Chapter 5
Gladys
It is our sixth month anniversary. I know that I am probably being sentimental and silly – most people only celebrate their yearly anniversaries – but I don’t care. I love this man, and right now, he needs me more than ever. He had been demoted from his position as a manager at J-Plex Department Store last week, and I really want to cheer him up. That is my job as his esposa neuva (his new wife), and I want him to know that I am seriously about my business.
I am standing over the kitchen stove preparing his favorite breakfast. I have dropped rose petals all the way from our bedroom to the kitchen table this morning. I just want his smile back. I only want his easy-going gentleness back. That was what I had fallen in love with about him, after all.
As he finally walks into the kitchen, I am just about to place his freshly prepared turkey sausage on a plate, along with scrambled eggs, grits, and a slice of orange. I have a pitcher of freshly-squeezed orange juice on the table and a single vanilla candle burning as the centerpiece. I absolutely beam with pride when I turn around to face my handsome new husband, smile brightly with love radiating behind my wide eyes, and greet him good morning.
“Good morning, papi! I know you have to be at work in about an hour, but I have cooked some of your favorites. I was hoping that you would have a few minutes, so that we could talk about what has been bothering you, baby.” I give him my warmest concerned look and poke my bottom lip out at him, trying to be as cute as possible.
James snatches the plate from me. My facial expression drops. I’m confused. He seems angry. ¿Pero, porque? Why? Seemingly emotionless, he slams it down onto the table, causing the grits to jump and spill over the side and the table. I stare at that huge splotch of grits, and as they sink in deeper to my good tablecloth and spread, I can feel the fear and sadness doing the same within my own heart. “Talk, huh? Well, let’s talk about the fact that you’re fixing me this bullshit to eat for breakfast. Do I look like some kind of dog to you?” Spit flies from his lips as he bellows at me.
In shock, I take a step back. He has to be joking. I lift my eyes from the table and search within his to try and find a trace of humor lurking there. No, he was definitely not joking. The look on his face was somber and grim. His eyes look dead and flat. This is a look that is unfamiliar to me. I am still confused. Flustered, I answer, “No, James, and you know I don’t think you are a dog. I… I was just trying to … Why would you ask me a question like that?”
“Because, Gladys,” He spat my name as though it were acid on his tongue. “You’re fixing some shit that looks like dog food, bitch! I know you think you’re better than me because you’ve got your little job as a world-renowned software consultant, but I’m nobody’s dog!” As he shouts at me, he takes steps closer and closer until our noses are an inch apart. I can smell the Cool Mint Listerine on his breath, and the Cool Water Cologne on his neck, but his temper is anything but cool. Did he just call me a puta? No one in my entire life had ever called me that. I must have heard him wrong. I had to have. I mentally curse the day I had told him about my promotion. Ever since, he has been in a pissy mood, but then his demotion had come at the absolute worst time. His mood has completely gone down the toilet.
I don’t recognize mi esposa, my husband, at all. The expression on his face makes him look as though he is possessed by Lucifer, or el Diablo, himself. I can’t pretend to be strong. His attitude completely takes me off guard, after I spent all morning thinking that he would be thrilled with all of my hard work. I had imagined that he would sweep me up off of my feet, swing me around the kitchen, and maybe even take me right here on the dining table. Instead, here I was, face to face with the beast I had never known resided within him.
A flame of fear travels through my bones, and I shake uncontrollably. The fright was so overwhelming that I almost gag. “What the fuck are you giggling about, Gladys? Got-dammit, you Spanish whore, you think I’m a fuckin’ joke?”
“Oh my god, James, I wasn’t laughing at you. I… I… I don’t know what has gotten into you this morning, but you need to…” WHOP! The next thing I know, I am half-way across the room holding my left cheek, which is screaming in excruciating pain. My back also hurts like hell from the violent contact I had experienced with the corner of the countertop on my way to the ground.
“Don’t you ever tell me what you think I need to do, Gladys! I’m a man! I do what I want to do.”
I quickly follow James with my shocked eyes, trying to ensure that
he doesn’t come any closer. Who is this monster that has taken over my James’ body and mind? I look up at the stranger in total disbelief. He had never so much as raised his hand to me in the entire two years that I had known him.
Hurt to the core, my heart bleeding twice as heavy as my face, I find the strength to ask, “James, how… how could you dare hit me!? What has gotten into you?” I manage to croak out in between sobs. I sit here too emotionally paralyzed to move. The fact that my dear esposo has just physically abused me is not registering. There is no way that I am a battered woman, like some of the other women I’ve always talked about. I had always felt sorry for those women who couldn’t be strong enough to leave those horrible husbands. I had always thought them weak and much more vulnerable than me. Es muy imposible’! No freaking way was I about to accept the title of being a victim of domestic violence!
James storms out of the room hollering, “What has gotten into me, you ask? No senorita! It is what is about to get into you.” I am relieved that he is no longer in the same room with me. Maybe he would just storm out and leave me here alone to nurse my wounds.
No such luck. After hearing him scrambling through our bedroom closet, I cringe as he returns, walking briskly toward me. I am still sitting on the floor, curled up in a fetal position crying. I am trying to melt into the wall. I am trying to disappear into the corner. I am trying to make myself invisible, so that I won’t have to face him again. I don’t know who this bruised and bleeding shell of a woman is, holding onto her elbows and rocking back and forth. I hear her mewling cries. I cry for the pain I am feeling – inside and out. I cry for the loss of the marriage that I had once dreamed about. I cry for the loss of the ideal I had once had of my loving husband.
