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By twenty years old, I was married and had moved to North Carolina where he’d been drafted by theHornets. A week later, I was due to begin my third year of undergrad. I’d returned to Jersey to take care of paperwork at the school and check in on my grandmother when my father approached me in an unusual fashion. It was at night, hours before my flight back to North Carolina. He came with a check from my grandmother’s account. It was his money, and boy was it a lot from an ex-con, fresh off a fifteen-year homicide bid. Yup. My father, Chino from Amherst Street, was a proven O.G.
Uncannily aware of his distance from my orbit of influence, my father pleaded with me to not go into the marriage without a safety net. When I shared I didn’t understand, he advised me to buy a house, even if it was down there. He said if things were to fail between Kelvin and I, I’d at least have a soft landing. I reminded my father I had no job or way of paying a mortgage and property taxes beyond a deposit. He suggested I buy down south, and if I needed help with anything, he’d make sure I’d get it. Oddly, naivety aside, there was a spark of hope in that moment for the man I didn’t know. Something instinctual told me to hearken to his words. And I did, which proved to be a lifesaver later on for not just me, but Kelvin, too.
I finished school mostly online, flying back and forth until I’d graduated. Life was such a blur, meeting significant, rich, and even famous people. I never had a honeymoon or downtime with Kelvin to really get to know him. Kelvin didn’t play much the first season. He wasn’t a breakout star like his peers. The Bookers, Towns’, Russells, et al eventually became the names ringing mental bells. Richardson out ofPrincetonwas not. And yes,theMichael Jordan took joy in whooping players like Kelvin’s ass on the court off camera. Unhappy with his bench-side view of the court, Kelvin would gripe about it. But he’d show up to work and practice as agreed upon in his contract. It wasn’t long before there were rumors about infidelity. They were plentiful, but not loud enough due to Kelvin’s lack of celebrity.
So, yeah. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be a Kardashian to the Richardson brand. However, the isolation from my family and new husband had been the spark of hunger for my own endeavors. I created them just before Kelvin’s career came crashing down. After graduating with my degree in nursing, I immediately enrolled into a master’s in nursing administration program atUNC Charlotte. A month before we were married, Kelvin purchased a beautiful, eight thousand square foot home just outside of the city. The place was so huge, it was easy for him to have his space from me. And that’s what he did. He also had a nice home built for his mother in Durham.
I didn’t know what to expect from a husband. So, I tried to listen to his cues, cook, clean, and arrange for anything he needed to excel. Even with that, there was a distance we had never been able to mend. There was occasional sex, some outings which were business obligations, and his regular family gatherings for the holidays. I obliged them all.
In all honesty, after year four of marriage, I didn’t believe Kelvin had ever loved or had been in love with me. For him, I’d become a necessary associate in his pursuit of life. I learned in the second year of our union that drugs had actually been Kelvin’s preferred, primary, and priority partner. He smoked weed. A lot. Sometimes, it would simply calm him, make him more amenable to stand. Then, he’d be despondent. I’d come in from work when I didn’t have class and find him staring at an unpowered television screen in the family room just off the kitchen. At first, I’d try to snap him out of it. Eventually, I’d caught on and understood, mentally, Kelvin was at an exclusive party in his head. I was not invited there with him.
I didn’t take to his lifestyle easily. Because we didn’t spend much time together, it took a while for me to grow agitated with his recreational escapes. His job did before me. The coaches and management complained and sanctioned him before I did, even before I caught on. Addiction didn’t happen overnight, but it blossomed like a flower. It eroded from within before withering on the exterior. The car accident into that second season with theHornetswas when the world caught wind to the existence of his problem. Before then, the organization tried getting him therapy and narcotics anonymous assistance. Kelvin wouldn’t show.
It wasn’t until he overdosed in our home eight months after his back surgery did Kelvin finally show interest in therapy. I supported him, going to sessions I was asked to attend, hearing him detail traumas of his childhood. He shared about his abusive childhood at the hands of his father, who died of alcoholism when Kelvin was in high school. The man had beaten his children often to the point of child protective services getting involved. His mother, Kelly-Ann, couldn’t or didn’t intervene. This trauma drove Kelvin to sports, including basketball. It pushed his older brother, Kyle, to a deep dive into drugs and alcohol himself.
