Month 23.
I was going back home, to Syracuse, New York. Phillip had given me permission to take two weeks off for a badly needed, but unscheduled vacation. Alarah, my mother and I would be flying to Syracuse to see relatives and old friends. We needed time away from Mississippi and a chance to reheal and regroup as a family unit.
Two days before my departure, Phillip met with me secretly in a secluded park. It would be the last time I would ever see Phillip alone. After the Billy Walker incident, I was bitter and angry. I wanted to curse Phillip out and finally tell him off. After all, I reasoned, if Phillip had never treated me like shit, I would never have gotten myself into such a predicament. If he had treated me with just a little compassion and humility, I would have never been downstairs grieving and crying. I had telephoned my mother earlier, telling her when and where Phillip and I would be meeting. I did not trust Phillip. For the last several months, I had obsessively pursued and irritated him. To Phillip, I was a constant reminder and thorn in his side, a nuisance that just refused to go away. He no longer referred to me by his pet name. James, which I hated, or my full given name, Torah James, was how he referenced me whenever he was forced to say anything to me. I often wondered if Phillip believed that changing what he called me, could actually change what had happened between him and me.
I pulled up into the park and saw Phillip pacing with both hands in his pants pockets, his face contorting in sink with his mixed emotions. Fear, tiredness, depression, and worry registered simultaneously as he pace up and down the narrow sidewalk.
I pulled up and parked next to Phillip's Jaguar. I got out of my car, slammed the car door, then briskly strode towards Phillip, saying, "Go ahead Phillip and curse me out, get it over with and out of your system. I am tired of you walking past me like I don't exist."
"Torah, I'm not here to curse you out. I came here to talk. You can't keep running into my office and telling me that you want to talk to me. Torah, you're not one of my managers. Doris and Mrs. Thompson are beginning to notice."
"Well, Phillip, I would never have been running back and forth to your office if you had treated me like a man. I am tired of being treated like a piece of toilette tissue you've wiped your ass with and thrown away."
"Torah, calm down. I am deeply hurt." Phillip stared at me, his breathing swift and hard, his eyes wild with frustration.
"I thought that you and I said that we would never intentionally hurt one another," Phillip said between clenched teeth. "This entire incident with Billy got back to my wife. She is threatening to divorce me. She even has me picking her up each day after work. Since this situation has occurred, other women have come forward claiming that I have sexually harassed them. This whole mess has fucked up my career. I'm looking for another job. I've got head hunters trying to find me another job. Why, Torah, did you have to go out with Billy Walker in the first place?"
"How was I suppose to know that Billy was a nut? I believed him when he told me that he was a director with two Ph.D.'s How was I suppose to know that the man was lying?"
I clasped my hands around my stomach and bit my bottom lip.
"Torah, you have to learn to size people up. Everyone has some kind of hidden agenda. Billy played you."
"If you had treated me just half way right, just half way, I would never have gotten myself into all that trouble. You knew that I care for you. You knew I was falling to pieces and you didn't do a damn thing. Just one little word of kindness, would have gone a long ways."
I paused. I was breathing heavily. My anger had surfaced and I did not want to lose control. "Phillip, it's not what you do. It's how you do it. All I wanted from you was to be let down easily. You could have told me anything and you knew I would have believed you. Why couldn't you have done that?"
