My Little Secret

by Anna J.

  I want to tell her that I could be home finishing my damn manuscript and because of this retarded heifer I was stuck in jail for the last three days, but instead I calmly explain the situation and, although I did knock her out the box, I didn’t cut her.

  The judge looks at me like her head is spinning and she can’t believe the words that have just come out of my mouth.

  Nevaeh is trying to get me on some domestic violence shit, but we would have to have first been a couple before it’s considered domestic, so what is she talking about? I hope she knows that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she and I will have any form of communication once this is over.

  I just can’t wait to get home. I just want to sit my ass in the tub and get back in the swing of things, like before I started fooling around with her crazy ass. I made Nevaeh a part of the change before, and she begged to come back, but this time I am cool on her ass.

  “Ms. Thompson, please approach the bench,” the judge says as she glances over her glasses before looking back down at her paper and scribbling something else on there.

  Nevaeh looks all scared and shit, like she was just called to the electric chair, and she has every right to be.

  I swear if my wrists and ankles weren’t shackled together and we weren’t standing in front of this good judge, I’d be all over her ass again.

  The judge looks at both of us for a long time, like she’s trying to look into our souls. I maintain eye contact so she can see that what I had to say was true. Nevaeh’s simple ass is staring at me instead of the judge, and I can feel her burning a hole in the side of my face, but I refuse to even acknowledge her ass.

  “Ms. Thompson, who cut your arms up like that?” the judge asks Nevaeh, while still keeping her eyes on me.

  I keep my eye contact on point and hope like hell she tells the truth.

  Nevaeh is silent, looking from me and back at the floor, then back to me, like the answer will jump out of my head and into hers.

  I’m willing her to tell the truth, and I try not to shuffle my feet in impatience. I briefly envision myself wrapping my hands around her throat, but snap out of it when I hear the judge repeat her question.

  “Ms. Thompson,” she says, leaning forward and commanding Nevaeh to make eye contact. “Who cut your arms up like that? Did Ms. Wells do that to you?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Nevaeh speaks to the judge in a low voice, like she was scared to say something.

  I don’t release a sigh of relief right away, though, because I can tell her mode of questioning isn’t done.

  “So you’re pretty much saying you’re in contempt of court, Ms. Thompson?” the judge asks, leaning back into her seat and continuing to write and take notes.

  “She beat me like I was a stranger!” Nevaeh hollered at the judge, afterward breaking down in tears.

  “Shit, she wrecked my ride. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Did you do those things to Ms. Well’s vehicle that she said were done?”

  “Yes, I did, Your Honor.”

  “Do you feel safe?” the judge asks her, making more notes.

  “No, Your Honor,” Nevaeh responds.

  I look at her like she is crazy. I’ve never in all the time we were kicking it put my hands on her, unless it was to please her. I turn to look at my lawyer, but he motions for me to turn back around. Good thing his ass was free, because if I had paid money, I’d be pissed right now.

  “Do you want a restraining order against Ms. Wells?”

  Nevaeh doesn’t answer right away, and I hope like hell that she says yes so I can ask for one also. That way I’d have a reason to not be near her ass even if she tried to pop up on me. I am done with this shit, for good.

  The judge continues to write, and after making us stand there forever, she finally decides she will let me leave, pending I sign some documents stating that I will stay away from Nevaeh and not try to contact her. My lawyer asks for a restraining order for me as well, the first thing he did right all day.

  After about another hour or so, I am unshackled and allowed to make a phone call, be it a cab or someone to come get me. They give me my belongings back in the meantime, and when I am finally allowed to make a call, I call Midori. Hopefully she’ll answer her phone.

  I see my little guard friend, so I knew if push comes to shove, I’ll just use his phone or get him to get me another call. I’d promised him twenty dollars for another five-hundred-minute card after I got situated, and that seemed to make him feel better.

