…I got in.
I already knew that he was too afraid to use his hands on me but at this very moment, what the hell could I really know? I had never seen Mitch come for me in such a menacing way like this-ever. I was never afraid of him until this very moment.
Still, I held on to the fact that while I was running up the outside door stairs and into my house, he wouldn’t grab me with his hands because he knew that would surely send me trucking right back down the steps by my face.
I guess to stop me from successfully reaching the top of the steps, he used his fucking feet. This time, not to stomp on my toes though: He kicked me in the ass. My tailbone was on fire. The pain was excruciating.
I fell to the steps and started screaming bloody murder. I mean…I screamed so loud that the people one street over could probably hear me.
That scared him away from doing anything further he may have intended to.
Like magic, he hopped on that bicycle of his and sped off on that damned bike again.
I crawled up the steps on my knees to reach my bedroom.
I called over to my mother’s house where Twin was-to tell him to start walking in the direction that I knew Mitch was most probably headed: To his mom’s house, which was not too far from my mom’s house-where Twin was at.
I told Twin that I would be driving towards him and we should pretty much sandwich Mitch in, somewhere along the route.
I could hardly walk. I was so damned sore. I thought I was going to be paralyzed for life. It felt like my upper half had been detached and placed back on to my lower half by some mad scientist that wasn’t finished with me yet.
By the time I pulled up on Mitch, Twin was right there too.
I dragged myself out the car and yelled: “This lunched out motherfucker kicked me in my back and I can hardly walk! Something is really wrong and I know I am going to need to go to the hospital tonight!”
Mitch began to tell my brother what I did and said to him over the balcony, then proceeded to give him a run-down of our eventful little day. My brother was standing there looking confused, but partially wanting to side with Mitch on it, because as a man too-I could tell he could feel his plight. I remembered all too well how Twin let Santana wear me the hell out the day the Goth guy saved me .
Mitch broke down. He started to cry and tell him how much he loved me and couldn’t take it anymore. I was in so much physical 
pain that I couldn’t even empathize with Mitch at the moment. I continued to yell and say mean hurtful things to him-I just wanted his head to pop off-I wanted some kind of pain to match mine.
He held on to his head like a rabid dog. He was livid, hurt, and looking like he was about to go crazy all at once. There were no walls to punch and he sure as hell wasn’t going to lift me off my feet and slam me into anything in front of my brother so instead, he drop-kicked the large business complex window on the corner of the four-way intersection where we all stood.
Glass fell everywhere: From the front side of the complex all the way around to the side street of the complex. It looked like glass dominoes-like some demolition explosion.
The alarm went off and the police came: Imme-jat-ly.
I kept yelling at Mitch-telling how crazy he was for all this. He yelled and cried as the officers put him into the back seat. While the officer was asking me what happened, Mitch was in the back of the cruiser in cuffs, banging his head on the bars of in front of him. I felt so bad for him-they way he looked up at me. His eyes were bloodshot red. He looked like a different person.
I could hear Twin in my ear: “Is that motherfucker drunk? ‘Cause he’s trippin’ back there.”
I locked eyes with Mitch.
He wasn’t drunk. His heart was drunk, his mind was drunk. He was tired.
With his hands cuffed behind his back, he used his entire face to point at me as if he was pointing in finger at me: “ANGIE. I loved you! I LOVED YOU!!!!! ANGIE!” he yelled, repeatedly.
I began to cry. I felt so badly for him-all over again. All I could do was hold my face in my hands and cry.
“Is this a domestic situation going on here Miss?”
“Do you want to press charges?”
The officer was asking a ton of questions that all began to sound like “whomp, whomp whomp.”
I continuously shook my head “no” while still looking at poor Mitch. There was no way I could make his night any worse than what it was at this moment. No way. I just couldn’t do it.
I knew Mitch had gone through enough already from this day, and I considered what he was going through and feeling at that very moment—in spite of the physical pain I stood there in.
