Tron let out a deep breath. “And what would that be, mother?” he asked.
Brenda glanced sharply over at Tron, knowing that he was being sarcastic when he used the term mother in his sentences. “Anyway,” she said. “Just tell me this. Are these twins the product of one of them situations you younger people call a break baby?”
Tron snickered. “Not really,” he answered, feeling honest and bold. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Then what would you say?” Brenda asked. “How did you meet this girl, Tron? What kind of person is she?”
Tron raised his shoulders and extended his arms. “Well, mama,” he said. “She was just this chick, you know, that I was kickin’ it with. That’s all. And then this happened.”
“Tron, be honest with me,” Brenda said. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some old person that don’t know what’s goin’ on out here. Is this young lady the reason that you and Shawna broke up? Was she a, what do you all call it these days since so many of you choose to not get married, a side chick?”
As much as Tron didn’t want to admit it, he struggled to think of ways around his mother’s questions. In fact, he wished that she wouldn’t have even asked them to begin with. He looked over at his mother, realizing that he was a grown man and not a boy. He had to keep it real with his mother and just be honest.
“Yeah,” Tron said. “I guess you could say that she was somethin’ like that. I ain’t too proud of it either, but I’m takin’ care of my responsibilities.”
“You know how I feel about this kinda mess,” Brenda said. “Now you got little Ebony down in Louisville with Andria, who at least has some damn sense and y’all were in some sort of relationship together. Then you got twins up here in Indianapolis with this Desirae person. God, son, please don’t have me meetin’ some, whatever y’all call it these days, a thot or whatever I hear the kids sayin’ now. Please, tell me she ain’t some big booty-fied girl with a bunch of fake hair and stuff.”
Tron snickered and shook his head. He wanted to laugh out loud, but he knew that such a response would really cause his mother to worry. Instead, he opted to remain silent. Within two or three minutes, he’d pulled his SUV into a parking spot in front of Desirae’s mother’s house.
“Well,” Brenda said, looking at the block. “This doesn’t look all that bad I don’t guess. Maybe she is a nice girl or somethin’ with a nice upbringing.”
Tron went ahead and climbed out of his truck, not bothering to say anything to his mother’s comments. He just wanted this meeting to be quick and painless. If he had it his way, they’d meet in the parking lot at a busy intersection. That way, the meeting would truly be quick.
As Tron walked his mother up the walkway and toward the front porch, the front door opened. Tron looked at his mother. Barely opening his mouth, he said to her, “Be nice, Mama. Be nice.”
“What you mean be nice?” Brenda asked, feeling appalled at such a remark. “I’m always nice.”
Tron helped his mother into the house where he and she stepped up to Desirae. She’d been standing in the living room, with her best smile on. Tron quickly looked her up and down, seeing how she looked ghetto in some ways, but was at least presentable. Without realizing it, Tron had licked his lips, seeing that no matter what Desirae wore, her ass and hips would look as if they could have their own zip code.
Desirae looked at Tron’s mother and introduced herself. “Hey, I’m Desirae,” she said to the older woman, who was in her mid-fifties and still in rather good shape. “I like that haircut on you.”
Brenda smiled and hugged Desirae. “I’m Brenda,” she said. “I’m Tron’s mother. It is so nice to finally meet you, Desirae.” Brenda looked Desirae up and down. “Well, I see you must’ve had a good pregnancy. You’re still in shape.”
“I did gain some weight,” Desirae said, “but a lot of it was proportionate. I still watch what I eat ‘cause I don’t need to gain no more weight.”
“Oh, okay,” Brenda said. “Well, if you don’t mind, can I please see my grandbabies. I gotta see these grandbabies.”
“Of course,” Desirae said, smiling. She pointed toward the dining room. “James and Titan are right in there.”
As Brenda headed into the dining room, Desirae turned and looked at Tron. She gave him a sharp look, knowing that he was probably having to suffer from looking at something that he couldn’t have. Furthermore, minutes before Tron and his mother had come walking through the door, Desirae spent a considerable amount of time and energy in the mirror, making sure that her makeup did a good job of hiding the remaining scratches on her face. “Hello, Tron.”
