The Love Prison Made and Unmade, page 21
59
We quickly outgrew our two-bedroom townhouse once Sekou was born. With all three of us at home most of the time, the townhouse stayed cluttered and there was nowhere to store anything.
Shaka didn’t want to move.
“The rent is only eighty hundred and fifty dollars. If we stay, we can save some money.”
“I hear you, but I feel like I’m about to lose my mind. I can’t stay here another year.” The space seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and the sounds of ongoing traffic from the nearby expressway and the smell of sewage in the basement had become too much.
I started looking online for houses and apartments to rent, and then enlisted the help of a Realtor, but we couldn’t find what we wanted within our budget. We wrestled with whether to buy or continue renting. Neither of us felt ready for the responsibility of owning a house, but Shaka’s felony was like a scarlet letter on every rental application we submitted. After the housing manager did the criminal background check, we were politely told our application had been denied.
“What if we don’t put your name on the lease?”
“Nah, that’s not gonna work. I need to have a key. If you’re the only person on the lease, they’re only going to give us one key.”
“Damn, that’s right.”
“And I don’t want to risk them finding out I’m living there and put us out.”
After much discussion, and several denied applications, we decided to buy a house. We looked in Detroit, and then the suburbs. Shaka’s travel schedule meant Sekou and I were often at home alone and he said he’d feel better if we were in the burbs. I am a diehard Detroiter and didn’t want to leave the city, but I agreed.
Months later, we were still looking. We couldn’t find a house we both liked. I preferred the houses with old charm and character and he wanted something modern. One day, tired of looking at houses and getting closer and closer to the end of our lease, Shaka told me, “If we don’t find a house this week, we’re staying here.” I didn’t like having that kind of pressure—buying a home is a big purchase—but that week we saw a house we liked in Westland, a Detroit suburb. It was a brand-new home in a new subdivision and we could make it our own. We would have more than enough space and Shaka could have a man cave.
I was excited about the move. I thought Shaka was, too. I knew he’d been frustrated with the process, but he’d gotten what he wanted—a modern home with new finishes and a blank canvas to build the man cave of his dreams. But months after we closed, during one of our arguments, he told me I’d forced him into buying a home. “I didn’t want this house,” he said. Every time an expense came up, I was reminded, “This was your idea. This is your house.”
I thought we were making lemonade out of the lemons we had, but Shaka thought I had been controlling and manipulative. Our relationship was already in trouble and the house did nothing but create another wedge between us.
No matter how much we argued, we never stayed mad for more than a couple hours. Before the end of the day we would be laughing again as if nothing had happened. One day after an argument, Shaka told me he had sent a text, a picture, intended for me to my mama.
“What was it?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said shaking his head.
“It was that bad?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you say anything with the pic?”
He nodded, guilt all over his face.
“Oh my God, you gotta call my mama and tell her it was a mistake.”
He showed me the picture, a woman bent over with honey dripping from her vagina. “How am I going to explain that?”
“I don’t know, but you have to call her,” I insisted. Seconds later, my phone rang. It was my mama. My mouth dropped. I stared at Shaka with pleading eyes and whispered, “Fix this.”
“Hey, Ma,” I said calmly, trying to pretend I didn’t know why she was calling, waiting on her to tell me about the text, but she didn’t say anything.
I handed the phone to Shaka. “Fix this!” I pleaded again.
The minute he put the phone to his ear, he started laughing hysterically.
I looked, confused, and then realized he’d pranked me with my mama’s help. I laughed and laughed until I cried. I thought about the look on my mama’s face if she’d actually gotten that text and laughed some more.
It was moments like this that reminded me why I loved Shaka.
60
We argued. We made up. We argued. We made love. And the cycle repeated. We never fixed anything. Making up didn’t mean we had resolved the issue. We buried it, we moved on, and then we dug it up again. I was stuck in the same cycle as my parents.
A few months after we moved, on a hot August night, I got a text from Shaka after one of our heated arguments. “I’m ready to move on.”
I simply replied, “Okay.” I didn’t cry or question why. I was exhausted from trying to make things work.
Once we had a chance to talk, we agreed he’d move out and I’d stay in our new home with Sekou. We’d give ourselves a year.
We searched for his new apartment together with the help of Toni, the same Realtor who’d found our house in Westland. After three weeks of searching, Toni found a one-bedroom condo in Detroit that Shaka loved. We discussed how he should handle the felony.
“This is a private owner instead of a management company,” Toni explained. “Your chances of getting approved are much better.”
“What do you think about attaching my bio to the application?”
“That’s a good idea. It won’t hurt.”
I forwarded Toni a copy of Shaka’s media kit and she sent it along with his application. We hoped the owner would focus on his accomplishments and not his crime. After a day or two of waiting, she called with the good news.
That fall, with the help of friends, Shaka moved into his new home. I helped him shop for furniture and linens and hung his artwork. I was excited for him. He had never lived on his own as an adult, one of many experiences he’d missed out on while he was in prison.
