Tessie D

One of the reasons we’d gone to Fredericksburg in the first place for our honeymoon was to meet with a realtor and check out some land Angel wanted me to see that he was considering. Later that morning, Angel got up and started getting dressed, and it looked like he was about to leave, so I asked him if I could come along too.

“Sure, whatever. Come on, let’s go,” he said, grabbing his car keys and wallet and shoving them in his back pocket.

I got into the truck and closed the door behind me, and we drove out towards the highway, got onto the main road, and drove west, turning here and there onto smaller, dustier country roads. We didn’t say anything. In the truck, Angel turned the radio on, and it played softly in the background.

When we finally arrived at a stretch of land along a caliche road, the barbed wire fence was tattered and rusted, held together haphazardly with some old rusted nails and cedar posts. The realtor was already there. She was a pretty blonde woman in her mid-40s, I’d imagine—thin, wearing a tight skirt, high heels, and a blazer in a bright fuchsia pink. I thought her shoes were fancier than anything I owned and still weirdly, grossly inappropriate for the moment, both for looking at a piece of farmland and for our mood. But we were polite in front of the realtor; we were pleasant with her and with each other, though there was still a tension in the air, a spark that she must have sensed since we didn’t seem like the happy newlyweds she’d expected.

Angel talked to her for a little bit, and we stood by the truck. She and him walked over and inspected the fence while I stayed back on the road. We were only there for a few minutes. There wasn’t anything on the land stretched out in front of us—just the tattered fence and a smattering of mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus dotting the landscape. I could tell by looking at it that it was a rocky piece of land. I didn’t want to say anything to Angel, but I’d seen Daddy farm enough to know that there wasn’t much soil here that would have been good for hay, much less raising cattle. But I didn’t say anything, since Angel didn’t seem that excited about it anyways. I suppose the previous day’s conversation had spoiled any excitement he’d had for the possibility of buying land out here and moving south towards Fredericksburg.

We eventually got back into the truck, and the realtor took off in her tan Cadillac sedan heading in one direction, while we turned and backtracked towards the cabin in the other. We pulled over at a roadside barbecue stand and had some lunch before getting back in the truck and driving back to the cabin.

When we got to the cabin, Angel walked in ahead of me, and I came in behind him. By the time I’d gotten inside, he was sitting on the bed, cradling his head in his hands. I kneeled down beside him, grabbed his hands, and pulled them towards me.

“You have to understand that nothing that has happened in the past has changed anything about how I feel about you,” I said. “You can’t possibly think that I planned any of this, that I tricked you into marrying me. You can’t believe all those things you said yesterday. Surely you don’t.”

Angel was quiet. “No, I don’t think you were trying to deceive me.”

“Then you can’t be mad at me, not really. How can you still be so upset?”

“Because you’re not the same person that I married,” he said. “You’re an entirely different person than I thought you were.” The words came out quickly and tersely, catching me off guard. He had never spoken to me this way before, and I didn’t recognize the voice coming from the man sitting in front of me.

“Angel, you have to understand. I was a child when all of that happened. I knew nothing of or about men.”

Angel was quiet. “Yes, yeah, I can see that you were the victim, not the victimizer.”

“So if that’s true, then you have to forgive me. Why can’t you forgive me?”

Angel looked up into my eyes. “I do forgive you. I can forgive you. I do forgive you. But surely you know that forgiveness just isn’t enough.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying. “I don’t know what that means. If you love me, then of course it’s enough.” But he didn’t say anything. “Angel, you have to understand, this sort of thing just happens sometimes. It just happens to people.”

I’d apparently said the wrong thing, and Angel suddenly looked angry. “Not where I come from. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen to people. In my family, we’d never let something like this happen to us.”

Shocked and angry at his response, I threw his words right back at him. “Of course it does. Your family is not any better than mine or anyone else’s.”

Angel was surprised by my anger. “None of the girls in my family had sex with an older man and got pregnant with their illegitimate baby.”

“How do you even know that? You think that this is something that happens just to poor girls, that we somehow lack morals or values because we’re poor?”

Angel didn’t say anything, and we sat in silence for a bit. He was still on the bed, and I was still kneeling at his feet. Finally, I stood up. I was tired of being on the floor; my knees ached and the tops of my thighs were starting to burn.

“What is it that you want?” I asked, taking a step back and looking at him. “When I got pregnant, should I have thrown myself off a bridge? Drown myself in the bathtub?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I would never wish that you were dead.”

“And what about now? Do you want an annulment? A divorce?”

He was quiet. “You know that’s not an option. We can’t. I’m a preacher’s kid.”

“Why can’t we? People get divorced all the time. I don’t want a divorce. I still love you. But if you don’t—if you feel differently—then I won’t stop you.”

Angel shook his head. “You are so naive. My father is a preacher. My father has a reputation. What would people say? They don’t get divorced in my family. It’s just not done.”

I sat on the bed beside him, leaned back, and laid down. I was so exhausted from the conversation. The passion of the past five months was gone, and all that was left now was anger, resentment, and betrayal.

He looked over at me. “Please just tell me. Just tell me that everything that you said, everything that happened, wasn’t true.”

I sat up and looked at him. “You know that it is. All of it was true, every word.”