“Hello, De…”
Just as Tron was speaking to Desirae, she had turned around and was now heading into the dining room. For the next ten minutes or so, Tron sat at one end of the dining room table while his mother and Desirae quickly got to know one another. His mother asked Desirae what was her field of work. Of course, Desirae’s response could only be that she was looking for a job at the moment. Desirae had decided to simply leave the Family Dollar fiasco out of the equation.
Another question Brenda asked Desirae was what kinds of arrangements she’d had for childcare. Once again, Desirae’s true response would not have been favorable. Lying, as she knew she’d need to do considering that she wasn’t working, she told Tron’s mother that she had a cousin who would watch the twins when she needed and was available full-time once she found a job.
“Alright, well,” Brenda said. “I guess we’d better get to going now, huh, Tron?” Brenda stood up and pushed her chair in as she held Titan. Together, Desirae held James as Tron’s mother held Titan. Tron grabbed the baby bag that Desirae had made and followed the two women out to his SUV. A little ways back from Desirae and his mother, who chatted to one another, Tron noticed a nice SUV parked up the street, probably four or five spaces down the block from Tron’s truck. While he was admiring the detail of the truck, as well as how clean it was, his eyes met with the man behind the wheel. Instantly, Tron recognized those eyes. He squinted, looking closer. Quickly, he figured out what was going on and looked at the back of Desirae, her big ass swaying from left to right.
“Desirae?” he said, quietly. As Desirae did not turn around, Tron looked back to the SUV. The person behind the wheel was a face he remembered from when he was a teenager and out in the streets, dealing drugs: D’Mann. Instantly, Tron locked eyes with him. Never in his life had he needed to use so much energy to keep from saying something to Desirae about it. As there was no doubt in his mind that D’Mann was there to see Desirae, Tron wondered how the two knew one another. Beyond that, he also wondered if Desirae really knew what she was getting into by messing around with a guy like that. All of the memories and the stories Tron used to hear about D’Mann came flooding back into his mind. Actually, he was feeling somewhat surprised that a guy like D’Mann had even managed to avoid prison.
Tron, Desirae, and his mother, all carrying the twins and their baby bag, crossed the sidewalk and approached Tron’s SUV. Keeping his eyes on D’Mann up the block, Tron walked around the back of his car and opened the doors. In a very gentlemanly way, Tron helped Desirae and his mother load Titan and James into their car seats and then shut the door.
“Okay, Desirae,” Brenda said. “We’re gonna get goin’ now. It was so nice meetin’ you, again. Well, for the first time.”
“Yes, it was nice meetin’ you too,” Desirae said, smiling. “Maybe I’ll see you again, like when you two drop them off tomorrow or on Sunday.”
“Yeah,” Brenda said. “Maybe.”
The two hugged before Brenda climbed into the SUV, leaving Tron and Desirae standing out in the street. Tron leaned in closer to her. “Desirae,” he said, “Who the fuck is that?” He shifted his eyes toward D’Mann’s SUV. Desirae glanced that way then back to Tron.
“What is it to you?” she asked. “What difference does it make to you?”
Tron stood there, biting his lip. He knew that if he said any
thing, it would only be vindicating what was going through Desirae’s mind. Any response he gave would only prove Desirae to be right. “You don’t know that nigga,” he said, quietly.
“You don’t know who I know,” Desirae said. She then walked off and back toward the house. Tron’s eyes followed the back of her, not forgetting to look at her ass. Desirae looked back and waved at Tron’s mother before Tron looked her dead in the eye and nodded. He knew that he was going to talk to her the first chance he got. There was just no way he was going to be able to sleep at night knowing that the mother of his sons was messing around with D’Mann. Even if only half of the things he’d heard about D’Mann were true, Desirae being with him in any way would still be twice as scary.
Tron swallowed his pride and watched Desirae walk back into her mother’s house as he climbed back behind the wheel. As he pulled off, he looked in the rearview mirror and back at the other end of the block. He could see D’Mann getting out of the SUV and walking up to the house. Reluctantly, Tron pulled his eyes away and focused on the road ahead of him.
