Titus: “Hey, you smoke weed?”
Tiffany: “No, I do not smoke weed. I don’t do stuff like that.”
Titus: “Oh . . . well, I do.”
Tiffany: “How you smoking weed and working for the airline? They drug test me.”
Titus: “There’s ways to get around that.”
That exchange basically sums up Titus. Sneaky and small-time.
• • •
Anyway, we talked all the way to LA. I remember in that first conversation, all the red flags were there. The dude lived with his mama, even though he was twenty-one and had a job! I should have run, but I was twenty and dumb.
We exchanged numbers, and we started talking and stuff. Just like friends or whatever. But basically, nothing was happening at all. So one day, I just laid it out.
Tiffany: “Look, I’m kinda talking to somebody. If you’re not trying to be, like, my man, ain’t really no reason for us to even be hanging out or whatever.”
Titus: “What? We ain’t even kissed or nothing!”
Tiffany: “Yeah, but I’m just saying. If you’re trying to be my man, then you need to let me know, because I kinda like somebody.”
And so then, he stepped it up a notch and took me on dates, and we started making out and shit. He introduced me to his mom, his sisters, the granny, everybody. I liked everybody, and they liked me. I introduced him to my siblings.
So we started being serious and being together all the time. We eventually got our work schedules matched up, so we’d be at work at the same time. Then we’d leave, we’d go places, and we basically did everything together.
He’d always be everywhere I went. He was around me so much, my cousins starting calling him “Tag-along.” Other than that nickname, there ain’t even anything funny or interesting to write about the first eight months of our relationship. It was a normal, early twenties relationship.
But then he met a pimp, and everything changed.
I can’t remember his name, but he looked exactly like the rapper Suga Free. This pimp, Fake Suga Free, had two hoes. I remember the girls, too. They was nasty.
After Titus started hanging around him, one day we got to talking.
Titus: “You know, I could probably be a pimp.”
Tiffany: “What? You ain’t no damn pimp! You’re a baggage handler!”
Titus: “I dunno. Fake Suga Free thinks I could do it.”
Tiffany: “Why you hanging out with that guy? You’re not a pimp, you’re a baggage handler. And I like that about you. I like that when you come home from work, you smell like luggage. I like men who smell like their work. It means they have a job.”
Titus: “Pimping is a job.”
Tiffany: “I DON’T WANT MY MAN SMELLING LIKE A PACK OF HOES!”
Titus: “Yeah, but I could probably make more money pimping.”
Tiffany: “Yeah, but you could also end up in jail. And what if you get, like, bad hoes? Then you’ll lose money. It don’t make sense.”
He dropped it for a while. Then he got fired from his job with the airline.
Titus: “I’m finna go to full-time pimping.”
Tiffany: “If you finna be a pimp, I’m finna be outta here.”
Titus: “Okay, fine . . . I won’t be no pimp.”
So he got a new job working in a cosmetics factory, boxing makeup.
But he became real distant. We weren’t hanging out all the time like we used to. For example, I would drop him off at work, and then I was supposed to pick him up. Then he wouldn’t call me to pick him up, and I didn’t know what he was getting up to.
And he would ask to use my car, which was fine. But then I wouldn’t see him for two days.
Yeah, I know, I know. In retrospect, the signs were obvious. What’s funny is that it took a child to point them out to me. I mean literally an eight-year-old child.
One day, I was hanging out with Titus’s mom and his sisters, and this one sister—who was, I repeat, EIGHT YEARS OLD AT THE TIME—spoke up.
Sister: “You know he cheating on you, girl. He cheating on you with this girl he met at the strip club. He pimping her in pornos.”
Tiffany: “What? Titus ain’t pimping nobody.”
Sister: “Yes he is.”
Tiffany: “You making this up.”
Sister: “No I’m not!”
Tiffany: “Would you say that in front of your brother?”
Sister: “Yeah!”
So we got with Titus:
Tiffany: “What did you tell me about Titus?”
