Tell Me No Lies

by Nikki- Michelle

  The wind blew as I rang her doorbell. I could look through her mahogany exterior doors because of the glass center and see her walking to the door. She took her time getting there. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the long dress she had on swished around her feet like waves in a wading pool.

  She opened the door and cast a despairing look at me. “What?”

  I was shocked to see a big white piece of gauze covering her nose. The bruising underneath her right eye and around the gauze on her nose was unsettling.

  “What happened to your face?” I asked her.

  “Nothing. What do you want?”

  “I came to check on you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  She inhaled and stared at me for a long while before she turned and walked away. Her dark skin was still flawless, minus the injury, while her hazel eyes showed the stress of the court proceedings. She’d left the door open, so that was her way of inviting me in. I closed it behind me and followed her. She sat down in her front room, on a chair facing her backyard. The TV was on, but she didn’t watch it. There were eight floor-to-ceiling windows, which gave the room a more spacious appearance and a panoramic view of the large backyard. The room was decorated in cream and red with a few white accessories. A big golden chandelier hung from the ceiling, and pictures of my father and her mother hung on the wall. There were also pictures of her with Aric. That alone told of her mental state.

  “How are you, Stephanie?” I asked, taking a seat in the chair beside her.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Aric had been the deliverer of the damage to her face. When he’d called me to ask for her address, I knew it was a bad idea. Who knew what the hell had happened between them after he showed up?

  “Why do you care, Gabriel?”

  “Because you’re my sister.”

  She picked up a glass with an amber-colored liquid in it, which I was sure was alcohol. “Not by choice, I assure you.”

  “Stephanie, for once can we be cordial to one another?”

  She cut her eyes at me and sucked her teeth. “Not when you’re still friends with the bitch that tried to ruin my life.”

  I sighed and pulled my locks back. “Stephanie, you tried to kill this woman.”

  “The gun went off by accident.”

  “You physically assaulted her before you shot her. Then you made it so she couldn’t call for help. I’d say you were the one who tried to ruin her life, not to mention tried to end it.”

  She turned to look at me. “Get the fuck out of my house. Why are you here?” she said with such conviction that each of her enunciated words came out like venom.

  I watched as she threw two prescribed pain pills in her mouth, then took a shot to the head of Rémy.

  I looked at my younger sister and felt sympathy. “You need help, Stephanie, psychological help.”

  She jumped up in a huff. “Fuck you.”

  I stood with her. “This is the second time I’ve come here, and you’ve just been sitting here, drinking. This is not healthy, and it’s obvious that other things are wrong with you.”

  She stood there, looking at me, shaking her head. “You fucked the bitch too, didn’t you? I know that look. It’s the same look Aric had when he talked about her.”

  I ignored her, because she was delusional, in a fragile state.

  “Stephanie, you do know you’re facing jail time, right? Like a prison cell?”

  I had to ask her because it was as if she was walking around without a care in the world.

  She sneered and took another shot to the head of the brown liquid in her glass. “All because of that bitch.”

  “No, all because of you. Don’t you get it?” I asked her.

  “Get what? Will you quit defending her in my home? I’m not dumb by a long shot, bastard. I know I’m facing time,” she said.

  I’d gotten used to her calling me names. It didn’t even faze me anymore. When I was a child, the words had hurt, but I’d gotten over it when I realized it was just misguided anger.

  “So you feel no remorse about what you did? Nothing at all?”

  “No. I didn’t mean to shoot her while she was pregnant, but everything else I meant to do,” she spat out with certainty. “She walked into my damn home to tell my husband he was the father of her little bastard kid, and I’m the one that should feel bad?”

  She shook her head and walked over to the bar in the far left corner of the room to pour herself more cognac. The bad part about the whole thing was that she believed what she was saying.

  “What happened, Stephanie? I don’t get why you and Aric had to go this route.”

  I didn’t think she would even answer my question. She turned to glance at me with a contemptuous look across her features.

  “He stopped giving me what I wanted,” she answered.

  “And what was that, Stephanie? I know for a fact he loved you. I know he did things for you that he did for nobody else. I was there, remember?”

  “He promised me that I wouldn’t have to worry about nothing.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  She shook her head and swallowed some of the contents of her glass. “He started working that fucking job at Claxton, and I became nonexistent.”

  “That was after you cheated on him the first time,” I countered. “You always blame everyone else for your actions, Stephanie.”

  “Well, I don’t fucking know, Gabe!” she yelled. “I cheated. He cheated. And now we’re fucking divorced. He got what he wanted.”

  I could look at her whole demeanor and could tell she was hiding something and that she wasn’t going to divulge any more than what she had.

  “I’d say you both got what you wanted.”

  “He shouldn’t have gotten that bitch pregnant.”

  I stared at my sister right in the eyes. We both knew that she had uttered the biggest load of hypocrisy that she could have spoken.

  “And what about the last baby you aborted, Stephanie? We both know that one wasn’t his.”

