“You named your vehicle Black Betty?”
“Yes. You don’t name your cars?”
“No,” he replied, “and why Black Betty?”
“The day I drove her home from the dealership Queen’s “Black Betty” was playing on the radio, so that became her name.”
“She must suck up gas like a sponge in city driving.”
“She does,” Jasmine admitted. “That’s why I only drive her when I’m going on the highway.”
“Do you really need a vehicle this big?”
“Not now. I bought it when I still had my decorating business.”
“Wasn’t that before you went into human resources?”
Jasmine shook her head. “Even though I was working in HR, I still had a decorating business.”
He shot her an incredulous look when stopping for a red light. “How were you able to manage both?”
There came a noticeable pause. “I didn’t. My ex took over the business for me.” There came another pause before Jasmine said, “I’d gone to Manila to visit relatives and look for pieces for a client who had become enamored with anything from Southeast Asia. That’s when I met Raymond Rios, whose family owned an import/export business. He had an uncanny gift for appraising whether an object was authentic or a reproduction with a single glance. What had begun as friendship turned into a long-distance romance and after a year we married in a traditional Filipino wedding and then in an American ceremony once we were back in the States.
“We ran the company together for about seven years until I decided to change careers, leaving Raymond to control the decorating business. Once I was out of the picture I discovered not only had he cheated on me, but unbeknownst to me, he’d had a baby with another woman. Meanwhile he’d been telling me he wasn’t ready to become a father. I was really devastated when he finally admitted after his son was born he had a vasectomy and that meant we’d never have children together.”
“The sonofabitch!” Cameron said under his breath. “How did you find out that he’d been cheating?”
“Raymond had two cell phones. One that was personal and the other for business. He’d gone out and left the business one at home and called me to ask if I’d seen it, and if I did, then pick up his voicemail messages because he was expecting a call from an important client. That’s when I heard a woman’s voice asking him to bring home some disposable diapers because she was running short. She ended the message with something that was too salacious for me to repeat. It was apparent she’d called the wrong phone. There were also text messages about when he could see her and others when he promised to give her money. I couldn’t believe he could be that stupid and give her both numbers. I don’t how I stayed so calm, but when he came home later that night I told him I knew about his baby mama, and that I was filing for divorce. We continued to live together until I had him served with separation papers charging him with adultery. That’s when he packed his clothes and moved out.”
“Where did he go?”
“The only place he could go. He moved in with his baby mama who lived in public housing with her three other children all from different daddies.”
Cameron laughed loudly. “Talk about going from the penthouse to the outhouse.”
“That he did. Of course he sued me for half the business, Black Betty, and a share of the equity in the condo, but thanks to advice from Hannah he wound up with only ten percent of the business, which I’d sold before the divorce was finalized. He wasn’t entitled to the condo because I never put his name on the deed even though he’d begged me to over and over.”
“Had you put his name on anything?”
Jasmine shook her head. “No. The business, condo, and Black Betty were all in my name, because my grandmamma had preached to me not to give a man what I’d worked for no matter how good he made me feel.”
For Cameron, it had been his grandmother who had provided him with a place of refuge when the arguments between his parents escalated to the point where he feared it would lead to physical confrontation. “Grandma does always know what’s best for their grandbabies.”
“I’m a witness to that,” Jasmine said in agreement.
“Hannah was your divorce attorney?” he asked.
“Not in the legal sense.”
Cameron listened when Jasmine said that she’d suspected her lawyer was being paid off by her husband and one call from Hannah threatening to report him to the bar association which could’ve jeopardized his license ended it.
“How did she know he was being paid off?”
“It probably was because he told me Raymond was entitled to a lot more than ten percent of the business, and that I was leaving him practically destitute because he had a child to raise and educate. I knew I sounded cruel when I told him I wasn’t the child’s mother and therefore it wasn’t my responsibility to provide support for him.”
“And you weren’t, Jasmine. If he made the baby with another woman then it was incumbent on him to take care of it and raise it with her. He waded out into the waters of adultery and unlucky for him he got caught in the undertow.”
“Have you ever cheated on the women with whom you were involved?”
