Turned Out by His Hood Mentality 3

by Diamond D Johnson

  “Pastor Davidson… he... he sent me. Listen, man... I don’t... I don’t know what for. He offered me twenty- thousand dollars to take you out, and he... he gave me ten thousand upfront. I needed the money because I’m living in an efficiency with my family. I was going to use the money to get us a nice apartment. I know it was stupid, but I was desperate, and I needed the money,” he said.

  He was crying the whole time he spoke. I’m not even going to lie, when he said that Normani’s father was responsible for this hit, my mouth damn near touched the ground. I just knew Reggie was behind this shit. I had this nigga so pressed that he would stoop this low and try to take me out? Wow! This nigga was really a motha fuckin’ fraud out here. He stood his ass up there on that pulpit, preaching all that shit to people when he was a whole conspiracy ass motha fucka. Not even going to lie, this shit was comical as fuck because he was a Godly man, living a double life.

  “When the next time he’s going to be at the church?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow night for bible study. Please, man!” he cried.

  “Yo, shut the fuck up! Doing all this fuckin’ begging, sounding like a little ass bitch! Next time somebody sends you to do a grown man’s job, you let them know that you a pussy and not a killer. You screaming about yo’ fuckin’ son and yo’ bitch when you sold them out for twenty bands. All yo’ family worth to you is twenty bands? That ain’t shit! One of my wife’s Birkins cost that much. The only reason why I ain’t going to kill you is that you not a threat to me! Trust me, me deciding not to kill you don’t have shit to do with your ol’ lady and your son. They wouldn’t have been the first widow and fatherless child in America. Here, take this little ass gun back and give it back to yo’ granddaddy,” I said and threw the shit at him with enough force on him to break his fuckin’ face.

  I walked away from him, got in my car, and sped off. Normani’s bitch ass daddy wanted to get a nigga’s attention, well he had it now. I would pull up on that nigga tomorrow and pay him a little visit.

  Even with the shit that just happened, I still took my ass to Walmart and got the shit my wife had asked for, although she had texted me again, telling me to just come home and that she didn’t need the items anymore. I was about two minutes away from the house as I thought about whether I would tell Normani the shit that had just gone down. I wasn’t trying to stress her out with this shit, so I probably wouldn’t say shit. If she found out, it would be from her bitch ass daddy, and not from me.

  I pulled the car into the driveway and parked on the side of Normani’s Mercedes. I got out, grabbed the bags of groceries from the backseat, and headed up the driveway. The second I was in the house and walking into the kitchen, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I looked up and saw Normani making her way down. I went into the kitchen, set the bags down, and in no time, she joined me. She went over to the refrigerator, posted her back against it, she looked over at me.

  “They ain’t have the brand of whipped cream that you be getting, so I had to get another brand,” I said as I pulled the items out of the bags for her.

  I knew Normani. She was staring me down, trying to figure out what I wasn’t telling her. The way women think, she was more than likely going to figure this shit out all on her own. She looked down at the tan colored Gucci sneakers I was wearing, and I looked too. It ain’t hit me until then that there were little specks of blood on them.

  “Is that blood on your shoes, Billionaire?” she asked, damn near running over to where I was standing.

  Once she was close enough, she pushed me back, so she could really see. Her hands started shaking, her eyes watered, and she screamed. She screamed so fuckin’ loud that I had to pull her ass to me and put my hands over her mouth.

  “Normani, shut the fuck up screaming! Khari is going to wake up, asking fuckin’ questions! Chill the fuck out, and no, I ain’t kill nobody!” I roughly told her in her ear.

  Because my hands were wrapped around her mouth, I felt when one of her tears hit my hand. I could just imagine how she would react once I told her the back story to this shit. This was why I didn’t plan to tell her anything. She would not let the fuck up and just let the situation be, so I knew I would have to talk. I let her mouth go, and she quickly turned around to face me again, eyes going back to my shoes.

  “So... what happened then, Billionaire? What the hell happened?” she asked. This time, she was speaking in a harsh whisper.

  “Call your daddy, Normani, and ask him what happened,” I said as I put the cold items in the refrigerator.

  “Wait, what? That’s his blood? Billionaire, what the hell happened? You’re going to make me lose my damn mind! I’m trying not to freak out, but you are being really standoffish right now with your revelations!”