Sister: “That he cheating on you, girl. He cheating on you with this girl that he tried to get to be a stripper. Her name is Bertha.”
Tiffany: “Bertha? How you gonna be a stripper with the name Bertha?”
Titus: “She lyin’! She don’t know what she’s talking about! She lyin’!”
I believed him. I didn’t believe the little girl. I don’t know why I didn’t believe her, because she had nothing to lose by telling the truth. I was thinking maybe she was watching too much TV or something. Like I said, I was twenty-one and stupid.
Three months go by, and slowly things got worse. To the point where we were basically broken up, except not completely. You know how with some relationships, the breakup takes months to really get momentum and be real, but you know it’s there long before? That’s how it was.
It just so happened that I was scheduled to go on a cruise with my auntie. Titus had zero interest in that, until we were ready to break up, and I told him I wouldn’t be seeing him for a week.
And now Titus wants to go on the cruise, too.
Titus: “Oh, you not going on a cruise, hell no.”
Tiffany: “Oh I paid, I’m going on a cruise.”
Titus: “No, y’all finna be on there hoeing.”
Tiffany: “Are you crazy? I’m not hoeing with my auntie, she’s twice my age.”
He was really passionate about this idea that I was going on this cruise to get wild and hook up with a bunch of men. Yeah I know, he’s projecting shit on me that he is doing behind my back. I can see that now, but I did not see it then.
The problem was that he didn’t have any money to pay for the cruise. So, he got his mama to give him the money to get a ticket.
And get this: motherfucker comes on the boat with $50 in his wallet. For the whole weeklong cruise. The whole week with fifty bucks? Like, really?
The whole trip, he was just awful. Everywhere I went, if a man talked to me, Titus was all up in my business.
Titus: “Oh, you tryna holler at that dude? That man tryna get with you?”
It didn’t matter if I was talking a ninety-year-old in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes, Titus would be trippin’.
Titus: “Oh you want some old ass now? That it? My dick is too hard for you now?”
Every few minutes, it was something. If I was dancing or having a good time, he’d come over.
Titus: “What you dancing for?”
Tiffany: “Because I like it, it makes me happy.”
Titus: “Why you gotta be all happy?”
Tiffany: “It’s a damn party, motherfucker! On a cruise! Why you think we’re here, this ain’t a fishing boat!”
Titus: “Oh, I see how it is, you lookin’ to ride the Ho Boat to Ho Island!”
What’s funny is that on that cruise I met the man who I would eventually marry, and then who would end up becoming my ex-husband. I had no idea at the time that any of this would happen. We just met a normal way. He said “Hi” or whatever, and we talked for a while. I wasn’t even into him, but when he told me he was a policeman, I was like, Oh, it’s always good to have police friends.
And then my future ex-husband starting acting weird, following me around the boat, filming me from a distance. And of course, Titus hated that, and he would yell at me about it, as the dude was lurking around, filming us.
What can I say? It was just all fucked up. But it gets worse.
The cruise was the week of September 11.
Of 2001
. Uh-huh. THAT 9/11.
We were in Jamaica, and the Jamaicans started freaking out, talking about “Your Twin Towers are down!” Titus was all mad about that, too.
• • •
Once we got back to the boat, they were saying that all the airports were shut down. We were supposed to be back in the States the next day, but they were saying that nobody would be able to fly home. They let us stay on the cruise an extra four days, for $300.
Me and my auntie decided we would pay it and stay on the cruise. Titus couldn’t afford to stay. Why not? Because he and his $50 was broke as hell, that’s why!
I was not about to pay for him. He was so upset, so mad about that. He ended up having to sleep in the airport for a night, and the next day, he got to fly back to LA.
When we got back to LA, we were still together, but not really. On the one hand, we were breaking up, but just couldn’t seem to actually do it. On the other hand, I still thought I was going to marry him, and I thought I could trust him. I felt this way even though he would take my car and say, “Oh, I’m just going to go to the store and I’ll be right back.” And he would be gone for, like, twenty-four hours.
