Nydia appeared deep in thought. “Tonya, how long have you been divorced?”
“Sixteen years. Samara was five when I left my husband. I just couldn’t take his wanting to control my life.”
“How long were you married?” Nydia asked her.
“Fourteen years. I’d just completed my second year in college when I discovered I was pregnant. Samuel and I married right away because his father never married his mother, and he always resented that. I was four months along when I lost the baby. I went back to college at night and worked at a day care center during the day, while all Samuel talked about was trying for another baby. I wanted to finish college, but that didn’t happen when I got pregnant again. I miscarried again. He blamed me for not taking care of myself, and for trying to do too much.
“We compromised when I dropped out of school and became a housewife. We moved out of our one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx to Brooklyn and rented an apartment in his aunt and uncle’s brownstone. He was a subway motorman and earning enough so I could afford to stay home. I was twenty-eight when I got pregnant again. The doctor put me on complete bed rest, and nine months later I gave birth to my daughter. That’s when everything changed. Samuel became even more possessive and controlling. He had his aunt and uncle watching me constantly, and I had to report to him when I left and where I was going. After a while I decided I’d had enough.”
With wide eyes, Jasmine stared at her. “He let you leave?”
A wry smile twisted Tonya’s mouth. “It wasn’t about hislettingme. I waited until he’d left for work, then called my brother and told him to come to my apartment. I’d packed all of Samara’s clothes, and just enough for myself, and my brother drove me to my parents’ house in Queens.”
Nydia leaned forward. “Did he come after you?”
“No. He was afraid of my brother, who belonged to a gang dealing drugs and had no problem shooting folks who got in their way. My brother hadn’t come alone. He brought his boys. One had a sawed-off shotgun and the other one carried an automatic.” She bit back a smile when seeing expressions of shock and horror on Nydia and Jasmine’s faces.
“What happened to your brother?” Jasmine asked.
She felt a cold shiver snake its way up her back when she recalled having to identify her brother’s body. “He OD’d on drugs.” A beat passed. “Fast-forward. My mother worked nights, and when it came time for Samara to go to school, my mother looked after her while I finished college.” Tonya closed her eyes as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. “The hardest thing I ever had to do was leave my daughter when I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend Johnson and Wales College of Culinary Arts. Initially, I’d enrolled in the two-year program leading to the associate in science degree. Then when I realized I wanted to run my own business, I knew I would have to get a BS in business studies.”
Jasmine pressed her palms together. “Well, Miss Lady, the sacrifice has been well worth it, because you’re on your way to opening a restaurant. And Samara doesn’t appear to be negatively affected by what you had to go through to secure her future.”
Tonya had to agree with Jasmine. She and Samara had talked about Tonya having to leave her with her grandparents for extended periods of time, and her daughter always managed to assuage her guilt by saying she did what she had to do to save them both. Her daughter had grown up with a mother and two grandparents who had given her everything she needed for a happy childhood: love and protection.
Nydia shifted into a more comfortable position. “I still feel bad about telling Hannah that we would sleep with St. John after she’d broken up with him.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Jasmine said, laughing.
“Yes, it did,” Tonya agreed. “If we hadn’t hit her over the head with the tough love, then we wouldn’t be here to witness her marrying one of the finest brothers in New Orleans.” St. John had proposed marriage and then admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and that was when Hannah broke it off with him, because of her own late husband’s infidelity.
“We still don’t know why he cheated on his wife, but Hannah has to be okay with it, because in two days she’ll no longer be DuPont-Lowell, but Hannah McNair,” Jasmine said. “I’m really jealous of her because she’s going to marry a man who started out as her best friend.”
“Remember,” Tonya reminded Jasmine, “it took her more than forty years to realize she’d always been in love with him.”
Resting the back of her hand to her forehead, Nydia pantomimed swooning. “It’s just like in the romance novels. She found her happily ever after with a man with a hero’s name. If only I can get my boyfriend to act more like a hero.”
Tonya slipped off the recliner. “Enough talk about heroes, heroines, and romance novels. Will y’all please leave my room so I can get some sleep? I don’t need to stand up as Hannah’s maid of honor with bags under my eyes.” What she really wanted to say is that she was tired of Nydia complaining about her no-account boyfriend. What the beautiful accountant had not realized was that she could have the pick of any man from any racial or ethnic group, who would treat her with more respect than the man now using her for his own selfish motives.
She understood young love, because she had been there and done that, but what she refused to understand was stupidity, expressly if it was staring her in the face. But, then denial was almost as difficult to admit as blame was to accept. “Remember, Nydia, what I told you about possibly renting my apartment. I have the option of renewing my lease for one or two years. I know you don’t need two bedrooms, but why don’t you come by and look at it and see for yourself. Perhaps you can use the smaller bedroom for a home office.”
Nydia nodded. “Jazz and I aren’t leaving until Sunday night, and I know you’re not going back home until Wednesday. I’ll call you Thursday, and we can set up a time to get together.”
Tonya had decided to delay her return to New York because she still needed to go over things with Hannah, who had mentioned she and St. John weren’t taking a honeymoon until the end of the fall semester. Then they planned to fly to the South Pacific and tour several islands. “If you decide to take it, then I’ll renew it under my name and inform the management office that I’ll be doing a lot of traveling and my niece will be staying in the apartment with me.”
“Okay, Titi Tonya,” Nydia teased, grinning.
Jasmine grimaced, and the masque looked like tiny shards of broken glass. “What are you going to do with your furniture if and when you finally give up your apartment?”
“I’m going to ship everything to Atlanta for storage. My daughter plans to rent an apartment or house once she graduates, and not having to buy furniture will save her a lot of money.”
“Lucky girl,” Jasmine intoned.
Tonya had saved and sacrificed taking vacations in order to pay her daughter’s tuition and room and board so that Samara wouldn’t be burdened with student loans once she graduated. She told Samara that she had done her part in underwriting the cost of her undergraduate education, and she was on her own for any advanced degrees she wanted to pursue.
Waiting until the two left her room and closed the door, Tonya turned off the lamp on the bedside table, slipped into bed, pulled the sheet and lightweight blanket up over her shoulders. Fortunately, she did not have man problems, and it was probably the reason she continued to date Darius Williams. Whenever he called asking to see her, he never exhibited any hostility when she said she needed to spend time alone. The one time he mentioned marriage, Tonya was emphatic when she told him she didn’t want to marry again; she enjoyed her single status and the freedom of living her life by her own set of rules.
And if she married Darius, she knew she would not be able to pick up and move to New Orleans, because her husband never would agree to leave his family-owned auto body repair shop. Getting laid off and Hannah asking her to invest in the future of the DuPont Inn had come at the right time in her life.
