“Muthafucka needs to die.”
“I know how you feel, Chris, and don’t think I didn’t think about killing his ass, but then I’d be no better than him. He has a problem and he needs help.”
“That’s mighty white of you to feel like that.” I laughed
a little, but I didn’t mean to. “You want my ice bag? Looks like you need it more than I do.” She grabbed the bag out of my hand. CJ smiled. She has such a pretty smile, but not today. She could take that liberal attitude if she wanted to, but I was thinking about callin’ Zack and Tee and rollin’ by there. “So what set him off this time?”
“You.”
“What?”
“It started over you.”
“How?” A chill came over me to think that I was responsible for the beating she’d taken. “What did I do?”
“Well, since you decided to disappear today, I was worried. I had been calling you all day; you didn’t call me back and that’s not like you. I knew something must be wrong. So when I got home Manny was drunk, as usual. I told him what was up and told him I was gonna ride by here to check on you. I told him he could ride if he wanted to. So he starts yelling, talkin’ ’bout I don’t need to be gettin’ all up in your business. And he’s gettin’ tired of hearing about Chris this and Chris that. He said I spend too much time with you, callin’ myself working, but he knows what’s going on. I told him that nothing was going on, that we are just working.”
“That is all we’re doing and it ain’t even that often, anyway.”
“I know that, but he doesn’t see it that way. He just knows what he knows. We kept going back and forth about the usual things we argue about—money, his drinking, and whatnot. Then he got back around to you.”
“What now?”
“He wanted to know if nothing was going on, then why was it so important for me to check on you.”
“What’d you say to that?”
“I was pissed off by then. I’m so tired of going through this with him, it isn’t even funny no more. So I yelled, ‘Because he’s my business partner! If something is wrong with him, I need to know about it!’”
“You never told him?”
“No. Because I knew this would happen. But I was on a roll. I told him that I invested my money in the company. He wants to know what money did I have, when we here struggling. I told him he was the reason we were struggling. And we went around and around about that, until I just got fed up with it. I told him I wanted a divorce.”
Tears began rolling down her cheeks.
“He slapped the shit outta me. I said, ‘I’m outta here.’ He said, ‘No, you ain’t.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And I grabbed my coat and started walking toward the door, mumbling that his broke ass doesn’t have any business telling anybody what they can’t do. He ran up behind me, grabbed me by my hair, and slammed my face into the door. Then he spun me around and started punching me in the face. I couldn’t run because he was still holding my hair.”
I went and sat next to her on the couch. She put her head on my shoulder.
“When he let me go, I ran and started throwing everything I could get my hands on at him. I made it to the kitchen and there was a pot of water on the stove. He came at me and I hit him in the head with it. He fell back and slipped on the water. He hit the floor. Hard. I grabbed my coat and got outta there.”
“My God. You think you killed him?”
“No. When I was backing out, I saw him coming out the door. Going to get in his car.”
“You think he followed you?”
“I don’t think so. I drove around for a while before I came here.”
“Do you think he’ll come here?”
“No.”
“I think you need to call the police, CJ. ’Cause if he comes here I’m gonna shoot him, and I don’t need to go to jail tonight; so you need to call the cops and let them go get him.” I looked at her face and I knew if he came to my house and started some shit, that I could kill him. I love CJ and look what he’d done to her.
After a while, I was able to convince CJ that calling the police was the right thing to do. She composed herself long enough to dial 9-1-1, and told them that she wanted to report a case of domestic violence. She explained what happened and told them where she was. “They said they would send somebody.”
“What are you gonna to do now?”