There Goes My Social Life (14 page)

“Actually,” Timothy responded, “I
am
single.”

My mouth went dry. Did he just tell a national audience that he was available? With a pregnant woman in a hotel room three thousand miles away? I threw my shoe at the television and watched it fall on the floor. That wasn't very satisfying. So I picked up a glass table and turned it over. It broke into a thousand shards. I looked around me. Everything that was within my grasp I broke, threw, or destroyed.

I'd be raising this child by myself.

There's something about being pregnant that stirs up your emotions toward your family.

As soon as we got back from New York, I picked up the telephone.

“Daddy?” I said into the phone. I could tell that he was not expecting to hear my voice. It had been years. Axel had forbidden me from talking to my dad ever since we'd left New York, and—like an idiot—I'd obeyed him. Now I ached over the fact that he was living so far away. I loved my father so much, and now he was totally alone except for the cold comfort of the drugs that had already taken so much from him. We caught up a bit, but things quickly turned serious.

“Stacey,” he said more urgently. “I want you to know I love you, and I'll always love you.”

I swallowed hard, trying to keep the emotion down.

“Daddy, I feel the same way,” I managed. “I love you and always will.”

Those were the last words I got to say to him. Two days later, my mother was in California to help with the baby. Though she had never seemed to care whether I lived or died, she suddenly percolated with affection when she heard that a grandbaby was on his way. When she arrived, I was busy secretly trying to figure out a way to be able to afford to leave Timothy. He was frequently gone on tour, so I began stashing away money in one place he'd never look: the boots in my closet. His success gave me ample time to scheme, to plan, and to make arrangements for the moment when I would take my baby and get out of an unstable situation and away from the pain Timothy's cheating was causing me. Two days after I talked to my father, I was upstairs in my bedroom when I heard a blood-curdling scream coming from downstairs.

“What's wrong?” I yelled, coming down the stairs as quickly as I could with my pregnant body. I saw my mother lying on the floor, clutching the phone. “Tell me! What's wrong?”

“Daddy's dead.” My brother Darien, who was seventeen at the time, had come home from school that day to my uncle's apartment on Boston Road in the Bronx. When Darien came into the house he found Dad on the floor. He'd overdosed and died of a heart attack after about twenty-five years of addiction to hard drugs.

I fell to the floor and began to sob.

My mother had always told me how worthless I was, that I was a tramp, that I was stupid, that I was selfish. But Dad would take me everywhere with him—for good errands and bad. I'll never forget the drug purchase gone bad that resulted in the deaths of the sellers just moments before we got out of their house.

I was so thankful that I had called him. When my dad died, a large part of my security (maybe all that remained after Uncle Freddy's surprise arrest) disappeared with him. I was heartbroken. And the next day, I went into labor.

My mother and Timothy were there at the hospital with me, and my eighteen hours of labor was not easy. When it was all over, I had a bouncing baby boy, just as God had told me. I named him after Austen Heller from
The Fountainhead
, a book that has meant a lot to me throughout my years of reading. As I held him in my arms—his little body melding into mine—I looked at his hands and his tiny little feet. He was perfect, and I cried. This child was everything to me. I had to start making better decisions now that my choices were going to affect this little, innocent baby.

Timothy fell in love with him too. He was good with the baby: he changed diapers and doted on Austin. Seeing him lovingly taking care of our son was so nice. There's just something about a baby that gives hope. It makes the world suddenly seem right. And it was, at least, for a while.

But the joy of the new baby dissipated when everyone left. My mother flew back to New York to help take care of the arrangements for my dad's funeral. Timothy left too, because he needed to go back to the loving embrace of one of his mistresses. In fact, throughout my pregnancy, he'd been dating the same girl. But it worked out well enough. While I was alone with Austin, I had time to plan how to get out of there.

After about four weeks, Timothy started staying out even later and then not coming home at all. During a two-day span when he didn't bother showing up, I remembered my vow to leave.

“How's your girlfriend?” I asked. Austin was sleeping in his bassinet when Timothy meandered in.

“You might be his momma, but you're not mine,” he said, pointing to the baby. Something about how he dragged Austin into the argument struck me as particularly cruel.

“I can't do this. I don't want to do this,” I said. “If you want to be with this woman, then go be with her.”

His face fell and his jaw clenched.

“I choose her,” he said and walked out the door.

There's nothing like being a single mom with a baby to focus your survival skills. I took the money from my boots and got a small apartment across town from Timothy. It was a one-bedroom place, and I kept Austin in his bassinet near my bed.

