The Johnson Sisters

by Tresser Henderson

  “Put your hands on your head,” the officer demanded.

  “Now you have gone too far. Explain to me how that is feasible,” Tyree exclaimed, looking at his son. The officer caught the hint. He really did need to think before he spoke.

  “Ma’am, you can get the little boy,” he told me. I approached Tyree and took Zamir from his arms.

  “Just do what they want, babe. This will be resolved, okay?” I said softly.

  Tyree looked at me with skepticism, and I couldn’t blame him. Two Caucasian officers had their weapons drawn on him when he didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t need another black man getting slain because a police officer got trigger-happy.

  “Now step away from him, ma’am,” the officer yelled.

  Tyree proceeded to put his hands behind his head like he was familiar with the procedure. The officer who told him to get down kept his weapon drawn on Tyree, while the other officer approached him from behind and began to handcuff his hands behind his back.

  “You are under arrest,” the officer who was putting his handcuffs on him told him.

  “For what?” Tyree questioned.

  “Assault and battery,” the officer answered.

  “Assault? I haven’t assaulted anybody.”

  “He hurt me. He tried to kill me!” Juanita screamed, lying on the ground and holding her face like Tyree had hit her. “He broke my window and then hit me, Officers. I’m pregnant with his child,” she yelled.

  “Like hell you are. I didn’t do anything to you,” Tyree retorted, still on his knees as the officer holding the gun went over to check on Juanita like she was the victim here.

  I ran over to the officer who was putting the handcuffs on Tyree to explain, but he got all nervous, putting one hand on his gun and holding the other hand up to stop me.

  “Ma’am, get back. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “But he didn’t do anything. She’s the one who’s causing the disturbance. Just ask them,” I said, pointing at the people who were watching this spectacle happen. “She’s the one you need to be arresting. Plus, I have a restraining order against her. She’s not even supposed to be here,” I tried to explain.

  “I was dropping off my son, Officer. It’s Tyree’s weekend to have his son, and out of nowhere he attacked me,” she lied.

  “No, he didn’t,” I yelled.

  “Look at my car. Look at how he punched the window out, which our son was in. What kind of father does that?” Juanita was putting on the performance of her life. She then gripped her stomach, saying, “I’m hurting. I hoping I’m not miscarrying our child.”

  One of the officers spoke into his shoulder walkie-talkie, saying they needed an ambulance dispatched.

  “But she’s not pregnant,” I yelled.

  “Yes, I am. How many times do I need to tell you that? Here, if you don’t believe me, look at this,” Juanita said, reaching in her jacket pocket and pulling out a white stick. She threw it at me, and I jumped back so it wouldn’t hit me.

  Like it was meant to happen, the white stick she threw to me landed face up. I saw this stick was indeed a pregnancy test, which showed two pink lines. Juanita was pregnant.

  I was dumbfounded. Pregnant? I looked at her as she acted like she was in pain, holding her stomach and everything. In my heart I still didn’t believe her. She could have gotten somebody who was pregnant to pee on this stick for her, just so she could make me upset. Still, I wasn’t sure. This crazy woman was about to get away with her lies. Or was she lying? Either way she had no business outside my house this early in the morning, making a scene like she was doing.

  Snapping back to the reality Tyree was about to be arrested, I said, “Officer, please let him go. He didn’t do anything.”

  “Ma’am, we saw him throw this woman to the ground.”

  “She threw herself to the ground. She was swinging on him while Tyree was holding their son. Why aren’t you arresting her for assault and battery, trespassing, disturbing the peace, and driving without a license for that matter?” I said, looking at Juanita angrily.

  The police officer’s eyes fell on her too. She looked back and forth between the both of us like I had burst her little bubble.

  “Why don’t you check that? Run her name and you will see the suspended license and the restraining order I have against her,” I said as little Zamir laid his head on my shoulder. I could tell Juanita didn’t like this, but I didn’t care. Her son probably knew his mother was crazy too.

  “I was bringing my son to his father,” Juanita repeated through clenched teeth.

  “We’re supposed to pick Zamir up at your mother’s house, Juanita. That was what the court order said. You know you’re not supposed to be over here. And still that had nothing to do with you blaring your horn so early in the morning, waking the neighborhood.”

  As if what I was saying was lies, Juanita said, “I knocked on the door and no one would answer. I called and you all ignored my call, so I blew my horn a couple of times.”

  “Officer, she laid on her horn for a good fifteen minutes. She woke me out my sleep. Ask the neighbors,” I said, pointing again to the ones who were still standing on their lawns to witness this nonsense. “When I called the police, a call had already been made by one of my neighbors, complaining about her. She’s lying to you. I will go get my and Tyree’s phone to show you she didn’t call,” I said, peering at Juanita. “I got voicemail evidence of her continued harassment, but we were trying to be nice by not having her arrested for going against the order; but, as you can see, she does what she wants to do, regardless of what the law says,” I said strongly. If she thought she was going to play us, she had another think coming. I would do everything in my power to have this trick get exactly what she deserved.