“Everything okay, Tron?” Brenda asked her son, noticing that he seemed preoccupied with something.
Tron nodded. “Yeah,” he answered, sounding very unsure. “Everything is okay, Mama.”
***
When Desirae went into the house, she waited in the living room for D’Mann to walk up onto the front porch. She smiled when she saw him, watching him walk so confidently into the living room.
“Everything go okay?” D’Mann asked. “That nigga ain’t give you no problems, did he?”
“Hell naw, he ain’t give me no problems,” Desirae said. “You saw his mama when they came out of the house. She was standin’ right here, well, in there, next to him the entire time. He ain’t say nothin’ that he shouldn’t say. He ain’t even look at me the wrong way.”
“The nigga was mean muggin’ me when he walked out to his truck,” D’Mann said. “With how he was lookin’ at me, nigga was lookin’ like he wanted me to jump out the truck and across that street so we could box and shit. But yeah, like you said, I saw the older lady he was with and knew that she was probably his mama or auntie or whatever you told me. Enough about that nigga, though.” D’Mann leaned in and kissed Desirae softly as he reached around and grabbed a handful of her ass. “You ready to go or what? You think they gon’ keep the babies until Saturday or Sunday?”
Desirae moved about the living room then dining room. She gathered her purse then her cell phone and slid into her jacket. “Hell yeah, I’m ready,” she answered. “And I still don’t know. I gotta watch the news to see. Knowin’ him and how he be so busy with stuff, he’ll probably be dropping them back off by the early afternoon or somethin’. I’mma just watch for his text and stuff, you know.”
Desirae led D’Mann out of the house, locking the door behind her. The two of them climbed into his truck and headed to an upscale mall in Caramel, a small rather-wealthy suburb north of Indianapolis. When D’Mann pulled into a parking spot close to the door, he could already see the look of excitement on Desirae’s face.
“Damn,” he said, chuckling. “You over there lookin’ like you ain’t never been to a mall or nothin’. Mister Baby Daddy, Mister Suave never took you and bought you nothin’?”
Desirae looked at D’Mann with the eyes of a brokenhearted woman. “No,” she answered, shaking her head. “Shit, when me and him was kickin’ it, he never even took me anywhere. Really, he would just come over to my apartment and fuck and then leave. Sometime he would chill and smoke with me, back when I used to keep that good shit on me at my apartment out on the south side. But no, he never took me nowhere or did anythin’ with me other than fuck.”
D’Mann shook his head. “Yeah, that’s some foul shit,” he said. “Well, here’s what I wanna do. We gon’ go in this mall cause I know you done had you a stressful week with everything that happened. We gon’ go in this mall, and I want you to only spend a stack, okay?”
“A stack?” Desirae asked. “You want me to go in here and shop with a thousand dollars.”
“If that’s a problem, then we can go to the dollar store,” D’Mann said, sarcastically.
Desirae looked at D’Mann with squinting eyes, smiling. “See, now you try’na be funny.”
The two of them headed into the mall. Inside, Desirae nearly lost her mind. There were so many stores, some of which were not located in shopping centers and malls in the city. Desirae felt as if she were in a fantasy or some sort of whimsical dream. With D’Mann at her side, as well as his pockets, the two of them walked into basically any store that piqued Desirae’s interest. For once in her life, she felt so sophisticated. She looked around at the white mannequins, who all looked so stylish in the name-brand pants suits. Desirae told herself that when she became successful one day, and maybe a little slimmer, she wanted to be one of those older black women she’d see around the city who looked sharp in a pants suit.
D’Mann liked that he was making Desirae feel better. From where he stood, it seemed as if she’d forgotten about what had happened with her face. When Desirae walked in and out of a store, D’Mann made sure to keep his focus on her ass. No matter where she went, he always knew just how to find her—he simply needed to scan the area and find that ass.
When the two of them walked down the mall and were passing by Victoria’s Secret, D’Mann noticed how Desirae didn’t even bother to look inside of the store. He grabbed her arm and pointed. “What about here?” he asked, smiling. “You can’t let a nigga buy you a little somethin’ to wear and shit, since we here already?”
