Judge Judy

Everybody was home when I arrived from my long walk to freedom. One of my sisters had just emailed that we should Skype looking forward to that. Soon as I walked in, Cindy asked me to make breakfast for everybody. I took my laptop to the kitchen, set it on the counter and skyped while I made branch. Husband was in his office working on the computer, his mom was around too. Cindy was upstairs cleaning. There was tension at home, I felt it as soon as I walked in. Glad I had the skype appointment, the last thing I needed was to walk into another dramatic situation right out of another one.

Grandma was busy in the garage sorting out stuff. She has stuff stored in Cindy’s garage. Later on, Husband took grandma to her place and went to bed. He was working that night. Cindy and I went downstairs to chill. We watched the murder shows and caught up. She and husband had an argument. They almost always argue when grandma is around or about grandma. Husband left for work that night.

I had been looking for work online the entire time. There is a shopping centre not too far from Cindy’s house, I dropped my resume there as well. One day, I got a call from a recruitment agency. Husband was off, he took me for the interview. I filled out a ton of forms and got the job. It was a Friday afternoon, I was to start the following Monday. I looked up directions to the place, it was going to take me three hours there, one way. I called them and turned the offer down. In as much as I was desperately looking for a job, I had to be practical. I wasn’t going to spend six hours on the road to do an eight hour job. I had to come up with a story as to what happened to the job to Cindy. I wasn’t going to tell her that I decided to turn down the job offer and was going to rather stay at her house and sponge off them a little longer. Even though that was not the intention, it probably would have come across that way to her.

On her off days, she took me to nursing homes to apply for work. A lot of these jobs require you to have a car. Even though they won’t need you to drive anywhere. It’s just a thing. Whenever we Cindy would take me to these places, she would also apply. Which automatically reduced my chances of getting the job by 50 % or even less because she has a car and way more experience. She had told me over and over again that she likes it where she works and has no intention of leaving, but she wouldn’t stop applying when I did. I didn’t get that!

Her supervisor has a second job in another nursing home, he referred her there, apparently they were hiring. We went and applied there. They gave us application forms which we took home. She had her friend submit them for us. Which I hope he did, I was willing to take them back myself by bus, bus she insisted. I didn’t want to be stubborn.

One afternoon, we were at the mall, almost an hour away from their house. Some of the stores had notes on the door that they were hiring, Cindy was like, why don’t you go try your luck over there. Uhm because if it’s an hour away by car, it’s going to be two to three hours by bus! I did. One of them, a perfume store, they told me to take the application back in person the following Monday when the boss would be in. That Monday, I was home alone, I took public transportation to the mall and submitted my resume (cv). They wouldn’t let me see the boss, even though that was the deal. Waste of my precious time, if you ask me, but whatevz. They told me  I would hear back from them.

On my way out, I saw massage chairs, a dollar for 3 minutes, I did 15 mins. Then took the last train out. I use google maps as my gps. I was meant to take a connecting bus halfway home. I got off the train and it was dark out! I ran towards the bus stop. A kind gentleman asked if I was waiting for the bus. I was. He told me that there were no more buses that time of the night. I was screwed. My Cellphone battery was dying. I got a text from Cindy asking where I was. I texted back and the phone died just before the text sent. Everybody had their own keys to the house, husband, Cindy and myself, so that wasn’t an issue. I didn’t have a curfew as far as I was concerned, so I was good. Not great, cos I was still stranded, but good.

I went to the nearest building, it was like a live in facility for veterans blah blah blah. That’s not why I was there J. I asked the receptionist for help charging my phone. He didn’t have a charger for my kind of phone. Crap! He was happy to let me use his phone to make a phone call, only thing is, I didn’t know Cindy’s number by heart. I had it on email cos I remember my sister emailed to me. I asked him if I could use his phone to access my emails. He did. Thank goodness for small favors! I couldn’t find the number.

He told me I didn’t live that far from where I was, I could walk. Yeah sure, if it wasn’t 9pm! Plus I wasn’t familiar with the area. I couldn’t call or ask anybody if I got lost, it wasn’t worth it. I was about to call a cab when he found a charger that fit my phone. I charged my phone, switched it on and found a whole lot of missed calls and texts from Cindy. That put me under more pressure than I already was. I didn’t know what she wanted from me so desperately. Apparently she was pissed at me because She was stuck outside the house and not able to get in. I don’t know what that had do with me. She wanted to know where I was. I told her, she was like, I’m on my way, I’ll come get you. Imagine if I had picked up lil one, we would be freezing outside now. I thought you would be home by now blah! I gave her the address. She drove around in circles, couldn’t find me, wasn’t picking up my calls nor responding to my texts. Twenty or so minutes later, I got hold of her. She was at home! I was like, I thought you were on your way here! She was like, I did come there, I didn’t see you. What’s the address. Great, I have to give her directions again, she had them on her whatsapp. This is not some random, hard to find place, especially not for somebody who has lived in the area for years. I was at the train station, right by the apartments she likes, she lived in that vicinity before.