  “Ma’am, we will take their statements and verify your information, but we still have to take this man downtown until we verify everything,” the police officer said.

  “I want to press charges. What do I have to do?” Juanita asked.

  “Just lie here until the ambulance gets here, and someone will take your statement,” the officer told her.

  “I would like to press charges on her also. She hit me. Ask the neighbors, because some of them witnessed this,” I said, glaring at Juanita.

  I could tell by her expression she was surprised I’d said this. For too long I’d let things ride for the sake of Tyree and Zamir, but I was done giving in to this tramp. If she wanted to play games, then I was going to show her how the game was really played.

  One of the officers lifted Tyree from the ground and escorted him to the police car. Juanita smirked at me as she looked at Tyree being put in the car. It wasn’t long after that the ambulance arrived to take Juanita to the hospital. She was still lying on the ground, playing her poor, defenseless role, while I stood to the side, watching and holding their son. Juanita was placed into the ambulance, and I heard her call one of the officers over to her. He walked up to the ambulance where she was. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but when he looked at me, I knew whatever he was being told was not going to be good. He spoke something into his walkie-talkie on his shoulder as he stared at me.

  I looked over to Tyree sitting in the patrol car. He was looking at me with so much anger on his face. I smiled and he tried to return it. I knew how hard this was on him, and I had to wonder, in moments like this, did he regret ever getting involved with someone like Juanita?

  It wasn’t long before I found out what Juanita was talking to the officer about. He approached me to inform me that social services was on their way to get little Zamir from me. When I questioned him about this, he informed me Zamir couldn’t stay with me because I wasn’t a family member. I asked him what that had to do with anything, since I was with Zamir’s father. He went on to explain Juanita didn’t want him around me because she felt I was mistreating her son. I told the officer this was another fabrication on the part of a crazy, jealous, spiteful woman, but he told me he still had
to let Zamir go with this social worker until everything got resolved.

  To see little Zamir grasping at my clothing as the social worker peeled him from my arms broke my heart. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I watched the woman walk a screaming Zamir to her car and strap him into the car seat she had centered in her back seat.

  I was furious. Juanita was so hell bent on making me and Tyree pay that she couldn’t see she was making her son pay in the process also. She would rather have him go into the system than see him safe with us, and that was trifling. Did she think about what could happen to her child once social services got involved? They could take him away from both of them and place that little boy into a foster home until they decided it was fit to put him back into either of our homes. Did she realize what people did to children once they got them? A lot of individuals taking in foster children weren’t in it because they loved these children. Most of them were in it for their own selfish reasons, and the main one was money. It really sickened me when I considered what the next one was. Children were sexually abused all the time in the system; yet Juanita didn’t care. She was willing to take that risk, which went to show what type of unfit mother she was. And she had the nerve to be having another one, so she said.

  I stood in my yard a minute, watching as all the vehicles left the scene. I had not had a cup of coffee yet, and I had already dealt with guns drawn on us, the arrest of my man, a fight with Tyree’s baby mama, a pregnancy test thrown at me, and social services taking Zamir away. This was too much to be dealing with this early in the morning. Now I had to get dressed, go downtown, and see what I needed to do in order to get Tyree released. But before all of that, I needed to go in the house and check on Nevaeh to make sure she was okay. I was worried about Zamir when I needed to be worried about my own daughter.

  Chapter 26

  Serena

  Once the officers took statements from our neighbors and ran Juanita’s name in their database to see the restraining order I had against her, they let Tyree go. There were too many witnesses who corroborated our story on what went down. As hard as Juanita had tried to press charges against Tyree, it didn’t work. Now the so-called victim was found to be the perpetrator of this entire event, and the cops knew this. She was now facing multiple charges, including her assault on me. I would have given anything to see the look on her face once she found out Tyree was freed and she was the one who was having charges filed against her. That would teach her not to mess with us.

  One thing Tyree was charged with was failure to pay child support. He had to go to court to appear in front of a judge in a month to handle the issues with that. Still, that was nothing to us, since the charges he would have been facing were more serious to the point he would have had to pull some jail time. I knew not paying child support also could land him in jail, but after Tyree showed the receipts and other documentation showing what he had contributed to Juanita, we were pretty sure the judge would throw the case out, finding that Juanita was a spiteful baby mama looking to cash in.

  Needless to say, when we got home we were exhausted. Tyree was still in his basketball shorts, wife beater, and slides when we walked into the house. On our way home, I attempted to pick Nevaeh up from Vivian’s home. I had asked Viv if she minded watching her while I went to get Tyree out of police custody. My sister jumped at the chance, excited that she could do this for me. She acted like she didn’t want to give her up when I came by to pick her up. When she offered to keep Nevaeh while we rested, I didn’t look that gift horse in the mouth. I took her up on her offer. Now it was just me and Tyree, alone in our home, and I couldn’t wait to get back in my bed and take a nap.

  “I’m so glad this is over,” I said, plopping down on my sofa.

  “Me too, and I’m glad I filed for custody of Zamir. He doesn’t need to be with her.”

