Tell Me No Lies

by Nikki- Michelle

  “Damn, Jamie. You got it bad, nigga.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He and I talked for a while longer. He asked about Ashton and Jessica. Everything had been going well with them. My son would be coming over for the weekend to spend time with us. He had been doing well in school, so I was planning to take him shopping so he could pick up some of the new games he’d been asking for. Before Jamaal left, he and I made plans to meet back at the gym for a game of hoops on the weekend. Once he was gone, I decided to clean, then start dinner. I wasn’t sure if AJ would be home, but for the first time I was hoping he would be with his father, so Chyanne and I could talk without the barrier.

  The ringing of my phone jarred me from my thoughts. It was my grandmother. I hadn’t talked to her in weeks, had no mind to. I didn’t want to be reminded of the reason I had to tell Chyanne the truth about my past. I decided to answer the phone, anyway, just so she wouldn’t be worried about me.

  “Jamie, you dere, baby?” she asked when I picked up the phone.

  “Yes, ma’am. How’re you doing, Grams?”

  “Oh, I’s making it, baby. Was worried ’bout ’cha. Why you ain’t been calling or answering? Jimmy was let down when I tell him you wasn’t coming,” she told me.

  “I know, and I’m sorry about that. Maybe I’ll fly him out here in a few months.”

  I could hear the smile in her voice when she answered, “Oh, he’d lack that, baby. But tell me, how you been?”

  I lit a stick of Egyptian musk incense then placed it in the holder before leaning against the wall.

  “I’ve been okay.”

  “Yo’ mama been asking ’bout ’cha.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had no response to that.

  “Jamie?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You gone call and talk to ya’ mama, baby?”

  I wanted to lie to her and tell her yes.

  “No.”

  “A’ight then. Won’t force ya to do nunnin’ ya don’t wanna. Just thought ya may hav’. Charles been round heah, fooling with her and Jimmy.”

  That made my eye twitch, my blood boil. I fisted my hands, almost crushing the phone with my grip. That name, that man was the reason I didn’t want to answer my grandmother’s calls. I didn’t like for my past demons to be thrown in my face. That man had wreaked havoc on my life ever since I could remember. Flashes of my childhood played before me like a picture on a movie screen.

  “I need to go.”

  “Ya can’t keep running from it all ya’ life, Jamie. Gotta face ya’ past some time or the other. That issue ya don’t want to speak on wit’ ya’ brother, it still gone be heah. That issue ya don’t want to speak on wit’ ya’ mama, it still gone be heah, even when ya ain’t looking, baby. Can’t keep running all ya’ life. Ya heah meh?”

  Her voice was stern and crisp. You wouldn’t be able to tell she was eighty just by listening to her. She had the kind of voice that would make the strongest of men stand at attention. That was the reason she was the matriarch of my family.

  “I hear you. I know. I just . . . I just can’t deal with it right now, okay?”

  “Okay, baby.”

  “Good-bye, Grams.”

  “Don’t tell me bye lack ya never gone see me ’gain. Tell me, ‘Talk to ya later,”” she quipped, frustratingly so.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later.”

  After that phone call I had to go grab my bag with my medicine in it. Most times my pride kept me from taking the pills. Then there were times when certain things required I take them, lest I spaz out. Those things that my grandmother insisted I not run away from, the pills helped me to escape them. Sometimes I just didn’t want to deal with the shit. That was the reason I never went back home. If it wasn’t for my brother and my grandmother, I would never set foot on any soil in Mississippi again. Family be damned.

  I grabbed my cell, then dialed Chyanne. Each time her phone just rang. My palms started to sweat, and I felt my nerves get edgy. I tried calling her another two times. She didn’t answer either time. Before I could control my anger, my foot sent the forty-seven-inch flat-screen television in our bedroom crashing to the floor.

