by Cachet
Now, at the bus stop, Dominique took a seat on the bench. As she watched the many cars whizz by, she thought about her situation. She didn’t have a normal life like other sixteen year olds. She couldn’t stay out late, hang out with her friends, or have slumber parties like the other girls in school. In fact, she could barely come outside at all because her mother wouldn’t allow her to do anything other than watch after the kids. This put a strain on her relationship with Kaleb; a relationship that Dominique was surprised had lasted that long. If she would have been a guy, she knew for sure that she wouldn’t even think to date the girl who could never do anything but stay in the house. Dominique could barely talk on the phone, which is why her and Kaleb’s relationship was strictly something that happened at school.
Taking all of those things into consideration, Dominique began to grasp the fact that maybe Kaleb actually had a right to be upset. He had been patient with her and up until that day, he had done a damn good job of being a great boyfriend. The two of them loved one another and had plans to marry once they finished school. After, she would go to college, while he got a job until he could purchase his first property, which he would flip and start all over again. They would have two children and raise them in a loving home. Kaleb and Dominique had their entire lives planned out and although she knew that it wouldn’t be perfect like they predicted, Dominique was willing to stick it out with him.
Maybe I should just go ahead and do it, she rationalized with herself.
Right away, Dominique wished that it was as easy as it seemed like it should have been. She wished that it was just simply her lying down and allowing him to make love to her. It wasn’t though, and she didn’t know how exactly to explain that to Kaleb because she knew that he wouldn’t understand. Things were different now and just the thought of telling him what she was forced to hide was enough to make her sick to her stomach. Dominique knew that, eventually, she would have to open up and share her secret because if Kaleb were to hear it from someone else, mainly her mother, he wouldn’t believe anything she said afterwards and would swear that she was in fact just playing games.
By the time the bus pulled up, Dominique had come to a conclusion. She was going to tell Kaleb everything after the party the following night. She just hoped that he wouldn’t look at her differently after she told him that she was no longer a virgin, like he believed her to be.
Chapter Four
“Keep your head up Pumpkin, and don’t let your dumb ass mother drive you too crazy,” Jessie said to his daughter the following day. “You don’t have long before you’ll be going away for college and away from her evil ass for good,” he told her seriously.
Dominique giggled, “I know daddy and I can’t wait.”
“I know you can’t. Just stick it out and keep making your daddy proud. You hear me?”
“I most certainly will.”
I love you baby girl,” he told her, hating the fact that they had to get off the phone.
“I love you too daddy and I’ll talk to you next week,” Dominique replied, right before the operator disconnected the call.
They had just had a fifteen-minute conversation about everything under the sun in that short amount of time. Jessie had asked his daughter about school, his other children, and life in general, like he always did. Even with him being locked away, he still cared about all of his children’s wellbeing and always wanted to make sure that they were okay, even though his ex-wife refused to let him speak to most of them. That is why when Dominique told him about how Monique was treating her, he lost it; even after he’d promised that he wouldn’t. Jessie didn’t play any games when it came to his children, especially his Pumpkin, and Monique knew that.
Dominique was not only Jessie’s first born, but she also had a special place in his heart as well. One of the reasons was the fact that she was a splitting image of him. They looked exactly alike, with the same color skin tone and bright round eyes. His parents used to always joke that Dominique was the girl version of Jessie, and whenever they were all together, they would always pull out the photo album and put both of their baby pictures side by side to prove their point. Not only were they twins, but Dominque acted just like her father. Both were very kind-hearted, loving, and would give you the shirt off of their backs. The flip side of that was that they were both ticking time bombs. If pushed too far, they were both liable to cause damage to anyone in their way once they got angry. Dominique knew what her father was capable of from the many times that she sneakily looked on while he beat her mother, and that is why she really didn’t want to tell him what was going on inside his old home.
Once she did, Jessie’s blood boiled. He knew that the only reason that Monique was treating Dominique that way was because she knew that he could no longer do anything about it. Monique was not only a very spiteful person, but she had always been jealous of the way that he treated his daughter. She used to complain all of the time about how if it came down to it, he would choose Dominique over her. Jessie never actually argued with her about it because what she was saying was the truth. He did love his daughter more and hated that he had to leave her alone with her bitch of a mother. The choice was not his to make though and one event made sure of that. Once he was arrested and hauled off to jail, he began to question the decisions that he’d made many years prior.
Jessie McDonald had just begun his senior year of high school and it was then that he encountered Monique. Their union was not one of a storybook romance. In fact, it was quite the opposite. One day at one of the basketball games held at their school, they struck up a conversation. Monique had always thought that Jessie was cute and wanted to see what was up with the quiet guy that all the girls secretly liked. That evening, one thing led to another, and they ended up having sex in the back of Jessie’s car. Since Monique was always known as an easy kind of girl, Jessie didn’t bother to give her a second glance after it was all said and done. Because of the reputation she carried, he knew he was nothing special, considering that he’d heard rumors about all of the other guys that she’d been with. In Jessie’s eyes, it was nothing more than one night of sex and he was fine with that.
