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by Jordan Belcher


  “Yeah. Get me a Pepsi.”

  Thankfully, the State never brought back up the murder case against Rodrick. But he still had to do time for his parole violation for coming in contact with the police without notifying his parole officer. I couldn’t believe that was actually a parole rule, but it was. Rodrick said there were endless rules to keep felons in a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality”—whatever that meant. At the most, he’d have to do six more months. But for Kylie’s sake, hopefully the board would give him an early review.

  We sat down in plastic chairs at our table. Kylie was behind us in the visiting room’s play area, building a Lego house with a girl close to her age. I unwrapped my burrito and took a bite.

  “I have to ask you something, Rodrick.”

  “Wussup?”

  “Did I mess up your life?”

  He looked confused. “How could you do that?”

  “By getting pregnant. You had a good future ahead of you with the basketball scholarship and everything. I remember you started hustling after that to take care of Kylie. I know if I would have never gotten pregnant, you would probably be playing pro. I always wondered if that’s why you cheated on me so much… because you resented me.”

  “You got it all wrong. I started hustling before I found out you was pregnant. And when I did find out, that just made me hustle that much harder. Then I got busted and they took the scholarship away when I got convicted. But that’s my fault. And you had a scholarship to Clark Atlanta. You turned that down to raise Kylie in Kansas City. I could be to blame for you only being able to get your associate’s from that online course. Who knows how far you would’ve went if you had gone to Atlanta. To be honest, I started trying to get you pregnant when I found out you got yo scholarship. I figured you was about to do big things and I wanted to keep you, get you pregnant before one of them niggas down there did. So I’m sorry for doing you wrong.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “I didn’t cheat because I resented you. I cheated because I was stupid. When I got out of prison the first time, I felt like I owed every female that sent me a letter. Fuckin’ all of ‘em was my way of saying thank you. You know how appreciative I am, Tyesha. But that was a twisted, selfish way of thinking. I’ve since learned from my mistakes. That’s why I stopped that cheating shit.”

  “You stopped? When?”

  One of the guards walked up and told me to keep my hands visible on the table. He also made Rodrick tuck in his prison red shirt and hand over the rubberband holding up his dreads. Rubberbands weren’t allowed.

  “I been done stopped,” Rodrick told me when the guard walked off. “And not just since I got locked up again.”

  “You’ll never change, Rodrick. I’ve learned that some people never will. You can’t force people to change; the only person you can change is yourself. The only reason I came up here was so you could see your daughter. And to tell you that I’m moving on.”

  “Hold up, Tyesha. I just told you that I stopped cheating.”

  “That’s funny. Because the one bitch I just knew you would never talk to again, Dava Babcock, just posted a picture of a letter you sent her two days ago. And before you fix your face to tell a lie, let me ad lib what the letter said. ‘Dear Dava, I can’t wait till I get out so I can suck on that juice box again. I promise you I’ll put it on you harder than before. No, you don’t have to worry about me getting out and getting with my baby momma. Me and her are just friends. She’s coming to see me Saturday just so I can see my daughter, but I got you on the list for Sunday. Thanks for the bread. A nigga been eatin’ good in here. If the board calls me for that review, I’ll be home before our baby is born. You just make sure you eat right and keep your Temple healthy and nutritious.” Clearing my throat to stop myself from crying, I said, “I would be able to tell you what the rest of the letter said but the guards wouldn’t let me bring in my phone. But it sure did look like your handwriting and your scribbly-ass signature.”

  He leaned back in his seat and sighed.

  We really didn’t have much to talk about for the rest of the visit. He asked to take a picture with Kylie and I didn’t mind. I paid for three images and stood behind the photographer as they posed together.

  “When’s the next time you coming up?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ll try to bring Kylie at least once a month.”

  When I got back to my car, I buckled Kylie in her booster seat. I got in behind the wheel and checked the comments from The Site on my phone. Earlier I had uploaded pictures of me and Kylie and Landon—and his two little girls, Kendal and Kayla—posing in front of Kaleidoscope’s glass doors at Crown Center. Landon made a comment that he was glad he didn’t get arrested this time. I laughed and clicked Like.

  The private message box in the corner of my display screen was lit.

  I tapped it with my thumb and read the message that appeared.

  Rick Myers: I’ll be waiting patiently until the next time I can see you again.

  The message was sent to me thirty minutes ago from Cameron, Missouri. I knew Gideon Byers was locked up for 25 years in a maximum security prison in that town. “Rick Myers” was his fake Site name, which he’d been using all this time to stalk and spy on me. If he sent this message, it meant that he’d smuggled a cell phone into the institution somehow.

  My first thought was to go to my settings and block him from viewing my page. But then I decided to let him keep watching. I knew one day I’d find a good man and start a family, and I wanted Gideon to see every step, to suffer every time I posted how happy I was, to get angry when I uploaded my wedding photos, to cry when he saw our child’s beautiful face.

  For him—but more importantly for myself—I was determined to live a blessed life. And to move forward, first I had to swallow my pride and take a step back.

  -

  Tyesha816 went from in a relationship to single.

