by Tracy Brown
“You need to—” Toya began.
Camille cut her off. “I don’t really want to hear it, Toya,” she said firmly. “I’m not in the mood for that shit tonight.”
Toya sat forward, her face expressing her shock. “What shit?”
Camille was tired of being lectured by her friend. “Your shit, Toya. Every time one of us has a problem, you’re the first one to tell us what we should do, how we should handle it, when you’ve never been through the shit yourself. You can’t tell Dominique not to love Jamel just because he made a mistake that put him in jail. Have you ever loved a man doing time? You can’t tell me or Misa how to deal with our shit, either. You’ve never been married, never been facing jail time. So save it!”
Everyone was caught off guard. They all assumed that the pressure of everything going on in her family coupled with her pregnancy hormones had made Camille hostile. That outburst was so out of her character. But, Misa and Dominique both silently cosigned. After all, Toya hadn’t walked a mile in their shoes.
Toya calmly stared at Camille before pouring herself another glass of cognac and sitting back, crossing her legs.
“Actually,” she said. “I’ve been through all of that.”
All three of her friends looked confused, and Toya decided that it was time she solved the mystery.
“Unlike you girls,” she said. “I don’t open up easily about the things I’ve been through in my past or what I’ve survived. So there’s a lot you don’t know about me.” She guzzled the contents of her glass and felt the warm liquor coat her chest. “On the night that Misa shot Steven, I told you girls that we should stop keeping things to ourselves. So let me practice what I preach.” She sighed and told them a story.
“You already know about my father, how he got drunk and high all the time and made a fool out of my family. But what you don’t know is that eventually things got really hard for my mother. She was working her fingers to the bone and that muthafuckin’ father of mine would spend the money faster than she could make it. Times were hard and to make matters worse, he would put his foot in her ass every now and then for good measure.” Toya rolled her eyes in disgust. “Anyway, it was the eighties and crack was making average Joes into millionaires. And I met this guy named Michael. He was from Antigua, but had an unmistakable thoroughness, a swagger that could only come from the streets. I was about to graduate from high school and I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of my parents’ house. My father was a fuckup and my mother was an enabler and I was sick of watching it. Three of my brothers were older than me and had already moved out. But I was still there and so was my little brother Derrick. He was sixteen, I was almost eighteen and we both used to talk about how eager we were to get grown and move out.
“So I met Michael and he pursued me something terrible. He was the same age as me—actually he was a year older—but had dropped out of school already. I would see him when I was on my way to school and he would follow my ass all the way there. At first, I ignored him. My father had drilled into my head that men only wanted me for sex. I had the body of a video chick—big boobs, phat ass, small waist—and my father made me feel like that was all I had to offer a man, like no guy would ever want me as anything but a sex object. So I was leery of Michael at first. But he was so fine! I liked him, I just wouldn’t give in and let him take me out or anything.
“Well, I graduated high school and I spent that summer getting ready to go away to college. I would see Michael from time to time and we would chat. I told him that I was going away to school and do you know that he offered to take me shopping for my dorm room?” Toya paused her story, smiled at the memory of the beautiful Antiguan man who had swept her off her feet. “I didn’t accept it, but eventually, he wore me down. I started seeing him secretly behind my parents’ back. By the end of that summer, I was in love with him. But my father had done a number on me. I still wouldn’t let myself believe that he wanted anything from me but sex. So I went away to school on a scholarship and didn’t look back. Then I came home for Thanksgiving and I wound up never going back to Atlanta.”
Camille was hanging on Toya’s every word. She had gone to high school with Toya at Brooklyn Tech, but hadn’t known about her father’s tyranny. Since Camille traveled to school from Staten Island, she had been oblivious to what had gone on in her friend’s family life. The Toya she had known was a pretty, around-the-way girl who all the other girls in school wanted to be friends with. After graduation, the two had kept in touch, but only via occasional letters and postcards, until one day they just stopped. “Why not?”
Toya looked at her, smirked. “I came home and found out that my father was worse than ever before. He was getting high more than ever, still kicking my mother’s ass, but my brother had started fighting him back. One night, while I was away at school, my father had punched my brother in the face and Derrick lost it. He kicked my father’s ass!” Toya chuckled, wishing she had been there to witness that. “My father kicked Derrick out, even though he was only sixteen years old, and my mother let him do it. Nobody told me about all of this while I was away at school, so I didn’t find this all out until I came home. I was pissed! I went out in our neighborhood looking for my brother and eventually I found him with Michael. He was working for Michael.”
Dominique shook her head. She had never known that Toya had dated a drug dealer, let alone one who had put her little brother to work. “What did you do?” she asked.
“I went off! I called Michael every name in the book and Derrick dragged me away, pulled me into some apartment building lobby and tried to calm me down. He told me that he had been kicked out with nothing but the shit he could fit in a duffel bag, that my parents had left him with nothing. He knew he could come back around when my father wasn’t there and my moms would have given him money or made him something to eat. But my brother was too proud to do that. He felt like since they kicked him out, fuck them. He was gonna make it on his own. He went to Michael, because he had seen him around the way, knew what he was doing, and saw that he was getting money. He asked Michael to put him on and at first he refused because of me. Michael knew that I wouldn’t approve. But Derrick was persistent and eventually Michael gave in. My brother was a drug dealer.”