  I walked into the bathroom, and my heart gave another skip when I noticed she didn’t even pick up the note or the rose that I’d left for her that morning. I leaned over the his and her sink, my knuckles pressing hard against the marble countertop. I made the mistake of looking at my reflection in the mirror. The little boy looking back at me scared me . . . took me back to a place and time when I was helpless. Why the fuck wasn’t she answering the phone? My fist connected with the mirror. The sound of the glass crashing and shattering around the bathroom did nothing to calm me down.

  An hour later, when Chyanne walked in, I was sitting at the foot of the bed, my hand haphazardly wrapped in a white bath towel to stop the bleeding. I looked up at her as she stood in the doorway. Shock, dismay, and maybe even horror were written across her beautiful face. I looked at her flushed cheeks. Watched the way her chest heaved up and down. Her hair had been in a neat bun when she left for work. It was now in a state of disarray, wildly swaying as she stepped closer to me.

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

  The grave bass in my voice gave her pause. Her hand slapped the side of her hair, like she didn’t even know what I was talking about.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I must have . . .” She looked around, as if doing so would help her formulate her words. Her eyes darted from the TV to my hand.

  “You must have what?”

  “Jamie, what happened to your hand?” She dropped her clutch from her arm, then stepped over the TV to reach me. She took my hand in hers, as she removed the towel. She gasped at the gashes that decorated the back of my hand, my knuckles and fingers. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you go to the emergency room?” she asked before she rushed into the bathroom.

  I slowly turned and watched as her heels slipped and slid on the glass adorning the already slippery Italian marble flooring. I rushed over to catch her. My injured hand soaked the side and front of her designer cream suit in red. Once she caught her balance, her shocked chocolate-toned face looked up at me.

  “Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

  “I don’t know. I must not have heard the phone,” she answered. “Jamie, you need to see a doctor. What happened?”

  “You didn’t answer my calls.”

  She moved out of my hold and carefully walked back into our carpeted bedroom. Her arms were stretched out as she looked around the room, then back over at me with a perplexing frown adorning her features.

  “You did this because I didn’t answer the phone, Jamie? Why?”

  I shrugged, feeling only like a shell of myself. I closed my eyes while moving my head from side to side like a scale. I was fighting with my thoughts of what to say next. “You should have answered the phone. That makes twice in less than twenty-four hours, Chyanne. What the fuck is going on with you?”

  I knew she was about to tell a lie by the way she started to bite down on the inside of her cheek.

  “Nothing is going on with me. I just didn’t hear the phone,” she said, then walked over to pick up the blood-drenched towel.

  She grabbed my hand again, wrapped the towel around it. I snatched it away. She actually jerked back and looked up at me, like she was afraid of me. She saw my black bag with my pills lying in it on the bed. I hadn’t even gotten around to taking them. I’d been too angry, too pissed to even remember to take them. Each time I’d called her and she wouldn’t answer, my anger had slowly bubbled under the surface. It was like a volcano getting ready to erupt.

  “Stop fucking lying to me,” I snapped at her.

  “No, I’m not, Jamie,” she quickly answered and picked up the toiletry bag. “I think you should take your medicine just so you can calm down.”

  That fucked with me. What she said fucked with me. She was actually rummaging through the
bag, looking for pills to give me. Something in me found that insulting.

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m some fucking head case, Chyanne.”

  I snatched the bag away from her. Pill bottles went flying everywhere, minus the two she had in her hand. Xanax and Risperdal were lodged in her closed fists. She’d remembered the pills that I’d told her would calm me down the quickest if I ever got too angry to be reasonable.

  “I’m not. I just want you to calm down so we can talk—”

  “I’m fucking trying to talk to you right now. Don’t play me, Chyanne. Who the fuck I gotta be right now for you to actually treat me with the respect I treat you?”

  “Jamie, I do respect you—”

  “The fuck you do.”