Months passed without a word from Timothy, but I managed to get by. One night, I heard a knock on the door, and I figured he'd come to see the baby.
Figures he
'
d come right after I got him to sleep
. But to my surprise, it wasn't Timothy at all.

“Axel?”

“Surprised to see me?” he said.

Here is the honest-to-God truth. As embarrassing as it is, my initial reaction wasn't to run or to scream or to hit him. My first reaction was a smile. A small part of me was happy to see him, someone from the old neighborhood. Someone who knew my parents and knew where I'd come from.

“How'd you find me?” I asked, but I soon realized this would be no romantic reunion. He wasn't there to catch up or to find out what I'd been doing. When he looked at Austin in the bassinet, he didn't look surprised. It seemed that he wasn't surprised by anything in my life, like he'd kept himself apprised of my situation.

“I told you,” he said. “You weren't supposed to leave me.”

This is when he started hitting me. I climbed to the middle of the bed. That's where I'd go to try to get away from him—right out of reach, to make it harder for him to get to me. I remembered that he kept a gun on his lower right leg, so I lunged for it. He laughed, pulled a gun from his waistband, and asked, “Is this what you're looking for?”

He dragged me off the bed and drove me to the ground. I tried to get away, but he grabbed my feet as I tried to leave. I ended up on my knees in my oversized closet. That's when I felt the cool metal of the gun pressed against my head.

“If you try to leave,” he said, “I'll kill you.”

At this point, I felt heat on my skin—fear. I couldn't let him shoot me while my son slept in a bassinet just a few feet away. The world slowed down around me, and all I knew—all I could feel—was that I needed to survive.

“Please, God,” I prayed. “Just don't let him kill me or hurt my son.”

“Come on, Ax,” I said, in as smooth a voice as I could muster. “Put the gun away. The baby's right there.”

Somehow I managed to calm him down and get him back to the bed. I knew what was coming and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. Suddenly, I was more aware of Austin in his crib than I was of the gun pressed into my temple. I didn't want my son to see his mother being raped, I didn't want him to wake up to hear my screams. And so I closed my eyes and shut my mouth.

I heard Axel partially undress, then felt him yank up my nightgown. Both he and I were quiet. I tried not to concentrate on my flesh tearing, but tears rolled down my face. The only sound in the room was my head hitting the backboard with each thrust. During the violent encounter, never once did he take the gun away from my head.

Never once did I make a sound.

The boot money ran out, and I didn't feel safe now that Axel knew exactly where I lived.

How on earth can I afford to move?

My answer came in the form of an audition.

My agent encouraged me to try out for a role opposite comedian Damon Wayans, the
Saturday Night Live
alum who went on to be a member of his brother's comedy show
In Living Color
. Damon wrote the movie
Mo
'
Money
and starred in it as a con man who tries to get his act together for the sake of his younger brother and for a woman.

I did a screen test for the romantic lead. When I got the role, I was both thrilled and worried. Austin wasn't even one year old yet. Filming was going to occur in Chicago over the course of about three months. My mother kindly offered to watch him, so I laid out specific instructions on what was—and was not—allowed with my baby. My stepfather and brother were living with her too, so I figured that she could handle it. With Axel out to get me, my son might've even been safer without me, but leaving him was the hardest thing I ever had to do. My mother brought Austin to Chicago for his first birthday, and I spent the day in agony over how much I missed him. Though it was a hard few months, it paid off.
Mo
'
Money
dominated the box office and was the #1 grossing film of the weekend. With the money I earned on
Mo
'
Money
, I was able to get a new apartment where Austin and I could live with my brother, who was going to the University of Southern California. I finally felt like I was making it in Hollywood, and immediately got another gig.

My next movie was to be shot in a cold, rainy state, but I was game for anything. Well, almost anything. I got there and went to the set and we filmed for a few days until one day the director said, “In this scene, you'll be nude.”

“There must be some mistake,” I said.

“It's right here in the script,” he said.

I immediately contacted my agent.

“These people are under the impression that I'm going to do a nude sex scene,” I whispered into the phone.

“Come on, Stacey,” he urged. “Be reasonable. This is where the money is.”

I hung up the phone and went back to my trailer, absolutely furious. By this time, I had enough success under my belt that I didn't feel like they should be treating me like I didn't have options.

I heard a knock on the door of my trailer, which opened to reveal a sorry-looking producer.

“Listen, about all that back there . . . .” he put his hand on my shoulder. “The lead guy heard about it and wants to talk to you in his room about that scene.”

“What's wrong with talking on set?”

“He heard you were upset and he just wanted to talk to you about your concerns.”

I hesitantly went to the main celebrity's trailer and knocked on the door. He greeted me wearing nothing but boxers.