No one paid attention because, eventually, Kelvin’s path into developing his game took precedence. He worked hard and became popular locally, eventually earning an athletic scholarship toPrinceton University. His youth and elite athleticism outshined his nasty pastimes, and Kelvin was able to get by, just like he was able to sweep his imposing “golden boy” imposter existence onto me. No one knew the demons he hid. That was until theLeaguelet him go, and his three-point-eight-million-dollar contract, eventually, was no more than a United States postal worker’s starting salary: it didn’t match our expenses. That meant the house we lived in had no provisions of being paid off, neither its taxes. The same went for the home he had built for his mother in Durham. There was still an outstanding mortgage on it.
Her home was the first to go into foreclosure. The sheriff seized the property, putting all of Kelly-Ann’s belongings on the side of the road. We managed to get her into our house, which would follow the same doom. I was so stressed out between his reckless living, school, and working a full-time job. I didn’t know what to do. Under unbearable duress one morning, I called back home to a mentally-decaying grandmother who, unbeknownst to me, ran crying to my father. Crying. Grandmother never panicked or turned to her only child.
Within ten hours, my father and a van filled with twelve goons descended on my property demanding answers. I was flustered, in a state of fear mixed with embarrassment from the way Chino from Amhurst Street aggressively pulled up on my husband, demanding answers. I hardly knew the man, but he presented himself with such extreme authority. There were gang members in my foyer, flashing the most frightening mugshots, while swaying left to right. The most notable was a petite female wearing a tapered cut and a boy’s two-piece pantsuit. She had a huge nozzle, perfectly arched brows, and wore no makeup. It appeared she was the number two in charge. Just when I thought twelve goons was enough, four more pulled up with local accents. My home was under siege.
Within eight hours of my father, et al.’s hostile appearance, most of the furniture and all of my belongings were relocated to the house I’d purchased in Kelvin’s hometown of Raleigh a month after our wedding. From visiting there several times since I’d known him, I took a liking to the town. I managed to find a realtor, and purchase a nice piece of property. I used it for short-term rentals. Thankfully, during this time, it had been vacant for the past two months.
On the way to Raleigh, my father suggested I return to Jersey “and give Kelvin time to figure his shit out.” I refused, reminding him of my job and school. I was midway through my master’s program at the time and needed the clinical experience to reach my goal. I couldn’t drop everything and leave. Besides, I’d been an ex-pat at that point, and didn’t feel I had any “home” to return to. In his own brusque way, my father begged me. He shared how he didn’t trust Kelvin and never had. My father even blurted he knew my husband was a fiend by their second meeting. That angered me. Why not tell me then? He only urged me to buy property as a backup plan. The head- and heartache that pertinent information could have saved me.
I was still young, now insecure, secretive as hell, prideful, and virtually unfeeling. I moved through my education like a machine. My life was all about the books and clinical work. There was no emotion attached. My pursuit wasn’t ambition in North Carolina so much as it was survival. I was trying to make it day to day with my sanity in a foreign world with a man I didn’t know.
Needless to say, I stayed behind when my father’s goons mounted up to leave. Before they did, two additional cars filled with more gang members arrived at my place in Raleigh. Kelvin and Kelly-Ann eventually made it to the house, too. His face was swollen with dry blood, and a sole mark on his forehead. Kelvin looked beaten. He wouldn’t give me any eye contact, and neither would his mother.
My father may have acted quickly on his mission, but the man’s thuggery had been well thought out. The last of the thugs to arrive were local gang members. My father explained to Kelvin how, just because his daughter was living in Kelvin’s hometown, it didn’t mean she would not have protection. The man demonstrated he had eyes and “guns” everywhere, including Charlotte and Raleigh.
