Genesis was still bare chested, wearing nothing but blue sweatpants when I walked in. He was just setting down plates stacked high with blueberry pancakes, next to a bowl full of fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, and another dish of grits. All of it made my stomach turn. If I could eat, I’d have settled for a salad, maybe with strawberries and balsamic vinaigrette. He gave me a big bright grin as he walked over to kiss me on my lips. I turned, giving him my cheek.
“Think I might be coming down with something,” I blurted out.
“Well, I’ve got plenty of juice and vitamin me to help you get over that.”
The look of disgust that wanted to spread across my face almost broke through giving me away. Thank God he’d turned to tend to a pan full of strips of bacon on the stove. Kenisha waddled in holding the small of her back. I looked her over from the top of her head down to her bare feet. Nothing on her looked out of place, bruised, or roughed up. She was wearing a sunny-yellow and green Mumu wrap. It pushed the tops of her swollen breasts up until they looked like they were about to spill all out of the damn thing.
“Thank you for cooking because I’m about to fuck up everything on this table,” she announced just before trying to ease down into a seat.
Genesis dropped the pan of bacon he was tending to rush over to help her ease down into the chair. I watched them closely from where I stood by the fridge. There were no signs of awkwardness, disgust, or even shame as Genesis touched the small of her back. My eyes were waiting to see if she’d flinch or shy away, if he’d react sexually and try to hide it. But they were all business as usual. I probably had more jealousy and disgust to hide than either of them did. Kenisha even smiled sweetly at him, thanking him for helping her with her chair.
I excused myself to my room, claiming I didn’t want to get Kenisha or anyone sick. The poor girl was probably suffering from Stockholm syndrome or he’d brainwashed her into thinking what he’d done was normal.
The sooner I could be alone with her, one on one, the sooner she could answer my questions so I could help get us out of here. How we’d leave and where we’d go I didn’t know yet, but I would do something. I sat in my room staring a hole in the wall. When I heard Genesis go into his bedroom, I ran to find Kenisha. She was still in the kitchen with a half-eaten strip of bacon in one hand and massaging her boob with the other.
“I can’t wait to get my body back. These thangs right here hurt like all hell, and it’s worse if I try to put on any kind of bra.”
I scooted into the chair beside her and gave her a polite but timid smile.
“I saw you two in the bathroom yesterday,” I rushed into my speech before I lost the nerve. “Kenisha, no matter what happens, I want you to know that you have somebody on your side. Genesis is the adult, and you’re the child. He will be punished for what he did. I’ll make sure of it.”
The bacon fell out of her hand, clattering to the table as her eyes glazed over. Her bottom lip quivered.
“What are you gonna do?” she asked in a little voice.
“Whatever I need to do. So long as you’re safe, I don’t care. He’s going to go away for a long time. Okay?”
She nodded quietly with tears slipping down her cheeks.
“After I figure out a few things I’m going to get us away from here. I need you to go upstairs and get your hospital delivery bag. Make sure you have everything you need. We’re leaving tonight.”
Genesis whistled as he made his way downstairs. I gave her hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze before I slipped out through the dining room toward the stairs. Genesis had no idea what he was in for. I waited by the stairs listening, trying to figure out which part of the house he was in. There was no way I could face him and not give myself away.
“She knows, and she said she’ll send you away,” Kenisha’s voice was a rushed pleading whisper. “You said having her here would make our lives easier, that we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone figuring us out, and she knows, Kane.”
“Don’t even worry about that shit, babe. You go wherever she tries to take you; act like everything is fine. Nobody’s gonna hurt you or my baby. I’ll handle it,” Genesis answered in a dry, emotionless voice.
I almost fell out right where I stood. I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong, and now it might cost me my life.
NOVIE
33
Going Home
I took the stairs two at a time, locking my door behind me. My heart was beating so fast I felt light-headed. As bad as I wanted to break down, throw shit, hell, throw both Genesis and Kenisha, this wasn’t the time. There was an old gym bag underneath my bed. I grabbed it and began slinging clothes into it as fast as I could. There was still time for me to save myself. Genesis was waiting for me to run with Kenisha, but if I left without her, it bettered my chances of getting away.
Genesis shouted through the house that he was leaving for work. He was trying to keep up appearances, which was fine with me. It gave me time to get my shit together and get out. Kenisha thumped up the stairs.
“I’m going to pack and get my stuff together, Novie,” she shouted through my bedroom door.
I didn’t respond back. I waited until I heard her bedroom door slam shut before I grabbed my bag and crept down the stairs. There was only one place I could think to go. Hopefully, my presence was still welcomed. My heart hurt, my spirit felt crushed. That nigga played me with his sixteen-year-old niece, right under the same roof as me. If this wasn’t the most shameful, disrespectful shit I’d ever dealt with I don’t know what was.
Thankfully, Kenisha’s bedroom was on the backside of the house. I put my car in neutral, letting it roll down the driveway quietly. I didn’t put it into drive or crank the engine until I was safely in the street. Genesis’s house loomed above me. It didn’t look like home anymore. It looked like a cage of lies, a stronghold of secrets and insecurities. I started driving home, to my real home. It was the only place I had left to go.