Anyway, I went and stood outside waiting for her. She shot by fast, I was like omg, there she is again. I was walking on egg shells at that point because I didn’t get why she was in a bad mood. I hadn’t seen that side of hers before. I tried calling to tell her I was across the street, to wait for me, even though I knew she was going to have to come my way again to head towards the house. She didn’t pick up. Fck! Eventually, she saw me. I mean I was the only person in the streets in all of Utah after all. I got on the car and apologised profusely. No idea what about. I just wanted to clear the air.

I told her where I had been hoping she wouldn’t be mad anymore. I asked how her day was. She told me that she and her husband are having another one of those arguments. Aaaahhh, that’s why she was so pissed! She had forgotten her key at home. I think he took hers and she was supposed to take his, blah blah blah. She ended up taking the wrong keys with her. When she got home, she couldn’t get in. She couldn’t even get in via the garage because of blah blah blah. Hot mess. We hung out in the kitchen and she poured her heart out to me. She told me things about the relationship that were straight out of movie-type things. All kinds of abuse, arrests, homelessness, it was bad.

She was ready to get out of the marriage but she had her reasons why she wanted to stick it out a little longer. I have never been married, so I don’t know what it feels like in her shoes. From an outsider’s angle, I thought, the sooner, the better. I wasn’t gonna tell her what to do about her marriage and her life though. They were still texting back and forth, saying things to each other that shouldn’t be said. I told her to just switch off her phone because the longer she engaged in the argument, the more upset she was going to be. I felt so sorry for her. She was all alone, nobody else knows about the things that go on in her marriage, the family back home doesn’t even know where he is from, they don’t know the first thing about him. I told her that’s one of the things that is working against her. She needed to tell someone. She is alone in this country and he know it. Should anything happen to her, the family wouldn’t even know where to start investigating. God forbid!

We went to sleep in our respective rooms. Husband was out of town, working. I overheard her arguing him over the phone through the night. She hardly slept that night. I guess my advice about switching off the phone fell on deaf ears. The argument went on for days until husband came back home. They were still texting back and forth, even though they were both home. They hardly talked to each other. Nice people, both nice to me and the kid and everybody else but I hardly heard them talk to each other.

One day, while Cindy was at work, husband was like, do you notice that my wife never even says hi to me when she comes home from work? I was like, eh, uhm, er. Trying not to get involved. One Afternoon, they all came to my room and were like, “ok, Baba, you be the judge. My wife works with my ex, the woman who destroyed my life. She knows that woman hates her and yet she went and took ear rings from her on credit, she forgot to pay this woman. When the woman asked for the payment. My wife returned the ear rings. It was too late! The woman won’t take the ear rings back, she wants her money. My wife doesn’t want to pay her. I told my wife that she has to pay her, they had a deal. I told her over and over again not to have anything to do with this woman, but she never listens. I told her that if she doesn’t pay the woman, I will pay her myself, but the woman will get her payment! Am I right, Baba?” It was Cindy’s turn to speak. She told me how the woman was selling ear rings from Africa, she didn’t want to buy them but the Mexicans were making fun of her, she thought as a fellow black person, she is going to have her back and take ear rings from her, even if she is going to return them later. She forgot (you know Cindy, she’s very forgetful).” She didn’t want the ear rings and she hates the woman, she doesn’t want to support her business but she had to have her back in front of other races. Cindy refused to pay the woman. The woman wouldn’t take the ear rings back. This was after a month or so. I had to decide who was right or wrong. Why me L

Cindy was upset that her upset went behind her back and paid the woman, husband said he didn’t pay the woman. Cindy said the woman sent her a text saying Cindy’s husband had paid her. There was no way of proving who was lying between Husband and the Woman. Cindy was pissed that the husband didn’t have her back in this regard. I was just sitting them watching the back and forth of it all, wishing I could hide under a rock. Husband was talking over Cindy, Cindy was talking over husband. The lil one was yelling at the top of her voice. It was quite something!

Eventually, husband blamed me for taking Cindy’s side and was like what was he thinking asking me to be unbiased anyway, blah blah blah, and walked away, simply because I asked him to let Cindy finish talking and not talk over her because she had let him finish when it was his turn. Childish, if you ask me. 

The arguments didn’t stop there, they went on and on and on for days and weeks. While husband was at work, Cindy would tell me how she wants to put cameras around the house and film some of their arguments to use as evidence, just in case. I told her that was illegal but why not start with just the Cellphone recorder. That’s not gonna be as in your face putting cameras all over the house and getting busted. Do you know what she did? One day, in their heated arguments, she took out the phone, right in front of him and put it in between them and kept arguing. LMAO. Needless to say, he saw that and went berserk!