I stared at him.
“Bigger? Your mother locked me outside on our wedding day.”
“Just wait a little while.”
He lowered his voice.
“You know how she is.”
“And you’re going to allow this?”
Brandon glanced nervously at the neighbors gathering along the street.
“I work for the city. I can’t afford a public scene.”
Then he added,
“My mother has high blood pressure. What if she gets upset and something happens?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Then he said the sentence that ended everything for me.
“A good wife has to learn how to adjust to her husband’s family.”
He walked away.
No discussion.
No apology.
Nothing.
A few minutes later, he was standing with his groomsmen, smoking as though his bride weren’t being publicly humiliated outside his mother’s gate.
My father approached and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“You don’t have to prove anything to these people,” he said softly. “If you want to leave, we’ll leave with you.”
Before I could answer, Brandon came back looking irritated.
“Stop looking like that,” he said. “You’re ruining the wedding.”
I stared at him for several seconds.
Then I let the bouquet fall.
I removed my veil.
Under the heavy bridal skirt, I had worn a simpler reception dress, so I unhooked the outer layer and handed it to my cousin.
Then I asked for her coat.
Brandon’s face lost its color.
“What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the second your mother locked that gate.”
I turned toward everyone.
“The wedding is cancelled.”
Mrs. Gertrude rushed forward, shouting.
Brandon reached toward my arm, but I stepped away before he could touch me.
“I’m not leaving because your family has less money than mine,” I told him.
“I’m leaving because your mother can humiliate someone and call it tradition—and you can stand there watching it happen and call that patience.”
I took my mother’s hand.
“We’re going back to Detroit.”
One by one, engines started along the street.
When I got into the car, Brandon ran after me and hit the window with his palm.
“You’ll regret this for the rest of your life!”
I looked through the glass at the house one last time.
He thought he had simply lost a bride.
What he didn’t understand yet was that his family had also just lost the use of nearly everything inside that house that I had paid for.
The next morning, they found out.
At nine o’clock, I returned to Grand Rapids.
No wedding dress this time.
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