Love Made Me Do It (11 page)

I dreaded going to work, and they dreaded me being there. Since I was so broke all the time, there were at least five people at work that I owed money too. I had made a new friend at work. She was an outside sales rep and she was super sweet too. She was smart, reliable and she too was in a relationship that couldn’t be understood by outsiders.  But her relationship didn’t involve drugs.

Often, we took lunch together.  Or I would go over to her house and we would talk for hours. She believed in me.  She wanted me to leave my lover just like everybody else did. She became my confidant and I trusted her.  But when she tried to advise me about my lover, I turned on her too.

Our relationship was obviously toxic ….even Ray Charles could see that. But I was hard headed.  I never listened. Shit was hitting the fan on a more constant basis.  We were drug addicts.  There was never enough money to comfortably get high and still live life normally.

One morning I left for work with no goodbye or kiss from him. I needed those in the mornings.  Hell, I needed those all the time. That morning I was not going to be getting it. I never knew when to just let things go and move on. So, I decided to come home for lunch that day to discuss the previous day’s altercations. In my gut I knew that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t explain it but I needed to go to home. So I went.

I pulled up as quite as possible and went into the house. It was quite in there except for the loud echoes coming from the bathroom. It was him and he was on the phone. The acoustics in the bathroom make words crystal clear.

I put my purse and keys in the spare bedroom. I crept to the bathroom, careful not to stand in the shadow of the gap from under the door.  So he wouldn’t see me before I was ready to be seen. The words and descriptions I heard from him about another woman made me physically ill.

On the phone with his cousin, my lover started talking about how smooth the girl’s skin was.  How pink the inside of her coochie was.  How she smelled good, tasted good, and she was virgin. Holding my composure I kept on listening. He described and mimicked the sounds she made…as he gave her head in the back seat of his truck. He told his cousin that she was so fine.  It made his dick hard thinking about her. “I never saw so much cream come out of one broad.”  Was his exact words.  I was floored. 

I don’t know is why I was floored. I knew who he was and what he represented. That was the man that he would always be.  But it would be my choice of how long I would take the bullshit. I backed away from the bathroom door and went into the kitchen. I looked at the time and I needed to be back to work in 30 minutes. What I did next set the tone for many years to come.  About what took precedence in my life.  HIM vs WORK. He always won. 

I picked up the house phone, intending to listen to the remainder of the story. After about a minute or so…he thought he heard someone in the house. So I hung up. Scared to death. I decided right at that moment. I purposely would not be going back to work. 

My lover came into that kitchen when he saw me, his facial expression changed. “Aye blood, let me call you right back Johnson is here.” I looked at him and I started to go off, about how he didn’t love me and how disgusting he was. 

The next thing I know I had a sweltering black eye. “SO WHAT!” was his response in between blows, “You shouldn’t have been listening to my conversation, nosey ass, insecure, bitch!”

Ignorance is never bliss.  In absolutely no way.  We tussled, but he won. My eye was getting blacker by the second. I called my job and gave them an excuse, about why I wouldn’t be back that day.

When I came in to work that next day the atmosphere was quiet and eerie. I was scared. I fucked up. Instead of getting my money at a good job, I was trying to keep tabs on a worthless excuse for a man.

“Tamekia?” “Can you come in here please?” I went into my manager’s office and sat down. There was an envelope with my name on it. I knew that this was an exit interview. Enclosed in that envelope was my last check. Even though the ladies in my department didn’t care for me, and weren’t the friendliest.  In hindsight they were able to see what I could not and would not see regarding him.

I was sad. Sniffling, and holding back tears I apologized I took my last check and went home. Now I had to tell this asshole that I had been fired from my job. I was unemployed with a black eye and a broken spirit.

Pulling up to the carport, I wished that I had some sensational story to tell about getting fired.
Oh well, he isn’t my daddy
was the best thought I could come up with. But I knew if I was too smart mouthed.  He would whoop my ass like he was my daddy.

I parked, grabbed my purse and looked inside the envelope. That check was $2,000. With that amount of money and the bills REALLY paid for the month.  I knew that me and my lover would be too sky high to be fighting. He was a fiend and so was I.  It’s funny that I used to be scared of that word. How it used to cut me and make me feel like the scum of the earth.

Everyone has had a demon or two.  Drugs were my demon. I unlocked the front door as slowly as possible. When I turned the corner to go into the kitchen, he was there sitting, not doing shit.  That was his daily routine.  As much as I hated him and what we were becoming.  I was glad to back home with him. 

When we made eye contact. I immediately turned on the crocodile tears. They weren’t fake tears, but I knew I needed to press them out fast and loud.  Before, I had a matching set of black eyes.

I sobbed in his lap and told them how they did me in. Failing… to mention the reason that for my termination.  “Tamekia has been emotionally distraught, and unprepared to perform said job, at a satisfactory level.”

My lover didn’t even ask about the reason.  But he did ask if they cut my last check. I just handed him the envelope. His eyes lit up. Yeah life sucked.  But the bullshit I was being force fed, would taste better once a little coke got in my system and I had the anxiety fucked out of me.

Issues were never clarified, reasons never justified and problems never resolved.  The drugs had us unconcerned and unbothered by real life issues. We were a mess.  But tonight we would be a high mess.  This was the difference between an awesome night….or a night of flying fists.