Not too long after that day, I realized how significant that move was. Raleigh loved Kelvin. He was their golden child, even after he’d gotten cut from theLeague. They all knew and supported him, from the police department, to the mechanics and the hospitals, which was how I got my current gig. I didn’t exactly qualify for it after graduating from my master’s program. It was because of Kelvin’s former coaches and trainers who knew people with pull at the hospital that I’d secured a job I should have had at least seven more years of experience to qualify for. I’d been there for three years, excelling. I ignored the naysayers and learned my craft to earn my title.
But I could never learn how to connect with my husband. My father, during the one visit, may have convinced Kelvin to not harm me physically, but all bets were off for my mental and emotional health. Kelvin never shared a bedroom with me in Raleigh. He moved into the finished basement, where he’d have the privacy he preferred to get high and disconnect from the world to his content. This meant no intimacy, no physical contact, no building, no repair—essentially no start—to the marriage we’d been in for three years at this point.
Yeah. In between his bouts of drug binges, I’d support him through recovery attempts by way of programs. If Kelvin stayed clean for a month or two, we’d occasionally go out to dinner and perhaps a movie. We’d even have sex sparingly during years four and six of our marriage. However, there was no magic, no romance, no longing. Just two adults trying to function through a union they signed up for. Even that came to an end in year six.
Kelvin and I hadn’t been intimate in two years. I couldn’t do it anymore. The attraction I once had for Kelvin had withered over the years of seeing him leaning over while standing, falling into a reposed state charged by heroine. The blisters and crust around his mouth from poor hygiene and a lack of grooming. The glassy, reddened eyes. The slurred speech. The stealing, the lying, the blackouts, and despondent episodes. None of it stroked my libido. And if I were honest, Kelvin hadn’t been banging down my door for sex either. The chemistry simply faded.
I was very naïve fresh into my legal adult years. This was something I now realized. It was also why I’d clawed through the first five years of my marriage. I held myself accountable for my decision. It didn’t matter that it was naivety. It was a decision, and I’d chosen wrong. Instead of allowing myself to be a victim, I took accountability by understanding what I’d done.
Often, I wondered if my maturity back then would have been sharper with my mother still around. I took Grandmother’s guidance because that was what her guardianship had always represented to me. Not having a mother for Lennox meant no back rubs, no soft touches during loving instruction. No smiles and giggles to develop me against firm discipline. I’d been with my grandmother since I was a preschooler, and never once had I confused her maternal role in my life. She’d always been Grandmother, never mother.
Grandmother wasn’t affectionate physically or emotionally. She was far from a mean woman, but tended to instruct from a femininize formality approach. In other words, her intention was to prepare me to be a woman suitable for the triple M destiny: marriage, motherhood, and ministry. This included college. She stayed on me about my grades until I got into a decent state college. Boy was I not prepared for how swiftly she’d turn over the reins of my custody once there.
It was under her advisory and resolute push that I married as soon as I could the moment I was of legal age. It was faulty advisement and had done damage no one considered. In our fighting throughout the years over his addiction, Kelvin would resort to calling me ugly and speaking ill of my family. He used words and nasty energy to attack my image and existence. Did I believe him when he called me ugly? No.
However, after being told that so many times, I’d developed a coping mechanism which was work and school, when I was still enrolled. Between those two, I didn’t treat myself well. No trips to the beauty salon, nail salon, or regular grooming maintenance despite my well-endowed salary. I worked, schooled, and even slept in scrubs until I got the position at the hospital. The first six months, I rotated between four suits.
It wasn’t until the musician reappeared in my world that I grew a conscience about my appearance. And when I stepped up my game by way of exercising, eating well, and getting groomed regularly, Kelvin’s disdain for me tripled. Each conversation with my husband turned volatile for him. When Kelvin was irritated, I’d be every ugly, selfish, stuck-up bitch he could conjure. And I took it, having become immune to his vitriol.
So, to answer my therapist’s question, ‘no.’ I could not tell him I was divorcing him, and expect him to believe me and act accordingly. I honestly didn’t think he’d care.
Shaking my head, I murmured, “I don’t think the focus should be in the details with this, so much as it’s in the end goal. I’m done. I’m leaving him.”
Slowly, her head began to bob as her mouth twisted. “I see. And last week?”
“Last week?”
