He led me out to the student parking lot. He told me he wanted to meet me back at the apartment to talk, but not with all these people looking. I climbed in my own car, though he told me he wanted me to ride with him.
In the parking lot of his complex, he was kind. Tender. “Is something wrong, baby? You’re not returning my messages. I’m asking Keisha where my woman is and she won’t tell me. I know she doesn’t like me, but Roz won’t say nothing, either.”
He moved to touch my face and I stepped back.
“What’s wrong? Abdul, you cheated on me!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“What do you mean? Your name was right there on the Dirty Thirty next to Precious! And now these bastards on campus are laughing at me! And you were just talking bad about her, too, right in front of me and Roz, when you knew you’d slept with her! How could you do that?”
“Oh, that. Baby, that ain’t no thing. I didn’t fuck that jawn. I only let her give me head.”
“That’s still cheating! And you shamed me! And Precious, too. How could you be so ungentlemanly? You don’t see Pat putting his girls’ names down on that list.”
“That’s cause that nigger soft. He probably gay.” He put on his patronizing voice. “And head doesn’t count as cheating. It only counts if I fuck her proper. Which I would never do with Precious. Everybody knows that jawn’s a hoe. You’re a good girl. That’s why I made you my woman.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better? That you had sex with somebody else, and now you’re calling her names?”
He spread his hands. “Ailey, I told you, sex and head are two different things. And a man’s gone be a man. A man can’t help but say yes when a hoe with no morals offers to give him head. And anyway, you weren’t officially my girlfriend when that happened.”
“I was staying at your apartment all the time! We were sleeping overnight in the same bed!”
“But we hadn’t discussed a committed relationship.”
“You are crazy. You are loony tunes and low-down and ready for a bed at the Milledgeville hospital.”
“No, I’m not. You just don’t want to hear the truth. You want me to lie to you and say I don’t like to get my dick sucked, but the truth is you need to learn how to please your man. Maybe if you did what I told you to, instead of always saying no, even when a brother begs you, I wouldn’t need to—”
I turned around, and he told me, don’t turn my back on him. He was talking to me. Didn’t I hear him talking to me? He spun me around. Pulled me into a hug, though I was struggling, and I could smell that he’d had a beer earlier. When I pushed at his chest, he slapped me. I stumbled back, holding my cheek, and then I turned and ran to my car. As I drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror. He was still standing there.
Those final weeks of the semester, Abdul and I didn’t see each other in private, but he played a game in the open. He acted as if nothing had happened. He blew kisses at me across the refectory. He touched my arm and used endearments when he saw me on the yard.
My roommates asked, what was going on? Abdul hadn’t paged me and I hadn’t left on the weekend with my overnight bag, either, and I lied to them that Abdul was studying. Or I was. Or both. I thought I was fooling them, but during finals week, Keisha told me she hoped that Abdul and I had broken up for good. It was clear that he wasn’t living right.
Abdul’s slap hadn’t left any bruises, and I was grateful for that, but without the evidence, there could be no crime, at least not publicly. And though the campus gossips laughed about my humiliation over his cheating, I was the heroine. Abdul had behaved as men were expected to act, when confronted with his many female options. But I had been faithful. I was the long-suffering, good woman, and Precious was the villain, for she had gone after someone else’s man. To everyone on campus, she was the Jezebel, the slut, the hoe, while I could cling to respectability.
In the weeks after he hit me, as Abdul blew kisses, I felt trapped by what I’d desired. I’d hoped to wound Tiffany for embarrassing me at the rush, for ridiculing my sister, so I’d slept with Abdul and made it impossible for her to stay with him. Then I’d wanted to be his girlfriend, to prove that I was a good girl, and not a whore who only sneaked out of the dorm to drive to Abdul’s apartment. But the truth was I still felt dirty inside, even when Abdul had tossed me his jacket and everybody knew I belonged to him. I still felt ashamed.