“You are about to learn some respect, woman.” The calmness in his voice inspires even more fear than his outraged yelling had. It is then that I realize that he has his thick pledge belt from college wrapped around his hand, as if he is about to break in a rookie frat brother. When his real intentions dawn on me, I plead with him for mercy. I forget my pride. I forget my proud Spanish upbringing. Briefly, visions of my father lecturing me when I was a little girl about having respect for myself so that others will respect me float to my thoughts, but the seriousness of the situation at hand push them away. I swallow all of my self-respect as I hold my hands out to him and beg for my life.
“No! James, please no!” I scream at the top of my lungs, or at least it seems to me as if I am screaming loud, but only hoarse whispered squeals are heard. I do so with all of the breath that I have left in my body. As the belt swings in a wide arc over his head, I cry out, hoping to touch any tender spot left in James’ heart. It makes its way closer to my body, and I whisper helplessly, “Please… don’t hit me again...”
After only six measly months of marriage, my matrimonial bliss had turned into a den for the devil’s work to be done. It seemed the only thing that James had going for him were the three “A’s”: anger, aggression, and adultery. If people knew what I was going through behind the expensively designed doors of our home, they would think I was gullible and naïve for falling in love with someone like him in the first place.
In actuality, he used to love me so tenderly and show me the utmost respect. He always put me first, and mi familia loved him enough to put up every dime for our wedding. It was extra money that they did not have. How could I go back to mi padre and tell him that the twenty thousand he took from his hard-earned retirement account was in vain, because the man that I married was beating me senseless? I wouldn’t be his prized princesa bonita anymore. I would be a disgrace to mi familia. My father would disown me. I couldn’t bear to think of the look on his rugged, hardworking face if he would ever find out.
Even though since that first beating, James’ modus operandi usually was to verbally attack me, intimidating me into a shivering heap of tears so badly that he didn’t even have to beat me in order to get me to submit to whatever he wanted me to, he certainly was not above putting his hands on me. I’d lived through the worst of it for the past six years with James – the absolute worst. We kept up a good public face, though. To see us out and about, you would think that we were just as in love as we were in college. I hadn’t even told my best friend about what was happening to me.
I am the type of woman that doesn’t keep too many friends around me. Especially since James had lost his mind, I preferred to have the least amount of prying ears and eyes in the vicinity as possible. The only two women aside from my family that I kept in close contact with were Shayla and Rhonda, from high school. Well, if I am being honest, there was only really one that I trusted – mi mejor amiga (or my best friend) Shayla. Rhonda was the third-wheel to our duo, and I trusted her as far as I could toss her. She’d always been somewhat selfish and conceited, as far as I was concerned. I stayed friends with her more because Shayla like her so much than my own personal preferences.
It was obvious that Rhonda felt somewhat the same about me. We were kind of like ‘frenemies’, you know – friendly enemies? I couldn’t remember a specific moment when she was truly there for me, in a best-girlfriend-who-I-would-do-anything-for kind of way. I could rattle off several times, in the last month, that Shayla had come through. And yet, the shame and the disgrace of my situation still would not allow me to reveal everything to her. One day, maybe.
I took a long look at the gold-encrusted special invite to Brenda Jackson's 2009 Grown and Sexy Masquerade Ball in Miami, Florida. It had been a minute since I'd seen my old college classmate, so I wondered how she had found my contact information to have the party planning company personally deliver an invite to my job. This woman was amazing! She’d single-handedly planned a weekend reunion getaway for the graduates of the African American studies program at Albany State, class of 2002. I was too ready to reconnect with some of my old friends. To top the reunion off, Brenda had even managed to hook me up with two freebie nights at the hotel resort. What do you have up your sleeve, Brenda? I thought, Man, I hope it’s good!
I wondered what the weekend had in store for me, but knowing Brenda, it could be anything. Something wild and crazy would be just what the doctor ordered after the grief that James had been putting me through. As far back as I could remember, she had been the life of the party. Brenda also knew how to be a good host of a great party, too. In college, it wasn’t enough for her to be on the cheerleading squad. No! She was the head of the Honor Society, Ambassador to the United States for the Culture Team America, track star, volleyball star, Spanish Honor Society President, and President of the African-American Study Club. African-American studies was my minor, so I was blessed to meet such a dynamic soul while I was there.
This invitation meant more to me than just some time to let loose and get buck wild. It was a much needed time to get away from all of the madness at home and clear my head. Almost to Miami, I changed lanes, switching over to the side of traffic that was moving the fastest. I breezed down the highway, anxious to get my weekend kicked off. I couldn’t wait to reach my hotel and spend the next two days in another town far away from any miserable tracings of my marriage. For just a hot second, I thought about James and how he must have felt when he came home from work to find my Oh-by-the-way-I’ll-see-you-on-Monday letter. I would have paid good money to see the look on his face when Mother brought the kids home at six.
“Ha! I wonder how he liked them apples!” I laughed, imagining all of the different faces and bellowing screams he undoubtedly expressed upon getting the news of my unplanned disappearing act. He’d probably soiled his pants once I called and confirmed that it was not all just some silly joke. The truth was that I should have been the one acting the fool, considering the email message I received last Sunday morning from an anonymous woman claiming to have a special relationship with my husband. It just so happens that last weekend he had a conference to attend for work, so he said. It was enough that I put up with his abuse, but to have to receive messages like this from his little si
deshow women was just too much. I’d be damned if I would endure his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality at home, only to be boldly confronted by one of the skeezers I knew he was keeping around town. If he needed a punching bag this weekend, he could take out his aggression on “his woman.” I won’t even attempt to explain the childish message from the woman, or the meaning within, but it came from a [email protected] email address.