  To my surprise, Midori answers on the first ring, and she doesn’t hesitate to come and get me, letting me know that she has to talk to me about something as well. She sounds upset, but it doesn’t even matter, as long as I am getting out of here.

  She pulls up a half hour later, and I hop in the car without hesitation. She doesn’t say a word to me, and she certainly doesn’t act like she’s happy to see me. I figure some shit went down with her and Ray, and we are coming to the end of the road. I’m cool with that because I’m tired of the runaround myself. But I’m no fool. I’ll let her say it out of her mouth first.

  When we get to my crib, I wait to see if she will say something, but she wants to come up and talk, so I let her. That’s cool with me, and I rush up to my condo, eager to take a bath. I fiddle with my keys for a second, but once I’m able to get in, I wish that I hadn’t.

  My condo is turned upside down. Pictures, crystal, and vases are broken on the floor, shattered glass everywhere. My bed is ripped to shreds, and there is a space missing on the wall where my forty-inch plasma television used to sit. That was a gift from Nevaeh, so I already know she was here.

  I’m not concerned about all of that because that’s just material shit I can replace. I start looking around frantically, lifting up couch cushions from the floor and hyperventilating.

  “Jaydah, what are you looking for?” Midori asks, concern thickening her voice because she probably can’t believe what she’s seen either.

  I can’t even answer because I lost my voice five minutes ago when I walked in. The tears that flow from my face start clouding my vision, and I have to sit down. I fall to the floor in a dramatic fashion and crawl to the kitchen, where I spot it sitting on the counter. My laptop.

  I rush over to it and am happy for a second because when the cops came I was in the middle of a chapter I was working on and never got the chance to save it. I hope like hell Nevaeh had a heart and didn’t do what I think she did.

  My kitchen is the only space in my condo that wasn’t sabotaged, for whatever reasons, which were beyond me, but at that moment I could care less. I take a deep breath and flip open the top to my laptop, pressing the power button immediately. While I watch it go through the motions of powering on, I hold my breath until I am ready to pass out.

  “Lord, please let this be right,” I pray to myself in a soft voice. That computer holds my entire manuscript that I was working on, plus the beginnings to several book ideas I had been considering writing next. My entire writing career is on my laptop, and I hadn’t saved a lot of it anywhere else yet.

  When my programs finally come up and I can finally see what was going on, it is just what I expected. Every file, program, game, and picture I had on my laptop is gone. My laptop looks fresh, like I just got it. When I click on a few things, I realize the bitch had restarted my computer and erased my entire C drive.

  I sit down heavily in my chair, not believing my luck. The Internet hadn’t been set up, so I can’t check and see what I had, but I do have some stuff saved to my Yahoo! account, and I hope I have enough of my book saved that I won’t have to start over.

  Before I close the top, I do notice a notebook file with my name on it, but I know it’s some shit that Nevaeh had written, and at the moment I don’t feel like reading it. I am going to get her ass back, but I am going to make sure I don’t run into her. She is going to get hers, just like she gave it to me.

  Decisions, Excuses

  Midori />
  There is no way in the world I can break up with her now. Not when I am seeing her in this condition. Damn, the girl was locked up for three days and came home to a wrecked condo. Not only that, the one thing she held dear to her heart . . . gone. Like she never even had it in the first place. Nevaeh knew how important this writing thing is to Jaydah. How could she do such a coldhearted thing? Why would she risk her getting dropped from her publishing company for not having her story turned in on time? Nathan, from what I know of him, is an understanding man, but at the end of the day he has a business to run. I am mad for Jaydah and want to go whip up on Nevaeh myself.

  I take careful steps over the stuff strewn on the floor throughout the place until I get to the kitchen because I am still stuck on stupid at the front door from what we walked into. If anything, and I know she probably doesn’t want to hear it right now, I have to let her know about the pictures my husband has of us and that it is possible her place is bugged. If Nevaeh were smart, she would have removed any evidence of cameras or recorders out of there, but I doubt if she was smart enough to do so. If anything, she was stuck on revenge and forgot all about it.

