Aria felt like she was gut punched.
“You were so busy judging him and living life waiting for the other shoe to drop your life wasn’t even as good as it could’ve been.” Heather reached over and squeezed her daughter’s hands. “Sometimes life is half full.”
“It’s hard to believe that when I can’t have children, Mama,” Aria admitted in a husky whisper.
Heather nodded. “I figured that’s what it was. You love kids too much not to have one. No career, no goal, or nothing would’ve stopped my baby from having a baby.”
Aria looked upward and blinked her long lashes for what seemed a million times.
“I remember you playing with your dolls and you would mix baby powder and water together and feed them. Bless your heart.”
Aria nodded, clearly picturing the doll and the little red and white outfit. “And I’d sew clothes by hand. And take them with me everywhere. And name them. And rock them. And love them,” she admitted, with a teary smile.
“And mother them,” Heather added.
“Oh, Mama, I wanted to be a mother so bad,” she admitted out loud for the first time ever. Before, she’d been too busy regretting that she couldn’t be a mother to claim what she wanted.
Heather leaned forward to wipe away a tear. “All these beautiful black babies in foster care and waiting to be adopted? You can be a mother anytime you get ready, Aria.”
We could have gone through fertility treatments or just adopted, Aria.
Kingston’s words haunted her.
“Madonna and Sandra Bullock and Angelina doing what black folks don’t want to do,” Heather spouted, waving her hand. “All of you wealthy educated black folks letting white people out-do you. Y’all better get up off it.”
Aria laughed a little as she looked down at the floor.
“And I’ll say this. Doing it with Kingston is beautiful. Real Cosbylike. But I raised you to be strong enough and smart enough to do it alone.” She reached for her plate. No nonsense = Heather Goines.
Aria tilted her head to cast her eyes on her mother. “You did damn good without help.”
Heather winked as she bit into a slice of bacon. “You’re a testament to the damn good job I did.”
“Are y’all done?” Uncle One-Eye asked, walking back into the kitchen with his empty plate and glass in his hand.
“I guess so since you don’t have the patience God gave a gnat.” Heather took the plate and walked to the sink to slide it into the sudsy dishwater she’d made.
Aria tried to finish her food but her appetite was gone and her thoughts filled. Adoption. The journalist in her wanted to know more and she felt that familiar nudge from her muse.
“Well, tell me where there’s a bathroom in this big ole house,” Uncle One-Eye said, already unbuckling his belt. “Grits run right through me.”
Aria dropped her fork and made a face of horror. “Why don’t you carry that upstairs. First door on the left,” she said, pushing away her plate.
He laughed as he walked back out of the kitchen.
“And remember,” Heather hollered behind him over her shoulder. “Drop one, flush one!”
Aria couldn’t do shit but laugh.
“Forgiveness, Aria. What does it mean for you, Aria?”
Aria looked across at Dr. Kellee as she wrote notes. Dr. Matheson had set up a consult for her with the therapist and even scheduled a Saturday appointment. “Forgiveness ?” she asked, wanting to make the therapist look up at her.
She did, leveling hazel green eyes on her that contrasted sharply with her deep chocolate complexion. It made Aria feel like the older woman was looking directly into her soul.
“Yes. What does it mean to you?”
“It’s an ability to pardon someone for something they did wrong . . . for a mistake,” Aria answered, settling into the chair and crossing her legs in the fuchsia ruffled dress she wore.
Dr. Kellee jotted something down again.
Aria released a heavy breath.
“What’s irritating you, Aria?” Dr. Kellee asked, just the slightest tinge of her Jamaican accent around the edges of her voice.
“I hate the note-taking during therapy sessions, just throwing that out there,” she said.
Dr. Kellee nodded as she closed her journal. “Okay, so let’s refocus on our purpose here today. What does forgiveness mean to you?” she asked again.
Aria’s bronzed face became incredulous. “See, I answered that, but you were so busy jotting down notes that you didn’t even hear me.”
