21. Locked In, Wanting Out

Looking back, some of the biggest arguments with BD were centered around my family. He’d always said he found my mother to be nosy, my older sister to be too protective and my younger sister too needy. I talked on the phone with the little one at least twice a day, sometimes several.

I know now though, that what really worried him was being found out. And that after finding out the person he really was, he knew my support system would swiftly whisk me away. His fear wasn’t far-fetched. My mother had read him the first day she met him and he knew it. My older sister Ayana's opinion was formed shortly after, and Laryssa, my younger sister, even before she’d seen elements of BD’s obsessive need for control with her own eyes, told my mother: 

“Something’s not right about him.” She wouldn’t share this thought with me though, until the night I’d finally leave.

That night, Laryssa had come to town with her college roommate Kya. Seniors at a state school, the two had planned to split their four-day weekend between partying in New York City and down time with me and the baby.

I was not going to have a repeat of last time’s events -- as if an out of control person can be controlled. This time, I put them up in a hotel from the first night.

On Saturday, we were going to spend the day in the city. It was a little chilly to have the baby out for that amount of time, so BD came by the hotel to pick him up. He pulled up in front. As I was strapping the little man into his car seat, he offered to drop us off at the train station.

“It’s right around the corner, why don’t I just drive you to the PATH?” He said.

Sounded good.

I slid in the backseat and called Laryssa’s cell telling them to come down and to bring my purse.

She and Kya walked out of the front entrance a few minutes later when I noticed Kya approaching the car with a bottle in her hand. She stopped and placed it on the curb before getting in the back seat. I shot her a silent look of alarm and she shrugged her shoulders as if to say she didn’t know what I was talking about. I just hoped BD didn’t see it. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize it as beer anyway. It’s not like he’s ever around the stuff. I knew the green bottle was a Rolling Rock as soon as I saw it but it could have been a soda or an energy drink - right?

We pulled up at the train station. Everybody thanked BD for the ride. I kissed the baby and we got out.

“We’ll probably be out until evening I said. Maybe 8ish,” I told BD through the window before taking off.

We spent the day browsing through knock-off bags, looking up like tourists as we walked down the bustling streets (New Yorkers never look up), and taking impromptu prison pose pictures in front of anything even loosely deemed to be a marker of our local. The Empire State Building, a street sign, anything.

We were tired and hungry when we finally got back to the hotel. It was Saturday night, so this would really be our last time together. Sunday night I’d put the baby to bed on time and turn in myself, getting ready for work Monday morning. The girls also flew out Monday morning, so this was it. Larissa had asked me earlier to stay the night and I told her I would. We’d order pizza and watch cable and play with the baby in the room all night.

I called BD and asked him to pick me up from the hotel. I wanted to get an overnight bag for the baby and to stay the night at the hotel. He flat out refused and I knew why.

“I don’t want my son around evil spirits,” he said.

Oh my God.

“BD, are you serious? She had one beer, way earlier this afternoon. Nobody’s drinking over here. Nobody’s drunk over here, there’s not even any alcohol in the room,” I said.

“What kind of person drinks beer in the middle of the afternoon anyway? I don’t want my son around people like that,” he said.

“It’s Saturday, first of all, they’re on vacation and they’re college kids. So what? I’m here. I’m not gonna let anything happen to our baby.”

“It doesn’t matter if no one is drinking right now or how long ago it was. It’s a spiritual thing. It’s about the evil spirits that alcohol brings. I don’t want my son in that environment.”

For close to an hour on the phone while holed up in the second bedroom of their suite, I tried to argue logic against insanity - an insane prospect in itself.

I did not want my sister or her friend to hear the ridiculousness of the issue at hand.

When I finally came out of the room, off the phone, they could read it on my face. Not to mention the walls were thin.

“Melyssa, is it all my fault? I’m so sorry. I knew I should’ve left that beer in the room,” Kya began.

“Whatever,” Laryssa interjected insolently. “You are a grown woman and if you wanna have a fucking beer on the sidewalk it ought not be his concern. Ugh!”

She looked at me now.

“What’re you gonna do?”

What was I gonna do?

Laryssa and I had been so close. She was so disappointed with me, not when I announced my pregnancy at Thanksgiving, but when I told the family BD and I were moving in together and trying to make a go of things.

She told me then it was a stupid idea destined for failure. She was angry with me because I tried to feed her the same spiel I’d given my mother about being in love and getting married and yadda yadda. It was bullshit and she knew it from the first time I said it. She was insulted because I’d lied to her.

Telling my mother what I think I need to tell her is one thing, but Laryssa and I, though a few years apart were pretty much peers. What she hadn’t understood is that I had to lie to her. I was lying to myself. She’d stopped speaking to me for a while after that. We never really had a falling out over it, she just stopped calling. So it was a big deal to me that she reached out and wanted to come visit. And I wanted us to have some more time together. I wanted her to bond with her nephew and I wanted us to wake up together. It was just one night.

“I’m gonna go get him,” I said.

“How’re you gonna do that,” Laryssa questioned expressionless. I told you, she knows bullshyt.

