Respect Me, Part 1 by Nia Arthurs
Harriet
My heart is in pieces.Just like the shattered glass sitting on the driveway.
I broke both of Barbie’s side mirrors and I’m paying for it dearly with glass shards that keep clinging to my skin. Demons the size of specks. I’ve been picking at them for almost an hour.
There’s one stubborn splinter I can’t get at no matter what. It’s embedded in my flesh like an invisible terror. I’m torn between giving up on it or continuing with the tweezers.
I give it another shot.
Wielding the tweezers from my non-dominant hand results in too much pinching for my tastes. Exhaustion and anger make me shake too much anyway. I toss the tweezers and groan, barreling my head into my palms. Wave after wave of frustration crashes over me. The urge to drop to the ground and bawl my head off creeps forward.
I hold myself back.
Jerrison’s here. Shuffling inside our bedroom. I can hear him moving around. Can picture him reaching for a change of clothes in the giant walk-in closet. Stripping out of his shirt and jeans. Folding them on the bed—the man’s obsessed with being tidy.
I can picture him pushing his brawny arms into the T-shirt. Leaving his boxers on because he prefers to go to bed in them rather than in pajama bottoms.
It’s a dance I could recite by heart. I know him. Know every part of him. I ignored his secrets because I didn’t want to face them, not because I lacked awareness.
A drawer slams shut. He’s probably reaching for his glasses. Settling into the mattress.
He came home to me.
At least that’s something.
I thought he wouldn’t. I thought he chased after Cindy to comfort her. If I wasn’t so busy slashing the couch like a madwoman, I would have noticed he left without his phone and his wallet.
When the door opened and he stepped through tonight, I felt a little better. A little calmer. It helped that, when Jerrison passed me, he didn’t smell like cheap perfume. He smelled like vodka and whiskey.
I relaxed, some part of me celebrating when I realized he had let Cindy flee without consolation.
It’s not much of a prize.
Right.
It’s not.
Hell, how low have I fallen that I’m considering such a paltry offering a win? My husband didn’t run after his mistress after getting caught. Who’s going to give him the freaking trophy?
I groan and bite harder on my lip as the tears prickle my eyes. My life is falling apart. So much has gone wrong.
But I can’t leave him.
Not yet.
We’ve been married for so long…
Even so, I’m no doormat. I think I’ve made it clear that I won’t put up with any more.
My husband does not get three strikes.
One more time, and I am leaving.
The bathroom door opens as I sit, hunched over, on the toilet, moaning about the glass in my finger.
Jerrison moves confidently toward me. He’s always been that way. Cocky. Charismatic. Whenever he entered a room—whether it was a snooty business conference or an urban cookout, he just… fit.
No, he did more than that.
He dazzled.
There was a time when I genuinely believed my husband glowed. Otherworldly. Supernatural. Could any man be that handsome and that approachable at the same time?
His blue eyes, the color of the sky bursting with glory, could tear a woman’s heart apart and have her begging for the privilege. His cheekbones were slashes on his face, too aristocratic to belong to someone without some kind of fancy title—Lord, Duke, or Prince. His smiles were easy, charming, the kind that could make people on the peripherals press in close so they could get in on the joke too.
Everyone wanted to be around him.
To be with him. Be like him.
And then I was chosen.
I got the ring.
I got one year of the fairytale before I realized it was a horror show.
Movies and books lied to me. As a child, I spent so much time daydreaming about my perfect life, my perfect wedding. As a teenager, I thought marriage was the ultimate form of love.
Wrong. All wrong.
Marriage is two people signing a meaningless piece of paper. Marriage is strangers trapped in mindless infatuation, a passion that putters out when real life responsibilities change the equation.
Marriage is like doing meth. A destructive force with a few, brief glimpses of happiness.
And weddings are the gateway drug.
The ceremony that I’d been gushing about, agonizing over, obsessing into the wee hours of the night, the details, the planning—who should sit where, picking the food, the cake, the flowers—it was a sham. An empty shell. A prize where opening the box reveals only disappointment inside.
And here I sit, facing the reality that all women eventually come face to face with.
My husband is cheating on me.
The pang that hits my heart sends a rush of tears to my eyes again.
“You okay, Harriet?” Jerrison asks.
I bite my lip to hold the tears in. “Get out.”
“I heard you hissing and moaning from outside.” He crouches in front of me, wearing a look that’s far too tender after everything that was revealed today. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I press my hand into the sink to push myself up. In doing so, I unwittingly agitate the annoying glass in my finger. “Ouch.”
Jerrison bursts into action as if he’s the one feeling the pain. Grabbing my arm, he holds it still and stares at my dark palm. “Did you get hurt?”
“It’s fine.” I snatch my arm back.
He whirls around, his movements urgent. Sinking to his knees, he throws the cupboards open and finds the first aid kit.
“What are you doing?” I snap.
“There’s no baking soda here. I thought we kept it in the kit.”
“It’s downstairs.”
“Oh.” The wrinkles between his eyebrows smooth away. He rushes out the door. I hear his footsteps pounding the stairs.
Not in the mood to wait around for him, I get up and wash my hands again, hoping that it’ll ease the irritation in my finger.
It doesn’t.
Jerrison blows the door open and strides toward me. He’s holding the baking soda along with a plastic cup. I watch in mild amusement as he pours the baking soda into the water and stirs the liquid.
“My dad used to get splinters all the time. He worked in window installation, so that was a given.” Jerrison sets the cup on the edge of the sink and wraps his hands around my wrist.
I resist him. “I told you. I’m fine.”
“Just let me do this, Harriet,” he responds firmly.
My shoulders tense, but I decide not to fight him.
Jerrison nods to my hand. “Where’s the splinter?”
“Here.” I show him my finger. “Somewhere. But it’s not at the surface.
His head bends in concentration. All I can see is the top of his thick hair. “This is a nifty little trick that mom used to do for him.” Tenderness rings from his touch and from his voice. He wraps up the area in a bandage and straightens. “That should cause the splinter to rise. I’ll pluck it out tomorrow.” His eyes linger on me and then flit to my lips.
I scoff and brush past him, stomping back to the bedroom. He got caught cheating a couple hours ago and he’s giving me those bedroom eyes? Does he have any idea what he’s done to me? What he’s damaged?
I flounce to the bed and get in on my side. Turning my back, I stare at the wall. Hanging from the eggshell paint is a giant picture of us on our wedding day. Bright smiles. Hands locked. Eyes filled with love and promise. Clueless fools who would break apart soon after pledging their lives.
The mattress dips as Jerrison gets into bed. He says nothing about the blonde, about his cheating, about me seeing them together.
The silence is stifling, but it’s not unfamiliar. We haven’t talked about much. The connection’s been lost for a really long time.
“Harriet,” Jerrison says, his voice sounding distant even though he’s lying in the same bed.
I don’t bother turning around. “What?”
“I’ll make sure you don’t have to pay for what happened today.”
My nostrils flare. “What did you just say?”
“I’ll make sure you don’t get sued.” His voice carries the somberness of someone who really thinks they’re making a difference. “And I’ll handle it if there are any charges against you because of what happened today. Don’t worry about it and get some rest, okay?”
My fingers dig into the pillow and, for the first time in my life, I consider murdering my husband in his sleep.