  Also by Felony Books

  Blacktop Hustlaz

  Tre Pound

  Tre Pound 2: Troublesome

  R.I.C.O

  R.I.C.O. 2: The New Regime

  R.I.C.O. 3: Hostile Takeover

  Please visit us at:

  www.felonybooks.com

  www.facebook.com/FelonyBooks

  @FelonyBooks

  The following is an excerpt from:

  STATUS 2

  CHAPTER 1

  It took two hours for me and my daughter to get here. Normally, she wouldn’t even be able to sit still for twenty minutes, but I kept her occupied with a new Disney movie on my smartphone.

  We pulled into the prison parking lot, tires crunching over patches of snow. Rodrick told me ahead of time not to park in the same spot as usual, and I didn’t. I drove straight to the end of the lot where the big gate was. There were other people standing outside their cars in big coats and skull caps, waiting on their loved ones to be released. Me and Kylie parked and joined them.

  “If you get cold,” I said to her, “you can get back in the car.”

  “I’m fine,” Kylie said happily.

  I smiled. She couldn’t wait to hug her daddy outside of prison walls. The whole time he’d been down she would ask when he was coming home. She had the countdown on her calendar.

  A guard stepped outside of one of the side buildings. “They’ll be out in just a moment, people,” he said. “When you see them come out, do not run up to the gate. I repeat, DO NOT run up to the gate. If you do, you just might be shot down. They’ll cross the parking lot and come to you. Thank you for your cooperation.” He stepped back inside.

  “Asshole,” said a young white woman on the side of me.

  “Amen,” I agreed.

  “Are you here to pick up your husband?” she asked me.

  “Oh no. I’m not married.”

  “I’ve been married to this man about to walk out for six years. I met him and married him while he’s been locked up. We’ve only known each other through
visits and letters, and today will mark the day we get to spend the rest of our lives together. I have butterflies. I can’t keep still.”

  “I know how you feel. Congratulations.”

  It reminded me of the first time Rodrick walked out of MCC in Moberly, Missouri. It was his first time down, and he’d promised me he was going to get out and get on his feet and marry me as soon as he was financially able to. I was just as giddy and excited as the woman next to me.

  But the marriage proposal never came. Only lies and betrayal.

  I wasn’t looking for anything from Rodrick Brown this time. All I wanted for him to do was take care of his daughter.

  My phone beeped in my pocket. I had to take one of my mittens off to tap the touchscreen. I had a text message from my unofficial boyfriend. I liked to call him my “man friend.”

  Fedbound Marley: Where you at?

  Tyesha816: I just got to Moberly.

  Fedbound Marley: Oh

  Tyesha816: What did you want?

  Then my phone started ringing. I picked it up.

  “Hey, honey,” I said.

  “Wussup, cute buns. I just wanted to know if you wanted to go out to see a movie tonight. Me, you, and Kylie. I didn’t know you were going to see him today. You’ll probably be too tired when you get back to Kansas City, huh?”

  “Yeah, not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

  He paused. “You okay? You don’t sound good.”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him that Rodrick was being released today and I was here to pick him up. Actually, that information probably wouldn’t even get him that upset, but when he found out that Rodrick would be living with me because he had nowhere else to homeplan to, I know that would get under Marley’s skin. And Marley wasn’t even the type of person to get outrageously mad, but I know I would see it in his actions—he’d probably stop calling me as much, he might not come over again, I’d have to go over to his place. Rodrick living with me was only going to be temporary, though. Hopefully me and Marley’s unofficial relationship—we both agreed to keep our Site status on “single”—could hold strong long enough.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just cold out here.”

  “Well, don’t let me hold you up. Tell him I said wussup.”

  “Yeah right.”

  He laughed and then we hung up.

  The white woman started clapping loudly. “They’re opening the gate!”

  I watched as a line of inmates dressed in street clothes filed out of the building on the other side of the fence. The white lady waved at a Black man with dreads in his hair, and I turned to her with a look of horror, until she said his name.

  “Hi, Howard! I love you!”

  I shook my head and let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Rodrick.

  He was the last one to come out of the building. His dreads were a lot longer than the other guy’s. He had on the clothes that he told me to send him for his coming home dress-outs—a black pea coat, some kind of Vintage for the Vain tee that he must have seen in a magazine, black slacks and matching Louis Vuitton loafers. He looked like he owned the prison, and I’m sure that was the look he was going for.

  “Daddy!” beamed Kylie.

  I had to hold on to her to keep her from running across the parking lot. When he got near, I let her go and he swooped her up in his arms.

  “Oh, I missed you so much, baby girl,” he said to her with tears in his eyes.

  I felt tears coming to my own eyes. I batted them back.

  He walked over to me with our daughter on his hip. “Hey, Momma,” he said.

  “I parked right down there,” I replied without emotion.

  “Okay. We’ll leave in just a moment.”

  When he set Kylie down, I thought he was about to ask me for a hug. But he didn’t. His Black butt got down on one knee.

  Oh my God!

  He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a white ring. It looked like he made it out of toilet paper, soaked in water and hardened into a tiny circle. The tears started coming down my cheeks. This couldn’t be happening!

  “Will you marry me?” Rodrick asked.

  The other families standing around us began to gasp and clap in celebration.

  “Yes!” Kylie exclaimed.

  Everybody laughed, including me.

  Copyright

  Felony Books, a division of Olive Group, LLC,

  P.O. Box 1577, Belton, MO 64012

  Copyright © 2013 by Jordan Belcher

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Felony Books, P.O. Box 1577, Belton, MO 64012.

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Felony Books at www.felonybooks.com

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