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“Thanks?” I say because I do not think that would be considered a friendly invitation, but it was an invitation.
“No problem. We are going to head down and grab some food; we’ll be back with something for you,” True tells me and they are out the door to leave me with my thoughts. Will Joyce come to see me, and if she does, what is there to say? She didn’t want to get to know me when I could walk; how is she going to feel once she learns I may never walk again? And I also need to call Bree and explain the craziness that is my life.
Joyce
I check my outfit, hair and make-up one more time, grab my purse and get out of the car. He told me when we had dinner the first day we met he was buying the hair products for the house, but I guess I didn’t give much thought to how big the house actually was. It’s massive and has anything and everything a family could want and need. I get to the door and ring the bell. A few seconds later, a young woman answers the door.
“Hi, I’m here to see Joseph.”
“Yes, he asked me to bring you up to his suite. I’m Brooklyn, his nurse. Please follow me.”
I follow her to an elevator that takes us to the third floor. We walk down a corridor to a set of double doors, we go through and on the other side is an honest to God house in a house. We walk into a foyer; past that is an office on the left and a small dining room on the right that leads into a kitchen. Past the kitchen, there is a living room and even further are at least four bedrooms. This is an amazing set up. We finally reach a door and Brooklyn knocks. I hear the familiar baritone of his voice tell us to come in. When I walk in the room, the breath literally leaves my body. He is sitting up in what I assume is a wheelchair in all black and looking finer than any man has the right to.
“I’ll be down the hall in the kitchen if you need me, Mr. Joseph,” Brooklyn says and walks back out the room.
“Please have a seat, Joyce,” he says with almost no emotion.
“Thank you. How are you, Joseph? I was so surprised to get your call. I knew you had been found, but I really hadn’t expected to hear from you again,” I ramble on.
“I am as well as can be expected. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I have never back down from a challenge. We have unfinished business, you and I. I wanted to clear the air so I can move on. I was surprised to hear that you've been here since I got hurt and taken, being that you were as adamant about us staying strictly friends with benefits.”
“I know, and since you got hurt and I decided to stay here, I have had a lot of time to think and re-evaluate. You getting hurt brought into stunning clarity how short life is and there is no need to live in fear, that is no way to live, and it is a slap in the face to all those who have gone on before us. I hoped and prayed I would get another chance to tell you how stupid I behaved, how selfish I was, and ask you for another chance for us to get to know each other.”
“So, once I got hurt you came to this conclusion, but had I never gotten hurt then what? Savvy and True told me you were in Mississippi to meet Peter and he had to cancel your meeting. Tell me Joyce if that hadn’t happened would you have ever called me again? See, I am willing to bet the answer to that question is no.”
“I cannot say, Joseph, but I will say things really started to change for me when I saw you out with another woman.”
“Once again when you thought you could lose me,” he concludes. I open my mouth but what could I say?
“Can I explain?” He nods yes, and I take a deep breath and begin to tell a story only T’Aundrea knows.
“When I was eighteen years old, my mom dropped me off at an all-girls HBCU in North Carolina. She handed me five hundred dollars and told me I was on my own. If I made it through school or not, I was no longer her responsibility anymore. I had to find a job to pay for college, plus I needed food and personal supplies. After the second semester, I couldn’t do it anymore, so I left and came home. Luckily for me, the mentor they assigned to me helped me out a lot and paid for a bus ticket for me to come home. When I got to my mom’s house, she opened the door and told me I couldn’t stay with her, that she meant what she said when she dropped me off to college and I better figure it out and not contact her again. That night I slept in a corner of a church front door. The next day I went to social services to see if I could get help and they sent me to a women’s shelter. I stayed there and looked for work. I finally got two full time jobs; one was day shift, and the other was B shift. I had to open a bank account because the last time I kept money in my room, it was taken. I couldn’t even leave my ATM card out. Eventually I saved enough money to get an apartment and moved as fast as I could. I didn’t have furniture, but the shelter gave me some vouchers and I got everything else at the thrift store. I continued looking for a better job because working two jobs back-to-back began to take a toll on me.
“Eventually someone called me for an interview, and I got a job that allowed me to quit my other two jobs. I was making more at the new job than I was making at my other two jobs put together. I went to work every day on time and worked my ass off. I was able to move from the studio I was living in to a one bedroom in a really nice neighborhood. One day the executives had some investors visit and was giving them a tour through all the departments and when they got to mine, I caught the eye of one of the executives. Once the investors were gone, he came back to my department and asked me to dinner. Two years after our first date we were married, and he was everything I could’ve ever hoped for. Good looking, good provider, caring, sensitive, and he spoiled and catered to me. But it didn’t take long after we said I do, for the controlling to begin. He would disguise it as him being caring, and because I never really had anyone who cared about me one way or the other, I sucked up the attention, not understanding what was going on. He eventually convinced me to quit my job since he was making more than enough to support us, so I did and became a housewife. I thought I was living the dream. One day I had an appointment that ran late. When I got home, he was already there, and I hadn’t cooked yet. He had already told me that since I did not work, he expected me to have a hot breakfast and dinner waiting on him. I rushed into the kitchen, the meat was in the refrigerator seasoned, all I had to do was cook it and in thirty minutes we could have dinner, but when I closed the refrigerator door, he punched me so hard he knocked me out. I woke up in the middle of the night, skirt bunched up around my waist and my panties missing. The meat was on the floor along with the broken plate. I got up off the floor threw the meat and plate out, cleaned up the kitchen, took a shower and went to bed. That was the first and last time I missed having any meal on the table for him, but that didn’t stop him from finding reasons to beat me. When I looked around, I was back to the same situation I was in with my mother; I was completely dependent on him. I had no job, no savings, and nowhere to go, so I endured the hell my marriage had become. Then after a few years he declared it was time for us to have a child and I knew I would never bring a child into this hellish situation so I snuck off to a planned parenthood, so that he wouldn’t find out, and I got some birth control pills. After a few months of me not getting pregnant, he began to get more and more mad, blaming me for it. I guess he was right, but I never failed to take a pill…ever. One day he left for work, and I headed back to my hiding spot, grabbed the pills and took one. When I turned around, he was there; he had seen everything. It was the worst beating he had ever given me. Once I regained consciousness, I left. I didn’t even take the time to pack anything. I grabbed my purse and got the hell out of there before he came back to finish the job. I went to the hospital and used my paternal grandmother’s maiden name so that he wouldn’t be able to track me. The social worker called a domestic violence shelter and that is where I went once, I was released from the hospital.