  She ran a hand through her hair as she shook her head. Then she extended her hand, like she was offering me the pills. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you right now, Jamie, but you should take these—”

  Before the rest of her words left her mouth, I backhanded the pills from her hand. She screamed out, then snatched her hand away, clutching it against her chest with her other hand. I walked out of the room. Left her standing there, looking just how she’d made me feel, like a damn fool.

  Aric

  “Something’s off with Chyanne,” I told Gabe offhandedly.

  We’d been talking about something else altogether, but Chyanne’s abrupt changes in mood had been bothering me that badly. I’d brought Gabe out to grab a couple of drinks just to settle his mind a bit. The death of his father had taken a toll on him, so I just wanted to lighten the burden as much as a few drinks could. I took him to a small hooka bar. Not too many people knew about it, because it was an exclusive club, one that his father had frequented. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, because of the memories attached to it, but it was what he chose.

  The place had dense lighting. It was a bit smoky because of the cigars that had been lit up around the place. We were at Wolf Creek. It was an upscale hooka bar and grill that played host to men and women of the corporate world. It was a membership-only type of club that, depending on the package you bought, could get you damn near anything you wanted. To me it was just like any other after work or lunchtime hangout spot, except for the fact that everything in it, including the upholstery, was top of the line.

  He looked up from his cell with a quirked brow. “Something like what?” he asked.

  “Her mouth, for one.”

  His head tilted as he placed his phone on the bar. “Okay. I’ll take the bait. I’m confused as to what you mean.”

  I explained myself. “She’s been real flip at the lip as of late, snapping at me like she’s lost her damned mind.”

  “And that’s not normal for her, I take it.”

  “Fuck, no. Chyanne already knows to calm that shit down when it comes to me.”

  He chuckled, then looked back down at his phone. “You still like to think you have her under lock and key, huh?” he asked without looking up at me.

  The tone of his question might have given me pause if I didn’t know any better. But his father, a man he was very close to, had just passed, so I could understand his solemn inquiry. I took in his demeanor, noted it in the back of my mind for later.

  “Not about having her under lock and key, although it’s clear that if I wanted her back bad enough, I could have her.”

  He glanced my way, gave a deep chortle, then a grunt, but didn’t say anything else. He’d always thought it was funny the way I handle the situation between Chyanne and myself. He didn’t understand it. My way of thinking was, as long as I understood it, I didn’t give a damn who didn’t.

  “The point I was making is that she’s been acting differently. Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s a fire. She’s been real curt and short over the phone, and it’s really getting on my nerves.”

  “Maybe she’s dealing with other things.”

  “I don’t give a damn what she’s dealing with. There’s no need to take the shit out on me.”

  We stopped talking long enough for Gabe to flirt with the waitress when she brought the pitcher of Heineken we’d ordered with the wings and fries. She was a sexy sister who had a little Asian in her. She kind of reminded me of Lucy Liu with black in her. Her body measurements looked nothing like Lucy’s, though, as she had the shape of a video vixen. I would have tried to talk to her, but in all honesty, my mind had been on Chyanne a lot as of late. I might have been dipping in some new pussy every once in a while, but it was Chyanne’s pussy that I wanted. No need to lie about that shit to myself. Once Gabe had gotten the waitress’s number, she was gone, and I got back to talking.

  “I’m just saying,” he stated, starting back up. “I saw her yesterday, and she had her wrist wrapped up like maybe she’d sprained it or something, and she did look stressed. You never know what she’s dealing with at home, either.”

  That bit of news caused me to sit straight up. I hadn’t seen or talked to Chyanne since the day before, so I had no idea what he was talking about. I had picked up AJ from school the day before, then had dropped him off at school this morning. However, that wasn’t what gave me pause.

  “So you saw Chyanne yesterday?” I asked, just to clarify matters.

  When he looked up at me, he paused, like he was contemplating his answer. “Yeah. Seen her in passing.”

  “In passing?”

  He nodded once, then picked up a wing. “Had to bring my mom over to that side of town so she could talk to some of my pop’s people. We saw Chyanne when we were at Publix over on Mount Zion.”