  “Jaydah, I know now is not the time, but once I tell you this I think I have a plan,” I say to her as I take a seat at the table, wondering why this is the only room in the entire place that was not messed up.

  “Midori, just spill it. Honestly, it can’t be any worse than what I’m already living through right now. As a matter of fact, I’ll make it easy for you,” she says, hopping up from the chair and walking toward the living room door.

  I follow behind her, not sure of what she is about to do. She walks to the door and opens it up. I can see the tears streaming down her face, and for the first time ever, I know Jaydah is really hurting inside. She wasn’t really the crying type, not unless it was serious. This time I think she’s had enough.

  “I know you can’t be with me, and instead of dragging it out just go,” she says to me through sad eyes, and my heart breaks instantly.

  I’m stuck at first, but I can’t just leave. Now most people would say how stupid I am and I should just take the opportunity to jet when I can, but am I truly happy with my own situation?

  “Jaydah, listen to me.” I walk up to her and close the door. I’m close to tears myself, but one of us has to hold it together. “Nevaeh set us up, and I know how we can fix it.”

  I tell her all about the pictures Ray showed me, and although I wasn’t sure how he got them, I’m almost certain that they were sent to his office, since that was just a matter of typing in the hospital info to get the address. She must have had someone follow us though, and for a second I feel like I am on that show Cheaters, where they catch people on the low doing shady stuff to their spouses.

  I tell her everything, and we agree that it’s time to make it official. I will be letting Ray know that I am leaving him today. We need some time apart, and I don’t want to stay in that house trying to figure it out. He can stay there until I decide what I really want to do.

  I tell her the plan I have to get Nevaeh back as well. We’ll go to her house at night when it’s dark. Jaydah says she parks her car in a designated parking spot every day, so more than likely it will be there, since Nevaeh’s banking on Jaydah following the rules of the restraining order.

  “So, this is what we’re gonna do . . .”

  I talk to her while we take a moment to straighten up the place. Everything that’s broken, we throw out, and what we can’t fit in the incinerator, we carry out to the dumpsters out back.

  It isn’t long before we have everything cleaned up. Jaydah’s sofa is a pull-out, so she says she’s cool with sleeping on that until she’s able to go out tomorrow and purchase another pillowtop mattress. Nevaeh was even petty enough to take the television out of her room, so we watch television in the living room.

  Jaydah doesn’t even want to look in the room she used as a home office, fearing that Nevaeh probably tore shit up in there too, and I try to get her to at least see what was up, but she’s losing her mind at the moment and refuses to think logically. Surprisingly, when I open the door, it looks as though nothing was touched. That’s a good thing, because Jaydah will be able to retrieve a lot of her stuff from her email account, and even though Nevaeh restarted her laptop, we found out that she was kind enough to store Jaydah’s book in her flash drive. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still going to get her ass back, though.

  My plan is so hot, I have to step back and kiss myself.

  Once Jaydah is showered and lying down comfortably, I make sure she’s okay and I roll out, reminding her to be ready tomorrow afternoon when I came. We need to go to Home Depot to pick up a few things for what we have to do tomorrow night. I’ve already been gone longer than I needed to be, so I have to get home. I have to at least let Ray think shit is copasetic, until I figure out how I am going to jet on his ass.

  I see Jaydah’s car looking a mess, and I understand why she wilded out the way she did. You don’t mess with nobody’s whip.

  I jet across town to my house, pulling up behind Ray’s car. We had been working overtime for the last couple of days, trying to get me pregnant, and I hope it never worked. The very next day after he was talking that I’m-gonna-leave-if-we-don’t-start-a-family shit, I had one of my medical assistants give me a Depo-Provera shot on the low. I didn’t feel like that shit right now, and hope he never decides to question me and get extra tests done.

