Never Keeping Secrets

by Niobia Bryant

  “So which one is the daddy?” Diane asked, motioning her cigarette toward Keesha’s belly.

  Keesha just sat down on the edge of the bed and covered her face with her hands. She had completely forgotten in all of the Xavier fuckery that when she left the house Shawn was there with Corey.

  “Now you know how I feel, right?”

  She dropped her hands to her lap and eyed her mother. “I wouldn’t lie to my child for over twenty years, though,” she snapped, not in the mood for Diane’s particular brand of crazy.

  Keesha took no pleasure in two men fighting over her because she knew at the end of it all she would end up with neither. She had destroyed any chance with Corey and she didn’t know how she was going to recover from that.

  “All I’m saying is you shouldn’t be so hard on me now that my shoes are on your feet,” Diane added.

  Keesha reached over and took the cigarette, stubbing it out in the ashtray before she left the bedroom and went back down the stairs. It wasn’t until she was halfway down that she realized the house was quiet. Too quiet.

  She ran down to the living room and came to a stop at the sight of Corey’s body laying in the middle of the chaos she caused with a shard of glass plunged into his heart. “Noooooooo,” Keesha screamed in high-pitched terror as she ran over to him.

  Keesha fell to her knees beside him and held up her shaking hands, unsure of what to do to help him. “Oh Lord, Corey baby, please,” she said, her eyes frantic as the blood oozed from him and stained the carpet.

  His eyes stared straight up to the ceiling and his chest was still.

  “No, baby. No. No. No. No,” she begged, tears flowing as she rocked back and forth and picked up his lifeless hand to press kisses to it. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Keesha. Keesha, what’s wrong?” Diane hollered from up the stairs.

  “Co-Co-Co-Co,” Keesha tried to call his name as she shifted up to press kisses to his face, his hand still in hers tightly.

  She knew he was dead. Gone from her.

  And she knew that her actions had caused it. Her betrayal. Her decisions.

  She lay down on the floor beside him and pressed her head to his shoulder as she planted kisses onto his chest and cried uncontrollably. “Forgive me,” she mouthed, unable to speak as panic and grief struck her to her core.

  “I love you so much. I’m so sorry,” she mouthed in between her kisses.

  Kisses he would never return.

  She looked at the glass in his chest and her entire body literally shook with tears and deep mournful moans that could never fully release the pain she felt. The guilt she felt. The absolute loss.

  Something inside of her died. A place where sanity didn’t dwell took prominence. She felt completely swamped by a world that would never feel or see light and goodness. In that moment she couldn’t imagine the sun ever rising again. And if it did she knew she wouldn’t care.

  “Keesha!” Diane continued to call.

  It was all just too much to bear.

  The pills.

  She sat up and opened the purse she dropped to the floor and pulled out the bottle she took from Latoya earlier. With one long look at Corey’s dead body she emptied the pills into her hand and then swallowed them down. Gulp after gulp after gulp until there were none.

  “Keesha, what’s going on?” Diane screamed down again.

  She lay back down next to the man she loved, pressing her head on his shoulder again and entwining her hand with his as she waited to join him in death.

  Chapter 32

  Danielle

  Brrrnnnggg . . .

  Danielle felt like she had just laid her head down on the pillow before her phone began ringing on the nightstand, not very far from where her head lay. She picked up one plush pillow and pressed it down on her head, hoping for some relief. Her plane from Newark had just landed, and all she wanted to do was sleep off the combined effects of drama, emotions, red wine, and bad kidneys.

  Brrrnnnggg . . .

  She flung the pillow from her head and reached out in the darkness until she felt the phone and picked it up. “Hello,” she said, her voice filled with the sleep she wanted so very badly.

  “Ms. Johnson, I hate to awaken you but you have a visitor—”

  She frowned as she heard rustling against the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “Danielle, please tell your pushy doorman to let me enter, please.”