That was, until Monique showed up at his door a few weeks later letting him know that she was pregnant and that he was the father. Right away, Jessie didn’t believe her because he knew for a fact that he wasn’t the only person that she had slept with, and he told her exactly that before telling her to get the hell away from his house. They began to argue back and forth, which caught the attention of his mother, Franny, who came to the door to see what was going on. Upon hearing what her son had gotten himself into, she told Monique that if the baby was Jessie’s, that they would step up and help her to provide for the child. This was a shock to Monique, who only came over to Jessie’s to see if she could get some abortion money. She didn’t want to have a baby at all because she knew that it would alter her lifestyle. Unfortunately for her, neither of Jessie’s parents believed in abortions. It didn’t help that her mother refused to give her a dime and told her, ‘You laid yo’ ass down and got pregnant, now you deal with it’.
Eight months later, Dominique was born and as soon as everyone laid eyes on her, they all knew that there was no doubt that she was indeed Jessie’s. Immediately, Jessie and his family stepped up and started to help provide for the beautiful baby girl who looked just like her father did when he was that age. They purchased everything that Dominique needed, from the crib to clothes and everything in between. In fact, Jessie’s parents all but moved Dominique in. They had her over their house more than she was at home with her mother; which was okay with her because she didn’t really want the child in the first place. If it were up to Monique, they could have taken Dominique forever and she wouldn’t have cared one bit.
A few weeks later, they all learned what they pretty much already knew and that was that Jessie was, in fact, the father of Dominique. With the DNA results in hand, Jessie called Monique over and proposed to her right there in t
he living room of his parents’ house. Jessie’s offer to marry her had absolutely nothing to do with love because he didn’t feel that way about Monique at all. He proposed because he knew that it was the right thing to do, since she was the mother of his child. Although his parents didn’t think that it was a good idea, his mother especially, they stood behind their son and promised to help him out as much as they could. Taken back, Monique said yes to be Jessie’s wife. Of course, she didn’t love him either or the child that she had just given birth to. She agreed to get married only because she saw it as a way out. Not only did she desperately want to get away from her abusive, alcoholic mother, but she knew that Jessie came from a well off family and she wanted to capitalize on it.
A little over a month later, Jessie graduated and the following week, they were married in a small ceremony in his parents’ backyard. As a wedding present, Jessie’s father gave him the paperwork to the construction company that he owned. With him retiring soon, he wanted his son to take over the business, which was always the plan that he had. This made Jessie happy because not only did he want to make his parents proud, but he was looking forward to being able to provide for his small family. Monique, on the other hand, was ecstatic because she knew that she had finally caught a good one. Seeing that her husband was on his way to the big bucks, the eighteen-year-old Monique immediately dropped out of high school. Her actions didn’t come as a shocker to anyone because she was only in the ninth grade to begin with. Other than being cute, dressing nice, and having a killer body, Monique didn’t have anything else going for her. Now that she was married, she figured she could ride off of Jessie’s coattail for as long as he allowed her to.
By the time Dominique was one, Jessie had saved up enough money for a down payment to move them out of his parents’ house and into their own. It was a four bedroom, two and a half brick townhouse that Monique absolutely loved. With Jessie giving her the okay, she busied herself decorating each of the rooms exactly the way she wanted. Once the home was completely furnished, Monique invited her mother and a few of her family members over. That was only a onetime thing because after a fight broke out between her mother and aunt, Jessie banned them all from coming back to their house. Monique didn’t care either way because she had only invited her family over so that she could rub her new cushy lifestyle in their faces. After that was done, she didn’t care if she’d ever saw either one of them again.
Things were going pretty good in the beginning. Jessie was running the construction company, and Monique had settled into being a stay at home mom. She tried her best to bond with her child, but her motherly instincts just never clicked. While Jessie was away at work, Monique pretty much allowed Dominique to do whatever it was that she wanted, while she sat around drinking and watching soap operas. Monique struggled to keep her old self locked up, but it was extremely hard. She had never pictured herself as a mother, and even though she was in fact one, she didn’t want to stay cooped up in the house all of the time with a daughter that she didn’t even want. Being a homebody was slowly driving Monique insane, but she suppressed it as much as she could because she knew just how much she could lose if she didn’t.
That tactic worked for a few years before the signs really began to show. Jessie knew what his wife was capable of, so he steered her on a clear path as much as he could. He was no fool though and knew that it was only a matter of time before Monique started to fall back into her old habits again. Right after Dominique turned two, Monique had Tiffany and it seemed like every other year after that, she was pregnant again. By the time they were both twenty-seven, Monique had given birth to a total of seven children. Soon after, Jessie’s best friend, Nicole, died from complications from diabetes, leaving behind her nine-year-old daughter, NiChia. With the child having nowhere else to go, Jessie brought her home to raise with his children, bringing their total up to eight.