Desirae’s neck snapped back as she smiled. “Nigga, what you mean?” she asked.
“You know what a nigga talkin’ about,” D’Mann said, raising his eyebrows. “I wanna see what that ass look like in somethin’ white and see-through.”
“Oh, really?” Desirae asked. “Okay.” She pushed him back and pointed at some white benches sitting out in the middle of the mall walkway. “Wait right there while I go in there and pick out somethin’ you might like then.”
D’Mann smiled and backed away, sitting down on one of the benches. While he sat there, checking messages, Desirae browsed Victoria Secret, looking for something white that she could put on that would really have D’Mann eating out of the palm of her hand. Once she’d found something, she used the money he’d given her already and bought it. When she came back out into the mall, she grabbed him and the two of them continued walking.
Later, when D’Mann pulled up at his house, he put the car into PARK and began to get out of the car. Desirae looked at the house then back to D’Mann. “Hold up,” she said, thinking about the basement. “You sure that everything is okay? You don’t think that we gon’ be woken up in the middle of the night and have to be walkin’ out the door in handcuffs or stuff like that, do you?”
“Naw,” D’Mann said. “Trust me, you coo. A nigga got all night to spend with you and shit. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. I told you, we got rid of him and we got rid of the nigga’s car. Ain’t even heard shit about it since, if you want the truth.”
“You sure we can’t just go stay at a hotel or somethin’?” Desirae asked, feeling uneasy. “I mean, you know, so I don’t have to sit up and deal with havin’ some bad feelin’ or nothin’.”
“Yeah, we could,” D’Mann said. “But then I won’t be able to dick you down like a nigga really want to.”
Desirae looked at D’Mann then down toward his crotch. She smiled. “Oh, is that so?” she said.
“Look, I know how you feelin’,” D’Mann said. “Look, let’s do this. We can go grab a Redbox movie since we forgot to before we pulled up outside the house. If you get in there and just feelin’ like you not gon’ be able to sleep easy, just let a nigga know. I put it on everything I own that I’ll get up, put my clothes on, and we can go to a hotel or somethin’. No problem, I swear.”
Desirae agreed, trying to be optimistic about the entire situation. They he
aded to a Kroger on West Washington Street and got a couple of movies to watch for the night out of the Redbox machine. Between what had been going on with Tron, being pregnant with twins for nine months, then having to cope with being a young, single mother to two baby boys, Desirae was just happy to be out of the house and doing something normal. She was unsure if she would even answer her phone, as she was more than confident that Tron’s mother could take care of James and Titan.
Back at D’Mann’s house, he and Desirae smoked a blunt and shared a bottle of wine together after they popped in one of the DVDs they’d gotten. They were so interested in one another that they completely forgot to really watch the movies they picked out.
Once the clock struck 11 o’clock, D’Mann knew it was about to go down. He’d shared a blunt with Desirae and had drunk a few glasses of wine. Feeling totally relaxed and very turned on by just being able to look over at Desirae’s bodacious thighs, he had had enough of the talking at this point.
“So,” D’Mann said, smiling, “when do a nigga get to see that ass in whatever you bought when you went into Victoria’s Secret and didn’t even wanna let a nigga come in and help you pick somethin’ out?”
“Don’t say it like that,” Desirae said. “Plus, that would’ve felt awkward. A man walkin’ around Victoria’s Secret with me. I don’t know if I could do that. Plus, you know how them white people up in Caramel be actin’ when they see some niggas walkin’. You know they think we all shoplift and can’t buy nothin’. They prolly woulda rushed right on over to assist you, even though you was with me.”
D’Mann nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I bet they would have. But fuck all that at this point. A nigga wanna see what you got.”
Desirae stood up and smiled. She’d brought her bags into the house and pushed them all into a corner behind the door. In many ways, it was a lot like Christmas to her. While there was no tree, nor lights, and certainly no snow outside at this time of year, she couldn’t help but smile when she looked across the room and saw so many shopping bags. It seemed unreal, but she was so grateful. Lord knows that she needed to ease her mind and getting some new clothes, jewelry, and purses was surely a way to do it.
The Diary of a Side Chick 6 (SCD) Page 18