  Publix was a grocery store that Chyanne liked to frequent because of their fresh seafood selections. So that wasn’t unusual.

  “Did she say what had happened to her wrist?” I asked.

  He bit into the wing, chewed, wiped his hand, typed something into his phone, then looked back up at me.

  “Nope. Didn’t think to ask.”

  AJ had been saying little things that had me thinking something was going on between Chyanne and Jamie. After the last talk we had, I had thought Chyanne would do better in keeping him sheltered from their arguments. The one thing I would not tolerate was my son being in a situation where there might be violence.

  Gabe and I talked for a few minutes more. He told me about what had happened with this mother and Cecilia at the attorney’s office. I could only shake my head at that shit. His father had left his mistress more money than he had left his wife. I didn’t know what to say about that, so I kept my opinions to myself. Truth be told, if I found myself stuck between two women the way his father had been, and if I loved both women the same, I would try to convince them that all of us living together was the way to go. I chuckled inwardly at the idea.

  Once we were done, I told him that I would be at his father’s funeral the next day, and that I would check in on him later to make sure he was doing okay. My mind was still on Chyanne and what Gabe had told me about her being all bandaged up and shit.

  “Hello?” She had picked up on the first ring.

  “You sound asleep. Did I wake you”—I looked at the Movado watch on my left wrist—“at three in the afternoon?”

  She smacked her lips, and judging by the way she huffed, I could imagine her rolling her eyes. “No, Aric. I’m just tired. Are you bringing AJ now?”

  “I have to pick him up, but is everything okay with you over there?”

  “Yes, it’s fine.”

  “Okay, if I bring my son over there and he tells me he saw you and Jamie fighting again, we’re going to have a few issues.”

  “Aric, don’t threaten me, okay? I’m not in the mood. I’ll be home for the rest of the day.”

  When I heard the line click, I figured she had to be going through something to hang up on me. She had to be out of her damned mind too. I’d known her long enough to know that although she claimed everything was okay, something was off.

  Picking AJ up took all of thirty minutes. He was happy to go, and I was happy to see
him, as always. As I drove, my mind traveled back to the other night, when I had gone to visit a man I had come to know as Mr. Jerry. The old man had become a constant in my life since he’d saved Chyanne’s life and in turn saved AJ’s. I remember the first time I had gone to see him.

  He hadn’t wanted to be bothered, but I’d kept going, anyway, until one day he finally opened the door. He walked with a cane, but that didn’t slow him down. He wore a ’fro that needed to be trimmed, and his skin was the color of a walnut. Old eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses could look right through me. After leaving Stephanie’s the night her father was killed, I went to see Mr. Jerry, because I knew he would be up. I stopped at Waffle House to get him the breakfast he liked with a tall cup of coffee from QuikTrip. He’d been appreciative. He and I, at times, just sat and talked on his porch.

  That night had been no different. We had sat outside, and he had asked me how AJ and Chyanne were. He’d always asked about them. He got only one check a month, so most times I paid a few bills for him, and I paid to keep his lawn trimmed. I took him to the store when needed or to a doctor’s appointment. No one knew I did this. Yeah, I knew I could be a motherfucker at times, but that man had saved two lives, and I would forever be grateful for that.

  What I hadn’t mentioned to Chyanne was that I’d seen April as I was leaving. Believe it or not, I didn’t think shit had changed about her. I said that because she walked right over and tried to have a conversation with me. I was a man, and I knew when a woman was throwing sexual innuendos at me. April was still April, and I still wasn’t interested.

  It didn’t take me long to drive to Chyanne’s house, either. As always Chyanne and Jamie’s yard was manicured to perfection. The outside of the home was nice and neat, and both their cars sat side by side in front of the three-car garage. She had made the perfect little home life with this guy. All bullshit, if you asked me.

  “Come on, AJ,” I said to my son after I’d unbuckled him from his car seat.