Respect Me, Part 1 by Nia Arthurs
Harriet
Darkness shrouds the empty bakery.The only light comes from the street lamps outside.
Shadows move and crawl on the floor like fog. I sit in the middle of it, my fingers clutched tightly in front of me, palm pressed on the table, feet flat on the ground.
My stomach rumbles with nausea. I force myself to sit still. To hold my head high. To keep my gaze steady.
The tension between me and my husband builds, stretching along with the silence. Neither of us has said anything for two minutes.
It’s as if we’re playing a game. The first person to blink loses.
And the loser won’t be me.
‘Do not be emotional’. Doc’s advice whispers through my ears. I hear him. Feel him in my head. I’m on the cusps of the most important tournament in my life. I’m a boxer tuned into his coach’s voice. Right hook. Go for the leg. He’s weak on the right side.
Back when I used to go with my dad to the gym, I saw a few athletes ignore his instructions. They’d take the match into their own hands, fight from a place of ego and stupidity rather than experience.
They always lost.
I know enough to avoid their mistakes.
No emotions.
I can do that.
At least, I can try.
One beat stretches into two.
Jerrison breaks first. He’s always been more uncomfortable with the quiet than I was. “Why did you leave?”
His words are measured. It must have taken him all of yesterday to come up with something that trite. To boil all his emotions, his anger, his pain and concern into one little sentence.
The way he’s looking at me, he still expects me to crack first. To bury my head in my hands and cry. Act as his wife rather than the leader of my own destiny.
Jerrison is in for a rude awakening.
Yesterday, Doc prepared me for this conversation. He prepared me to get into this ring. I know where to set my feet. How to lift my hands. When to dodge and when to go on the offensive.
‘Don’t be angry, sad, hurt, happy or in love,’ Doc said yesterday. ‘You’ve gone back to the period of pre-dating. Don’t have any emotions attached.’
“Harriet.” Jerrison’s voice snaps with impatience. “Why?”
“We’re not discussing that,” I say calmly.
His eyebrows hike. I watch them jump like caterpillars. Thick black lines creeping higher on a tan forehead. His hair is mussed. No sign of gel or mousse to keep the silky blond strands in place. Blue eyes darken. Navy oceans caught in the middle of a storm. There’s scruff on his jaw. More than a simple five o’clock shadow. He hasn’t shaved since I left.
I pay no attention to the emotions that crawl toward me at every observation. Instead, I let them sit. Let them stew. Push them to the back of my head where they’ll be safe until I can pick them up and hold them.
Jerrison sweeps his eyes closed. Thin blond eyelashes. Trembling eyelids. “Come back home.”
“That is not an option.”
His eyes sweep open. Startlingly blue. Gorgeous.
I stare right into them and refuse to get lost. The waves can’t swallow me when I’m standing on a buoy.
Doc’s advice lifts me beyond his reach. ‘As far as you’re concerned, this is a stranger who has no ties with you. He has an interest and wants you to be his. Now it’s your time to become an investigator. A PI takes note of the facts. She has no emotions.”
Jerrison presses his lips tightly together. Pale fingers scrape against his scalp, dislodging his thick golden hair until the strands fall all over his forehead.
I collect the trickle of sorrow that fills me when I note his distress. Gather the strains of anger that thread through my veins. Pluck at the doubts telling me that I should just accept this much, go this far, and return to where I belong. Every emotion inside me gets sucked out. Packed away.
Later.
I’ll rinse them out, hang them to dry, analyze and piece them together.
Not now.
Doc told me to wait.
No anger, he said.
No bitterness,he said.
No explanations to give.
“I got it, Harriet.” He licks his lips and scoots to the edge of his chair. Leaning forward as if the distance between us is the only problem in our marriage, Jerrison pleads, “I heard you. You gave me the shock that you wanted. Now stop throwing a tantrum and come home.”
“The only way I come back is if you come out.”
Annoyance flickers in his eyes. His nostrils flare. “Where are you staying?”
“None of your business.”
“I could find out.”
My eyes narrow immediately. “Is that a threat?”
“Harriet,” he softens his tone and rubs his face with a hand, “Harriet… you have a home. Come back home.”
“I’ve already rented a place. That’s my home. You can have the house.”
“That’s our house.”
“Not anymore.”
A vein in his neck begins to bulge and his unsteady breath hits the air in staccato beats.
Unmoved, I study him with a bored expression. “The only purpose of this discussion is to let you know this—for us to get back into a relationship and start over, you’ll need to do two things.”
Jerrison takes cues from my indifference and pulls back his emotions. He eases away, one hand stretched across the chair beside him. His head jerks to the left. “And what’s that?”
“First, we’ll start from scratch.”
“Start what from scratch?”
“Dating.”
If Jerrison rolled his eyes any harder, he’d go blind.
Undeterred, I lift both fingers. “And number two, before we get anything started at all, you go and get help from one specific person…”
“I don’t need help.”
“… For me to come back,” I slant him a dark eye for interrupting me, “and for us to have any chance at a relationship, you need to meet with Doc.”
“Doc?”
“The man you saw me with when you had me investigated.”
He shoots to his feet and the chair turns over. It crashes on the ground, skittering back until it hits another table. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
My temper ignites. Despite Doc’s words in my head telling me not to show emotions, I snap the words with a little too much feeling. “I’m dead serious, Jerrison.”
“What nonsense is that? You want me to go and talk to a mechanic? About what? He can’t help us and it’s none of his damn business anyway.”
I fold my arms over my chest. Take a moment to breathe. Chase the emotions down. Lock them in their cages again. “I’ve made myself clear.”
“You don’t control my life, Harriet.” He sticks a finger in my direction, his face turning red in the moonlight. I’ve never seen lips that firm, a jaw that clenched, eyes so furious. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play, but I’m done letting you manipulate me. You don’t tell me what to do. I’m not going to see anybody for anything.”
“I’m fine with that.” I jut my chin at the door. Tilt my head calmly. “This conversation is finished.”
“It’s finished then,” he spits. Grabbing his phone from the table, he storms out of the shop.
I watch his muscular body cut swiftly down the sidewalk. Off the pavement. A hand on his car. I watch him yank the door open and slide in. I watch the two taillights brighten the night, glowing eyes that pierce the shadows.
He reverses, tires screaming over stones and spitting gravel.
My husband’s rage crushes me, and I let it. Let the weight of what just transpired peel away my indifference and reveal the hurting woman inside.
Doc’s assurance whispers through my head as I wrestle with my loneliness. ‘Evaluate the first reaction but also evaluate the response over time. His response now and in the future will tell you how important you are to him.’
As silence falls, I flip-flop between wildly different emotions. One moment, I’m proud of myself for taking control of my life. On the other, I regret delivering a critical blow to my marriage.
It bothers me that I still feel sorry for Jerrison even after he’s betrayed me a hundred times. And then thinking of those betrayals makes me cold. Makes me throw my hands up and declare I’m done.
I’m in that state until I get to the apartment. Until I hear the silence and the echo of my own breath hitting the ceiling. Until I reach for cold blankets and even colder pillows. A bed that’s empty and restless.
Doc said these next few weeks will determine if my husband really wants me. The part of my heart that hasn’t walked away from my marriage shivers in fear. What if he really chooses his girlfriend over me?
The thought makes it hard to swallow.
I turn over in bed and imagine the reality of being discarded. Thrown away. Abandoned.
It’s nothing.
Nothing I haven’t felt before.
I tell myself to put away my emotions, but I can’t run from the fact that it hurts.