“Once I could, I began to look for work again. I couldn’t go back to my old job because he was there, and I wouldn’t even list it as previous employment for fear he would track me that way. Against all odds I found a job, not as good but at that point just about any job would do, and just like I feared he found me. By the time he left, I was unemployed again. I got an order of protection against him but that didn’t stop him from coming to every job I could get and getting me fired and trying to force me to come home. Eventually I just stopped trying, but not having any employment wasn’t going to cut it, but I didn’t know what to do. I made friends with one of the volunteers there, T’Aundrea, and she began telling me about one of the other women who lived there whose hair appointment was canceled and had an interview later that day. I told her I did hair in college to supplement my income. They took a chance and let me do it; it came out beautifully and I began doing other women’s and kids’ hair. They would pay me like I was any other hairdresser and that is how I began making money again. The only drawback was the products, they sucked,” I say, laughing. “So, I began creating my own using what we had. I would take the money I made and buy other ingredients to go in the concoction I had come up with. Those creations started getting requested as much as me doing hair, and I began to sell them to the women so they could maintain the hair styles I was giving them.
“One day, T’Aundrea came to my room to hand me some papers. She had taken it upon herself to enroll me into hair school. The shelter paid for all the books and supplies that I needed outside of what the school provided. It seemed I found my niche in hair school and I excelled there. The more I learned about hair the better my homemade products became. I graduated top of my class. By then I was able to move out into a studio apartment that was in the shelter’s name. I was still going there to do hair, or they would come to my apartment. T’Aundrea was coming by to check on me and suggested I trademark my hair products and actually start a business or a salon where I used and sold my products in. But I knew before I could do that, I needed to get a divorce. I did not want him coming back to try to lay claim to my business. So, I began working a business plan up, saving money and I filed for divorce. They served the papers to his job, and he dragged the divorce out for as long as he could, but his control tactics came back to bite him in the ass since I wasn’t on any of the accounts, the house, cars, nothing and we didn’t have kids together so there was nothing to try to split. I told the judge I didn’t want anything from him, not even his last name. Once it was all over, I walked away free, clear and happy. I moved back to North Carolina the very next day and eventually opened my business there. I legally changed my name to Haynes and focused on building up my salon and hair care products. I could have stayed where I was, but I felt I would never have any real peace and I would always be on edge, looking over my shoulder for him. It took a little work but eventually things began to take off. One day I was closing my shop and T’Aundrea walked in and said she moved here to be with someone she met and wanted to know if I needed help. Fifteen years later we are still together and the woman she moved to North Carolina to be with is her wife. She wound up being a genius at mixing and making hair care products, so that is how she became my master mixologist and partner. Eventually I couldn’t keep up with the demands of the salon and the products, so I stepped back from doing hair and focused solely on creating the best line to date and seeing if a major store would pick it up, and they did. I sold the salon to one of the stylists and ran my hair care empire. I went from getting two dollars a bottle to making my first million three years after selling the salon. Now I profit in the mid eight figures.
“Of course, once I started making money, men came out of the woodwork and my dating life took off. But with that came a lot of men looking to use me for my money and influence, so I figured I use a contract for everything else, why not for this too? I had a lawyer draw up the contract and that eliminated the bullshit, and it worked for all these years with every man I was involved with until you. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch on purpose or minimize what you were asking, but every person I have ever loved or cared for has left me with nothing, and I just can’t let that happen to me again. It scares the shit out of me. YOU scare the shit out of me. And yes, you getting hurt was the catalyst to me finally facing the fact that I really do want to get to know you, but I want to be with you, Joseph, and I hope it is not too late.”
I am wiping away tears by the time I am done telling my story and wait for his response, but before he says anything, there is another knock on the door.
“Come in,” he tells whoever is on the other side and the door swings open. When I look to see who it is, it is the same woman I saw him coming out of the restaurant with.
“Hi Bree,” he says with a smile I definitely didn’t get. “Bree, this is Joyce. Joyce, this is Bree.” We acknowledge each other and I stand up to leave since I have obviously been dismissed.
“Can I come back tomorrow to see you?” I ask him.
“Sure, ask New York when the best time would be since I have a few appointments,” he says and begins having a spirited conversation with Bree. I walk out and find Brooklyn preparing food for him.
“When is a good time for me to see Joseph tomorrow?” I ask her and she gives me the information I requested and walks me back to the front door. I get in my car, but I sit there for a second, and everything in me tells me to get on a plane and go back to North Carolina. He’s been found and he’s healthy even if he is in a wheelchair. He is obviously involved with Bree so why should I stick around? But then I remember the promise I made to myself, that if he was found I would fight for us. Before his accident he was fighting for us even when I was acting like an ungrateful jackass, so it’s my turn. I start the car and head back to the hotel. Tomorrow I will be back and every day he says I can come until he tells me out of his own mouth not to come back anymore.