  She shot straight up in bed at the sound of Mohammed’s unmistakable voice. Her heart tap-danced on her ribs. “You’re in Los Angeles?” she asked, sitting up on the side of the bed to turn on the light.

  “Yes, and I’ve been traveling all day and I’m ready to see you,” he said with that Jamaica lilt that really should be criminal.

  She stood up and looked down at the white silk pajamas she wore and then yanked the silk scarf from around her head as she felt her excitement completely beat out her surprise. “Let me talk to George,” she said.

  The phone rustled again.

  “Yes, Ms. Johnson?”

  “Please direct Mr. Ahmad to my apartment,” she said, tucking the phone under her ear to smooth out the linens on her bed.

  “Enjoy your night,” he said.

  Danielle paused and arched her brow. “I will.”

  She ended the call and placed the phone back on the base before she left her bedroom and crossed the hall into her living room. Sniffing the air she retrieved a can of air freshener from the guest bathroom and gave the room a few bursts. She looked around, assessing what he would think of it. For three times the money of her New Jersey apartment she received one half of the space. Still, she had made sure that her stylish presence of clean lines and splashes of colors against neutrals was present.

  She jumped at the sound of the doorbell even though she was expecting Mohammed. She finger-combed her hair as she made her way to the door. She pulled it open with a smile, completely forgetting in her excitement that she had planned to never see Mohammed again.

  As soon as she opened the door she felt nothing but wind as Mohammed stormed past her. Danielle made a face and then turned to him as she pushed the door closed. “Well, hello,” she said.

  His jaw was tight.

  “Do I love you?” he asked.

  Danielle looked startled. “You’re asking me?”

  He ran his fingers through his slender dreads. “Okay, do you think I love you?” he asked, his hands now on his waist in the linen shorts he wore with a matching V-neck tee.

  Neither Jamaica nor Los Angeles weather paid attention to the fall season.

  Danielle took a few steps closer to him. “I know you love me,” she told him.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about your illness,” he said.

  Danielle wasn’t sure if the hardness to his jaw was from anger or pain. She looked down at the terra-cotta tile of the floor as she made her way to him. She didn’t look up but she was so close that the coconut oil of his braids seemed to surround her. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to take care of me. It’s not your responsibility,” she said, tilting her head to the side as she looked him in his eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  Danielle bit the inside of her bottom lip as she let him pull her into his embrace. He held her close even as her arms were pressed in between their bodies with his arms locked behind her back. She pressed her face into his neck and let her lips rest just a hair’s breadth from his warm mocha skin.

  “Tell me,” he guided her with kisses to her cheek.

  And she did. As they stood there locked in an embrace that was everything she needed Danielle told him everything. It felt good to release it. When she was done she felt a pressure lift from her shoulders.

  “So I don’t want you to see me dying,” she told him truthfully, leaning back in his embrace to look up at him.

  “No one knows God’s plan,” he told her. “But I know an old woman and a lit
tle boy that love and miss you. You need to be around family at times like these.”

  Danielle bent her head to her chest. “I don’t have any. They screwed and made me and gave me this thing to deal with and disappeared,” she said.

  “Family has nothing to do with blood. It’s all about who cares about you and we care about you.”

  Danielle looked up at him. “It’s not gone always be easy and pretty. It could be bad. Real bad and then it will get worse,” she warned him.

  “I’ll be right there loving you.”

  “But I am going to die, Mohammed,” she insisted, breaking his hold on her as she turned to walk away a few steps.

  “And I will love you even beyond death doing us part,” he said. “Come home with me, Danielle. Get out of this rat race and let me help you.”

  She looked at him, her eyes searching his. She had just decided to leave Jersey for LA full-time and now this man wanted her to leave LA for Jamaica.

  “My job—”

  “I’ll stay here in LA with you until you can resign and give them fair warning to find another smart woman with a pretty face.”

