“I told you not to come here,” Lionel’s voice said. Only it wasn’t through a decrepit buzzer in Harlem. On Tasha’s third try, he’d opened the door and was standing before her like a goliath.
Like Tamia, Tasha said, “I want to talk to you.”
“This ain’t no time to talk. It’s 2:30 in the morning.”
“2:30 in the morning never stopped you before.” Tasha softened her voice a bit and smiled at the man she knew still loved her.
“Tasha,” Lionel started calmly, “you think this is a game. That you’re just going to show up here and I’m going to let you into my house.”
“Your house?”
“You’re fucking right. You left before,” he said, “so leave now.” He tried to close the door, but Tasha pushed her $3,000 purse in the way.
“Well, let me see the girls, then,” Tasha tried.
“It’s the middle of the night. I’m not waking them up because you’ve been drinking and you suddenly want to have a moment.”
“Open the damn door.” She pushed herself into her husband’s solid chest.
“No. You wanted to leave.”
“Lionel, this isn’t a fucking option. Let me into my house or I’ll burn this motherfucker down.” On her tippy-toes, she dug a pointed finger into his chest.
“Really, Tasha? You’re gonna burn the house down with your children inside? Think about it.”
Tasha sank back down to her heels.
“Let me in,” she demanded.
“No.”
“Let me in.”
“No, Tasha.”
“Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!” Tasha was pounding into Lionel with her fists, screaming and hollering so loud Toni was awake and had crawled out of her bed and made it to the top of the stairs where she sat in a space her parents couldn’t see. “They’re my kids. I want to see them!”
With one hand, Lionel was able to collect his wife and her things. It broke something in him to do it, but he had to keep the other parts of himself together. He dragged a fighting Tasha down the walkway and to her car.
“No,” she pleaded the whole time. Now they were both crying.
Lionel opened the car door and stuffed Tasha inside.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Get out of here before the cops come,” Lionel said. “I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
?
Two long and seemingly sunless days later, Troy was sitting before two puffy-eyed friends at a wine bar.
“Maybe we should’ve had a breakup party,” Troy said. Tamia was slumped over in her seat and Tasha held such a posed pose, everyone walking by knew she was hiding something. She slid a pair of huge shades on. “You know, so you guys can get over this—”
“I cut off my hair for that fake kente cloth–wearing clown,” Tamia said, shaking her head into her third glass of wine. This wasn’t exactly a smooth transition for someone who hadn’t had any food in more than a month. She was skin and bone, and the alcohol went right to her head and would find its final resting place in the toilet after she vomited later.
“But it’s growing back, right?” Troy was padding her voice with pleasantness, but she’d been sitting there with those two like that for two hours and was running out of sane-sounding things to say.
“I can’t believe he won’t let me see them. He said I have to wait until this weekend…to see my own children. Who does he think he is?”