Guilty of Love (2 page)

“
No, Love. There
isn’t.”

She gnawed on her fist, crying. Larry
was the calm, reasonable decision-maker in their relationship. He
was the strong Black man every sistah craved and every woman would
endure drastic measures to keep. His charm opened doors for him as
if he were royalty. He had shown her how to love and was now the
father of her child. Yet, he didn’t hesitate to say, “Kill it.” Her
lover might as well have slapped her in the face.

A collage of their romantic moments
played in Cheney’s mind. She sighed, visualizing Larry’s long,
dark-chocolate fingers outlining her lips when she smiled or right
before he smothered them with kisses.

Cheney remembered the night they
shared their first slow dance at a campus fraternity party at the
end of her freshmen year. At that magical moment, she wanted to be
with Larry for the rest of her life. At the end of her sophomore
year, she had shared her entire being with the self-confident,
handsome and sensitive Larry Thimes.

I could use some sensitivity right
now,
she pleaded silently
.
Didn’t Larry realize how much
she was in love with him? Their souls had connected in passionate
lovemaking that had produced a little miracle. A baby, their baby.
Cheney shook her head in disbelief. She wanted to wake up from this
nightmare. “Larry—”

“
Cheney. There’s no point
to keep discussing this.”

“
There is no discussion.
You’re dictating to me.”

“
We’ll have another child
later,” he consoled before snapping, “How could you have been so
stupid and allowed this to happen anyway?”

“
Me?”
Did he just blame
me?
Larry’s harshness caused Cheney’s head to pound. Her heart
ached as her stomach contracted. Suddenly, her prenatal, P-M-S,
post-menopause, or any other hormones that scientists had yet to
identify, kicked in.
I am not the one to mess with
, she
shouted inwardly. Without a goodbye, she ended the call.

It had taken Cheney seven days to
accept the fact that she was a pregnant, unmarried college student.
Larry gave little thought before his resounding, “no.”

“
Why couldn’t he say, ‘A
baby? That’s wonderful,’ or ‘What do you want to do?’ or ‘We can
get married now or later’,” she fussed to no one. Instead, Larry
had failed the ultimate test. Sitting still on her narrow twin bed,
Cheney listened as water dripped from a corner sink and voices
shouted in her head.

The boisterous women had moved inside
to the adjoining suite connected by a small bathroom. Mentally
tormented, Cheney collapsed against the wall, rubbing her belly.
The phone rang, but it was her prerogative to ignore it.

She needed time to think and pray.
Instead, Cheney sobbed.

As an hour ticked by, Cheney’s swollen
eyes half-registered the room’s blackness. To wake up from a bad
dream, she forced her body to move to the sink where she patted
cold water on her numb, red face. She sighed at her tousled
reflection. “I’m pregnant.” Cheney yanked her long, black hair as
if she were about to extricate weeds from a manicured lawn. “Career
or motherhood, what am I going to do? God, if I ever needed You,
it’s now.”

Five years later

Four-year-old Cheyenne
Reynolds slammed the screened door, limping into the house. Tears
trickled down her plump cheeks. Faint traces of blood and grass
marks stained her pink-and-watermelon-green short set. Dirt played
tag with her once clean ruffled socks and new Keds.

“
Mommy, I fell off my bike.
I’m bleedin’. Am I goin’ to die?” Her bottom lip
trembled.

Kneeling, Cheney examined
the scraped skin below Cheyenne’s knee and relaxed—nothing
requiring stitches.

“
No, sweetie, you’ll live
to be an old woman with a house full of your own munchkins.” Cheney
smiled.

The child giggled,
forgetting her accident.

Meticulously, Cheney
picked leaf fragments from her daughter’s hair, smoothing back wild
black strands that had escaped from her two braids.

Cheyenne laid her head
against Cheney’s chest, casting an angelic upward look. “Ooh,
Mommy, it hurts. It hurts,” she whimpered. “I can’t
walk.”