“I’m just gonna go get him. I’ll be back.”

I got in a cab outside the hotel room and rode the short 20 blocks up the street to the apartment. It was literally right up the street. Straight shot. I could not understand what BD’s problem was. I also did not understand what I was about to get myself into.

My stomach was in knots. I was nervous and I was worried and I was having second thoughts about going up against BD tonight. As the cab pulled up across the street, I called my mother.

“Hey, Ma,” I said. Before she could even answer I just spewed out everything. I never complained to my mother about my relationship with BD. I knew how she felt about him and I didn’t want to feed it. I had not been ready to leave and I did not want to hear it. So I quickly brought her up to speed in one breathless sentence ending in --

“I’m right outside in a cab/ I’m about to go up now/ There’s no way he’s gonna let me just take the baby/ I don’t know what’s gonna happen/ I don’t know what I’m walking into/ I just want you to know.”

My mother was a master organizer. She could put a group together, draw up a plan, delegate duties and have that shyt executed in under five. She spoke competently and quickly.

“Melyssa, that is your child. You bore that child. You go get your son. Be careful and be brief. I’ll call you in 15 minutes. Answer the phone. If you don’t answer the phone, I’ll call you again. I don’t care what happens, you answer your phone or I’m calling the police.”

She said a short prayer for my protection. I paid the driver and got out of the car.

When I got to the door my key wouldn’t work. BD had put the bolt on. I knocked.

He answered the door in the dark, cradling our sleeping baby still outfitted in his snow suit. They’d just gotten in a few minutes ago. I had no idea how this was gonna work.

We began in the living room, sitting on the sofa talking about our different positions. I’d taken off my jacket and put my bag down.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I said. “Why don’t you call Allen and ask him? Call your mother, call somebody reasonable and get a second opinion.”

BD has this unchangeable tunnel vision. When he locks onto something it’s as if he is unable to change his mind. He cannot be enlightened. Sometimes, when he’d get like this, we’d call up his mother and she could talk some sense into him. Or his normal friend Allen who I respected, or his cousin. This time, BD said no.

The argument escalated and we, for some reason, moved into the bedroom. I don’t remember why.

The baby was lying on the bed now, still in his snow suit. At some point, I picked him up and made a quick reach for my car keys sitting on the shelf in BD’s open closet.

He quickly cut me off with his arm, but I was able to snatch the keys before he knocked me backwards, back onto the bed. I immediately got up and moved toward the bedroom door that BD positioned himself in front of.

I laid the baby, still asleep thank God, back on the bed and took position at the door. I was so tired of being controlled.

My phone began ringing off the hook from the living room as we struggled at the door. My mother’s ringer, then my sister’s ringer, then my mother’s again.

I kneed him, I scratched him, I bit him, I clawed at his eyes, but for a skinny dude -- about 180 soaking wet -- BD was pretty strong. He held his stance and I could not wrestle him away from the door. Then his phone began ringing now, over and over again. It was my family calling him. Who knows what they were thinking was going on. They were scared. I was scared. But I was also determined.

I fought hard. I exhausted myself. I knocked over a nightstand, a glider, broke a lamp ... he knocked me down each time and I came back each time. He’d never seen this from me and it had been a long time since I had. He wrapped one hand around my throat and pulled his fist back with the other and I flinched instinctively, cowering with my hands covering my face. A twisted smile spread across his and he said, “See, you’re not that tough,” before releasing me.

I picked the baby up off the bed and went for the door again. He wrapped his arms around the baby’s waist and tried to take him from me, squeezing. He woke up wrinkling his face and I let go.

BD took him, cradled him, whispered to him, comforted him and rocked him as he walked away from the bedroom door, freeing me.

“You can do what you want, but you won’t take my son,” he said.

I rushed out of the bedroom, grabbed my phone and began calling the police. BD did the same on his phone and he got the 911 operator first. He told the 911 operator I was trying to kidnap our son. This would not be his last allegation of kidnapping.

Simultaneously, both standing in the living room, I was reporting domestic abuse. I was not leaving my son.

Seconds later, in a blur of red and blue lights, 12 officers arrived at the door. I told them I just wanted to go. I didn’t want to press charges. I didn’t want anyone arrested, I just wanted the opportunity to gather my things and get out of the house with my son.

BD protested, telling the group of officers that he was this child’s father and “Don’t I have any rights!?”

“Take it up with family court,” one cop told him. “If I have to make the decision tonight, I’m letting the child go with the mother.”

“Why? How can you just make that judgment?”

“Look we got about four calls to us tonight (me, BD, my mother and my sister) we’re here now, and it’s my job to settle the situation. That’s my decision. A judge might tell you different, but tonight, I feel the child will be best served with his mother.”

It was pouring outside. I picked Laryssa up about 10 blocks away from the apartment. She’d put on her boots and her coat and started hiking to me in the downpour with her roommate in tow. I was so glad she hadn’t made it. My sister is kinda gangster. They got in the car soaking wet and we went back to the hotel.

I would never share a roof with BD another day in my life. But it was not the end. Actually, our fight was only just beginning.

 Originally posted on March 14, 2008