In addition to the great “I told you so” lecture his Cruella DeVille ass mother was going to give him if she found out, I also took into consideration the fact that Mitch and his friends had been involved in those check-kiting schemes. And I never knew what was to become of that, too. I figured that with him being held in the back of that police car on his way downtown for the damage done to that building, he would have enough on his plate to deal with already. I could not bare the thought of hurting him anymore after tonight. I just couldn’t do it.
Realizing all that, I shot my shot: “Officer, can he please come with me. He’s just having a bad night. We can work on it together. Just give him a ticket for vandalism and we will pay it, please.”
The officer looked at me with total disbelief and said: “Miss, the whole block here is shattered with glass on the ground which will require manpower to come sit here until it’s all boarded up. He can talk to the judge about it in the morning but he’s going to jail tonight, though!”
At that moment, none of what he ever did to me, or what we had gone through-mattered anymore. I just wanted him to be alright at the mind and heart. He was fucked up in that back seat in a way like I had never seen him-never thought I’d ever see him, like.
As the police pulled off with Mitch, he kept banging his head on the fencing in front of him and still pointing his head at me: declaring love. I was watching him rock from side to side and crying-not evening caring about the trouble he was already in. Mitch was merely upset and hurt about what I said to him-and wondering where I was going to be in the early morning hours.
No where. Nowhere but home-waiting on him, little did he know.
This time, it was big.
Mitch was headed downtown, riding away slowly, hand-cuffed, crying and rocking his head from side to side with no one there to catch and wipe his tears.
That hurt me-and I folded my lips and cried.
Twin and I got back into the car.
I took him back to my mother’s house then went home to bathe and lie down.
I was so tired, sore and worn out. I slept peacefully-like a baby.
I hadn’t slept that hard in a long time.
Fresh out of jail the next day, Mitch’s first call was to me. Emotionally and mentally sober now, still, his ass was NOT done:
“Angie, I want to talk to you-still,” he said.
“Yeah, we can talk but without no violence-please!” not today Mitch, I’m tired and I am sore as hell.
He promised, so I agreed.
Ciara was over (thank God)…
The moment I hung up the phone she sighed out: “Oh God-Oh no!”
I laughed.
“No, he’s on chill right now Ciara, he does not want any drama after last night—so I thought.
So far, so good. Everything was everything (at least for a little while). We sat around the house for hours while I cooked. We kicked it while he drank beer all afternoon and into the evening. He saved the questions about what I said about Tommy for last—after the beer’s wine and spirits set in.
Truthfully, that pissed me off because considering how sad and empathetic I was last night when he had his breakdown and arrest, I at least thought we would approach what was still ailing him-sober. I felt like he wanted to punish me and couldn’t do it sober-knowing that our talk about it would arouse him to respond violently. I got no points for the drop kick he served me, any more than I got any points for not pressing charges on him or caring about his hurt feelings while in the back of that police car. I don’t know why I thought that he would just leave it alone but considering the fact that I knew I said those things to anger him, I should have known that he could only entertain the thought of me getting fucked by someone else-not my telling him it was all said simply to upset him.
He: Tit.
Me: Tat.
He wanted to start a fight so I went on and said it again-just to upset him—again—this time, to his face. Faux details included. I knew him didn’t want a repeat of last night.
As the beer kicked in along with the faux deets along with the truth that yes, Tommy constantly stayed at me many times even outside of Mitch having witnessed it himself, Mitch began to pace the floor back and forth like some deranged man.
He couldn’t help himself.
He did what he always did:
Grabbed my already bruised arms and held me back up to that same wall in my bedroom behind the door-all over again. This time, I was able to hit him in the head with the can of soda that I was drinking—as if that had any effect on him. It didn’t.
I could tell though, that he did not want to fight but wanted to do something to alleviate the anger growing inside of him but instead, he just dropped me to the floor and kept pacing back and forth saying the words: “Total control, total control!” repeatedly.
Ciara came in to my room and stood at the door. We watched him do this exercise over and over in total awe. We kept staring at one another because this one was a new one on us.
