address and tried to keep calm as he drove.
Chapter Five
Tammy got there as fast as she could with the taxi, but she could see there was another person rushing there before her. As she ran up the stairs, she could hear hard footsteps preceding her and then her sister’s cries of victory.
“He’s over in the corner there! Hit him!”
She ran faster up the stairs. Once she got there, she found Thomas standing over a body and her sister holding on to his arm. In a normal scene, the woman would be holding a man’s arm to make sure he would stop from hitting someone, but Monica was urging him forward.
“Monica, what’s going on?!” Tammy went into the room in a rush.
Before she could say any more, the man on the floor got to his feet. It felt like all of the blood in her body disappeared as she looked into the eyes of her ex.
“Marcus… What are you doing here?”
“You know him?”
Tammy’s eyes met the ones of Thomas, the police officer contact, who had rushed to her sister’s rescue. The man looked disheveled in his gym clothing and was panting hard. Her sister looked neat in comparison for someone who’d seemed like she was fighting for her life on the phone. Her hair was freshly washed and styled while she clung to him in a light gray t-shirt dress that hugged her curves.
“No, she does
n’t know the crazy asshole. Well…she doesn’t have to know him anymore.” Monica reached over to a couch pillow and threw it at Marcus’s face.
“What is going on here?” Thomas looked more confused than Marcus did.
Marcus had his sleeping clothing on, his jogging pants and an oversized t-shirt. But he was swaying even though he was now sitting on the floor. Happy hour apparently started in the early morning for him.
“I came over to the house to find Tammy—”
“And instead you found yourself in a beat down,” Monica interjected with another pillow throw.
“I don’t know who you are, but this is what I do know. She is my friend’s best friend’s wife, which means if you screw her over it’ll be like screwing over my own wife, so I’ll kick your ass like you’ve never had your ass kicked before!” Thomas grabbed Monica’s hand and came out of the room. “You have five minutes and counting.”
Tammy sat on the counter table as Marcus paced. Finally he looked up at her with a softened expression.
“It was my anniversary yesterday. I looked over at my wife’s sleeping form and suddenly forgot her name. I could only remember the name Tammy, so I didn’t want to speak. For that whole day, my only communication with my wife was through grunts. Because of that the bitch took my credit card and almost bought a mall full of brand names.” He stopped pacing and looked over at her. “I really don’t have any excuses. We broke up and nothing was wrong with me. I think I had a harder time during a basketball upset than breaking up with you. But yesterday I couldn’t think of anyone else but you and your sweet dark body—”
“Just stop there so I can go and call Thomas back in here to kick your ass.” Tammy got up from the coffee table and scoffed. “You wanted to think of me, fine. But do it in a place that isn’t my sister’s home.” She turned to walk away, but he grabbed her arm.
“You think I don’t know about who you’re married to now? Your moms are bragging all over church that you got yourself a Scottish man. Their daughter sold herself off, so they must be so proud—”