  I don’t feel like arguing with his ass, and he doesn’t have the right to be mad. He’s been cheating on me for years. Men kill me with that shit. They can go out and do whatever they want, as many times as they want, with as many people they want, and it’s okay. Let my black ass step out there and get caught, and it’s like the world is about to end. I hate him.

  When I walk in the house, he’s in the kitchen eating grapes and working on his laptop. He doesn’t even bother to look up when I come in, and even though I speak, he doesn’t bother to speak back. He’s been doing that for the last couple of days. That’s cool with me because I don’t feel like talking anyway. Fuck him. I make myself a sandwich real quick and take my ass on upstairs to prepare myself for tomorrow.

  Deciding to take a shower, I lock the bathroom door before proceeding because I made the mistake of not doing that two days ago and he came and fucked me in the shower, making me feel like a rape victim afterward. I felt so violated. Even last night he waited until I was good and half-’sleep before he took it upon himself to pull my panties to the side and shove himself inside of me, afterward rolling over, like nothing happened, and falling asleep. I was tempted to smother his ass during the night, but I didn’t feel like going to jail for murder right now.

  In the morning I get the same attitude. He comes down and eats the breakfast I cooked him without so much as a good morning, and would roll out without saying a word. I guess he would be mad if he knew that I didn’t even bother to at least rinse yesterday’s breakfast off the plate, opting to reuse it for his breakfast this morning.

  “So you’re just not going to speak?” I ask him when he joins me at the table.

  He doesn’t even acknowledge my question with a mere grunt; he simply takes his seat and begins buttering his toast.

  This is why women grind up glass in their husband’s food and feed it to them. “Ray, I asked you a question—”

  “Midori, honestly, you can save your conversation for someone who gives a damn. I just need to eat breakfast so I can get going.”

  I want to drop-kick his ass. Who the fuck does he think he’s talking to? I don’t even honor that shit with a response, because in the end I’ll have the last laugh anyway.

  Once he’s gone, I call Jaydah to make sure we’re on for today. It’s important for Nevaeh to be home when we go there because my plan is brilliant. I want to get her back probably more than Jaydah. I’m not really worried about Ray because I don’t feel like putting him in his place right now, but I’ll get with him in a minute, aft
er I fix this shit with Jaydah.

  Take What You Give, Even Your Lies...

  Jaydah

  “But, baby, are you happy without me?” Nevaeh actually got up the nerve to call me. I want to curse her ass out, but Midori has yet to tell me her plan, so I figure I’ll just be nice to her for now. That way, sneaking up on her will be a lot easier. I entertain her for a while before I grab my house phone to call my cell, so the other line will click.

  “Can’t say that I’m totally happy, but what made you do what you did to me? Why did you mess my car up like that?”

  “I was jealous, baby. I thought you were going to choose that married bitch over me. What do you see in her anyway?”

  I have to take a deep breath. I want to say, “What do I see in you?” But I decide to let it be what it is. I’ll get her ass back; that’s the bottom line. I dial my cell phone number into my house phone so I can get this chick off the phone. I’m about to say something I’ll regret later, and I don’t know if this is a trick or not, since she’s got the restraining order on me.

  “Hey, Nevaeh, let me call you back. That’s my mom on the other line.”

  I don’t even bother to wait for a response. I just hang up the phone. I still have a little over an hour to meet Midori at the Home Depot in South Philly, so I go ahead and get dressed, so I can be there a little early. To my surprise she’s already there waiting on me. She must really want revenge on Nevaeh.

  She told me on the phone that her husband was acting crazy, so she walked ahead into the store and I trail behind her while we talked on our cell phones. Grabbing a basket, I fill it with the things she told me to buy, including two tubes of Krazy Glue and a tube of Gorilla Super Glue that is supposed to hold tighter than anything in the world. I buy all the things I need without question, and she follows me to Jersey so we can make it happen. By the time we take the hour and some change drive to Jersey, it’s dark outside, just the way we need.