Divorce Cereal Chapter Two

"Don't Break Your Arm..."

I was in my final year of undergrad. I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little girl. People would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up and I had tried a few different answers: the first Black female President of the United States was one. That got a chuckle from my dad, but it wasn’t until I landed on “lawyer” that I saw him look proud.

I lived in a run-down house with three other women. I loved being a student. I was an English Literature major and I studied my passions, including sociology (Black and women’s studies) and journalism. Socially, I felt awkward, an ugly duckling in a pond of tall, skinny, blond sorority girls.

At the beginning of my senior year, I met the man I would eventually marry. I was out with friends at a local bar. We were on the back patio where a live band was playing and we were dancing, singing, and drinking way too much.

Toward the end of the night, I bumped into a friend’s ex, a slimy, serial cheater. He leaned in close to be heard over the music. “Hey, my friend likes you!” I looked at him. Even in my drunken state, my guard was up. Anyone who was friends with this guy was probably not for me. I looked over and saw a tall white guy, with dark hair that kind of flopped over his blue eyes. Although I thought he was cute, I simply smiled and went back to partying with my friends.

Not long after, they announced last call and everyone rushed to the bar for one last drink. I stepped up to the bar and there he was. I was still wary, but the wounded part of me felt compelled to be nice. Plus, he had a pitcher of beer. He said, “want to help me finish this?” I agreed, taking the stool next to him. I don’t remember what we talked about, but we finished off that pitcher and, by the time the bar closed I had given him my number.

We dated that entire school year. He lived about two hours away, with his parents. Turns out he had flunked out of school, partied too hard as a freshman, so he was back home. He called me nearly every day. We would talk for hours. He also made the drive down to see me countless times. It became a game, where he would give me the odds on whether he could make it down to see me that weekend. Monday it would be a 30% chance. By Thursday we were up to 80%. He had a crappy old car with squealing brakes. I could hear him coming from three blocks away.

At Halloween, he had plans to go out with friends where he lived and told me he wasn’t coming down. I was disappointed, but went out to my own party. Late that night I was awakened by a tapping on my bedroom window. I peeked out and saw him standing there in a full bumblebee costume, antennae and all. He’d left his party and driven the two hours to my house. He did that for me. I felt loved, cared for. Like I mattered more than anything to him.

I didn’t have any money to speak of. I got some scholarships, but I had to take out student loans for college. Before too long, he began to ask me for a little money here and there. I helped him out with gas money, which seemed fair given how far he’d come each visit. Later, it was the occasional meal. I was a feminist. I didn’t mind. There came a time when he said he couldn’t afford to pay for his community college class. I wanted him to finish school, so I used some of my student loan money to help him pay for the class.

I don’t know why I did this. Why I didn’t question it. He could have taken out a student loan like I had. I think I wanted to save him, to show that I cared. I wanted him to survive so we could survive.

Through all of this I somehow managed to keep my grades up and apply for law school. Because money was tight and application fees were expensive, I only applied to a handful of schools. My public university was my “safety” school, and my “reach” schools were NYU, Columbia, and Stanford. Stanford was the dream.

I worked hard on the essay, pouring my soul out onto the page and into the void, hoping someone on the other end would see my value and let me in. I wrote about how a Black girl from a small white town survived the racism, the doubts, the questioning where and whether I belonged.

I mailed the applications off, then went on with the business of finishing my senior year of college strong.

One sunny afternoon I walked home from classes, through the tunnel under the main road that led to the dilapidated shack where I lived. He was at the house - he had stayed the night before and slept in while I went to class. It was Friday, so he planned to stay through the weekend.

I walked up to the little front stoop and saw a fat envelope sticking out of the mailbox attached to the house. I didn’t connect the dots until I reached out to remove the package and saw the return address: Stanford!

I was so excited. A fat envelope meant acceptance. I opened it carefully, and glossy brochures spilled out, smiling faces beaming out at me. The cover letter opened with, “Congratulations!” It welcomed me to the class and provided details that have long since faded away. My housemates were home and we whooped and hollered, celebrating my accomplishment. I felt pure joy and I could not stop smiling.

In the midst of our celebration came his quiet, “Don’t break your arm…” I turned to him - I hadn’t even noticed he was there. He had come out of my bedroom and was standing off to the side, watching me. His expression was blank. My housemates had not heard it. “What did you say?” I was unsure. “What does that mean?”

He didn’t repeat it. He just looked at me. Then, I got it: “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.” I was smacked in the face. Stunned. I tried to make sense of what was happening. My smile left me. I felt deflated.

I managed to say, “Don’t break my arm patting myself on the back?” He looked at me, saying nothing. We stood there for a moment, the words absorbing every last drop of joy. Thickening, growing heavy between us. Everything else had fallen away.

I managed to find my footing. “Are you serious? I just got into Stanford Law and you’re telling me not to pat myself on the back?” I told myself that I was dismissing him.

30 years later, I was jumping over my front gate with my sister. Trying not to break my arm.