Wyndiand I sat on the sofa in my family room. The television was on, but we weren’t watching it. Her feet were in my lap as she ate a slice of the pizza we picked up after we left the game.
She let her head fall back, and she moaned slightly as my hands massaged her feet. “That feels so good.”
“Listen,” I said as I continued to rub and massage, “I know I was distant this last couple of weeks or so.”
“You were, but I deserved it.”
My face twisted up, and I stopped rubbing her feet. “What? Nah. You didn’t deserve to feel like you didn’t know where my head was at. You?—”
“Be serious, Kaynaan. I did deserve it. You’ve spent this entire time that we’ve been dealing going out of your way tomake sure I know where your head is at. Where your heart is at. And instead of matching your energy, I run and hide every time I?—”
“You needed time to work up to matching my energy, Brown Eyes. I got that. I came into the picture right before everything exploded. We were just getting to know each other. You had a right to take your time.”
“Taking my time is different from running and hiding, boo. It was the fear.”
“I get that,” I told her softly.
“I could’ve handled it better.”
“And I could’ve handled it better.”
She giggled. “Stop trying to take the blame for something that was my fault. I’ve been talking to a therapist. So I’m very much aware that my actions are my own fault. I made the decision to hide, instead of talk to you about what I was feeling and thinking.”
“And I made the decision to come on strong. Probably too strong for where you were at the moment.”
We were both silent, and the foot rub resumed.
“I wanna tell you something.” She broke the silence.
“Okay.”
“I’ve never told anybody except LoLo. Not even my mother. But the therapist thinks you’re safe for me. So, I should tell you.”
“Okay,” I repeated.
“Channing, my ex, when he used to go through his struggles he would be . . . different. He was really mean. Like, he would say the meanest, cruelest things he could think of. And I had just lost a baby. So most of his vitriol was aimed at the fact that I didn’t carry the baby to term.” She took a deep breath. “I knew Channing inside and out. I mean, we’ve been in each other’s lives since birth—our mothers are best friends. To have somebody you know like the back of your hand switch up on you . . . you’reblindsided. I didn’t have any sassy clapbacks for the things he said to me. I was too much in shock that Channing was talking to me that way.
“Now here I am, pregnant again. And you’re being so kind. You’re involving yourself when you don’t have to. You’re stepping up to do things and support me when you don’t have to. There’s no way for me to think that’s normal, when my normal is somebody who loved me for years starting to verbally abuse me. Does that make sense?”
What she said hit me like a ton of bricks. “Yeah, sweetheart. That makes perfect sense. Instead of assuring you that I was down for you, my behavior probably made you more anxious as to when the other shoe would drop.”
“I didn’t want to feel that way. I wanted to accept that you care about me and the baby. But it’s so hard when the only frame of reference I have for a relationship is watching while it morphed from love into an unhealthy situation.”
“I hate that you went through that.”
She sighed. “I have mixed feelings about it. I hated it at the time. I hated watching a relationship that I put my trust in and gave my all, crash and burn. But I’m thankful that Channing and I didn’t get married before he got his diagnosis. I know myself. I would’ve suffered in silence in that marriage. I would’ve felt like it was my responsibility to protect the image of my marriage and my husband.
“I mean, the reason I never told my mother that Channing was treating me like trash was to protect him. My mother is his godmother. I never wanted her to think bad of him. If she’d known how he was treating me, she would’ve started to dislike him. Then she and my aunt Cecilia would’ve fallen out. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Is that why the thought that you caused the beef between my grandmother and me bothered you so badly?”
“Probably. I never want to be the reason there’s beef.”
“You weren’t the cause of that beef.”
“Well, your mother told me the history between your dad, Kenya, and your grandmother.”
I nodded. “My grandmother’s preoccupation with optics bugs the shit outta me. But she adopted that shit from the generations before her.”