He grabbed his keys and to the bank we went. Now that there was more free time, I was hoping that it would be well spent with each other.  If our time wasn’t well spent, somebody may be dead by the end of the week. I honestly felt like it could be me.  I would continue to hold on.  I refused to call it quits. Black eye and all we would get thru this

The scariest thing is, loving another person more than you love yourself.  Fuck love, give me the drugs. The love I possessed was a gift and a curse.  I was done crying I was ready to go get this dope.  So, with my clearly exposed black eye, I went inside the bank.  Cashed my check, lost my pride and tucked my dignity. 

We were off to go and buy as much drugs, as we could handle for the night. Life sucked …but I would live off our cocaine high to get thru my dark moments.

CHAPTER 17

IT’S ALL ABOUT DRUGS

Even though it wasn’t the most favorable situation, we had no choice but to make the best of a bad situation.  I will say that everything wasn’t all bad.  But everything was far from good.  In between the fights, the drugs, the make-up sex and the madness we did have some fun. 

We had a few parties.  His friends and cousins would come over and we would we have a ball.  I almost always drank too much, and spent most of my over the toilet.  We woke up when we wanted to and then plotted on how to take over the world.

When you use drugs, you are constantly thinking about your next move and using more drugs.  We stayed high every day.  We had so much time on our hands.  As soon as we woke up.  I gave him the money and he went and copped drugs. 

Life was changing at such fast pace, I was fearful of the speed we were moving at.  Since I was home all day, I had plenty opportunities to talk to my lover about any and everything.  But usually after we used drugs, there wasn’t too much conversation after that. 

I told my lover after he had copped about $100 worth of drug. That I wanted to roll the blunt for us, he was hesitant.  But gave me all the tools I needed, the blunt, the weed, and the cocaine.  He told me to break the cocaine down with the razor blade until it was powder like. 

That’s when I asked him “If this is Coke, why is this like a rock?”  That is when he told my naïve ass… that it was Crack.  This whole time we were smoking Crack.  My mama was going to kill me and for some reason using Coke sounded a little bit more respectful as a drug of choice.

While I rolled this blunt he also warned me to never snort this type of coke.  It would kill me.  Life was full of surprises.  Especially mine. 
So all this time I have been smoking Crack?
 
Did that make me a Crack head?
  At that time I didn’t think so, and I could find a million reasons why I wasn’t a Crack head. 

The number one reason was because there was no pipe involved.  I thought in order to be that you had to be using a pipe.  Like on New Jack City.  I guess I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.  I sealed the blunt up, dried it off and sparked it up. 

At a minimum level we were smoking at least 10 blunts.  On a maximum level, we smoked almost 40 blunts.  It was a feeling that can never be explained.  It’s beyond powerful, that’s why we mixed the Weed with it.  To balance out the harshness of the drug.  We made love, we kissed, we fought, and we used drugs.

He would put me out; throw my clothes out the front door.  I would call my friends to come and get me.  They would come and rescue me, but I would always go back.  It was becoming obvious to others that something was wrong with me.  I just told them that I was stressed.  No one understood why I stayed with him, and neither did I. 

What I did know for sure.  Is that it was hard for me to stay away from him.  It was hard to stay away from the drugs.  It was nearly impossible for me to consistently stay around my friends and enjoy their company.  Everything was revolved around getting high and since they didn’t use drugs, I barely seen them.

I was becoming something that I didn’t want other people to see.  I was embarrassed, so I stayed away.  They cared about me so much and they were so wonderful. I felt it was best for me to stay where I was at, in turmoil with him. 

I’ll never forget getting dressed one day to hang out with one of my girlfriends and my panties fell off of me. I had no idea how thin I really was.  Everything in my closet slid off my thin frame.  I had the figure of a snake.  My existence was getting more shameful by the day.  But I didn’t care, it was me and my lover and fuck anyone else. 

As long as I was appealing to him….then whoever else didn’t like it, could kiss my ass.  He was getting thin too.  His face was scared with acne, and there were lines that creased his face, that weren’t there before.  We slowly became people that we didn’t even recognize. 

Sometimes when we would fight we would talk about how the other person looked.  Our fighting was at an all-time high and more violent than ever.  He asked me once “Where did your ass go?”  I told him “The same place your dick went…”  He slapped the shit out of me.  Drugs had changed us they made him violent and kept me paranoid.

As if our situation wasn’t already bad enough.  He taught me a new bad habit.  He taught me how to shop lift.  I never stole anything in my life, but I wasn’t opposed to it either.  This whole time I was thinking that all his nice, material objects were acquired by working hard.  No.  He acquired those nice things with his sticky hands. I wanted nice expensive things too.  Plus we needed an additional source of income to feed our growing addiction.  Nothing was off limits. 

Top shelf liquor was our biggest seller.  We went in every store in our area, and it didn’t matter if the items were behind the counter.  He would take the bottles of alcohol we stole and trade them for dope.  He was the business end of all the drug transactions. I was just the pretty girl that sat in his truck waiting to get high. 

My lover could take anything that was not nailed down.  I was scared the first few times, but then it was fun.  The only times that I was really scared, was when I felt like we were
hot
in a certain store.  He was never scared, even if we were hot.  We saved so much money since we stole everything.  When we did grocery shop, he would push grocery carts out of the store filled with groceries. 

This was the life of drug addicts.  We were barely functioning.  I was incoherent most of the time and he was volatile.  Pushing and shoving became normal.  I expected it. I probably needed that verbal abuse just to feel alive.  I was dying inside.  If he wasn’t physically abusing me, it was verbal.