Toya took a break from her story and poured another drink. Her friends waited with bated breath for her to continue.
She sipped her drink and finally went on. “Well, at that point I was mad as hell—not just at my father, but my mother as well. This was her baby boy she allowed to be tossed out in the street like that. So I kept to myself. I stayed in my room most of the time and ignored both of them. When I did go outside, I spent most of my time with Derrick and Michael and their crew, watching them do their thing and keeping an eye out for cops. Derrick had found a room in a rooming house on Saratoga and he was renting it by the week. It was small, but it was warm and clean and that’s all he cared about. Michael was living nice! He had a big old apartment on the top floor of a building with a doorman and everything. I was impressed, but I tried not to show it. I would chill with them, help them bag up their shit and then I’d go home and lock myself in my room until the next day. Then one night, I came home and my father was waiting for me at the front door. He told me that he needed money. I said I didn’t have none, but he knew that I was lying and I wouldn’t give it to him. He slapped me so hard that my ears were ringing and I swear I saw stars. So I packed my shit, went back out there in the cold and told my brother and Michael what happened. Michael told me that I could stay with him. I didn’t even think twice about it. I knew I wasn’t going back home, otherwise I would have wound up murdering my father. From that night on, Michael and I were official.
“I eventually dropped out of college and spent most of my time with Michael and Derrick. I was part of their team, and even got to know some of the other hustlers’ wives in their circle.” Toya looked at Camille. “So this was when I got married.”
Camille looked amazed. “You married Mi
chael?”
Toya nodded. “Yup. I was so fucked up at first by all the shit my father had drilled in my head over the years—a man won’t marry you if you give up the ass too soon; the only thing a man wants from most of the women he meets is some pussy; once a nigga gets the pussy he’s looking for the exit—and I believed that. So I started expecting Michael to push me away, to do all the things my father said men do. But he didn’t push me away. In fact, he tried to undo all the damage that had been done to my self-esteem throughout my upbringing. He loved me.” She nodded matter-of-factly. “No doubt about that.”
“Did you have a big wedding?” Misa asked.
Toya shook her head. “Nah. We went right down to City Hall and did it. And that was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Michael had it all—a nice home, fancy car, clothes, cash, so much fucking cash!” She shook her head at the memory of it. “We used to travel all over the place—Mexico, Aruba, Barbados, all around the United States!”
Camille smiled. “That’s when you were sending me postcards from all those places,” she recalled. “I thought you were traveling while you were on break from school.”
Toya smiled, too, remembering. “That’s what I wanted you to think,” she said. “But I was Mrs. Michael Nash, and I was on top of the world. I had furs, diamonds, expensive furniture, but most of all I had respect. People respected me in the streets ’cuz they knew I was Michael’s wife. I even went back home and told my mother that I got married. She was happy for me, but my father said it wouldn’t last. I didn’t give a fuck what he said. I was happy and I was finally out of their house for good.”
Toya looked at her friends seriously. She took a long swig of her drink and stared at the floor. “We were happier than anybody else in the world,” she said. “I was so in love with him! I’m sure he cheated on me, but I never knew about it. When we were together, it was all about me and everybody knew us as a team. I felt powerful, and I was more in love with him because he was so powerful. He made a lot of money. They all did. My brother was driving fly cars, getting all the prettiest girls. My mother was mad because she didn’t approve of us being involved in the drug game. Meanwhile, she was still with my drug-addicted father.” Toya shook her head at the absurdity of that. “Years went by and we were untouchable.”
She looked at Misa. “Then my brother got arrested. I thought it was my fault—definitely that it was Michael’s fault. We never should have let him sell drugs in the first place. I think at that point that I started looking at the whole thing differently. Michael became the bad guy in my mind, because if it wasn’t for him, Derrick wouldn’t be in jail. At least that’s how I looked at it. Derrick wouldn’t rat, so they sent him to jail for five years. He was only twenty-one.” She sighed. “That was hard to handle. My parents turned their backs on him. My mother was embarrassed that a child of hers—a teacher who worked hard to make ends meet—would resort to selling drugs. My father was disappointed for God knows what reason! It seemed like neither of them saw that my brother’s hand had been forced, that my father’s bullshit contributed to it. Anyway, I held Derrick down. I sent him money orders, food, cigarettes, sneakers, letters. I accepted collect phone calls and went on visits … I did all of that!” She looked at Dominique pointedly. “And I watched women go up there week after week, dragging small kids with them and getting treated like shit by the prison guards. Then the same unappreciative bastard they were traveling hours to see would have some next bitch sitting up there at the next visit. I listened to the stories Derrick told me about guys in there dealing with faggots on the low and then kissing their wives when they came to see them; heard story after story about chicks paying thousands of dollars in phone bills because their punk-ass man couldn’t do his time without touching base every night. And I even watched women get arrested and their kids taken away because they tried to smuggle drugs into the prison hidden inside their baby’s diaper. So all the things I warned you about, all the things I said to you about Jamel … I was speaking from experience. From day one, I could tell that he ain’t shit! I was just trying to save you the trouble of finding out the hard way.”
