Living Monologues | Tangie
Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash
This monologue is pure fiction and part of my ongoing Living Monologues Series that explores who we are beneath our words.
VOICE MEMO 39 - September 28th, 2019 8:56pm EST
I’m driving the highway home tonight instead of taking McCollough because I need to clear my head. And I’m recording this because I’m…if I don’t… I’m… Tonight was just… Ok….
We had a nice dinner going tonight, right? Like, it’s the first in a while since I’m always working and my brother’s always traveling.
So, I do my famous garlic bread, Mommy does up her famous chicken cutlets and pasta, and Lily insists on greens with neckbones and everything because she’s a daddy’s girl who will never lean more to her Italian side than her Black side. Dominic, Margot and the kids come crashing into the house like the (cute) zoo of a family they are. It was a nice, impromptu full family dinner. Daddy didn’t get home until just before we started eating but whatever, at least he was there this time, right?
Listen, I know I’m the oldest, 37 with no husband, no kids. I know Lily is getting married next month and Dom and Margot have been together for 6 years and they’ve got two kids. Almost got divorced but they worked through it and they’re happier than ever. That sounds so cliché and PR-trained to say but it is actually true. And I’m happy for them. I am. I’m happy for them.
I’m rooting for everybody’s relationship. Lily’s got a great guy named Zeus. I love it. And he acts like you’d think a Zeus would act too, minus the hubris. I call him Super Zeus behind his back to tease Lily. She protests but I think she secretly likes it. Because he is. He’s super protective of her and a great provider. He proposed three months in and started building a house for her after seven. He’s a really good dude with the most beautiful locs I’ve ever seen.
But what’s got me so aggravated that I’m probably going to spend an hour driving the highway instead of the 20 minutes it takes to get home is Mom and Daddy. Mom gets a little too loose-lipped when she’s had too much to drink so naturally she starts going in on my love life in front of everyone. Mommy feels like if you think a thing, you have absolutely every right to say it. Out loud. No filter. No grace. She calls it being old school Italian but I call it being rude under the guise of speaking truth. And honestly it’s the only reason why she and my dad’s Black Mississippi-born-and-bred family got along so well. A bunch of “truth-tellers.” The lot of them. Until someone got to telling the truth about them.
And listen, I’m pretty much an open book, you know what I mean? I can take it on the chin and keep it pushing. But tonight she says something like, “Tangie, If you’d quit wasting time pretending like you’re happy alone maybe you could actually be happy with someone. Look at how happy Dom is with Margot and Lily with Zeus, huh?” Then, she nudged me and pointed at my brother and sister with their strikingly good-looking partners. Like, wow. They’re two fabulous couples. They could cover magazines, for real.
Now that alone, by itself? Not so bad. I was just gonna laugh it off and make a self-deprecating joke like, “Well, Ma whenever you wanna go get pedicures I’m always free. You wanna give that up?”
But then she goes, “You’re not getting any younger, just ask Nick.”
Like, almost instantly I can feel my heartbeat in my neck. I can hear it in my ears. Everybody’s looking at me. Dom goes from stabbing his poor chicken cutlet to pushing back from the table and letting out this half chuckle, half exasperated exhale and says, “Ma, damn.”
And naturally, I’m livid. So, yes. I just start saying stuff.
I go, “Oh, you want me to be happy? You mean like how you and Daddy were happy when he used to pop you in the mouth for fun? That was real ‘happy’ for you, wasn’t it, Ma?”
At first everything and everybody is still. Even the kids. Tasha and Jackson are only five and nine but they’re smart kids. They may not fully understand what I just said but they know shit ain’t sweet. You know what I mean? The only noise is Tasha’s white and clear beaded braids clacking against each other as she turns from Dom to Margot to figure out what number on the Richter scale that shakeup was.
Daddy stands up first, of course. He’s seething.
I love my dad. He’s been a rock for all of us in a lot of ways. I get my thick head of I’m-Black-and-I’m-proud ass kinky hair from him and every bit of assertiveness I grab hold of when needed.
But I didn’t forget.
He throws his napkin down into his plate so hard the fork and knife go bouncing up into the air like how the people do on YouTube when they go blobbing out on the lake. Just flying all up into the sky and come smacking down into the water. The fork lands near little Jackson’s plate and the kid nearly jumps out of his skin and just hides his face in his mom’s shoulder. I don’t blame him. I remember that reaction.
But the crazy thing is that Daddy just looks up and glares...at Mom. He doesn’t even acknowledge me and I’m the one who said the thing. I’m the one who laid all his stuff bare in front of his two other children who were either too young or not even born to remember him at his worst. Long before he became a grandfather and started doing everything he could to make up with God.
I’m the one who just leveled the shrine the family built to him. But he never lets his gaze fall on me, only on Mom and I’m sitting right next to her.
He’s staring a hole into her head. She looks at him and then away.
“Oh, sit down Martin,” she says. “Anybody want some cake?” She starts trying to clear plates to cover her embarrassment. She skips my plate and moves around me to Zeus and then Lily.
Then, I kid you not, Daddy leaps toward her like a freaking wild animal. She drops all the plates. A shard of glass flies into Margot’s barely-touched plate - she’s got a thing with food. Another shard hits Zeus’s hand. Sauce somehow lands in my lap and on my glasses lenses. Daddy’s hands are on Mom’s throat.
At this point everyone is on their feet and I’m thinking “I didn’t know he could still move that fast.”
When I come to myself, it’s almost like I’m perched up on the chandelier over the dining room table watching the whole mess play out. Everyone is frantic, freaking out. Dom is yelling at Margot to take the kids upstairs. Little Tasha is crying. Loud. And I want to just pick her up, get her in my car and go get some Baskin Robbins like we do on Saturdays.
My left arm hurts like hell, like something is digging into it. Then I’m like, Wait, something is digging into it. Lily’s fingernails. And they’re strong as shit because Mommy says Lily drained her of all her Vitamin D. So Mommy’s nails are brittle and Lily’s could cut diamonds.
Zeus has me around the waist trying with all his godlike strength to pull me away, pull me up. Lily’s screaming in her sweet high-pitched voice, pleading for Zeus to hurry-up-and-pull-her-off-Daddy. I know I’m less than half his body weight but he has a struggle going on and I’m locked into my target.
Daddy’s on the ground. I’m over him with one of the new Cuisinart steak knives with the walnut handle I got Mom when she decided to redo the kitchen for no reason. She thinks renovation means to get all-new everything.
Dom is saying things to me. He’s on his hands a knees at my eye level, talking to me over Daddy’s head. He sounds frantically calm. You ever hear someone frantically calm? You’d think it’s soothing but it’s actually irritating. I can’t hear him clearly. And I can’t see anything but Daddy. It’s like we’re sucked into each other’s pupils, both too proud to be the first to look away or move in the slightest. I’ve got a sharp object some kinda close to a vein in his neck that if I so much as poked it, it would erupt like the fount of every blessing they used to talk about in church. It feels like we’re in a bubble made of slow motion. Everyone’s yelling and trying and pleading and grabbing and crying around us. But it’s just me and him in this thing together. Like it’s always been. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. And that’s what scares and angers me at the same time. More than any of the blows I ever saw him land to Mom’s face. It’s the fact that I never could tell. Could never see it coming. With Daddy or with Nick.
And Mom knows this. And I’m just tired.