  She tossed her glass at me. I sidestepped it and knocked the glass to the floor, not even looking at it when it shattered into pieces around my feet.

  “Get the fuck out of my house, Gabriel.”

  “Why? You don’t want to hear the truth? You don’t want to hear that you’re to blame for the divorce just as much as he is?” I snapped. “The fourth child you aborted . . . He thinks it was done just to spite him, but we both know it was because you knew it wasn’t his and you didn’t want him to find out. I’m the one who had to pick you up from the abortion clinic, because the last man you cheated with decided to stay with his wife. He left you ass out, played you. Aric still doesn’t know that you were planning to just up and leave him with no questions asked. He still doesn’t know about the penthouse you purchased in Manhattan so you and your married lover could run away together and have a little love nest to go to. He doesn’t know any of this shit.”

  I was pissed that she had thrown that glass at me, first of all. Second of all, I wanted to shake the shit out of my little sister because she just didn’t seem to grasp reality. I remember Aric accidently finding out that she was pregnant because she left the home pregnancy test in the bathroom. He’d automatically assumed it was his, when it wasn’t. He’d been happy, all too thrilled that he and Stephanie were about to have a baby. Then it all came crashing down. I remember him calling to ask me if I knew where Stephanie was, because she had disappeared for two days. No phone calls, nothing.

  I went on. “He doesn’t know that I had to stay with you in a hotel for two days, because the last abortion almost killed you. He has no fucking idea that you took money from both your accounts and opened another for you and this other nigga to fuck around. If he had known, you know, he would have killed you on sight.” I stepped closer to her so my words could slap the spit out of her like I wanted to do. “We both know the only reason you all of a sudden stopped want
ing a divorce is that the man you’d fallen in love with proved never to have loved you and he stayed with his wife. He played you. Used you like a fucking whore and left you to pick up the pieces. We know how he changed his phone numbers on you, took a position in a whole other fucking country with his job, took his wife, and left you high and dry, Stephanie.”

  “Screw . . . you. . . .” she said, barely above a whisper. It looked as if she couldn’t breathe as tears rapidly fell down her face.

  “No, you screwed yourself. What you didn’t expect was for Aric to turn the tables on you and finally ask you for a divorce. I’m not saying he was the best husband to you all the time, but I do know that in the beginning you guys were good together and you messed that shit up. So no one is to blame for this but you,” I said as pointed at her.

  When I was done, we both stood there and scowled at one another. She’d been nothing but a pain in my ass ever since I could remember. But the day that she called me and I heard the tears in her voice on the other end of the line had changed it all for me. She’d called me from some abortion clinic way out near the Hamptons in New York. The married man that she’d been cheating with had convinced her to have an abortion, and he was supposed to be there with her. He walked into the clinic with her, but when she went back for the procedure, he left. I jumped on a private plane and flew in to help her. She was barely able to stand on her own when I got her to the hotel. I didn’t know if it was because she was suffering from a broken heart or because of the medications. Hell, it could have been both. Either way, it was me who stayed in that hotel room with her until Cecilia could get back into the country to help her. I never got one damn thank-you.

  “Get your shit together, Stephanie. You tried to murder a woman and her unborn child because your husband loved her enough to insist that she keep his son and give birth to him. You’re pissed because the man you were fucking over Aric for didn’t give two shits about you or the child you were carrying. That is your fault,” I stated, finishing what I had to tell her.

  “Just get the hell out of my house,” she yelled again and pointed to the front door. “You want to stand here and act all self-righteous with me when your mother is still perfectly happy with being my father’s mistress of a whore. You have some damn nerve,” she said, slapping tears away from her face.

  I shook my head and walked away from her. I wasn’t worried about her throwing anything at my back, because of the mood I was in. I would have turned around and done something that I would have been apologetic about later.

  “Oh, and tell your mother she wasn’t the only one. I hope she knows that shit,” she said, walking behind me. “She was just one of his many whores.”

  If I’d had the strength to withstand all the other verbal attacks from her about my mother in my life, then I sure as hell could survive this one and I make it to the front door.

  “Fucking whore—”

  I turned around and looked at her emphatically, then got right in her face, staring down at her. “Don’t you ever call my mother any other name than Dixie. I’ve let you get away with saying whatever you want to me and about me for years. It stops today, Stephanie. And for the record, it always takes one whore to recognize another.”

  She was looking like she wanted to say something else as her lips quivered. Hate festered in her eyes. I’d become familiar with the way she worked. So when she drew back and tried to slap me, I knew it was coming. I gripped her wrist and shoved her backward. She fell back hard against the wall, knocking over a flowerpot that sat on the table against it. I quickly made my way to the door and snatched it open, slamming it on my way out.

  By the day’s end I was in no mood to deal with anything else. I didn’t even answer my father’s call. I knew he was calling because Stephanie had probably called him. The last thing I needed was for him to go calling me to defend my sister when he was still on my shit list.