It was almost dark when I pulled up. But the house still looked almost identical to how it did the day the last time I was home. Momma had gotten the shutters painted in a soft cornflower blue. They stood like beacons out against the red bricks. Lights were on in all the rooms.
After a deep breath and several Visine drops in my eyes, I climbed out and walked up the cement steps onto the front porch from my childhood. The doorbell was loud enough for me to hear it chime outside as I pressed the button. Chairs scraped against hardwood flooring, followed by heavy steps in the direction of the door. The front porch light flickered on. I squinted against its brightness, waving at whoever was looking through the peephole with a fake smile glued to my lips.
“You finally decided to climb up out of Genesis Kane’s ass. You must be in trouble.” Daddy opened the door slowly with a sour scowl on his face.
I wrung my fingers together, feeling how it felt when I was eight all over again.
Momma walked up behind him. “Who the hell’s at the door at this hour . . .?”
Her face lit up when she saw me through the storm door. She pushed Daddy out of the way and launched herself through the door.
“My baby girl is back! Oh my God, look at you, baby. Hug your mother, girl.”
She pulled me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe. Happy tears welled up in my eyes as I hugged her back while staring at Daddy over her shoulder. It seemed like no matter how right I thought I was, I was still choosing to side with the people who were the worst for me. I’d done it consistently from day one with Swiss, and I was still doing it now. Genesis was just another notch on my bad call list.
It was time for me to learn how to forgive. I owed my parents the mother of all apologies. They’d only been trying to protect me, and now I could see it for what it was, because I would do the same thing for the little girl or boy that I had growing inside of me right now. I stepped out of my momma’s arms, giving my daddy a cautious glance. One side of his lip slowly cracked into a lopsided smile. His eyes were sparkling with tea
rs that he wouldn’t shed because he was a rock, and rocks didn’t cry.
He hugged me, picking me up off the ground, swinging me back and forth in his arms before he set me down with a kiss on my forehead. He knew something was wrong, and he also knew that he’d given me the tools and the mind-set to deal with just about anything.
“Doesn’t matter what it is. You know it’ll get handled, baby girl,” he said in a gruff voice.
I nodded in agreement before shuffling past him into the living room. Egyptian musk hit me square in the nose before I even had both of my feet in the door.
“Hi, Tariq.”
He was sitting on the couch in the semidark living room with the remote in one hand and a blunt in the other.
“Welcome back, Nono,” he called out, using the nickname I went by as a kid.
I shuffled in the direction of my bedroom, suddenly anxious to get some real food and some much-needed rest. It was safe here. If Genesis tried to send anyone out this way, Daddy would respond with an army of niggas.
Everything was laid out almost exactly as I remembered it. Momma had changed the color scheme of the kitchen from peach and blue to black and red. All of the carpets were now a blended light oatmeal color instead of the deep navy blue that used to run through the whole house. Momma was going a mile a minute about everything from the day she realized I was gone up until the day she’d called me. I was so tired I couldn’t hone in on a single word. My mind was ready to recharge.
“Okay, Momma. In the morning, Momma, I’ll tell you and Daddy everything, I promise. I just need to get some sleep, okay?”
I smiled at the collection of stickers I’d stuck all over the outside of my bedroom door back in the day. Momma had obviously thought against redecorating it. I recanted that thought as soon as my hand turned the knob.
“Baby, before you get upset or whatever, let me explain.” Momma walked into the room and stood with her arms spread wide.
Gone was my queen-size bed and armoire, a small red Corvette-looking thing with a mattress on top sat in its place. My armoire was replaced with a tiny red and blue desk. The baseball glove-shaped lamp sitting on top of it cast shadows across the whole room. I couldn’t step inside until I knew what was going on.
Momma walked over and held my face between her warm hands. “We named him Justus. You kept saying it over and over when they first dragged you out of the water. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
My eyes ran back and forth over hers. I was trying to make sense out of what she was saying and what I was feeling. The questions all lodged themselves somewhere in between my brain and my mouth. They fought their way through my subconscious mind. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? Did my son survive, and then die, or did they make him a room and give him a funeral?
“Please, Momma, just tell me what this is.”
“Come here, Novie,” Daddy spoke from behind me.
My legs felt like they weighed a ton as I moved toward him, questioning him with my eyes.
“Bryan Novellus Deleon just turned four not too long ago. They saved him, Novie, they saved your son.”
I always thought the women who fainted or hand-to-forehead swooned in those old-school romance novels were always full of shit. That was up until I’d gotten the most shocking surprise of my life, and my world went black.
When I came to I was laid out on a bed in the guest room. One of Grandma’s old brown and burgundy quilts was pulled up to my chin. The house was so small that the acoustics were damn near perfect for eavesdropping. I stared at the light coming from underneath my bedroom door, listening to everyone arguing over and about me in the kitchen. It was obvious that I wasn’t the only one with mixed emotions about being back home. And I had a son. He’d lived all these years without me even knowing he was alive. I’d been beating myself up and mourning a loss that never happened. They should’ve told me.