“
I bet a Bugs Bunny
Band-Aid will make it feel better, and then you’ll be able to ride
your bike again. Okay, sweetie?”

Liking the sound of that,
Cheyenne nodded and squeezed Cheney with what seemed like all the
strength her tiny arms could muster. “You’re the best.” She smacked
a hard, wet kiss against Cheney’s cheek. “I wuv you,
Mommy.”

Savoring the moment,
Cheney closed her eyes, rocking the preschooler she had created
with Larry—no doubt an established attorney by now, but a
non-existent father who had fought her daily to terminate the
pregnancy.

“
Just do it! It’ll be over
before you realize it, and we can get back to the way we were,”
Larry had said in a frustrated whisper, waiting outside her dorm
room. For days she hadn’t returned his calls and had avoided him in
the dining hall.

Tired of being ignored,
Larry had come to see her after a morning exam. Presenting her with
a long-stemmed rose, he displayed an expression laden with guilt.
Without much coaxing, he guided her to a secluded bench on the
other side of campus. Neither hinted at the turmoil raging between
them.

Once they were seated, Larry
intertwined his fingers through hers, then stared at a passing car.
Cheney didn’t rush him. Her heart was heavy, too. She admired his
dark skin, high cheekbones, and large lips. She wondered who their
baby would look like.

Larry seemed to welcome Cheney’s
scrutiny before loosening his fingers. He snuggled closer,
cherishing her like she meant everything to him. “You know I love
you.”

His whispered proclamation
caused Cheney’s vision to blur. “I love you so very, very much, but
I’m scared, confused, and excited.”

Grabbing her around the
waist, Larry suddenly recoiled when he touched her stomach. “Baby,
our love is strong and endless. We can’t let anything— I mean
anything come between us, including this mistake. That’s all this
is, a mistake, not a baby.”

Within days, their
tranquility shattered. Tempers flared and disagreements became
commonplace. Larry accused her of not thinking rationally about
their future. To the contrary, that’s all she had been
contemplating, and she was starting to accept the idea of becoming
a mother. But the stress and despair overtook Cheney in her weakest
state. Finally, she submitted to Larry’s demand, beguiled by a
romantic dinner, a seductive body massage, and a dozen
roses.

Honking horns jolted Cheney back to
the present and the green traffic light. Fanning her sweaty face,
she swallowed back tears. Her trembling hand gripped the steering
wheel. “It’s water under the bridge.”

That one decision had pulled her into
hell. The memories had faded in and out during the past five years.
Sometimes Cheney could still taste the fear and feel the
uncertainty of being an unwed pregnant college student.

Their loving relationship
disintegrated after she allowed Larry to take her to Crist Clinic
in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She cried all the way; he
concentrated on driving. Once inside, Larry didn’t hold her hand or
glance into her grief-stricken eyes as they waited. To add further
insult to injury, he had refused to go into the counseling room
with her. “It’s nothing more than woman talk. I know you can handle
it.”

Cheney found herself begging God for
some guidance. When He didn’t answer, Cheney knew she was on her
own. The nurse’s words of wisdom seemed to reinforce what Larry had
suggested, “You made the right decision because your man doesn’t
look like he wants to be tied down with a
small
fry
.”

The final nail in her coffin was his
nonchalant attitude after their child was ripped from her womb. No
whispers of I love you, or warm hugs
. Basically, get over
it.
Larry wasn’t even cordial enough to ask if she was okay. “I
should’ve recognized the signs,” she told herself. But God didn’t
give her any signs, so the decision was hers.

Four days later, Cheney laid in Duke
University Medical Center as blood drained from her body. The
doctor who had performed the abortion had perforated her uterus.
She endured fitful nights of excruciating pain—alone. Only a close
friend knew her secret. She was too ashamed to tell her
family.