  “Yo, when I see your daddy, he gotta feel me. I been sparing the fuck out of that man, off the strength of you, but how many times am I supposed to let the fuck nigga try me, and I don’t do shit? A nigga hates me because I treat his daughter good. Imagine that! Meanwhile, he takes his fake holy ass to the front of that church, treat everybody else all good, but look how he do you! I know I told you a couple of months ago to stay away from that nigga, but I mean that shit this time. Go around that nigga, Normani, and me and you going to have some problems! Trust me, I’m the last nigga you want some conflict with,” I let her know.

  “Okay, but baby, what happened? You still aren’t telling me anything,” she said.

  “Your daddy paid a nigga twenty thousand dollars to kill me tonight. Well, ten G’s upfront, and he was supposed to get the last ten G’s, once I was dead.” I told Normani, and her hands went over her mouth.

  She covered her mouth to quiet down the loud outburst of a cry mixed with a scream that she just let out. My wife did exactly what I knew she would do, which is why I didn’t want to tell her. I grabbed her by the back of her head and pulled her into me. Her head went crashing into my chest as she hysterically cried. Knowing her, she had to have been thinking about the fact that I could have died tonight, leaving her and my kids by themselves.

  “Ima handle it,” was all I told her because, shit, I was still mad about this shit my damn self.

  This old ass nigga was playing with me like I was a fuckin’ toy. I would have done this bitch ass nigga so dirty if this shit had happened a few years ago. It’s like, I was trying to change, but the devil was right there on my back, and he was slowly trying to reel a nigga right back in. It was to the point that I had to question if a nigga like me could even change. I was being tested, and it was only a matter of time before I just nut the fuck up, and everyone would have to feel me.

  “Why can’t he just allow us to be happy? All I want to do is be happy,” Normani kept saying.

  It took me at least twenty minutes to calm her down. I knew she was pissed when she didn’t even want to eat the sweets and shit that she had me pick up for her. As far as her daddy went, I couldn’t wait to do a pop up on him tomorrow.

  I walked through the semi-crowded restaurant and did a quick scan of the place, so I could find my mother. We were meeting today for lunch. I’d texted her first thing this morning and asked if she could meet me there because I wanted to discuss the things my husband shared with me last night. I wanted to know if she was aware of the things that her hateful ass husband was doing! From now on, I wouldn’t even refer to him as my father. I planned to address him by his first name, or I would continue to call him my mother’s husband.

  The things that Billionaire had told me last night had me so disturbed that I didn’t get an ounce of sleep. I tossed and turned all night, and at one point, I’d gotten out of the bed, prepared to take that drive to my parents’ house to confront him, but Billionaire wouldn’t let me leave. I just couldn’t see how he could sleep so easily last night after letting me know that someone had pulled a gun on him and was just seconds away from killing him.

  When the incident happened to me in Mexico, I could hardly sleep that night because it was the only thing I c
ould think about. Closing my eyes for a good night’s rest was literally the last thing I forced myself to do. Billionaire and I came from different walks of life, and he was able to handle things that I couldn’t handle, but he literally came into the house last night like nothing even happened. This man had beaten death, yet he still made his way to Walmart to go grocery shopping for the things I told him to get for me. Is that not weird? Like, really, how the hell is that even okay?

  I wondered if he would have even told me what happened had I never seen the blood on his shoes. Maybe I was tripping, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he was keeping anything else from me these days. I liked to think of my husband as my confidant and my best friend because I knew I could go to him with anything. Someone pulling a gun out on him should have literally been the first thing he told me as soon as he walked through the door.

  Billionaire just hadn’t been the same person in over a week, and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was finally hitting him that maybe we were moving too fast or what, but I felt like he was holding back from me. Every time I tried to talk to him about what was going on, he had a way of shrugging it off, as if it wasn’t a big deal. Initially, I thought it had a lot to do with him being stressed about this closing he had coming up in the next few days, but I was starting to think that it was deeper than that.

  Eventually, I found my mother sitting at one booth toward the middle of the restaurant. I let the hostess up front know that I was there to meet someone, and then I made my way toward the table. My mom’s back was facing me, so she didn’t see me when I approached her. I could tell from her body language, though, that something was off with her. After her birthday, I called her that night, just to see if she was okay, and she assured me that she was. It was something about how her husband had disrespected her that night in front of us. His behavior didn’t seem like it was new. It came off like he had a habit of disrespecting my mother, but this time, he just ignored his surroundings and let it come out in front of other people.

  “Hey, Mommy,” I said as I squatted down to give her a hug.

  She leaned in to hug me back and kissed me on my cheek.

  “You look beautiful,” she told me once I took a seat in front of her.