On the one hand, I could feel hatred swell up in my heart toward them. They knew the guilt ate me alive, but they let me stay in that state of mental purgatory. All it would have taken was a word, a phone call. I was robbed. My baby was robbed. There were so many parts of his life that I’d missed and would never get back. I buried my nose in his pillow and inhaled. He smelled like Swiss, or maybe that’s how I wanted him to smell. I curled into a ball, and I cried for the baby I had who I didn’t even get to name.
“You need to tell her when she wakes up,” Momma said in quick whisper.
I sniffled into my baby’s pillow and calmed myself down so I could listen. The clink of a bottle let me know that the men were taking shots. Momma was most likely having a glass of wine since she never drank hard liquor.
Tariq cleared his throat loud. “I don’t think we should say anything just yet. She’s obviously been through a lot. Might need a minute just to adjust to all this.”
“And when she starts asking for him, what do we say?” Daddy asked.
“You’ll say whatever’s true,” I announced as I walked into their argument about me. “So who is the ‘he’ you’re talking about? And where is my baby boy?”
Their eyes all dropped in unison. I got an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know they hadn’t made a fit out of telling me Justus was alive, only to finally admit that something had happened to him.
“Tell me what happened!” I slammed the side of my fist against the wall.
Momma set down the glass of wine she’d been sipping. “Novie, sweetheart, you might want to sit down.”
“I’m fine, just tell me whatever it is that y’all are trippin’ over.”
“A month ago we were celebrating Bryan’s birthday. I invited all the neighborhood kids over. We even had a few extra ones crash the party, but there was plenty of ice cream and junk food to go around so I didn’t even—”
“Ma, just tell me what the hell is wrong.”
She wrung her hands in front of her. “I tried to tell you when I called awhile back. See, the thing is, his daddy came asking for him a while ago. We couldn’t deny him the right to see his son. He’d visit off and on, but something wasn’t ever right with that nigga. Then he stopped visiting altogether. Shandy brings this little boy named Aris to Justus’s birthday party. They were playing and getting along, and next time I looked, they were gone,” she ended with a teary sob. “That bitch stole my grandbaby. We got guys looking everywhere, and nobody knows anything.”
For the second time in one day I almost fainted, but anger kept me standing my ground. Swiss knew! He knew about Bryan the whole time, and that’s probably what he wanted to tell me too. I never in a million years would’ve expected the person who I called sister, who I loved like a sister, to play me to the left.
I looked at my parents and Tariq sitting at the table.
“We will get Bryan back. He has to be here, so he can meet his little brother or sister.” I patted my still flat belly with a small sad smile on my face.
This time, the chair slid across the floor and a glass hit the ground at the same time as my momma.
NOVIE
34
No Justus, No Peace
One thing at a time. A woman can only deal with one thing at a time. Genesis was still in the forefront of my mind, but now I also had to deal with the issue of my snake-in-the-grass ex-best-friend. Shandy was crazy. She had to be. She had the nerve to take my child. We didn’t judge her or pass her off to the next person. All we’d ever done was treated her like family. What happened between me and Swiss, and what happened to us was our business, not hers. But she wasn’t going to make me feel guilty for the rest of my life about an accident that took the same person away from me too. Family forgave each other, but bitches did bitch-ass shit. They’d clap and run for cover when you clapped back.
I waited until Momma was back to herself an hour later. Daddy and Tariq had gone to check on the latest harvest. They needed to stay on top of this new crop of guys or they’d take too many breaks and take twice as long to bundle up the product.
“Momma, you know Tariq helped me escape, right?” I asked her.
She shifted the icepack on her forehead, giving me a confused look. “No, he said he was jumped when he stepped out to go to the grocery store. That you had some guys waiting to rescue you.”
I laughed. “Shandy might be as loud as a group of guys, and she might even eat like that. But no, he wanted to holla at her so bad she distracted him so I could get away.”
Realization set in on her face before the words were fully out of my mouth.
“We’ve had a few guys watching her momma’s place. They were trying to find Swiss just in case the story his momma got was fake.”
“No, Ma, he really did pass away. I was driving the car when it happened. But Shandy, she was pissed at me for a whole ’nother reason. If she didn’t go to her momma’s house, there’s only one other place where I’d look for her.”
“Your daddy and Tariq are gonna be gone for at least another hour.”
I climbed into the passenger side of my momma’s Chevy Blazer.
“When are you gonna upgrade this thing?”
She smirked at me. “That’s why all those young fools get caught up. Nobody looks for somebody who does what we do driving this,” she pointed out.
Momma was right. The reason they’d stayed under the radar for so long was because they worked smart, and they weren’t flashy. I knew all that shit too, but being around niggas who made flashy dumb moves made me forget all my training.
“What is he like?” I asked after a few minutes to break up the silence.
Momma smiled at nothing in particular. “He reminds me of you when you were that age. He’s extremely smart; he knows how to work his iPad and pick the movies he likes. One time, I told him not to go out the gate and to stay in the backyard and play. When I came back, not even ten minutes later, he was on the other side messing with the roly polies. That boy has a smile that makes my heart melt. When I asked him what he was doing out in the yard, he said he didn’t go through the gate. He climbed the fence.”
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