Cracked Roots & Roses 20: The Sharp Edge

Well, that was it. I was no longer pregnant, and I had no baby to show for the last nine months. I was now a part of the grieving parents club, a club I didn’t ask to join. Quite frankly, I was tired of everything. This was the proverbial straw. It felt like every step I took forward, I was knocked back three steps. Foolishly, I believed that because I was now saved, my life would be smooth sailing. I didn’t know I was born into a war that had been raging since the beginning of time. I was entering the valley. I also had not accounted for the fact that we have a real enemy who hates us. My life was falling apart AGAIN. This time, it wasn’t just me—I had a daughter, a husband, and bills. I was 25 years old and couldn’t see 26. I tried. I really did. I tried to be good. I tried to be a mother. I tried to be a good daughter. I tried to be a wife. And all at once, I was done trying.

I returned to work after two weeks. It didn’t matter that I was still traumatized; there was nobody I could talk to at home, and I needed to get some of the words inside of me out. I knew who I could talk to, though: Ahmad. I knew he would understand and listen sympathetically. He was the only person in my life who called periodically to see how I was doing.

When I walked into the dealership on my first day back, he was standing in the back at the business office window. He turned, saw me, and smiled. Then he met up with me, gave me a brotherly side hug, and insisted on carrying my lunch bag to the front desk. I felt better already. Work was fine—it was a welcome distraction from the shambles of my life. Until later that week, when a part-timer came to the desk and asked me if I had the baby.

I was reminded of my failure out of nowhere. I dropped my head. I couldn’t answer that. I did have the baby, but not in the sense they were thinking. I felt the tears rushing to their exit, so I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to keep them in. Ahmad heard the question, rushed out of his office, and pulled the guy aside. His office was a few feet from the front desk, so he heard what was going on and could see because the offices had glass outer walls.

It felt like he had a low-key crush on me, but I wasn’t really sure. I never had a great self-image because of my father’s jabs about me being skinny, and I never once thought I was attractive or someone who caught a man’s attention. In high school, boys weren’t checking for me, so this attention from someone so handsome and tall was kind of new.

One day, I didn’t bring my lunch with me because Marilyn said she wanted to take me to lunch as a treat. Well, Marilyn called in sick that day, so I had no way of getting lunch because we had one car, and Jeremy always had it. Ahmad said he would take me to lunch in Marilyn’s place. I said, “Nah, I’ll eat when I get off later.”

He insisted.

I was hungry, so I said yes. I mean, what was the harm? He had been so kind to me through this horrible season, and I considered him a friend. So I agreed.

We ended up going for pizza. I can still remember that first lunch. The tension in the air was tangible. This was shocking because I NEVER saw him like that… but it was obvious that he saw me like that. There was no hustle and bustle of the dealership—just me and him in a half-empty pizza place with each other’s undivided attention, talking about life.

I was in trouble.

I knew it.

No more questions in my mind—I knew for certain he liked me, and not like a sister. I didn’t know what to do with that because I never had that. I was married. I was not supposed to feel these things for another man. That was also odd because I had always seen my husband as a brother and never had this level of attraction to him at all. I decided on the drive back to the dealership that I would not go to lunch with Ahmad again.

A week later, he asked me to lunch again. I firmly declined.

Around that time, Patricia had called me into her office and closed the door. She said, “Kim, you know Ahmad likes you, right?”

I said, “No, he doesn’t” (that was a lie).

She said, “Yes, you know. If you want to keep your marriage, you have to quit this job. He is not a man who takes no for an answer. He is also not what you think or what he’s showing you.”

This upset me because I was tired of everyone telling me what to do. Can’t I have anything to myself? Everything in my life was someone’s business. I also wasn’t about to quit my job. Where else would I go? It was hard enough getting this one. I thought I knew how to handle Ahmad—I would just be firm.

A few weeks later, a position opened in the business office, so I applied for the transfer from the front desk to the office. This was better. I was no longer near Ahmad. He would still sometimes come to the back when he wasn’t busy selling cars to joke with me or tease me about something.

Jeremy quit his part-time job at the dealership and went to work full-time at Lowe’s. He and I were doing okay as long as I showed no emotion and didn’t talk about how I felt. I guess you can call that okay. We just weren’t intimate anymore. We were in that part of marriage in less than two years’ time. After everything, I just didn’t want to be touched, and the nonstop bickering didn’t help.

That Christmas was the tipping point for me.

It’s never the big stuff, like the couch dropping, the wall holes, or the speeding to scare me. It’s the little foxes that spoil the vine. Christmas was my favorite time of year, so I worked a few overtime hours to get him some stuff. I LOVED Christmas, and I am a giver. I gave him a list on paper of what I wanted with the stores underneath each item. I didn’t want him to have to guess because Christmas was important to me. All I wanted was a jewelry box, Clinique Happy body wash, and a new nightgown. That was it.

On Christmas morning, I gave him his stuff and waited for him to give me mine, but there was nothing else under the tree after my daughter’s and his stuff were opened. He saw my face and said, “I have your stuff in the trunk.”

I watched him out the window as he went down to the car, popped the trunk, and grabbed a big red-and-white box. I thought maybe my stuff was wrapped in that box, but a sinking feeling told me it wasn’t. He came upstairs, stood the box in front of me, and smiled like he had just done something incredible.

It was a Dirt Devil floor cleaner.

He said it was a customer return that he got for a good price. He then started telling me about all the functions of this glorified mop. My face told a story, and that pissed him off.

He got that floor cleaner for him—I KNEW it, and there was nothing he could’ve said to convince me otherwise. He didn’t think to get me anything, so he gave me one of the things he got for himself. He was always buying little gadgets and things with his check. This was one, and I knew it.

In the past, I would overlook this because maybe he didn’t know. He knew. He was just selfish.

This was the one thing I could not let go. I was different after my loss. I was more brazen and was done being run over.

We got into a HUGE argument on Christmas Day. It wasn’t about the gift! It was the fact that he didn’t listen to anything I said! I didn’t ask for much because we didn’t have anything! He was making more at Lowe’s and doing some side work, so he could’ve gotten even one thing on my list. He chose not to do it.

I knew he liked bowling because I observed him. I got him a bowling bag with a ball. I got him more of his favorite cologne and a jacket to wear around the job. These were all things he needed and said in passing.

This argument began the demise of our marriage. It was hanging by a thread, and Ahmad was a sharp edge.