I could’ve sworn that clock was there on the wall one day
and a couple days later I look up and it’s not there. It was BD’s and I didn’t miss it.
But I could have sworn it was there. Maybe I was remembering it being there
from before I left. Maybe not.
BD had assured me he’d returned his key to our landlord and
the Shafik’s had confirmed this. Still, there were little, subtle things. We
had this snow globe with a picture of the three of us, me and BD holding the
baby on one side, and the baby laughing by himself on the other.
I didn’t like the “family”
picture. We looked so happy, smiling, loving, in that picture and I felt like
such a fraud. That’s not at all how we were. The snow globe sat on the dresser
in the bedroom. I'd turned it around, so that the baby’s picture was facing
out. The next day, I’d find it turned back around, the family picture facing
out. I turned it around again.
“I knew it! You’re turning our picture around on purpose. I
left it like this,” BD said illustrating the way he’d positioned the photo. “I
wasn’t sure, but now I know you’re doing it on purpose.”
I had pretended like I didn’t know what he was talking
about. But this night, when I returned home from work with the baby, to my now
empty apartment, the snow globe was not the way I left it. I wouldn’t have left
it like that, I don’t even like looking at that picture.
I got the locks changed the next day, a whole week in and I
was just now doing something that shoulda been done from day one.
I was so terribly naive. I thought this could work with us
living apart and co-parenting together. BD seeing the baby whenever he wants,
picking him up, dropping him off, cooperating like reasonable adults, all that.
Even after all the drama, that’s really what I wanted. It was not to be.
The harassment began almost immediately. Angry phone calls
and voice mails throughout the day, texts in the middle of the night demanding
in capital letters, “WHERE IS MY SON!?”
Sometimes if I couldn’t get a parking space out front, I’d
have to walk a block to my building.
Each night I had to do this, I expected to
receive nonstop demands of my and the baby's whereabouts. It never failed.
I kept the drapes closed tight, but on occasion, during one
of his call-call-and-call-again blackouts, I’d peer out of them, to see him
standing across the street, looking up at the window for lights or movement.
His behavior had become more and more erratic. The day after
a night of calls and crazy voice mails, I’d get apologetic ones.
“Where did we go wrong, Mel?” He’d ask in this pitiful, sorrowful
voice. Almost sincere. “I just want my family back,” he’d say. “Why
does it have to be like this?”
He even suggested counseling. I was outdone. Counseling?
That’s for people who want to work on their relationship. What I wanted was
out.
On days when his temper was more even, he'd call and ask to
pick up the baby. (He hated to have to ask me). And I'd pack our son's things
and get him ready to go with his father. After taking him, BD would wait with
the baby for a good 15 minutes in the foyer of the building, pretending that he
was waiting on the bus. The bus stop was right outside and he didn't know that
I knew that he lived right next door. I didn't correct him.
I thought getting him out of the apartment would solve our
problems, but I was realizing that if I was to have any peace at all, I needed
to get as far away from BD as possible. The mounting bills I was now footing
alone were just an extra push.
Whatever I was gonna do, it had to be done quickly and
quietly, keeping an ear out for footsteps in the hallway and intermittently
stealing peaks through the peephole of the front door.
I just knew it was only a matter of time before I’d catch
him standing outside the door in the hallway or something.
And one night, he was.
Originally posted on
March 19, 2008
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