How Did I Get Here: A Novella Read online

  Preston had to think of a way to get out of this quickly so that he would at least have a chance at seeing his child. “We’re actually separated and I am at the house; I mean townhome, she left and I am just trying to work on my marriage. So could you please stop the hauling and come to your senses for a minute?” Preston’s cell phone began to ring and he knew it was Delight, because he was supposed to get her something sweet from the store over an hour ago.

  “Aren’t you going to answer your phone? If it is Delight, I can answer it for you and tell her where you are. Just tell her you’re on call at the hospital like you always do when you come over here. In fact I can call her, I got the number memorized I dialed it so many times. Remember, that number you and your wife use to always see and no one would say anything on the other line? That was me calling! My stage name was Susan when I decided to say something. I was the infamous telemarketer your wife kept hanging up on!”

  Preston was at a loss for words and to prevent further argument he just remained silent and took in the rest of her venting frenzy. His phone continued to ring and Lustray continued to rave. He began to feel like he was being attacked by the both of them so he decided to leave to where neither one of them would be…… Longs’ house.

  Preston decided to head to his car with an empty heart and defeated demeanor. Lustray yelled, “Go back to your wife, you whore, your mama! That’s all you do, you’re like a prostitute that goes back and forth, back and forth.”

  Ignoring the additional attacks from Lustray, Preston got inside the car, and slowly drove to Longs’ house. It’s been so long since he’s been over his house because he was so busy running back and forth between Delight and Lustray. On the way to Longs’ house Preston contemplated on everything from suicide to divorce and none of the options looked good. As he rolled up the driveway he beeped the horn to see if there was anyone home and Longs came running out.

  “What’s going on black man, I thought you would be somewhere powering up your vitamins or something the way I last heard you were trying to juggle those two women,” Longs joked. Longs could look at him and tell that something was wrong, because Prestondidn’t laugh or crack a smile. Fear set into Longs’ eyes and he said, “What’s wrong?”

  Before Preston get the first word out of his mouth, tears began to stream down his face and he could no longer hold in the pain that he knew was sure to come. “Lustray is pregnant! The girl is pregnant with my child and I don’t know what to do,” he sobbed.

  Longs never saw Preston cry before and he didn’t know if he wanted to cry with him or smack him. With a soft voice and slight hesitation Longs asked, “Do you think Delight will take you back?” Preston nodded. “Well it will be alright then,” he patted Preston on the back.

  “Man, I thought about everything from suicide, divorce, to running away altogether. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Now I have to think about child support, visitations, and all that extra crap that does nothing but keep brothers in the system.”

  “Now that you do have to think about, but all of that other stuff like suicide needs to go out the door and the rest of this stuff is just life. You may not like it and not have it all figured out but, it’s just life. And you know I’m not feeling abortions either, because believe me I have been there and to this day my ex-girlfriend and I cannot stand to even look at each other. I have been through three abortions coming up and when it finally came time for me to have a son he died after he was four days old, because his lungs weren’t full developed. So, my brother after trying to play God, in essence I played myself, because I always took it upon myself to take God’s children. Now I have to live with that the rest of my life.”

  “But all the stuff that we ever debated and talked about why our people are so messed up is the exact thing that I have just created.”

  “What you have to remember is that Jesus died for you too, and sometimes we need to have a little pain to be able to walk in the rain with our head up high. In the meantime, you are going to have to be a man, act responsibly, and do the best that you can. Look, she has nine months to go and anything can happen in nine months. So if I were I would leave Lustray alone, go home to the family, and do what you should have been doing months ago. If you would have listened to me earlier, you would’ve gotten some booty and memories and not have to go through this. But, hey everyone has to learn somehow.”

  Preston hated it when he was right and at this point he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be with Delight anymore. He could just imagine what it would be like if he tried to work it out with her. She would have to know everything, be everything and try to control the relationship between him and his child and that was just not something Preston was ready to accept. But he did know one thing. He had to go back home.

  XXVI

  Preston dreaded the ride back home; because he already knew he was gone far too long and he was not going to give Delight any type of explanation. He was too burned out emotionally to cook up another one of his now infamous excuses. What did he just do? How did he let it get to such a point? Preston now began to realize that even the saved are not exempt from the devil’s trap.

  The ride home went way too fast for Preston’s like. “I guess time flies when you have to go somewhere you are not excited to encounter,” Preston jumbled in his mind. Now, that this came to a head, he felt that now would be the best time to tell Delight that he had another seed on the way. But, no he couldn’t! “This is just the beginning; maybe she will have a miscarriage or something. Nine months is a long time away. Maybe she is just lying to get me to spend more time over there, since her daughters look at me as a father figure and they like me. But, I did go up in there unprotected more than a few times. But, how could this even be possible? She said she was on the pill! Now all of a sudden around the holidays, she’s pregnant. This is surreal, I need a drink.”

