A long silence passed between us. Then she asked the question she really wanted answered.
“When?”
“Soon enough that you can stop worrying. I’m going to take care of it.”
She studied me another second. Then she nodded like she saw the truth, the promise in my eyes. Her head returned to my chest. I wrapped both arms around her and pulled her closer. A few minutes later, her breathing finally began to slow.
“Targen?”
“Hmm?”
“Moya lyubimaya… Sergei calls Ms. Joia that. What does it mean?” she asked drowsily.
“It means ‘my beloved,’” I whispered.
A sleepy smile tilted her lips.
“Better take yo’ ass to sleep. My granny making me a plum tart tomorrow,” she murmured.
My brow wrinkled. “Why I gotta go to sleep for that?”
She rose a little bit. “Who you think gon’ help me pick ‘em?”
Mimicking her, I kissed my teeth. “Lies you tell,” I said, voice pitched high.
“Please,” she said, not worried at all. “We just need a few ripe ones. But ooh, the green ones. You ever had a green one with a little salt? That shit so good!”
“You up here eating unripe fruit? I done married a country bumpkin, for real!”
“Country bumpkin? You ain’t worried about that when you be bumping them hips against this country ass,” she popped off.
“Speaking of, let me bump that luscious thang right now,” I growled, grabbing one generous cheek and squeezing.
“Lies you tell,” she threw back at me, then giggled.
Until I proceeded to make those giggles turn into passionate moans and fevered pleas. Afterward, the tension left her body piece by piece. Sleep was winning because she believed me. My wife trusted me, worried about me…
Loved me. I took that seriously, would betray it for nothing.
I stared into the darkness above us for a long time before I closed my eyes, too, one word on repeat inside my head.
Soon.
(Sunday,July 6)
Six weeks in, I finally understood something about myself. I was not crazy. That might have sounded simple to somebody on the outside, somebody who had never had their name whispered about by family or never had everybody they loved look at them like they were a dog that might bite. But to me, it mattered.
I wasnotcrazy.
I just had some anger issues.
That was what my doctor called them, anyway. Anger responses. Emotional dysregulation. Violence as a “maladaptive coping strategy.” All those long, expensive words meant the same thing to me: people pushed me too far, and sometimes I pushed back too hard.
Was that perfect? No.
Was that my fault entirely? Also no.
That was the part nobody ever wanted to talk about. Nobody ever asked what happened before I exploded. Nobody cared how much disrespect I swallowed, how many times I was ignored, dismissed, embarrassed, lied to. They only wanted to talk about the moment I finally lost it.