I just figured he was with his friends or whatever. I didn’t need the car, because I was at work, anyway. You know?
It didn’t really dawn on me that he would be with somebody else, because I thought he loved me.
Then I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t know what to do.
So I freaked the fuck out.
This whole pregnancy thing made me feel like such a loser. I felt so stupid. I still had all these dreams and goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish, and here I was knocked up by this broke-ass loser.
It made me really look at the big picture. I was just barely living in this little studio apartment. Titus was living with his mama. Titus didn’t even have a car or a job. He just came on a cruise with $50 on him. How are we going to raise a kid? I only make $400 a week at my job, and then with the Bar Mitzvahs, I’m clearing $2500 a month. That’s not enough to raise a kid.
I can’t have no baby by this man. I can’t even be with him. I don’t even like him anymore.
When I first told him, he wanted the baby.
Titus: “Yeah, that’s right. That’s mine.”
Tiffany: “What the fuck are you talking about? How we gonna pay for this? You ain’t got no job!”
Titus: “It’s all right, baby, that’s why they got welfare. We be aight.”
Tiffany: “Is you fucking retarded? I’m not going to be no welfare mom!”
I did not want to have an abortion, but at the same time, I did not want to have a baby with that man, in those circumstances. What kind of life would that be for the baby?
What if something happened to me? This man couldn’t even take care of himself, how was he going to take care of a child? If I died the kid would inherit what? A Geo Metro? That’s not a good inheritance.
And honestly, I was not ready to be a mom. I hadn’t even gotten to experience life at this point. How could I raise a child, you know?
I felt the weight of the world on me. I felt like if I had this baby, it’d be the biggest mistake of my entire existence.
I felt terrible, I felt like I was going to go to hell for this. But you know what? I’d rather go to hell and die without a baby on Earth, suffering, than have a baby here on Earth that suffered. That ain’t right.
We were still arguing about it, then he took my car to go pick up some food for us . . . and he didn’t come back for two days. Then he walked in.
Titus: “You should probably go ahead and take care of that.”
On the way to the clinic, he was trying to shame me. You know how when somebody’s like, they want you to do something, but they don’t want to feel bad about their role in it? They want you to take the blame for it, so they don’t have to feel bad about themselves?
Titus: “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. It’s all on you. You want to kill my baby, that’s on you.”
I fucking hated him right then.
I remember the clinic so vividly. As I walked through the door, something came over me. I hate to admit this, but it’s true—I became very happy.
It was like a total one-eighty from how I felt in the parking lot to how I felt once I went through that clinic door. I felt like I was doing the most responsible thing in the world. I just felt really, really joyous. I knew, as painful as it was, this was the right thing.
You go into a room, then they put you on this bed. I was smiling the whole time. This one lady, this Hispanic lady notices.
Hispanic Lady: “Why are you so happy?”
Tiffany: “I guess because I know that I’m not going to be in this trap. I know I’m not going to be in the trap anymore.”
She just smiled back and rolled her eyes.
They put you to sleep for a little bit, for like ten minutes, and do the procedure. Then when I woke up, I reached down between my legs, and I felt the big ol’ maxi-pad thing they put on you.
I jumped out the bed, and I started to dance. I started full-on dancing.
Nurse: “Ms. Haddish, you can’t dance. Ms. Haddish, you are scaring people!”
Tiffany: “I’m free!! I’m free!! Thank God almighty, I am free!!”
I started doing the Running Man, and then I ran my ass right into the ground. Those drugs they give you are strong.
They made me sit down and act calm. I looked over and there was a Mexican lady, she was awake and looking at me like I fucking lost my mind. Then there was another girl in the room, and she was just full-on crying. Here I am just as happy and joyous as can be. I kinda felt bad about my dancing, and I was chill after that. Not everyone was happy about being there.