After NiChia came to live with them, Monique lost it. She was already overwhelmed with her own children. Having just given birth to their youngest child, Eva, Monique was trying her best to take care of the household, but it was tiresome. Not to mention, their one year old twins, Taylor and Skylar who had ADD. Just dealing with them day in and day out was a chore in itself. So, for Jessie to add one more to the bunch was just too much for Monique. She thought that Jessie was being inconsiderate because he wasn’t the one who had to deal with the kids all day long. Not only that, but she didn’t give two shits about Nicole dying because she never liked the bitch anyway.
Monique swore that Jessie and Nicole had fucked around while they were together, and NiChia was a product of their infidelity. She had no clue that, although NiChia was in fact Jessie’s biological daughter, it wasn’t because he had cheated on her. He and Nicole had had sex a few times right after he and Monique had hooked up. Nicole found out she was pregnant not long after, but didn’t reveal the truth to Jessie. She led him to believe that she had gotten pregnant by a one-night stand. This tore Jessie up because he had always been secretly in love with her for as long as he could remember. He knew that he couldn’t say much because he had slipped up himself and had a baby on the way. He didn’t find out that NiChia was his until after she died.
Soon after, Jessie was contacted by a lawyer, who told him that Nicole had named him as a beneficiary of her life insurance policy. Jessie didn’t think anything of it because Nicole had no family other than her aunt, and she couldn’t stand her, so it made sense. Upon learning how much she’d left him, he was handed a letter handwritten by Nicole herself. In that letter, she revealed that NiChia was his daughter, and why she hadn’t told him before then. Her reasoning was that Jessie was already expecting a baby with another female and that it had hurt her feelings. She went on to explain that she planned to tell him once NiChia was born, but once she found out that he and Monique were getting married, she decided to leave them be. She didn’t want to bring drama in their fresh marriage, so she opted to keep it to herself. Nicole ended the letter, by letting Jessie know that she always loved him, before telling him to take care of their daughter. By the time Jessie had finished reading, he was in tears. Had he known that Nicole felt the same way that he did, he would have never married Monique in the first place. Armed with the knowledge of having yet another child, Jessie kept that information to himself because he knew that his wife wouldn’t understand. So he opted to pretend to adopt NiChia, and claim her as his child that way.
It didn’t matter either way because right after their nine year anniversary, Monique tossed the married life to the side and went back to her old ways. She started to drop all of the kids off at Jessie’s parents’ house whenever she could, just to get away. They’d stay there for hours at a time until Jessie got off of work and brought them home. Drinking and smoking had become a way of life for Monique, and whenever there was a party in her old hood, she was in attendance. This lasted for a few months before Jessie had had enough. He kicked her out and changed the locks. This was music to Monique’s ears, at first, because she was glad to finally be away from him and all of his nerve-wracking ass children. It didn’t take long before she began to run out of money, and with no funds, all of her so-called “friends” turned their backs on her. Many of them wouldn’t even let her sleep on their couch. It was then that Monique realized that she had seriously fucked up.
With nowhere else to go, Monique came crawling back to Jessie, with the promise that she would change. Even though he didn’t believe her, Jessie allowed her to come back because not only was it hard for him to raise them and work at the same time, but he also knew that the kids needed their mother, no matter how shitty she was.
Monique’s claim to ‘do right’ lasted for about a week, before she was at it again. This time, instead of putting her out of the house again, Jessie handled it a different way. When she called herself getting ready to walk out of the door, Jessie hauled off and smacked her down to the floor. She jumped up acting like she was bad, but after a few more licks, she surrendered and went
back up to their room. It surprised Jessie when he noticed that afterwards Monique acted like she had sense for about a month. After that, Jessie figured that that must be the best way to keep her in line. Whenever Monique would act up, he would smack her around. Jessie hated to put his hands on Monique, but if it meant that his children would have a mother at home with them, he was willing to do what he had to do.
This went on for the next three years. During that time, Monique had gotten better at hiding the things that she was doing. Since she couldn’t get away with dropping the kids off at their grandparents anymore, she started to drink heavily at home. She would hide multiple bottles of liquor all around the house, and once Jessie was gone to work, she would spend her entire day getting drunk. She was able to get away without him noticing, all the way up until the birth of their last child, Jada.
When Jada was born, Jessie knew that something wasn’t right with his daughter as soon as the nurse brought her over. Even though she was born eight weeks early, she was still much smaller than she should have been and truthfully, she didn’t look normal at all. Jessie spoke up about it and was told by the doctor that he would run some test. When the results came back, Jessie found out that Jada was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. To find that out was a shocker for him because he had no clue that his wife had been drinking during her pregnancy because he had never seen her. He knew that he worked a lot and wasn’t home much, but to not find not one bottle of alcohol in their house made him realize that Monique had been keeping it a secret. Not able to keep calm, Jessie lost it right there inside the hospital room.