  Preston saw all of the lights on in the house and he knew that Delight was up with the baby and there was not going to be any escape of this confrontation. “I might as well just be a man and go on ahead in there and face the music. I’m the man of this house. I run this!” As much as Preston tried to build up some confidence inside himself he knew there was really no way to prepare for what might come out of Delight’s mouth. All of the education in the world could not prepare him for this.

  Simultaneously as he opened the door he heard Delight shout, “Where the heck have you been! I am up here with our baby that has a fever from teething and I have school work to do. You need to sit down and explain this one to me.”

  Preston inhaled and exhaled deeply with his hand on his forehead and sighed, “Look Delight I ran into one of the pastors from the church and we had a real deep conversation about my future. We were trying to get a timeline for my ordination and getting into some baptismal ministry.” Preston was disgusted with himself at this point. Every time he uttered another excuse with the church his heart cringed. “Why can’t you just tell the truth? What is wrong with you?” You are so deep in Satan’s trap and there doesn’t seem like there’s a way out. The world seems like it is caving in on you, but there is a way. Just listen to God and not yourself.

  Delight sat the baby down on the couch, put her hands on her hips and countered, “So you mean to tell me that it took you four hours to bring me back some candy and talk to a pastor from the church?” She twisted her lips to the side and looked out of the corner of her eye like she knew that there was something going on. She smirked and retorted, “You know there was some girl that called here for you, but then hung up the phone. There was no caller ID. She said she was selling something, but it sounded like a scam.”

  Preston’s heart dropped through his butt, but tried to remain composed, “You, you, you know there’s all types of knuckleheads out there trying to scam for something.”

  “Are you cheating on me? Because, if you are you better tell me right now.”

  “Now does that even sound smart? I am living on food stamps and working a job that
pays me a quarter of what their salaried staff makes. I wish I did have the money to be able to cheat! You know what, I am just tired and I am going to bed, I’ll see you in the morning.” Speaking of money, Preston had to go hurry up and pay that cash advance he took out to get some things for Lustray’s house. It was a good thing that he looked after the money or he would have been toast. But, he still used cash whenever he did anything with Lustray so there would be no paper trail; just in case Delight wanted to do some online banking.

  As Preston proceeded to walk upstairs all he could hear were the loud weeping sounds of his wife. He couldn’t just go upstairs with her crying the way that she was so he turned around to go and console her. Any other time he would have let her cry, but the way that she let out was a cry of pain and severe anguish. No one hit her so Preston knew that it was genuine impairment. He stroked her hair and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “You! You treat me like crap and all I do is worship the ground that you walk on. All I do is listen to you, but when it comes to something that I want there is no compromise whatsoever. I am thinking about moving to Florida with my grandparents with the kids, because I can’t be here and there is no way that I can stay here with someone who refuses to love me.” Her hands trembled as if she were being shot with a stun gun.

  What happens in the dark will come to light. There is no escaping that. You might get away with it now, but like I said before there is no way that a man can go on living a lie forever.

  “Look, I just have a lot on my mind right now. I’ll make sure that I will make an effort to pay more attention to you and the kids.”

  Delight shook her head in assurance. This made Preston stay up longer than he intended. All he could figure to do throughout the night was how to slowly peel away from Lustray until he knew for sure that Lustray was pregnant. He hated to do it, because he was so intentional on creating a new image of men for her, but it seemed like no matter what he chose it would create a detrimental conclusion emotionally, and possibly physically. Maybe she might consider an abortion and she just might not tell him.

  Preston sat on the living room couch feeling as if he had been drinking all night, the way things have been swimming around in his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about the possible birthdates, how his pride would be crushed if he couldn’t see his child, the gender of the child….. Or, would the child be born healthy? Would God have the baby born retarded for his sins? Will his child be unhappy for not having his father in his life like Proverbs 7 says? “This is just too much to start thinking about right now. Just go to sleep, wake up, and tell Lustray you are going to fall back for awhile.”

  Preston felt like that he was going to lose his mind. He could not fathom how he just administered character assassination upon himself. He was his own hit man and didn’t even get paid for it! All the while he listened to his baby cry upstairs while Delight cried along with him to sleep.

  XXVII

  Preston awoke the next morning looking like a crazed beast. His eyes were bloodshot red from a lack of sleep and his head felt like it weighed a ton. His sole focus was getting to Lustray’s house and telling her it was over until further notice. Forget taking a shower or brushing his teeth. He couldn’t even remember the last time he ate; or even wanted to eat for that matter. Just thinking about the entire situation made him sick to his stomach. He snatched the keys off of the key rack and drove as fast as he could to her house. “All of this driving is killing me too. All of this back and forth with gas prices this high. This is ludicrous; I could be saving an extra forty dollars a month for all of this. This is why black people stay in poverty, making babies while on food stamps with somebody else that’s on food stamps.” Preston began to get mad at himself the more he thought about it as he drew closer to Lustray’s house.

  When he arrived at Lustray’s place; just as he approached the door to knock, Lustray heaved the door open and began to jump and kiss on him!