Leaving the hospital, Cheney had
experienced post-abortion stress syndrome. The deceased’s spirit
seemed to lingered, haunting Cheney when she least expected. If
only God had spoken to Cheney, guiding her on a different path. In
hindsight, her baby would have been strapped in a booster seat,
singing a nursery rhyme. Thousands of women aborted their babies
every year so what’s the big deal? They got over it, didn’t
they?

“
The dreams aren’t funny,
Jesus. You gave me free will, and I used it!” she boasted, then
recalled reading about other women’s grief on an internet site
where some said they regretted their decisions even after ten or
twenty years.

Remaining in North Carolina would only
serve to remind her of what went wrong in her life. But for the
past five years, she had been too ashamed to go home and tell her
family the good, bad, and the extremely ugly decisions she had
made. So she did what she thought was best—shut them
out.

Then something happened. As she sped
past a little storefront church, an overwhelming sensation came
over her that God was peeping out from the building watching her,
then plucked her out of the car and thrust her into a tarnished
Garden of Eden. Like Adam and Eve, God was letting Cheney know she
couldn’t cover the shame of her nakedness. She audibly heard a
scripture whispered into her ear, but to this day, Cheney refused
to read Revelation three, seventeen and eighteen. Besides, she
didn’t own a Bible. After that, she packed up and moved back to St.
Louis.

“
Well?” Imani Segall,
Cheney’s best friend since childhood, asked from her hotel room in
Amsterdam.

“
Well what?”

“
Did going back home bring
you the peace you expected?” Imani paused then continued without
giving Cheney time to answer. “You know, I’m probably one of the
biggest hypocrites God created, but when things aren’t going my
way, I’m the first one to ride on someone else’s coattails to get a
prayer through. It can’t hurt, girl.”

“
It won’t help either.” As
far as Cheney was concerned, God didn’t appear on the scene until
after the baby was gone. She despised Him because of the
nightmares. What could she and God possibly have to talk about?
Absolutely nothing!

Imani sighed. “Okay, okay. Bore me
with the details about your new place.”

“
Technically, it’s still a
shack, but it’s coming along. I love fixing up this place. It’s
good therapy.” She eyed the kitchen’s worn tile floor. For two
months, she had labored on her house after work, sanding and
staining hardwood floors, wallpapering rooms, and stripping pink
paint from her brick fireplace.
Ugh!

Cheney’s pride and joy were the two
front bedrooms. Although she believed in using proper speech, she
would get downright ghetto and curse out the devil himself if he
tried to stop her from putting children in those rooms one day. A
husband wasn’t required. The six-windowed sun porch above the
garage would make an excellent playroom. She could imagine pastel
balloon curtains filtering in the morning sun.

“
I can’t wait for your
housewarming to see it. So, how’s the neighborhood? Is it quiet?
Are there any kids or…” Imani paused, “handsome bachelors
nearby?”

“
I’ve got drama living next
door by the name of Mrs. Beacon. We haven’t formally met and that’s
okay with me. From a distance, I can tell she could be
dangerous.”

“
In what way?”

“
From the rumors I’ve
heard, every way. Beatrice Tilly Beacon is an annoying seventy- or
eighty-something widow, known for monitoring the comings and goings
of her neighbors.” Cheney groaned.

“
Lucky you.”

“
Yeah. Residents call her
‘the neighborhood watch unit’, but no one will ‘fess up to
appointing her, and the police show up every time she calls. She
has a rep of taking matters into her own hands. The cops are afraid
that she’ll eventually hurt someone.”

“
She sounds
scary.”

“
That’s what I heard. I
figure Mrs. Beacon is a menace.” Cheney glanced out the pillow-size
window above her kitchen sink, and did a doubt take. Sure enough,
Mrs. Beacon was trying to peep through her window with a magnifying
glass.
What in the world?
Cheney frowned.

Imani’s hearty laugh echoed through
the phone and drew Cheney back into their conversation. “Well, if
it isn’t drama in your life, it’s comedy.”

“
I can do without overkill
from both.”

“
You would be bored; so
how’s the job?”

“
Challenging,” Cheney
said.