“I guess it’s some technique he learned from jail last night or something,” I said to her, as he continued his ritual.
“Mitch quit it. Get up, please,” I asked, gently.
His ritual worked. Some kind of calm-some kind of peace came over him.
This was something new, too.
Without saying a word, he grabbed his bike and ran down the steps with it-as if whatever came over him, helped him decide at that very moment;
he was done with us sipping each other’s poison, drama, tit-for-tat and confusion.
I followed him downstairs-I knew he didn’t want any trouble. I knew he wasn’t going to swing, pick me up and wall sconce me, stomp my feet, chase me—or kick me.
With a deeply frowned brow, pensive stare and look of agitation, he looked down to the cement porch and did something else new: He sat the bike down on the porch, ran across the street and began to ram his head into the two street signs in the parking lot of the apartments across the street from the house.
I didn’t know what the hell to do with this one. I didn’t know if he was trying to commit suicide with a gun, having a nervous breakdown and deciding to hurt himself versus hurting me.
I was clueless at this point-and embarrassed for him because the homies were being entertained yet again. This one was a new one on them as well-they all looked on as if to say “what in the hell is happening here?”-each one of their faces.
After calling his name repeatedly I could tell I was tuned out of this one. This was strictly between him, his head, the street signs—and his heart.
I stood there with tears in my eyes knowing that there was nothing I could do or say to calm him down or console him, so I let him tire himself out-from sign to sign-ramming his head while I stood there holding on to mine. It looked so painful. He wasn’t himself. I had never, in all the years of our fights, ever seen this side of him. I was so worried that he was not going to snap back to himself again. I just didn’t know this person.
When he stopped ramming, he simply walked back over to the porch to grab his bike, looking like a pouting kid with a shaky bottom lip.
“Come in the house so we can talk Mitch,” I said, calmly.
He wouldn’t talk. He couldn’t talk.
He just sat on the steps and broke down crying like a baby.
Ahhhh. That broke me to pieces. My heart fell. And I cried with him.
I felt so badly for him, for us, and our mess.
I sat on the step above him and held his gorgeous big block head in my arms while running my fingers through his beautiful head of hair and kissed his beautiful forehead over and over. Nothing else could console him at this moment, but my touch.
So I held him quietly and cried with him. He was so broken down and winded of us that I could tell that he just didn’t know what else to do.
Like a mother consoling her child, I held onto him tightly while thinking about the two of us.
It was too much bad for anything to go good with us.
I knew it and he knew it.
Nothing was ever the same since I pushed him aside to be with Rem through to his antics when he knew I didn’t have Rem anymore followed by my efforts to hurt him back.
I knew it and he knew it.
Bad timing. We started out on the wrong foot and barely had any footing throughout the entire relationship or any footing that was ever stable-despite how we would go through the motions-pretending and consciously making an effort to prove to ourselves that we had something solid and stable.
The fact of the matter was: we didn’t.
I needed to be free him. I needed to let his heart, his mind and his spirit fly free.
At that moment while holding him, he looked so different to me.
I knew that he was about as tired of me as I was of him, but I still felt bad.
I wanted my hold to make all his hurt go away.
I wanted so badly for my touch to make him think our nightmare was all a bad dream.
I had to let him hear my voice: “I’m sorry Mitch. I’m so sorry,” was all I could say.
He got up and dragged his bike back into the house, walked up the steps, got in the bed and went right to sleep. He slept the kind of sleep you would have after getting that good ole’ fashioned ass whipping from mom and dad-the kind that made you go to sleep even if beforehand, you weren’t even sleepy.
I prayed that somehow, within this sleep; the beer would wash away any thought he had that was hurting his heart and mind. I prayed that he would wake up an emotionally and mentally-sober and new man. Still, even though I knew that in spite of how he woke up, when he woke up, that even if my prayer was answered; no matter how much a new man he could possibly wake up to be-he still wasn’t the man for me. And I was not the woman for him. Not at this moment in time.