  Danielle thought about that week in Jamaica. She could use a million more. Life was too short. Tonight Monica, Keesha, nor Latoya knew if their loves were still intact after Hurricane Xavier. But she still had the man she loved wanting to fight with her through whatever came.

  “Okay,” she agreed with a nod.

  Mohammed walked over and gathered her into his arms again. “And my mama said to tell you that you’re welcome.”

  Danielle just laughed and then took Mohammed’s hand in hers to lead him into the bedroom for a proper welcome.

  Epilogue

  Ladies

  Each of the ladies held a plate at the repast for Latoya’s funeral but none of them felt like eating. It had been a long draining day and they truly just wanted it to be over.

  What had started to be a horrible day of secrets, lies, and betrayals revealed had been made all the more worse by the news of her passing. Latoya had been instantly killed in the car wreck that night. The combination of getting hit from behind and then having her car shoved forward into traffic to be violently sandwiched by two oncoming vehicles had sent her home to the Maker.

  And now her children could only live with memories they had of their mother. They wouldn’t even grow up in the same home any longer. Tiffany was going to live with her father Bones. He had immediately come to his daughter’s side at the news of Latoya’s passing. It had been Bones who comforted her throughout the emotional funeral.

  Danielle could only hope that both Bones and Taquan, who were far from friends, would work together to make sure Tiffany and Taquan Jr. stayed close. She knew Latoya would want it no other way.

  Danielle tucked her hair behind her ear as she looked at Mohammed. She gave him a smile but she hoped he didn’t see the sadness she hid behind it. Although her soul literally ached for the tragedy, the funeral was a stark reminder of her limited mortality. One day people would come to mourn her and Mohammed would have to deal with her death just like Taquan was.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Danielle asked, shifting her eyes to where he sat by the window in the living room of Latoya’s parents’ home.

  “Hearing how that last phone call between them went,” Monica said, her eyes following Danielle’s to rest on the minister who was so obviously dealing with the loss of his wife, “I don’t know.”

  “Take it from me, you don’t want to hear or see someone die,” Keesha added softly, almost too softly, as she gripped and ungripped the cigarette lighter she held in her hand.

  She furrowed her brows just as one lone tear raced down her cheek. That tear hardly represented her level of grief at losing Latoya, losing Corey, and losing her mind. She stared off into the distance at some spot as a vision of Corey’s dead body flashed. Keesha winced as she felt a sharp pain that pierced her soul the way the shard of glass had pierced Corey’s body.

  Keesha felt a hand comfortingly squeeze her shoulder. She looked up. Surprise filled her eyes to see her daughter standing there suddenly. She forced a reassuring smile even as she felt a tidal wave of guilt wash over her that her daughter was so affected by her suicide attempt. Kimani was never very far from her and constantly stopped what she was doing to check on her. The daughter taking care of the parent.

  Keesha squinted her eyes as she saw Danielle and Monica share a look that was filled with as much concern as she felt. The same concern she constantly saw in the eyes of her father, stepmother, her baby sister and even Diane. “I’m going back into therapy,” she said, answering a question she wasn’t even sure they were going to ask. “They said I had a mental break. I fucking snapped. So, uhm, yeah.”

  “I’m glad you got out of the hospital in time to make the funeral,” Monica said.

  Keesha nodded. “I’m glad I got out the hospital at all,” she said. “My baby wasn’t so lucky, you know?”

  Monica and Danielle fell silent.

  The pills had led to Keesha suffering a miscarriage and they just didn’t know what to say to that.

  “It’s okay. Maybe it’s for the best. I mean, I don’t think I could have taken having Shawn’s baby after he killed Corey, so God and those mysterious ways, I guess,” she said, her voice sad.

  But none of her sadness or tears was for Shawn. Yet another death and the only bright spot in the darkness Keesha felt over her life. She hoped that crazy motherfucker rotted in hell. He shot himself that night as he sat in his car, overcome with grief for murdering the cousin he had already betrayed. They had betrayed.