Dr. Kellee laughed softly as she crossed her healthy legs in the navy pantsuit she wore. “I heard you give me the dictionary definition, Aria. My question is what does it mean to you?”
“Oh.” Aria looked out the window. “It means letting God. It means moving on and moving past. It means accepting an apology and accepting that people do things that they think is best or in hindsight know is wrong.”
Dr. Kellee nodded. “And can you think of anyone whom you need to forgive?”
“I will never forgive Jessa if Dr. Matheson filled you in on that drama,” Aria said in a hard voice.
“We can discuss the topic of Jessa Bell another time. Let’s refocus.”
Aria nodded and scratched her scalp before she shook her head. “No, I cannot think of anyone that I should forgive.
Dr. Kellee leaned forward. “I’m going to say that in time you will need to forgive your abusers.”
Aria looked confused. “I wasn’t abused?”
“You were a fifteen-year-old child having sex with grown men who didn’t care that you were a child. Who didn’t care that you were misguided. Who didn’t care that it was a crime to have sex with a minor. Aria. Aria, you were abused.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m the one who needs to ask those men for their forgiveness. I stole from them. I seduced them. I wasn’t a victim, Dr. Kellee. I was far from a victim,” she finished softly.
“You were a child, Aria,” she stressed again. “A babe in the woods.”
“I’m the one who needs to be forgiven.”
“Okay, then forgiveness like anything else can go both ways, but I feel it’s very important for you to take another look with mature eyes and sensibilities at your past, Aria.”
Aria frowned as she continued to shake her head. “No. No, Dr. Kellee, I don’t agree at all.”
“So if you heard about a man of thirty sleeping with a child of fifteen would you call the police, Aria?” she asked, those eyes seeing through her.
“Of course I would,” Aria stressed.
Dr. Kellee widened her eyes as she stared at Aria and nodded as if to say, “Exactly, Aria. Exactly.”
Aria released a heavy breath and leaned back in her chair to hold her head in her hand with her elbow pressed into the arm of the chair.
“It’s time to take a new look at your past, Aria, because the guilt, shame, and pain you carry with you has built this boundary around you that affects everything you see, you hear, how you react, how you feel. Everything. Everything.”
“But I’m not the type to hold other people responsible for what I did,” Aria balked, feeling her irritation rise. “I’m a grown-ass woman—”
“Who is stuck in her past. Who is still the sixteen-year-old crying after her second abortion. Who is still in so much pain,” she finished with emphasis and compassion.
Aria had never felt so confused in her life. She’d thought therapy clarified things? Bullshit.
Dr. Kellee rose and walked over to a full-length mirror in the corner of her stylish and comfortable office. “Come on over, Aria,” she prompted with a wave of her hand.
Between Dr. Matheson, Dr. Kellee, and her mother’s ghetto psych 101, Aria felt all “therapied” the hell out. Truly. Still she rose and walked over to the mirror.
Dr. Kellee pressed a marker into her hand and then stepped to the side of Aria. “How many men do you think you have slept with?”
Aria shifted her eyes away from
her reflection. “I don’t know,” she admitted, shaking her head.
“Ten? Twenty? Fifty?”
Aria closed her eyes as shame coursed over her body in waves. “More.”
“I want you to draw a line for each man, Aria. Each one you can remember.”
Still raw with emotions, Aria raised her hand and began drawing lines of four and then drawing a line across them representing five. And she did it again. And again. And again. Until nearly the entire full length mirror was covered. She had to squat to finish her task. Each line lowered what was left of her self-esteem inch by inch. Whore. Ho. Slut. Trick. You ain’t shit, Aria. Just a big fucking front.
“What was the scheme your cousin and you did? What did you call it?” Dr. Kellee asked.
“Fuck and pluck.”
Dr. Kellee nodded. “Was it right that you robbed those men?”
Aria shook her head, barely seeing her reflection past the thick black lines covering the mirror.
“Of course not. Of course not. Let’s officially acknowledge that. But was it right for these men to have sex with a minor? To abuse you. To use you just as much as you thought you were using them.”