I finally came to terms with that, that night. Anything else would be lying to myself and nothing but lies could keep me from that truth, and I was done with living one.
~~~~~~~
Mitch and I eventually called it quits and he moved out. It was humbling.
We needed to part ways. My life was mess. His life was mess.
Fast forward.
He started to get himself together, and we would still talk on the phone from Cruella’s “humble abode”-nothing to heavy.
Eventually, he moved out of town and attended some military school. He, of course, gave me all of his contact information but I never really called much because I thought it would be best that he and I be a done deal-no more on-again and off-again, mixed signals, chaos, confusion or crossed fingers.
I had done so many things to hurt him, and him-me, that I was pretty much ready to chalk up all of our years of knowing each other and being together as just a “thing;” an experience of some crazy kind; nothing to be continued-now or later.
Apart of me think I blamed it on everything up to and including his mom hating my guts as a reason not to allow myself to take him so serious, and not be head over feet with him in spite of the fact that I knew he loved me far too hard to allow that to be my excuse to not be with him wholeheartedly. He would defy his own mama for me. And I knew that-he already was doing that. Still, it indeed was a big part of my reason.
Despite his playboy ways, I knew Mitch was in this for the long haul. All he ever wanted was for me to be in with both feet. My respect and love for Rem over him made him lose full security in having that with me. So we both had issues. I just couldn’t see myself being in a monogamous relationship with a man that I could end up marrying whose mother wouldn’t want me around for the holidays and shit. Fuck that. She blew my “ideal” necessity and fantasy of that ever being so, and in turn-in some way-blew it for Mitch.
I never revealed my deep feelings about that to him, because he would have had a conniption fit to know that I felt so strongly about such a thing when we both knew that he would just as soon divorce his mom before he would ever divorce himself from me if it came down to that. But still, I can’t lie. It was always stained in my brain-and shared a little bit of the blame for my haphazard ways with him. I secretly obsessed over that about as much as I had no interest of an eventual apology and laugh about it all later in life, perhaps.
The way she would call the house and her obvious tone of even having to give me-the lady of the house-the respect of merely saying “hello” before asking to speak to Mitch, irked my fucking soul-an insult to the injury of the completely disrespectful day at her house.
Mitch and I were fine before she entered the picture. In addition to the chaos in our relationship afterward, with his mom not giving two fucks about a me, and especially after Rem’s death; it was like Mitch came to me with no protection-no solidarity behind him or any reasons for me to consider him for anything solid, treat him well and solid or to handle with a solid kind of care. The fact his mom not only rejected me, but premeditatedly treated me so badly was something that I never experienced in my life and could never forgive her for.
I was apart of the family as far as Santana’s mom was concerned.
‘Til the day of his funeral, sight unseen and even from the distance, Remy’s mom knew of me as ‘girlfriend’ and respected his boundaries and choices. And here I was with Rem now as gone as the life between us-fast forward: Mitch and I-amid all our dysfunction had since, had the nerve to have life between us with a would-have-been grandmother that hated the mother. I refused. It lowkey fueled the fuse beneath our relationship but I didn’t care. I just didn’t care. It was just all too much for me…
~~~~~~~
I guess things were going well for Mitch at the military academy. He was thawing out and very sober: emotionally, physically and mentally-I could tell-because his calls were infrequent to few and far between after some time. I guess when he felt up to it, he put his thoughts on paper and wrote me this letter after my finally calling him:
“Angie. Hey. How ya doin’? I’m straight. Just sitting here thinking about you and I thought I’d write you a little somethin’. Anyway. You shocked the shit out of me when that dude told me that Angie called. I thought that it was some kind of emergency. (Like you bumped into Carmen-lol) But I was very pleased to know that you were just thinking about me. Dig…I was for real when I was talking about us meeting up in Atlanta for a weekend-ya know-spend some time-get to know each other again and have some hot butt naked sex!