  Jamie

  How well did we know the people who slept next to us? That was the question I asked myself as I sat in Chyanne’s home office. There was a picture of her parents lying facedown in her desk drawer. I had come in to look for a folder she needed. She’d called me to tell me it would be in the top drawer of her desk and she wanted me to fax the contents inside over to her office. That was where I’d found the picture. Neither of us had ever talked about the people who had birthed us. I mean, I’d just told her about my parents, but she still had said nothing about hers. Why was that?

  It was easy to tell that the woman in the picture was Chyanne’s mother. The only difference between Chyanne and her mother was their skin tone and the color of the Afro on her mother’s head. Her mother had the same wild, beautiful hair she had. Her father stood there, holding the woman he loved close to him, with a smile that said he was happy to have her. Her mother’s smile was just as bright.

  I sat there in her chair with the picture in my hand, but my mind was all over the place. I couldn’t focus. Ever since she’d confessed to me about the kiss, my trust in her had wavered. I’d never loved anyone the way I loved Chyanne. I’d fallen in love with her way before she had with me. While she chased Aric and waited for him to notice her, there I was, doing the same thing, waiting for her to notice me. I chased her from one year to the next, from 2010 into 2011, until finally she saw me. We were in her old place when she finally walked up to me and said yes. That was my cue. I had told her before that all she had to do was say yes and I would know what she meant.

  She said yes with a smile on her face and a look in her eyes that said she meant it. That night, for the first time, I made love to her. Yes, we’d had sex before, but that night I showed her how much I wanted her in a different way. She was poetry in my arms . . . the way her body moved and the way her moans reminded me of simple yet deep haiku of pleasure. She kissed me like she wanted me, needed me . . . but I knew there was someone else there with us. When she thought I was sleeping, she went to the bathroom to cry one last cry over the one asshole that had almost cost her, her life. I lay in the dark and wondered if my love would ever be enough.

  The night when she confessed to allowing Aric to kiss her, I had to lie in bed again and wonder the same. I didn’t like the fact that she’d lied to me like that. That shit was too easy for her. It made me wonder. Yeah, I got angry. What man wanted to hear about his woman being kissed by another? To even think about her kissing the motherfucker back almost made me want to do something stupid—like jump across that table and choke the life out of her.

  I laid the picture of her parents back down, then walked out of her office. I needed to get my head together. Chyanne and I were supposed to be visiting my family this weekend, but I didn’t know if I wanted that to happen or not. I’d told my grandmother that I would come, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. With that man, my uncle, getting out of jail soon, there was no way I could risk that. I knew in my heart that I would probably kill him if I laid eyes on him.

  My thoughts were interrupted by my ringing phone. I pulled it from my pocket and saw that it was my grandmother.

  “Hello?” I answered. “Hey, Grams. How are you?”

  “Hey, baby boy. I ain’t know what number I’s calling. Had Jimmy dial it fa’ me,” my grandmother replied. Hers was a raspy voice, but one that always had a comforting tone.

  “It’s my cell, but the right number. You can dial this one or the other you called before to reach me. Where’s Jimmy now?”

  “He done left outta here to go help ya’ auntie Rosa Lee, but dat ain’t why I call ya, baby.”

  I walked down the stairs until I got to the kitchen. Since Chyanne would be late, I’d already picked up AJ. He was sitting in the front room, enthralled by the ABC song being sung on the TV screen. He was surrounded by scattered toys, alphabets, and books. Once I made sure he was still comfortable, I brought my attention back to my grandmother. I’d picked up on the urgency in her voice. It was the second time she’d called me in less than a month. That was unlike her.

  “What’s
wrong, Grandma? Talk to me,” I said to her while taking chicken breasts from the freezer.

  There was a long pause. She grunted a few times, like she was debating whether to tell me something or not. I could hear her radio playing in the background. There was old swing-style music playing that was reminiscent of the Cotton Club back in the twenties.

  “Ya’ uncle’s out, Jamie. He been round here today. Him and ya’ mama, baby.”

  She said it slowly enough for me to know that she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but quickly enough to let me know that she needed to tell me and had no other choice. I closed the top of the freezer but didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. No words would form that would explain my feelings at that moment. I’d hid my pain and shame for so long that I hadn’t prepared myself for the moment when his freedom would be definite.

  It had been years since I’d even forced myself to think about the man. Medicines had quieted those voices and demons, medicines and therapy. There I stood, faced with the reality that my demons had literally been released from their cage. It was in that moment that I decided that there was no way that I could go back home. What would be the reason? I couldn’t risk my freedom, and I couldn’t risk Chyanne getting caught in the middle of the drama that was sure to come. I heard my grandmother as she called my name, asking if I was going to still come, then asking if I was going to be okay. I just didn’t respond. I said nothing as I hung up the phone. I hated to hang up on her, but I no longer felt like talking.