Dominique smiled. “All I know is the hard way,” she said, though she wished now that she had heeded Toya’s advice.
“So, okay,” Misa said. “Did Michael ever get caught?”
Toya smiled and nodded. “Unfortunately, he did. We both did.”
Camille shifted in her seat, tucked her legs underneath her and rested her chin on her hand as she listened intently. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“We were home one night and the police raided our apartment. One of his boys snitched on him and they found everything. Drugs, guns, everything! I got arrested right along with him and spent a few weeks in jail because my mother wouldn’t accept my calls. It was bad enough that her son got arrested for drugs, but her daughter?” Toya shook her head in dismay. “That was the last straw.”
“So how did you get out?” Dominique asked anxiously.
“Eventually, one of his cronies posted my bail. Michael was denied bail because he took the fall for everything. He told them that it was his shit, that I had no idea all that stuff was in our home, that I was blind to the fact that he was hustling. The police didn’t believe him, but they had to let me go. They had no evidence against me, I had no priors and he was admitting being the one who did it. So I got out, while he got sentenced to fifteen years.”
Dominique’s chin dropped. She had been struggling with Jamel being locked up for three years. Fifteen sounded like an eternity!
“So now, you had to visit him and your brother in jail,” Misa assumed.
Toya frowned, shook her head. “I guess you haven’t been listening,” she said. “I had seen all that I needed to see by then to convince me that men in jail don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves. I wasn’t going to be traveling for hours to visit him, spending my last money on packages for him, when he was bound to play me just like the rest of them incarcerated niggas do to the women in their lives.”
Camille frowned, sat up. “What are you saying? You left him while he was locked up?”
“I sure did,” Toya said, with no hint of regret or remorse. “It was one thing to do all that for my brother. But I wasn’t about to do it for just some ordinary man. Husband or no husband, Michael knew I wouldn’t be willing to put my life on hold for that long. He loved me, but he knew that I wasn’t built for that life. I could never be some prisoner’s wife, running upstate every weekend for a nigga who would ultimately give me his ass to kiss.”
Silence filled the room until Mary J’s “Take Me As I Am” filled the speakers.
“So what ever happened to him?” Dominique asked.
“He did his time and as soon as he got out, they deported him.” Toya crossed her legs and looked at her friends. “I took the money the police hadn’t seized and put a down payment on my brownstone. Been living there ever since.”
Everyone was floored. Dominique stared at Toya wide-eyed. “So all this time you’ve been talking shit about what we need to do,” she said teasingly. “You were speaking from experience. You’ve been married to a drug dealer like Camille, been locked up like Misa and—”
“And I was still smart enough to know not to waste my time on a convict like you did.”
Dominique threw an olive at Toya playfully. Their giggles lightened the mood somewhat.
Camille felt that Toya had been a little heartless, though. “Do you ever feel bad for turning your back on your husband? Ever wonder where he is now or how he’s doing?”
Toya sighed. The truth was that she often wondered that. She thought about Michael all the time, about the patient love he had given her, allowing her to feel protected and adored after all that she had been through. And in the end, she had walked away from him without thinking twice about it. She realized, as she thought about it now, that she had been able to shut her emotions on and off so easily because she had never allowed herself to believ
e it was all real in the first place. Even now, part of her believed her father—men could never be trusted with her heart. “I don’t feel bad,” she lied. “But I do think about him sometimes. Then I think about something else.” She refilled her glass and Dominique and Misa held theirs out for refills, too. “Oh, and I divorced him while he was in prison. So he’s not my husband anymore.”
Camille’s head was spinning after all she’d just heard. “Wow,” she said. All along, Camille had thought Toya hadn’t been through the kinds of the things that the rest of them had endured. Now she realized that Toya had been through all of what they were dealing with and more.
“Let me tell y’all the new drama in my life,” Toya said, eager to change the subject. Thinking about Michael always made her heartsick.
“There’s more?” Misa asked. Hearing about Toya’s past had been enough of a shock.
“Yeah,” Toya said and sighed. “Lately, this guy named Russell has been bothering me, begging me to go out with him. He comes to my house and brings me flowers, gives me compliments every time he sees me. But he’s as ugly as sin.” Toya shuddered for emphasis. “Anyway, the other night, after I had dinner with my father, I ran into this son of a bitch and he asked me out for the hundredth time.”
“Did you go?” Camille sat up slightly.
Toya nodded. “I did. He took me to a nice restaurant and we had dinner. I ordered the most expensive shit on the menu hoping to turn him off and make him mad. But he paid for it with no problem. In fact, every time I ordered something expensive, he ordered something even more expensive than that.”
Dominique raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Nice!” she said. “So, what was the conversation like over dinner?”
“It was interesting,” Toya admitted, somewhat reluctantly. “He’s a fireman, no kids, no wife, no baby-mama drama. He lives on his own—rents an apartment across the street from my house. He says he likes to travel, that he likes a challenge, and he noticed me as soon as he moved into the neighborhood.”