  “Girl what are you doing? Your daughter isn’t even up for school yet,” Preston said in protest trying to unclamp her legs from around him. “Look, I have to get my priorities straight and I am just here to let you know that we are going to have to call it quits for awhile. You know, until we know what’s going on with the baby and everything.”

  Lustray continued to try and unzip his pants while on her knees, “So what’s that got to do with us making magic like we always do? The damage has already been done so let’s go Daddy.”

  Preston continued to back up and as bad as he wanted to get intimate he had to think about the future, just in case there was the possibility of her not being pregnant.

  “Look, girl I just told you I’m not doing anything until I get myself together. You better start playing with yourself or something, because you and I are both married and there are some things that can and have went very wrong here. So in the meantime just let me know how the pregnancy is going and when the doctor appointments are,” Preston yelled at the top of his lungs to let her know that he meant business.

  “Did you tell your wife yet? You know the earlier the better,” Lustray pleaded.

  “No, I didn’t so let me handle it.”

  “So when are you going to tell her? You created this, so you have to fix this. I didn’t sign up for this. She deserves to know.”

  “Look, I came over here to say what I had to say and I am off to class. So just text me if something comes up.” Preston held up his hand in resilience as he buckled his pants and made his way towards the door.

  “But-”

  Wham! He slammed the door behind himself and all Lustray could hear was his car pulling off like someone just robbed her bank of love.

  XXVIII

  “Oh, hell no! There is no way he is going to continue to treat me like crap, come over here whenever he pleases and impregnate me like I’m a piece of meat that he can toss off to the side!” Lustray’s hormones were raging and it was bad enough Prestonwouldn’t give her any sexual satisfaction. Now she had just suffered the ultimate rejection at the expense of his wife. “I hope his wife doesn’t think that this is going to be some type of happy ending while they just act like one big, happy family.”

  Lustray began getting all of Preston’s clothes together in a box that she saved just for this very moment. She snatched all of his underwear, his movies that he brought, and copied everything off of his flashdrive onto her computer before she packed that too. “I’ll show him and his wife that they are messing with the wrong one. Maybe if his precious, skinny, little wife finds out, she’ll kick him out and he can come and be with our baby. In fact let me write a little letter to the housewife and let her know just what he’s been up to all of this time. Besides, she deserves to know. She pulled out a piece of notebook paper and began to write:

  Dear Preston,

  I am writing this letter, because you have not yet decided to make a choice if you wanted to be with our baby or not. I cannot just sit around and let you have your way forever. I want to thank you for the all expenses paid trips to New York, New Jersey, the Bahamas, and Miami. I’ll never forget all of the shopping sprees that you took me and my girls on at all of the malls around town. Unfortunately, this relationship has to come to a close, because you refuse to be a man. I am sure that you have a nice wife that you use to talk so badly about and I am sure that you two will be happy together once I am out of the picture. I will let you know when the baby is born so you will not have to worry about anything until then. I just know that somewhere deep down there is a nice man that I have always hoped for; that I have yet to see. You just can’t go on living a double life forever and I will not continue to be the other woman. I hope that you do turn yourself around for the best and somehow commit yourself to being a faithful man. Now, that we are parting ways I will only be able to see you through the eyes of our son. Loving you as always,

  Lustray XOXOXOXOX

  PS. If you ever think about me, remember my picture will always be in the back of your wallet.

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nbsp; “Perfect. I will just throw all of this inside a box and make sure that I spray all of my perfume over his clothes and that will be that. Now let me get the girls up for school and get their breakfast ready. Mr. Brown will be in school until about two and that will give me more than enough time to get this over to his wife. Now what did I do with those directions I printed out?” She got everything together around the house and texted Preston about her immediate intentions for the remainder of the morning.

  XXIX

  Delight woke up a mess after crying herself to sleep and just felt the sudden urge to just get up and clean. The day was partly cloudy, which made the cold air feel that much colder in Central Ohio. Now, that her and Preston finally talked she felt a little bit better about their marriage. The kids got themselves up and ate some cereal before they made their way to the bus stop next to the house.

  “Me and my baby are going to have a good time today. We’re going to take a bath, eat some cereal in the high chair, watch some Disney cartoons, and enjoy Daddy when he gets back,” she giggled as she held their new baby boy in the air.

  Delight had real high hopes for the day and she prayed that the weeks ahead would be better than the past few months. She walked around the house and looked at her and Preston’s wedding pictures that hung in synchronized fashion. “That day was the happiest day of my life. Everything did not happen the way that I dreamed on that day, but it happened the way that it was supposed to.” As she stared into the picture, it brought back memories of all of the hard work it took leading up to that special day. She went back down memory lane of how Preston would coordinate plans on the phone and how her and the matron of honor would run all over Deptford, New Jersey trying to get photographers and disc jockeys. The years went by so fast and everyone was so much older now. As she wiped her hand over the frame of the picture she heard a mysterious knock at the door. She wasn’t expecting any packages and Preston was in school. “Who could that be,” Delight asked herself. She peered through the peep hole of the front door and saw a strange car.