By now we were causing quite the scene. The crowd started leaning in to see what all the commotion was about, and there was some jostling and more yelling, and Tracie was trying to get between us to calm me down and Mark was waving his arms and roaring. It quickly escalated out of control. No punches were thrown, but there was enough of a commotion to draw the attention of the club’s bouncers, who made quick work of moving bodies to get to the center of the action.
Next thing I know, the bouncers put us out of the club, but Mark gets to stay! The bouncers didn’t touch him. But the girls? Side-eye. They had us hemmed in and pinned up and we were screaming and cursing and trying to pull back our arms and tug down our miniskirts, which had risen so high in all that ruckus that our asses were showing! I tried desperately to pry the bouncer’s vise grip off my wrist to stop him from making my new watch dig into my skin; that was a piece I’d just got from Cosmo, a trendy store where Tracie and I got our fly gear. We knew we were cute when we climbed into our outfits from Cosmo, destined for big things. But on that night, we were just some hood rats starting fights and getting booted out the club. Everybody was staring as that bouncer dragged us through the crowd. “Shut up, with your weave,” one man yelled, practically spitting at us, as we passed by. Tracie managed to yank herself away from the bouncer long enough to grab her hair and shove it toward that man’s face.
“Yo, this is my hair, bitch!” she screamed, before the bouncer grabbed her again and recommenced to pushing and dragging us to the front of the club. He pressed his man hands on our backs and shoved us out the door.
“Get out!” he said. “And don’t come back.” I was undone. I had always been the good girl. I followed the rules. Any drama I encountered was usually on the stage. This was new for me. And I wanted no part of it.
But guess who was back at the club, in line with shades on, the very next weekend?
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There were plenty of examples of marriages that lasted in my immediate family, but no one was telling us to pull up a chair and get some firsthand instruction on how to make relationships work. And closer to home, in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood where Mark and I lived, single mothers struggled and made do, even and especially since the presence of fathers and father figures was in all too short supply. People went together, sure. That was human. But staying together? That was a whole different beast. Youth, inexperience, environment, and a lack of relationship role models made my union with Mark a recipe for disaster.
Still, I wanted him. And I tried my best to get that through his thick skull, even after he grabbed me and so enraged me that I got kicked out of the club. “I don’t understand why you want to break up. We’re going places,” I reasoned. “I love you. We can do this together. I won’t let you fall.”
By now Mark was seeing things differently and wasted not one second entertaining my “you and me against the world” fantasy. “Let me explain it to you like this,” he said. “You’re like an old favorite bag. When I don’t want to use it anymore, I put it away on a shelf.”
Now, I know a dis when I hear one, and I’ve never been one to hold back my tongue, but when I heard that I was rendered speechless. I admit, I didn’t know what, exactly, to make of what he was saying: Was it that he loved me, but he wasn’t ready to be with me? Was it that I was old faithful, the one he would always remember as “The One”? Was I the old bag that you used to love but now that it’s all old and raggedy, you keep it around for sentimental reasons, but as soon as you get your check, you head to the store in search of something new?
“Forget him,” my friend Pam said, seething, after I recounted Mark’s analogy. “You’re not an old-ass bag!” She was pissed. I was simply heartbroken.
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It would be a good year before we got back together, and for a while in those months, our lives changed in immeasurable ways, with my trajectory rising as Mark’s remained stagnant. By then, in the summer of 1991, I’d moved out from my father’s basement and into my own apartment, I’d gotten myself another good job singing and performing on a cruise boat, and I’d finally gotten up the cash I needed to pay off my tuition at and get my transcript from North Carolina A&T and pay my way at Howard University, where I’d transferred in as a theater major. I had my act together.
Mark, however, was still struggling. In the time that he was busy breaking up with me, he’d managed to get not one, but two women pregnant, just months apart. His daughters came into this world with a father who was increasingly overwhelmed by all of his responsibilities.