“That’s what I am gonna do, tell the world that you are a no good-for-nothing father, husband, and friend.” My ex’s words echoed off the hard white marble of the world’s largest shopping mall. (It’s not, but it used to be). I shrugged my shoulders and keep pushing our third child in the stroller in the air-conditioned air. The white marble floor is elegant and a sign of grander times for this mall. Half the storefronts are empty. We walk by a near-deserted Old Navy and she screams “I will tell the world how you cheated your brothers out of their share of your parent’s estate, and tell the world how you fucked the babysitter when I was throwing up with morning sickness from our second child,
A family of five dressed in party clothes stops and watches us. The teenage daughter pulls out her phone and starts filming us, you can see her zoom into my wife. My wife shouts, “And I will tell the world you are an even worse ex, you are nothing but disappointment and trouble for anyone who comes in contact with you.”
This is not the first time I had to hear my failures broadcast to the public and at this point, it doesn’t matter since I am finally at the bottom. The kids hate me, my ex is suing me, my boss caught me stealing and my Mom has cancer. There is nothing left for me to fuck up so, “Are you ready to change?” I ask myself.
I watch my ex-wife pace, circling the bench I sit on like a tiger, eyeing me, wanting blood, wanting me to suffer.
I sit and watch her. I lost all desire to be right, or to defend myself. “Guilty, guilty as charged,” I scream out to the multi-color rotunda. The mom pushing her twins in a stroller on the second-floor leans over the railing to watch, the older couple coming out of Macy’s stare and move closer to each other and keep walking.
She laughs, “So little, so late you are.” She knows, and I know that I have a gun. And it’s loaded. She is sick that way, she likes it when the violence sparks up. If a guy cuts me off she says, “You gonna take that? You need to teach that little bitch a lesson.” And the violence, in words, thoughts, and actions hit hard and hurt. She grew up with it and she knows no difference, and that is why we are a good pair. Sick on sick, no hopes, no dreams, it’s hurt or get hurt. She does know how to push me, I see it in her eyes, wondering if I am going to kill her, and she just stares at me, my hand around her neck and she holds that stare, unblinking, fearless, resigned to her fate. Her look releases my grip on her neck, and I take a breath and she smiles.
She is silent as she moves toward me and our child. The baby is asleep, never wakes up when we are fighting. She sits next to me and she bounces her leg and slaps her hands on her thighs.
“Damn boy, where is the fight in you? You going soft on me?”
I don’t say anything. I sit silent.