  She couldn’t overlook her role in the tragedy and it was that truth that had her walking the fine line between sanity and insanity.

  Feeling Kimani’s steady presence behind her, Keesha reached up to smooth the back of her daughter’s hand. “I’m okay,” she assured her.

  But that was a bold motherfucking lie. She was far from okay. She didn’t know if she would ever write again. They were all back living in Diane’s apartment because the home she had once loved and was so proud of acquiring was now a bloody crime scene and a constant reminder of it all.

  Latoya was dead. Corey was dead. Her baby was dead. And she had tried to join them all in death.

  There wasn’t shit okay about that.

  Will we ever be okay? Monica wondered as she leaned back against the wall of the crowded dining room and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Taking a life was not an easy pill to swallow and Monica was choking on it.

  She still had nightmares about the sight of the bullet she fired from her gun, piercing Rah’s chest as the bullet he shot at her burnt a thin scar across her cheek before firing through the metal of his van. His injuries had been far more fatal than hers. As she climbed from the van and watched him bleed out onto the sidewalk his eyes had still held a crazy and demented rage for her. She had rushed to kick his gun away from him as he struggled for just enough strength to raise his arm and fire it at her again.

  Monica covered her mouth with her hand as she felt the urge to vomit.

  Not from the memory of the smell of his blood.

  Not from the sight of his body convulsing during the last moments of his life.

  Not even from the reality of coming so close to the end of her life.

  None of those things made the bile of her stomach switch into reverse.

  It was the truth—a truth she shared with no one—that her fear of him was so intense and palpable that she stood there and let him die.

  Monica released an audible breath that was heavy.

  She shook her head to clear the image of her not even attempting to call the police until she saw his chest rise and fall with his final breath.

  In that moment, with her cheek still burning from his bullet and the threat of his words still haunting her, she felt she had no choice. It was survival of the fittest. Period point blank.

  For years he sat in prison blaming her for actuall
y being daring enough to press charges against him for breaking her leg. How dare she? She had no clue that Rah was even free and stalking her. Monica shook her head. She’d had two loons on her path and didn’t even know it. It was Rah who sent the harassing text messages. She had always assumed it was the same person blowing up her e-mail box. She assumed wrong and it almost cost her life.

  Crazy motherfucker.

  She brought her hands up to gingerly touch the small bandage still covering her cheek. She nudged her chin higher as she looked over at Cameron talking to Mohammed. In the last week since that horrible night they weren’t back to a hundred percent but they were trying and that’s all she could ask for.

  The ashes from Rah’s cremation were probaly spinning like a mini tornado at his ironic role in offering something for her and Cameron to lean on each other about. In some weird twisted way Rah had made their transition from her betrayal to Cameron’s attempt at forgiveness easier. That night the phone call from the police had brought Cameron to her side at the hospital. The story of her kidnapping and shooting had shaken his stance. And the sight of her wounded face had softened his anger.

  She looked up again just as Cameron removed his phone from the inner pocket of his tailored suit. His eyes shifted to hers momentarily before he took out a pen and picked up one of the memorial cards sitting on a table.

  Monica frowned as he scribbled on it.

  “We can’t let another five years go by, y’all,” Keesha said, looking down at her hand as she made a fist. “We’re like family and a family is stronger together than apart.”

  Monica’s heart raced as Cameron ended his call and walked towards her. She hated the panic she felt at a quick irrational thought that it was his ex-wife on the phone and he was coming to her to announce he was leaving her cheating ass behind.

  “You’re right. I’ll be in Jamaica but we’re just a phone call away,” Danielle was saying.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” Cameron said, stopping in their midst to hand the folded card to Monica.

  She took it as he turned and walked back over to Mohammed. Glancing down she looked at his dark slashing handwriting and her gut clenched so tightly that it felt like a stab. She looked up to meet Cameron’s stare with a question in her eyes. He nodded his affirmation sharply.