Stranger Than Fiction

By Xhanti

She has done it. After years spent suffering and months of plotting and planning, she has escaped her destructive marriage with Storm while still hanging onto her possessions, dignity, and sanity. It was a well thought out plan because, when she makes decisions, they are focused and practical. Now free, she seeks a new path.

She had entered into a series of disastrous relationships with losers, even having a child with one of them out of wedlock. But each and every one of them taught her a lesson. Still, she knows God has a hand in her life and is using even her mistakes to nudge her down the path He intends. She doesn’t fear the future and has her ex-husband to thank for that. If she survived what Storm put her through, she can survive anything. Now a collector of good and bad life experiences, she continues to seek real love despite past heartbreak and betrayal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663234360

Xhanti

Xhanti is a first-time fiction author, although she has several nonfiction publications. She considers herself a renaissance woman, an agent of change, and a defender of the defenseless. Her life’s work is dedicated to empowering those around her with her gems of wisdom.

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Copyright © 2022 Xhanti.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3435-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3436-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900388

iUniverse rev. date: 01/04/2022

CONTENTS

The Escape

Rule 1: Draw on Your Legacy

A Girlhood Happy and Safe

Freedom and Independence

My First Love

The Marrying Kind

Baby Daddy Material Only

When Money Is Well Spent

Rule 2: Choose the Wrong Man Once

Things to do While Leaving Your Cheating Husband

Rule 3: Have Someone Other Than Yourself to Live For

Rule 4: Shop Around

Mr. Perfect—Or So He Thought

Dwayne

Ray

Getting Caught in a Storm: The Happy Times

Red Flags That Looked Rose-Colored to Me

A Storm Is Brewing

In the Eye of the Storm

The Waiting

The Dark Writing on the Wall

Freedom

Rule 5: Rest, Reflect, and Heal

Bouncing Back

The Sisterhood

When You Are Unequally Yoked

Plenty of Fish

A One-Night-Stand Turns Into More

We’ll Figure This Out

Postponed Lasagna and Shared Laundry

How Star Trek Could Save Us

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THE ESCAPE

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I vaguely remember clearing security. The airport was noisy, busy, bustling, as usual, but I barely noticed, just as I was barely aware of all the many details of handing over documents, passport, ticket; answering questions; and jumping through all the many hoops that are part of airline travel these days.

But I do remember standing on the other side of the security checkpoint at Miami International, so weak with relief that my legs could barely hold me up. I knew I was breathing, but I couldn’t feel the rise and fall of my chest. I knew my heart was beating—it had to be—but it felt as though the steadfast, rhythmic organ that was keeping me alive had been replaced by something savage and wild that couldn’t be contained.

I’d done it. After years of suffering and months of plotting and planning, I’d escaped from Storm without a scratch, still hanging on to everything I’d entered into our marriage with: my possessions, my dignity, and my sanity.

Morning light streamed through the rows of glass panes above. It was getting late, and I knew I should be heading to my gate. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

Harried travelers brushed past, and I realized that I was still standing in everyone’s way. I took several steps backward, dragging my carry-on bag with me. In spite of the ruckus, the chatter, and the muffled announcements from the speakers overhead, I could hear the clack-clack of my heels on the tiles.

Then, as though a passing angel had reached out and caressed my cheek, all my anxiety and nervousness rolled away, replaced by an indescribable calm.

I would never have to see my husband again.

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RULE 1: DRAW ON

YOUR LEGACY

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I am descended from a long line of wretches, at least as far as the men go. Those that fell from the uppermost branches of my family tree valued their masculinity highly—and their definition of masculinity involved screwing around with as many women as they could, as often as they could.

They chased skirt tails in the same way puppies chase chickens, with scant regard for the feelings of their wives or partners. They reproduced as though trying to repopulate a postapocalyptic world. They mixed and mingled with women of every stripe, blind to race, religion, or origin, resulting in the large and variegated broods that peopled my youth.

On paper this sounds quite horrifying, but I know I’m not alone. Rare is the woman who cannot testify to the wayward and indiscriminate tendencies of our men.

My father’s endless pursuit of women hurt my mother, frayed his marriage, and sent ripples of discord through our family.

In my teens, this was difficult for me to understand. I guess, as most young girls do, I looked up to him, the first man in my life. For a long time, I puzzled over why he would do this and why he seemed unable to rein in his own desires in the face of mounting evidence of the damage he was doing to his family. Later in life, I surmised that it was less a matter of pursuing pleasure and more one of a burning need to feed his low self-esteem.

I won’t bore you by making pronouncements about a Napoleon complex; I’m not even convinced that’s actually a thing. But my dad was very short. He was insecure about this, and to make it worse, he never thought of himself as good looking. When I look at old photographs of him as a youngster, even the ones we used on the program for his funeral, I find him quite attractive. But he never saw himself as such.

A nagging sense of unfulfillment probably fed the monster. His father died when he was very young, and he grew up with a stepmother who had a mental illness. He graduated at the top of his class with the desire to become an attorney, but his folks couldn’t afford it. They sent him to work in a more lucrative trade industry instead. And although he worked there until his retirement, it was always his greatest regret.

He would have made an outstanding attorney and did well in his chosen career; he was the kind of man who insisted on doing whatever he did well. But there was always that little something missing in his life; his candle was sputtering out, and he desperately sought ways to keep it alight.

Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers were just as bad when it came to having affairs and chasing tail, even though they made the effort to raise their children—my parents, aunts, and uncles—very circumspectly.

My mother’s dad, Leonard Gordon, was a tall, stately man; he had to bend to come through doorways. He was originally from the Caribbean. He’d wear a white suit every Monday when he made his pilgrimage to the local hospital to get his insulin, and he always, always sported a hat and cane. Sporty, right?

