His Third Wife

“I’m glad you tuned in. I only wonder if whoever so desperately wants Ras behind bars was tuning in too.”

“I’m sure whoever was,” Keet said distantly before abruptly getting up from his seat.

“I’m sure they realized they don’t have me in their pocket anymore. That probably made them very mad. Probably made them come down on the low guys on the totem pole.” Jamison stood up as Keet had turned his back to walk

out. “The low guys like you. The ones who do the dirty work.”

“This is a joke,” Keet said firmly.

“You think?”

“Yeah, it is. It’s a joke if you think this little Columbo routine you’re playing here is going to get you anywhere. You can go on any news station you want to. It won’t stop.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re talking about men and money. And men and power,” Keet said. “The shit that makes this motherfucker go around.” He looked around the office. “All of it. The fucking reason you’re here—in office. Contracts. Business. That mean green. You think you got here by chance? They made you. They fucking made you. And when you’re gone, they’ll just make another one. Another contract signer. Get them in. Get them out.”

“How much are they paying you?” Jamison asked.

“What?” Keet laughed at what he’d selected as a joke and finally turned to leave.

“How much did they pay you to kill Dax?”

Keet stopped, and with his full back to Jamison, he answered, “I wasn’t there the night Dax was killed, Mr. Mayor. You were.”

Jamison’s bubble of boldness burst with that mention. He hadn’t told Leaf, who was listening in, about the night at the Rainforest.

Keet felt Jamison’s hesitation and turned to attack.

“Don’t you know they have that in their pockets? That you were there that night? You put in work. Right?”

“I didn’t do—”

“No. No. No,” Keet said. “We’re both familiar with the law. You know you can’t be in the room with a dying man and not take some of the blame. Your hands are dirty too. How much are they paying you?” He looked around the room again.

Jamison was stunned to silence.

“And look, you can tell that girl not to worry. Won’t be bothering her anymore. I’m not into seconds. Plenty fish out here.” Keet tilted his head toward Jamison in mock concern. “And I’m sorry to hear about her baby. Your baby. Right?”

When Keet walked out and Leaf walked in, Jamison felt that he was losing his step. He imagined Dax standing in front of him holding a microphone, smiling, youth alive in his eyes.

The good thing about losing my marriage was finding myself. Not me before Jamison and I got married fresh out of Morehouse and Spelman. Me with a bow and arrow. Me with heart and nerve. With fight in me. It’s funny, because anyone who knew us back then knew that my weakness was part of why Jamison loved me so much. It was what made me available to him. What made him open so wide to me. Yeah, I was feisty—someone that had my mother for backup, but I was always falling apart and Jamison was always getting me together. Sometimes I look back and think maybe he felt like a needed thing. Like a hammer or wrench. A gun. But in the end, after the end, in the divorce, I, like most other women, learned to be my own hammer and wrench. Be my own gun. I didn’t need him like I needed him before. I needed me.

Now, that’s a whole lot of catharsis. Liberating language that came after years in the world by myself. Raising a son. Living alone. Realizing that, at the end of the day, the only person who was responsible for my life was me. But I didn’t get there on my own. There were signposts I had to learn to read along the way. Friends who showed up and dragged me out to dinner. Lovers who made me feel sexy. Family who let me know I would trust again. A son who proved to me every day that it wasn’t just about me.

Probably most influential in that journey was a place I found when I was way at the bottom of a barrel of misery. A place filled with other women who were going through the same thing and understood what I needed to understand. The women at Hell Hath No Fury House, an innovative counseling center for women going through divorce, held my hand and helped me over my hump. After I cut off my hair and everyone thought I was crazy, I showed up on the doorstep of the house and met with a counselor who said my sisters there were going to change my life.

And they did. As they listened, I felt soft, empathetic hands wrapped over my shoulders. It was more than a rebirth. It was a baptism there. I became addicted to the place. To the feeling I got from being helped and helping. I referred friends and family, anyone I met on the street, there. And soon I realized being at HHNFH was more than nourishment for my spirit, it was what I wanted to do with my life—to spend it helping others. Interestingly enough, I was already on that path when I started at HHNFH. I was working on my second degree in public health with hopes of opening a clinic for handicapped mothers. Somewhere that they could go to get help and basic services. Really, it was everything I could do at HHNFH—just with women dealing with a specific kind of handicap. So, I put my hopes on hold and joined the board of trustees at HHNFH. It’s amounted to a career choice I don’t get paid for. But I put in the hours anyway, knowing getting paid in no way measures up to a payoff.

“That little girl stays in some trouble. Doesn’t matter what I do, Cheyenne will find a way to get in some trouble and drag me and her brother and the little ones right up into it with her. You know last week she told Reginald she didn’t want him to be her father anymore? She said AJ is her real father now. Can you believe that? You know what kind of crazy phone call I got from her father after she made that little comment?”

I nodded along. I could believe every detail of the tale. I was sitting at the front desk at HHNFH beside Dawn, one of my Spelman sisters who’d been having a hard divorce years ago when her roommate from Spelman arrived at her doorstep one morning for a visit and left one evening with Dawn’s husband in tow. It was a scandalous affair that had left Dawn on the brink, but I referred her to HHNFH and her brink experience became her calling for service. Now, she was in the vineyard at HHNFH working with me.

“You’ve got to give Cheyenne some space. Let her get some bruises,” I said to Dawn. “And if her father was so hurt by what she said, he should’ve taken it up with her—not you. You didn’t say it. What did he want from you?”

“Blood! I don’t know,” Dawn joked before smiling at a HHNFH sister who was walking in to meet with her divorce counselor. Neither one of us knew her name. None of us went by our real names at the center. Instead, we wore name tags highlighting the names of famous and infamous former brides (Ivana, Juanita, Jennifer, Elin, Star—there was even a Carol McCain) in an attempt to protect everyone’s anonymity because there were some pretty rich first wives walking through that door in tears and with black eyes and broken hearts.

“Who do I write a check to?” the woman asked before picking up a name tag that read LisaRaye.