Aria’s eyes dulled at the thought of all the men. Faces she remembered. The many more she’d forgotten. “No,” she answered.
Dr. Kellee pressed a board eraser into Aria’s hand. “Erase the men. Erase them. Erase them, Aria.”
If only it was that easy, she thought, accepting the eraser and cleaning the mirror with circular motions.
“Who do you see?” Dr. Kellee asked.
Aria started to be flip and answer, “Me,” but she didn’t. “I see an educated, attractive woman.”
“Look deeper,” Dr. Kellee nudged softly but firmly.
Aria studied her reflection. Her asymmetrical hair that she was growing out, her pretty summer dress and pale gold heels. Her bronzed brown complexion. Her sheer makeup. Her wedding ring.
“Beyond the physical, Aria.”
Aria looked into her own eyes in the reflection. They mirrored her soul. Her emotions. Her being. Her fears. Her everything.
Emotions swelled up.
“I am . . . am afraid that I will never outrun my past,” she admitted.
“Good. Keep going,” Dr. Kellee urged, stepping back from the mirror and Aria’s moment in time.
Aria opened and closed her hands at her sides. “I am scared that I am still that person.”
“Yes.”
“I am afraid to fail.”
“Yes, Aria. Speak what you feel,” Dr Kellee urged from somewhere in the distance, her voice an urgent whisper.
“I don’t feel I deserve to be loved.” Her lip quivered and she bit it deeply as her shoulders slumped under the truth of her words.
“Why, Aria? Why?”
“I hate myself,” she admitted with an emotional gasp as she covered her mouth with her quivering hands. Her knees weakened and she stumbled back.
Dr. Kellee stepped forward and caught her, pushing her upright. “Stand up, Aria,” she urged. “Stand up.”
Aria did, wrapping her arms around herself, her emotions running on high. She felt drained.
“They took from you, from your foundation. Just as much as you took from them.” Dr. Kellee stepped forward and embraced Aria tightly, massaging her back like a true nurturer.
“We will work on rebuilding that foundation, Aria. You and I. Okay?”
Aria nodded, glad for the comfort, the compassion, and the support. Even glad for the truth. A little piece of her felt just a tiny bit freer.
“We will work through it all so that you can forgive the most important person of all in this, Aria,” she said, rocking her back and forth like she was soothing a baby.
She looked up over Dr. Kellee’s rounded shoulder, knowing the answer before she even said it.
“You, Aria. You have to forgive and love yourself.”
Chapter 12
The ties binding Jaime felt more restrictive than all of the years with Eric. She felt strangled by her mother’s whims and weighed down by her father’s restrictions. She felt like a child.
The last week had been filled with soirees, charity functions, and the like. Jaime was tired of smiling and nodding. Tired of endless chatter. Tired of being her mother’s puppet.
But what choice did she have?
Money makes the world go around and her parents held the purse strings. It was them or Eric. Either way she wasn’t in charge of her own life.
She raked her manicured fingers through the layers of her hair and then straightened the row of cultured pearls she wore around her neck. The jewelry perfectly suited the pink short-sleeve cardigan she wore over a crisp white Ann Taylor sheath dress. Soft perfume. Neutral makeup. Kitten heels.
The perfect socialite costume.
“Hmph.” Jaime bit off a bit of her pale pink lip gloss as she studied herself.
This woman in the mirror was Jamison “Goody-Two-Shoes” Pine who became Jaime “Mrs. Stepford Wife” Livewell. Neither one fit her.
Turning away from the reflection, Jaime grabbed her Coach straw purse and keys, leaving her bedroom. It was time to go and get some Jesus, and Virginia Osten-Pine didn’t like to be late. It was the first time Jaime would walk into a church since she’d left Eric.
And with everything going on among their circle of friends, Jaime could honestly say she needed to talk long and hard to God.