And yet he had no professional ambition. I never got the feeling he was aware of his true potential—or maybe he was but didn’t care to achieve it. He lived in low income housing on for years, where the rent was just fifteen dollars a month. He made fairly good money and held down a stable job. Yet it never occurred to him to buy himself a piece of land. Land was so cheap then, but no …

When it came to the ladies, he was someone different. My grandfather was a player. He was screwing with my grandmother but refused to marry her, because she was jet black and he was high yellow. You know how it was back then … well, how it still is, to some extent.

My grandmother bore him two girls, and each one took after one parent. My mother got his height and coloring, and her sister, my aunt, was short and dark like granny. They both had Coke-bottle figures, which my mother insists I have, although I tell her, with no trace of false modesty, that I’ve never noticed that. Hard to look at yourself like that, isn’t it?

Anyway, he lived with another woman after my grandmother moved on and got married, taking my mom with her. My grandmother then had another child, giving me an uncle who is thirteen years younger than my mom.

My grandmother was one of—wait for it—the twenty-two children that her father had with two women. She was lucky number thirteen. They were interspersed; in other words, great-grandfather was romancing them, even a husband of sorts to both of them, at the same time. They all lived together—one big roiling, tumbling family.

To this day, I have no idea which of my great aunts and uncles belonged to which woman; I just grew up knowing they were all my grandmother’s brothers and sisters.

My grandmother, to her credit, refused to be married off at a tender age like her other sisters; she ran away, and took up residence in another town to make sure that didn’t happen—which was likely, given how overbearing her father was. Years later, as he began losing his eyesight, but gaining a realization that his sons were stealing his money, he hired a taxi for the day, found my grandmother, and sweet-talked her into coming back to live with and care for him. This caused more family conflict, because it was only when he died that it became common knowledge that he’d left all his land and property in her care. While it belonged to all of his children, nobody wanted to spend the money to divide it up. She’d also inherited her own separate piece, which my siblings and I inherited. I’m hoping that the larger piece will be inherited by the generation below me, my daughter and her cousins, because it’s important for us to ensure that the next generation has a starting advantage in an uneven playing field.

My great-grandfather was verbally, but not physically, abusive, to both of his wives. At one point, he discovered one of his belts was missing. It turned out that my aunt, child number twenty-two, had been the culprit; she cut it to pieces in a fit of anger and buried it. But he blamed his wife, my great-grandmother; and the argument that followed became legendary. It was the tipping point for her, and she left.

She survived by doing odd jobs. On her day off, she used to visit my grandmother, her daughter, until she eventually moved in with them. She’d only been with them for a short time when, one day, she had a quarrel with my grandmother’s husband, who wasn’t my grandfather (yes, I know, it’s complicated). Undaunted, she rolled up her mattress, balanced it on her head, and walked ten miles to her sister’s house. She then moved to the mountains, specifically sparsely populated area which was undeniably, a bold move for a single woman. Eventually Great-Grandmother Jane Greaves saved up enough money and built a one-room house, where she squatted on wild, undeveloped land, without neighbors. My mother remembers traveling for hours by public transportation with my grandmother and my aunt, dropping off at the bottom of the mountain, and walking up the hill through the densely forested areas to visit her. A single woman, living alone, more than seventy years ago. I think I have her blood flowing in my veins!

So at the time of the argument with my great-grandmother, my grandmother’s husband sold himself as a natural healer, and people came to him for both physical and spiritual healing. The story goes that a woman turned up one afternoon seeking help—or at least pretending to. It soon came to light that this was my step-grandfather’s bit of skirt on the side, and the woman had no shame in moving into my grandmother’s house and making herself at home.

When my four-foot-seven grandmother dared to complain, that six-foot, three-hundred-pounder of a man grabbed my grandmother, all ninety-five pounds of her, and shoved her face into the fireside. There was little she could do or say, but she took the course of action many oppressed West Indian women before her had. That night while he was sleeping, she boiled a pot of oil and straddled his sleeping form, holding the pot in one hand, fresh and fragrant from the stove.

He opened his eyes with a start and looked up into the face of a woman who meant business. Lay your hand on me again, she promised, and you will not survive the oil.

And he believed her. He tells the story that for two weeks he couldn’t sleep, and thereafter he stayed his hand.

To understand my grandmother it’s important to understand her history. My great-grandfather died at 109; I guess he’s taking a well-deserved rest. That age wasn’t unusual for us; we’re a long-lived bunch. All of my grandmother’s siblings except for baby number twenty-two died in their nineties or more. One even died at 103. My grandmother died at 92, and even up to a few years before her passing she was caring for two of her siblings, aged 97 and 98.

My paternal grandfather migrated from yet another Caribbean island with his two brothers. He, too held a steady and well respected job. One of his brothers had settled in the very mountain side my great grandmother had moved to and the other, as we’re now being told, moved to one of the smaller islands. My grandfather had four children, only two of whom had the same mother. There was only one girl in the bunch. He died when my father was young, leaving him to care for a mentally ill mother.

The men made a mess of my family, leaving it as tangled and knotted as an unraveled ball of twine. Children growing up in such a family often inherit a legacy of chaos—a loud, discordant clanging that echoes through their own marriages.

But I feel that my legacy was not one of confusion but rather one of strength, passed on to me by the many strong women in my bloodline: my mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, who were sent reeling time and again by their circumstances but who got to their feet each and every time they were knocked down.

This strength they passed on to me is probably the most important thing I have ever inherited, and in turn, I have passed it on to my only child, my daughter. I made sure she understands two things: (1) that she must never depend on a man, ever, no matter how much she loves him, and (2) that she