Every night at Sekou’s bedtime, I’d call Shaka so he could do affirmations, a nightly ritual he had started with Sekou months earlier.
“I am brilliant,” Shaka began.
“I am brilliant,” repeated Sekou in his little voice.
I am kind, I am strong, I am a warrior, he continued, Sekou repeating each line after him. Then finally, with great enthusiasm, Sekou would say, “I am Sekou!”
This wasn’t how we wanted to raise Sekou, in two separate homes, but we knew if our relationship was ever going to work, we needed some space.
61
A separation sounded good, but we never left each other alone. Shaka had moved, but he was in between my place and his.
I became obsessed with who he was seeing and drilled him constantly—how did he meet her, what did she look like, did he like her, how much time did they spend together. I was afraid he’d fall in love with someone else. I regularly checked his phone records, text messages, emails, instant messenger, and then four months into our separation, snooping through Shaka’s phone one night, I learned about two women he’d been with while we were still together.
I screamed, I cried, I lashed out in anger.
“This is fucked up. The one person I thought had my back, the one I trusted with my heart didn’t give a fuck about me. I know I’m not perfect, but I didn’t deserve any of this. I feel like a damned fool. We have been down this road before and I told you then how I felt about this shit. All I asked you to do is be real with me. It’s fucked up that a relationship that had so much potential has come to this.”
Shaka listened. He apologized. I woke up the next morning to an email that started, “Where did we go wrong?”
“I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about how much I have fucked you over in the last three and a half years. I can’t understand why I have hurt you the way I have. Every day I find myself trying to find the answer to the question WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME? I have failed you and our relationship. I fear that the damage I have caused is beyond repair and that worries me. I don’t want to lose you, our friendship, or our family. We have gone through many obstacles and been challenged on every front, but this is different because I am the source of your pain and heartbreak.”
I read and reread his words. And then hit reply. “I don’t know if the damage is beyond repair, but I know this shit hurts like fucking hell and I’m afraid of being a fool again.”
That night, after putting Sekou to bed, I wrapped myself in a blanket, grabbed a corner of the couch, and sat in the dark crying for hours. You should have known better. What did you expect?
Eventually, after many heart-to-heart talks, I forgave him. He tried to explain why he’d cheated. I listened.
“This shit ain’t easy, Eb. Ever since I came home, I’ve been trying to make some shit happen and I keep getting doors slammed in my face. Shit with me and you wasn’t working out, and then there’s my family drama. I was depressed. The women were just an escape.”
I don’t know what it is, this place inside me that makes me hold on, but it was all I knew to do. I wasn’t sure anymore if I was staying because I was committed or, like my mama, I was too tired to do anything different, but I knew I loved him. Life together wasn’t as easy as we’d hoped but I didn’t want to lose him. I’d waited four long, hard years for him. Four. I’d invested too much.
I knew the pressure to succeed was consuming Shaka. He didn’t have a job or a degree, the book business was still slow, and he had been piecing together work from consulting and speaking gigs. Then there was the guilt he carried because he hadn’t been there to raise his son Jay, who was now struggling his way into manhood. Jay was bouncing from couch to couch with no real job or plan for his life. Shaka felt helpless. He had kicked it with him countless times about his life in the streets and the lessons he’d learned, but Jay was determined to do things his way. The sad irony—Shaka had poured himself into the young guys he’d mentored in prison, serving as a father figure to many of them, but couldn’t seem to save the one person that mattered most, his own son.
When everything in his life seemed to be falling apart, I was Shaka’s refuge. I had always been his refuge. I was heartbroken, but I knew the man I’d grown in love with was still there, buried beneath the pain.
Prison is a traumatic experience and it leaves innumerable scars. Shaka had always prided himself on the fact that prison didn’t break him, that he was different. He thought once he came home all he needed was money and opportunity, but he needed more. So much more. He came home with scars he’d tried to mend, scars he didn’t feel through all the toughness and the optimism, and I supported him the only way I knew how. But love wasn’t enough.
With each secret I kept and stored away, I became invested in my silence. I thought that this is what wise couples do. They keep their business to themselves. And so I did.
I’d shared the news of Shaka’s homecoming on social media when he first came home and my Facebook friends grew in love with our story. They rooted for us. When Shaka won the Black Male Engagement Leadership Award from the Knight Foundation, I shared the good news. When he got a fellowship at the MIT Media Lab, and then started teaching at the University of Michigan, I shared that news, too. But I couldn’t share the not-so-pretty side of freedom. We were supposed to be the couple to prove prison relationships can work. Our success, proof that I wasn’t crazy. If we didn’t work out, that would mean I’d waited in vain; I’d been the fool my mama said I was. It would mean I was wrong about him.
And I couldn’t be wrong. It was as if Shaka had been handpicked just for me.
I tried to remember why I had fallen in love, heartbreak after heartbreak, year after year. I tried to convince myself that this is love.
62
I’m ready to come home,” Shaka announced one day out of the blue. “This dating shit ain’t for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun but it’s not fulfilling.”