  “I’m happy you did, too, but you do know it’s going to be hard for a judge to take a child away from his mother and give the child to the father. That rarely happens,” I said.

  “I know, but I have to try. We have—or rather, you have—collected evidence of how she’s taunted us. The judge has to see it our way.”

  Tyree went to the fridge and pulled out some turkey, cheese, lettuce, and tomato to make himself a sandwich. “I’m so hungry. I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “They didn’t feed you there?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want that food,” Tyree said, frowning.

  “I bet you would have eaten it if they kept you for a few days,” I said.

  “Probably so, but lucky for me I didn’t have to go through all of that.”

  “If you would have listened to me, Tyree, things might have turned out differently.”

  “I know. I should have. I was so mad though. Seeing my son crying like that pissed me off,” Tyree said, taking out the bread and pulling out two slices and placing it on a plate.

  “That’s all Juanita wanted was for you to act a fool, and you fell right into her trap,” I said, kicking off my shoes to bring my feet up on the couch.

  “I know that now,” he said, spreading mayonnaise and mustard onto his bread.

  “Juanita is good at trapping you, Tyree.”

  He looked over at me, saying, “Why you say it like that?”

  “She tossed me a pregnancy test showing me she was expecting.”

  There was a slight pause, which I didn’t like at all. It was one of those moments when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you know things aren’t right.

  “And you believed it?” Tyree finally asked. “You know Juanita ain’t right. She probably rummaged through somebody’s garbage until she found it. Or maybe she got one of her chickenhead friends to pee on it for her.”

  “That may be true, but my gut is telling me she’s not lying,” I said, crossing my arms, waiting to see how Tyree would react. I watched him, paid attention to his mannerisms to see how he reacted to my line of questioning, and I didn’t like what I was seeing. He kept looking down like he was concentrating that hard on making that damn sandwich. He would glance my way but never looked into my face fully, like he was trying to avoid eye contact. But I wasn’t going to get mad. Not now anyway.

  Tyree looked up to see me still staring at him. He paused long enough to say, “Honey, come on. It ain’t true. You know you can’t believe anything she has to say.”

  “Tyree, you know I love you, right?”

  “I know this, babe. I love you too,” he told me.

  “If you slept with Juanita, I hope you would be man enough to tell me, because if I find out some other way, things aren’t going to go well for us,” I threatened.

  He sliced the completed turkey sandwich in half and then grabbed the bag of sour cream and onion chips out of the cabinet.

  “You did hear what I said, didn’t you? Or are you trying to ignore me?” I asked.

  Tyree paused, leaning against the counter like he wanted to say something.

  “Tell me the truth,” I told him.

  He looked over at me, and it was an expression I hadn’t seen from him before. The look was enough for me to feel an ache in the pit of my stomach. I crossed my arms tighter to squeeze the pain away as I stared him down. I was waiting for him to come clean. As much as I wanted to know the truth, I didn’t really want to know, because that meant what we had had been a lie.

  Tyree came over and sat next to me with his turkey sandwich, potato chips, and a glass of Kool-Aid in hand. He set his drink down on the coffee table along with the chips, but held on to his sandwich. He glared at me for a moment too long to deny his innocence, and I knew then that he had indeed slept with her.

  I closed my eyes in anguish.

  “Serena, it was one time,” he said as his words cut me like a hot knife through butter.

  “When?” I managed to mumble.

  “A few months ago. I went to see my son, and things just happened,” he said regretfully.

  I nodded slowly, tongue to cheek. He placed h
is hand on my knee and said, “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “This explains why Juanita has been acting nuttier than ever. She thinks you two still have a thing.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “But you do. As soon as you slept with her, Tyree, you let her know she still has a chance. All that taunting she’s been doing to me and our baby, yet I’m the one looking like the damn fool in the end.”

  “Baby.”

  “How do you think that makes me feel? I believed you, and you made me look stupid. I was giving birth to your daughter and this crazy bitch was wishing death upon us. Hell, she still is. Got your son calling us bitches. The phone calls, the herpes letter in the mail, and now this,” I said, beginning to cry.

  “Serena, please don’t cry.”

  “All of this happening wasn’t enough to make you not want to fall into her bed?” I asked.

  Tyree set his sandwich down on the coffee table. He attempted to move closer to me on the sofa, but I held my hand up for him to remain where he was. He didn’t know how hard I was trying to control my anger right now, because all I wanted to do was get up off this sofa and beat the living hell out of him.

  Taking a deep breath, I managed to ask, “Do I need to get checked? Was the herpes test a lie, or was there some truth to it?”

  “No, baby, it was fake.”

  “Juanita is crazy enough to spread disease, Tyree. Especially if she thinks it’s going to affect us in any way. She’ll do anything to get back at you and me.”

  “Serena, no. It was forged. I don’t have anything,” he said assuredly.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Did you get checked?”

  Tyree couldn’t answer.

  “Exactly. You don’t know for sure.” I turned away from him and got up off the sofa, saying, “I need some time to think.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere away from you,” I said, picking up my purse and keys from the counter, and then I was out the door.