Well…It’s been real, but class is almost over. I just wanted you to know that you stay on my mind…
I’m out.
Mitch.”
Deep sigh.
I’m out too, Mitch.
I’m out, too…
He dropped me a line or few for the next three years-even into my moving from our house of hell on Prospect Place 537:
The house where I first got the bad news that Rem was killed and died that Tuesday morning.
The place with holes in the wall from Mitch punching it or ramming me into it.
The place where, even after all that, Ciara herself would eventually show her crazy—even after welcoming her back into my life after her first bout of crazy way back after Ian.
The energy of Prospect Place was with the shits and I had to move out of there.
A fast-forward snapshot of my life went exactly like this:
Mitch would write me in the meantime and in between time, not too far from [but not before, I was living twenty three to twenty five-year old recklessly and learning lessons in life that inadvertently prepared me for a certain kind of seasoning and situations], he would eventually catch me quite by surprise when fresh from military school with a six figure job, and his grown man sexy all kicked in; he returned back to me a respectable man with a full proposal package and proof-down to the option of my choice of 1 of 4 states of where I wanted to live-even down to the car I wanted to drive.
He promised me I wouldn’t even have to work. Mitch was like that though-even despite his wild ways once upon a time. He always wanted to prove to himself that he had it in him to be substantive. He was always idealistic and wanted to be a family man-a husband to a woman that he really loved and Mitch came back for his bitch. All he wanted was me in his life and all I would have to do was entrust him to take care of me and Lucky and let him show me he could be the man he always wanted to be to me-all proposed, prepared and ready to defy that Cruella DeVille ass mother of his.
I was impressed. That scored cool points with me. Major ones. In this moment, he was worthy. He was worthy of my respect, my loyalty, my devotion and my “yes.” It solidified his manhood and stance when it came to protecting me and being all about me. That’s of top notch importance to me. My heart fluttered and I was actually floored to tears inside. I wished that he would have kept me on notice. By this particular time in life and evolving, I would have kept a light on for him, sat on it for him, and been rockin’ 3/4ths of cloth-never showing my stuff off.
Unfortunately, before that time-with life having gone on since him-I was recklessly back to my private joy, secret life and TGGF-like roots: playing around with the ladies.
I even the found myself wrapped up with a forbidden, not so faithful and gentle gent.
Full-circle moments of love lives and ghosts of boyfriends past like Pucker popping back up, Santana seething, and other tests of growth and strength: leading me to conclude that as I was progressing from naivete to a more season and sophisticated woman; I wanted nothing to do with any one having any bullshit, baggage, or belonging to any body or any thing-yet I would find myself in a situation with somebody that was the boss of everything around him yet, belonged to the streets who, because of-like with Remedy-Mitch’s timing was all wrong-yet again…
THE ABOVE-POSTED EXCERPT IS FROM THE NOT YET PUBLISHED PREQUEL / BOOK 2 (Naivete) “Angie Situation” series/trilogy
BOOK 1- already PUBLISHED (and on Amazon):
TABLE of CONTENTS
PREFACE 5
- The Roots of Picked Fruit 17
- The Precocious Ripening 33
- Ripe & Ready. Gangs, Bangs & Pangs 39
- The Queen Bee in Me 63
- Another Level. Blossoming. Beautiful. 80
- TGGF, Male Model & Me 101
- TGGF & Me 112
- Divorcing Dad 124
- You Know Who 130
- First Flings First 139
- In the Lion’s Den 170
- Cold Shoulders and Frozen Dancing Feet 195
- Pills & Frills 204
- You Know What: I Told You So 209
- Dichotomies & Dazes 228
- Situations, Decisions & Transitions 241
- Up, Out & Away 244
MEET the AUTHOR Q & A 254
READING GROUP GUIDE 257
SNEAK PEEK into book2 (“Angie Situation NAIVETE’” )’s CHAPTER ONE 260
OTHER BOOKS BY ANGELA SHERICE 269
ABOUT the AUTHOR 270