“Are you sure?” I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
“Yeah, these women can’t touch you, Eb.”
We immediately started making plans for Shaka to move back home. We had been inseparable the entire separation anyway. And we had Sekou. Reuniting our family just made sense.
Weeks before Shaka was set to move back in, I knew we had made a mistake—we weren’t ready. The arguing never stopped. Even though we were apart, we hadn’t given each other the space needed to process what had gone wrong in our relationship or do the work needed to heal old wounds. But the wheels were already in motion—Shaka had gotten out of his apartment lease three months early. There’s no turning back now.
Things were rocky those first few weeks, then Shaka surprised me with a hot air balloon ride for my thirty-ninth birthday.
“Just pack an overnight bag. Bring something casual and something dressy.”
“What you got up your sleeve?” I asked, blushing.
“All I can tell you is this is about to be the best birthday ever.”
Shaka drove far outside the city and wouldn’t give me any details no matter how many times I asked or tried to guess. When we pulled into the parking lot, I still didn’t know where we were. And then I saw the big rainbow-checkered balloon sitting in the middle of a wide grassy field.
“Baby!” I screamed. I’d just written a bucket list, things I wanted to do before I turned forty, and riding in a hot air balloon was on it.
I am nervous and excited when we climb into the balloon’s small basket, just big enough for six people and the pilot. The crew gives the pilot a thumbs-up and he turns on a propane burner. The balloon starts to fill up, and before I know it, the basket is lifted off the ground. We go up, up, up until we are nearly 5,000 feet in the air. The wind pushes us over lakes and trees and we see wildlife darting across the open woodlands below. Halfway into the hour-long flight, the pilot asks if anyone in our group of six wants to touch the treetops. “I do,” I say, giddy. When he gives me the signal, I reach over the side of the basket.
“Aaahhhh!” I screamed as I grabbed a handful of leaves. “I got some!”
“Ayyeee,” Shaka said, proud of me.
When we landed, I thanked Shaka repeatedly, still high off adrenaline. Afterward, we checked into an exclusive hotel in Birmingham for the night. When Shaka opened the door to our room, there were flower petals on the floor in a trail leading to the bed, and then more petals sprinkled on the sheets. There was champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries and cupcakes. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Shaka was beaming the entire night. He’d talked so much about how he was going to show me how much he loved and appreciated me once he came home, and that night he delivered on his promise. I had never felt more special.
Weeks later we were back at it again.
“Did you send that email?”
“No, not yet. I’ll do it today,” I responded.
“You said that yesterday. Why don’t you do it now?”
“I said I’ll do it today,” I snapped.
When we argued, I tried to remember those days in the visiting room leaning into each other, waiting on each other’s words, hungry for each other’s touch. Remember these moments, we said. Storms will come, we said. We are stronger than anything life throws at us.
I suggested we go to couples’ counseling. Shaka hesitated but agreed. I did the research and returned with the names of some therapists I’d found online. “I’ll think about it,” he told me. Months later, still no therapist, I suggested we do some couples’ exercises I’d discovered. “I’m just not in that space,” he finally admitted. “I’m focused on building my dreams right now.”
We had dug such a deep hole that climbing out seemed like a Herculean feat and his relationship muscles were tired. I hoped once Shaka got his first big win, he’d be able to give our relationship the time and attention it needed.
63
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back started with an argument about the laundry—the bane of my existence. It may seem easy enough—sort the clothes, put them in the washing machine, then the dryer—but I hate doing laundry. I’m usually on my last pair of underwear before it dawns on me that it’s time to wash. In college, I bought extra underwear and towels so I would have a longer runway when it came to washing clothes. Anything to get out of washing every week. Sometimes Shaka washed his own clothes when the pile in the corner of our bedroom became too much. That day he was frustrated. He was about to pack for a trip and didn’t have any underwear.
The argument went south quick, and by the end of it we’d both shut down. He left the house without saying a word.
Once I put Sekou to bed, I cried out to God, Is it finally time to let go? I asked for a sign.
Later that night Shaka came home drunk and was out like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow. I had spent the night tossing and turning, my heart heavy. I didn’t know where he’d been, but a little voice said to check his phone.
I grabbed his phone even though I’d promised him I wouldn’t look through it again. I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the toilet thumbing through his text messages. I was prepared for the worst but hoping to find nothing. My hands started trembling as I scrolled through text after text—he’d been cheating for months.
The screams stayed stuck in my throat. I thought about whether to wake Shaka up right then to confront him or go back to sleep. It would be a few hours before he roused from his drunken slumber. I lay in the bed beside him and wept, the queen-sized mattress suddenly feeling small.
What now? I thought to myself.
In that moment, God whispered to me, “Let go. I got you.”
“But I can’t. What about . . . ,” I started, unsure of God’s words.
“Trust me. This is just the beginning.”
“But I thought you said . . . ,” I continued, ready to list all the reasons why I couldn’t let go.
