Seventy minutes, three crown orisha and twenty answered text messages later, I am forehead smooshed against the window of the six bus headed home. Eyes squinted, I cynically observe pedestrians laughing on their cell phones, and drivers with unbuckled toddlers in their backseats, questioning if they knew something about life that I didn’t. As for myself, Diaspora Taylor, I am still wondering where the hell my dignity went. “He doesn’t want you anymore Dia”, I remind myself for the one thousandth time, after sending twenty unanswered text messages. Twenty. Why do I feel like incessantly contacting him will win me some magical opportunity to be back in his life again? He looked me right in the eye and said that we were never serious. He also acknowledged for the first time that he was a married man. The sound of the words “my wife” were so foreign coming from his mouth, I almost questioned their origin, asked their definition and damn near thought I’d be expected to spell it back to him for some national prize.
Three years of eyeing one another at church services, “sheparding calls” when my mother wasn’t home, playing hookie from classes for day trips, just to have to swallow my pride and pain being reminded of his wife. She isn’t nearly as much of a godly woman as he is a man, so I only encountered her during seasonal church campaigns or fundraisers. Essentially, this made her no threat, granting us both peace of mind, and now, I’m sickened and he’s suddenly belligerent. I should have known better though. After all, Victor Jones was one of our congregation elders and a friend of my father. Former friend now, who knows? Three weeks after my dad split, I had a boyfriend, or so I thought.
After an approximate twenty one minute bus ride, walking six blocks and not one highly anticipated love letter in the mailbox later, I’m in the shower. With my head hanging shamefully low, I watch the water cascading off my head and down to my aching swollen feet. I need a car. Well, first, I need license. I need license to live again, if that’s what I had with a Victor, a life. I need license to let go, let go of someone I had no license to love in the first place. Then, I will be awarded the luxury of being able to drive my own vehicle, instead of being enslaved by loneliness and lack of understanding.
Feeling only superficially clean and not nearly as renewed as I hoped for, I step out the shower and wipe the mirror to reveal the force of displacement. “I shall prevail”, my father’s motto softly echoing in the bathroom. And that’s what I shall do. I shall prevail the travail, combat compulsive communication and prepare for my tyrannical mother to get home.
Tyranny is the unjust use of governmental power. Due to my mother’s inclination to conjure misery in her own mind, she has the uncanny means of fostering a tumultuous household. This was mainly before my dad left us. Though I’m sure they loved one another very much at one point in time, I have no recollection of my parents ever being really happy together. I mean, how could they have been when one half of the team succumbs to two to three hours of screaming and crying fits that include calling out my father and I for one on one verbal scrimmages based on events that happened more than a decade ago? In the last month alone, I had to twice soothe and reason with my forty-six year old mother as to why I wouldn’t let her kiss me in front of my friends in the schoolyard when she dropped me off when I was all of seven years old. Each time I made a point, she would obey the truculent orders of her demons to immediately find another trivial topic as to which she attributes her disproval of my entire existence. “Ignore her”, my father would counsel. I understood his easier said than done approach to my mother’s instability. He had less of a difficult time managing her.
My parents professed Christianity in its purest of forms. So on occasion her possession subsided long enough to allow her to be submissive and level headed. The scriptures don’t require that my parents take a back seat to my needs, as it does for children to do for them, so my attempts to heed my father’s admonition would result in being followed around the house and cornered in the hallways or in my bedroom, being called out my name and egged on to take the first blow on a unruly woman. This was a spiritual household, Christian! Where was the Holy of Holies? Are you there God? It is me, your Devotee. Whilest waiting for divine intervention from The One True God, I bestowed my inherited tribulation the title, The Tyrant.
Growing up my dad was the last to return home from work, which made me The Tyrant’s welcoming party. From the moment the wench would walk into the house, I swear, a fiery and tempestuous entity would mount her. Every day, she’d cross the threshold and resume whatever hurricane of a hissy fit that had her very large panties in a bunch the night before. Hello to you too, mother. I’m happy to see you too, mother. Instead of a warm welcome, she'd systematically slam the front door and stomp up the stairs to find me minding my business in my room.
Scowling, she would ask “Did you hear from your father today?” “Yes”, I’d reply, “he texted me earlier today asking about dinner. Everything okay?” I’d ask uncomfortably, wondering if I was unknowingly guilty of a transgression against her. Then the look of complete devastation would manifest on her face every time we had this exchange. Why on Earth did I insist on telling her the truth? “Dinner? Why didn’t he ask me? I plan the meals. You only cook them!” She’d shout pitifully. “Mom, I don’t know, you’d have to ask him.” “But, I’m his wife!” She’d scream at the top of her lungs, usually leading to hyperventilation.
By the time, she starts to pant during her episodes, I’m usually deathly afraid to make any sudden movements. It was always clear that these problems predated myself. I wouldn't know what to say to the woman, his woman, not mine, except: “Mom, I’m sorry”. “I know you’re sorry Diaspora, you’re just a sorry person. I’m sorry I even had you. I should have just aborted your sorry ass”, she’d rebuttal cryingly, then abruptly leaving my room, slamming my bedroom door behind her. I’d hear her deranged muttering as she’d make her way to her bedroom. After creeping to my closed and too afraid to make physical contact between it and my ear, I'd suddenly hear, “Fuck you both! Fuck you, Dia! Fuck your father! Fuck this house! I should just kill myself! AAAHHH!”
Whoa, this has nothing to do with me Lady, call your husband.
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