Her kitten heels clicked against the floor as she made her way out the front door. She paused and looked up and down the quiet street. She hated that she felt like she was being watched. Her life tracked. Her movements monitored. Eric was controlling her life from a distance by fear of her own actions.
She hated it.
As Jaime made her way to the Honda Accord, she spotted Lucas walking along the side of his house into his backyard. He turned, spotted her, and instantly turned away. No wave. No friendly smile. Nothing.
It had been that way since that night in her car. The night she’d let hurt pride and horniness push her into a one-night stand with her neighbor. They hadn’t exchanged words or even a direct look since that night.
I wanted to take you out to dinner and get to know you better. I wanted to build on the attraction I had for you. My plan damn sure wasn’t to screw you in a parking lot, but I took what you offered. ”
“Lucas,” she called out, following an impulse, walking across her lawn to reach his.
He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. She gave him a hesitant smile and a wave.
His round, boyishly handsome face showed his surprise for a quick second before he threw his hand up quickly and then continued on his way.
She started to go behind him but stopped herself, instead turning to walk to the car. She eyed the cars parked or passing by on the street. She hadn’t seen Eric in days but he’d called. He’d taunted her. He’d tried to lure her to come back with threats and bullying tactics.
No romance. No words of apology. No wooing.
Just get your slave behind back to the plantation. That’s how it felt.
Jaime had even considered it for a hot second, but good sense prevailed and she was moving on. “I can’t go back,” she said, climbing into the car and then reversing down the drive. “I’m not going back.”
If Eric was having her followed then she was leading her shadows straight to the doors of church. She even listened to gospel music to help her get her mind focused.
To not think too heavily on Eric. Or Jessa. Or Lucas. Or . . . or . . . Renee.
She was even glad to pull the Honda into the fenced parking of the Church of Distinction. As soon as she’d grabbed her embossed, leather-bound Bible and stepped out of the car she saw her mother walking away from a crowd to approach her in a peach silk suit with matching shoes, purse, and wide-brimmed hat. Pulling from endless years of fronting, Jaime plastered her pageant smile on her face. “Morning, Mother,” she said, hating that she wondered if her outfit would get a thumbs-up.
It didn’t.
“Jaime, you really should have on hosiery.”
“Of course,” Jaime answered, feeling twelve years old and ready to scream and throw something like a two-year-old might.
“And the car could use a good washing, Jamison.”
“I’ll have it detailed first thing tomorrow,” she replied, her voice monotone.
“I hope you will heed everything we said about your friendship with Renee,” her mother said, as they crossed the parking lot.
Jaime’s anger sparked and she literally had to bite her bottom lip to stop herself from telling her own mother—on church grounds—to shut the hell up.
“Remember, Jaime, people think birds of feather flock together. Do you understand that a woman’s reputation is everything?”
She eyed her mother and damn near rubbed her hands raw.
See, this shit right here is not working, Jaime thought, the whole time she gave her mother a smile more fake than gold-plated jewelry sold at one of those dollar stores.
“Hi, Baby Girl,” her father said, snapping his cell phone closed before giving her a close hug and then holding her close to his side with one solid arm around her shoulders.
“Eric denied the settlement offer,” he said to her as they walked toward the front of the large brick church that was just as much a high-society gathering as a place of worship.
“What settlement offer?” she asked, wishing she had her shades to block the sun from her eyes.
“The attorney made a reasonable offer to your husband—”
Jaime paused in her steps. “But I haven’t spoken to an attorney,” she protested, looking at her father’s profile.
“Oh, there’s no need,” he scoffed, waving his free hand dismissively. “You let me and Cole Jennings take care of it.”
What the fuck? Jaime reached up and squeezed the bridge of her nose and forced herself to count to ten—three times.
Do something, Jaime. Say something.
“Daddy, can I use your cell phone?” she asked. “I left mine home and I need to check on something really quickly.”
I’ll just add lying on church grounds to my other sins.
He handed her the phone and Jaime walked away from him, scrolled to recent calls, and dialed back the last number on the list.
Mistress No More Page 19