When I walked out, I was just smiling. I’m like a little doped up and kind of woozy or whatever, but I’m really happy. I’m like genuinely happy. Titus was so mad that I was so happy.
Titus: “So you just joyous, huh? You just joyous?”
Tiffany: “Yeah, we don’t have no stress no more. There’s no stress. We got a second chance.”
Titus: “That’s all right. I’m going to just get you pregnant again in two months. You’re just going to be pregnant again.”
Little did he know, I had gotten a Depo shot when I was in there. I didn’t even tell him. This man was not trapping me again.
Things actually got cool again for a few weeks. It seemed to be getting better. He’s not disappearing. Then my birthday came up, and he said he needed my car, because he was going to an interview.
Tiffany: “Okay. But it’s my birthday.”
Titus: “Yeah, I’m going to take you over to my grandma’s house, use your car, go to my interview. I’m going to come back, and we’re going to go out.”
He didn’t come back until the next day.
Tiffany: “Yo, what happened? No call, no nothing? Where were you?”
Titus: “I had got caught up in some stuff, but it’s all good. I’m going to take you out today.”
Tiffany: “I got to go to work. This is so stupid. I don’t get it. Why would you even do that? You just ruined my birthday. You ruined my birthday.”
Titus: “Stop tripping. You’re tripping. Just relax. I’m going to make it up to you.”
Three days go by. I go over to his house—which is his mom’s house, ’cause he don’t have his own place. I was ready to forgive him. I don’t know why I was, but I was. And most importantly, I was now healed up from my abortion, and we can have sex again, for the first time since I was dancing for joy.
I went in his room, and I saw he had a video camera on his TV. I don’t know why, but I had this weird feeling come over me.
Tiffany: “Let’s do something freaky. Let’s make a movie.”
I grabbed the video camera, and I started recording. He immediately got all mad, snatched the camera from me, scratching my face in the process.
Titus: “You need to mind your motherfucking business!”
&n
bsp; Tiffany: “What is wrong with you? What’s on that tape where you got to be acting like that?”
Titus: “Ain’t nothing on this motherfuckin’ tape. You just need to mind your motherfuckin’ business and stay out my shit!”
I tried to reach for the camera, and he snatched it away. He took the tape out the camera, went out the house, and threw it in the dumpster.
I knew. All of it dawned on me, right then in that moment. Not like, consciously, but I knew. I felt it in my body.
Was I smart enough to admit that shit to myself in the moment? Hell no! I just said to myself, You need to just chill. You love this dude. You need to chill. I still didn’t know that I should listen to my gut and my feelings and my body.
When he came back in the house, I decided to change up. I just started being real sweet and nice, and we started kissing and stuff.
Tiffany: “I just want you to hook me up. I want to get me some head.”
So he went down on me and gave me some head. Once he was done, he was all hard and ready to penetrate me. He was literally right about to put it in, and I mean like, an inch before his penis touched me, I pulled away. My body was screaming at me, and not in a good way.
Tiffany: “Ooh, wait. No. I got to go to the bathroom. I got to boo-boo.”
I sat in the bathroom for like thirty minutes. I was crying, because it all hit me at once.
I knew everything was true. His sister was right. I could just feel it in my bones. I was talking to myself, Oh God, everything she said is true. I’m so stupid.
This man was betraying me so much right now. A feeling of disgust for him came over me. I was disgusted by him, and I felt disgusted for myself for being so blind. You know?
I was crying so much. You know how you do that quiet crying, like the tears are coming out and you’re breathing hard, but you don’t want nobody to hear you crying? I remember I was just covering my face, just trying to hold it together, tears running through my hands.
And quite frankly, the head was not good. It wasn’t. It was, like, the worst.
Eventually, he came banging on the door.
Titus: “You all right in there? What the hell?”
So I started making throw-up noises, acting like I was puking. I was just so disgusted with him, I needed to find a way out.
The Last Black Unicorn Page 6