  I smiled at her compliment as I sat on the other side of the table. Although my mother wore a little bit of make-up, I still saw the heavy bags under her eyes. I saw weariness, I saw unhappiness, and I even saw sadness. Instantly, I reached across the table and held her hands in mine. Anyone who knew my mother would say that she was easily one of the nicest persons anyone would ever meet. Tiny like me, but let her get up on a stage and talk about God… I’m telling you her voice would fill up a whole church.

  I had seen my mother minister on many occasions, and she’s brought grown men to their knees with her words. When I was a little girl, my mother would pastor too, but she would only do it on certain occasions, like her birthday month, Mother’s Day, and I remember my father letting her preach for Easter Sunday as well a few times. These days, she really only taught bible study, and sometimes if she was called to do a sermon at another church, she would do it. She was just taking her role as a first lady.

  For many years, I wondered if that role was all my mother wanted to do, but I was scared to ask. My mother could blow when it came to preaching. On top of that, she had a singing voice out of this world. Knowing the type of man my father was these days, I wondered if it was him quieting her down… you know, dimming her light. I sat across from the most beautiful woman to me and tugged on her hands.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?” I asked, truly concerned about her.

  I could see the hurt in her eyes, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to bring up what I’d planned to come down there and tell her. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her, especially when it was so obvious that something was causing her great pain. Something just told me that she didn’t know what her husband had done.

  “Just tired, Normani. I am tired. Never mind me, though. What’s going on with you? What did you have to speak to me about this afternoon? I read your message this morning, and I could feel the urgency in your words. I really wanted to pop by your office, but I decided to just wait because I’m sure I could have just been fearing the worst,” she said.

  I tugged on her hands as I released a sigh. Finally, I let her hands go and sat back in my seat.

  “Do you know that your husband paid someone twenty thousand dollars to kill Billionaire? Well, technically, he paid them ten thousand dollars as a deposit, and they were supposed to have gotten the rest of the money once the job was done. Ma, my husband could have been dead last night. What is getting into him? He is getting sicker by the day. He really has some nerve to not like Billionaire, and he keeps referring to him as a thug, but look at the things he’s doing. He’s such an evil person, but he just dresses his evil up in expensive, designer suits, so people will never even know what this man is capable of. Did you know this?” I asked my mom.

  A lone tear fell from her eyes as she looked at me from across the table, shaking her head no. She took a while to answer my question. It was as if she was trying to process everything that I’d just said.

  “That money was withdrawn from the account about three weeks ago. I remember asking him why ten thousand dollars had been removed from the account, and he told me that he was getting ready to have some men come and do some work at the church. I actually believed him and never even questioned him about it. For months, he had been telling me that he wanted to get the church fellowship hall renovated. I thought that money was to cover the renovations. I’m sitting here now and thinking about last week Wednesday when I went into his office after bible study. You remember Saint, right?” my mom asked me.

  “Yeah. The young deacon with all the tattoos, right?” I asked my mom.

  She nodded, letting me know that was the one she was talking about.

  “As I was walking out, Saint was walking in. Bible study was already over for the night, and everyone had gone home, including the rest of the deacons. The whole drive home, I kept questioning myself on what my husband had to talk to Saint about. I could have stood outside the door and ear hustled, but you know the way your father watches those cameras, so he would have seen me. I stayed up all night, just trying to figure out what they could have been talking about. Now that you’re telling me your father paid someone to kill Billionaire, Normani, I can bet you every dollar I have to my name that your father paid Saint to do that. Normani, baby, I am so sorry. I knew nothing about this until now,” she said, using the back of her hands to wipe away the tears falling from her eyes.

  I believed her; I wasn’t even sure why I thought for a second that she could have possibly known anything about this. My mother wasn’t even A hateful person. Since my mother’s birthday, she had been around Billionaire on a few occasions and had often expressed that she loved him for me. This just left her in an awkward situation, and I wondered what she would do.

  “I met with a lawyer yesterday. I’m getting the paperwork started. Your father and I are about to start the process of getting a divorce. Normani, I have hidden the way I felt for years, and it’s finally time to walk away,” she said, shocking me with her words.

  “Years, Ma? I thought this mess just started once Billionaire came into the picture.”

  She quickly shook her head, letting me know that I had it all wrong.

  “No. That’s just when he stopped directing all his negative energy toward someone else and not me. The side of your father that you have seen for the past few months, Normani, I have seen that side of him for years. I hid it from you, your sister, and the church because I never wanted to ruin his image. So many people look up to your father. Young boys come up to him all the time and tell him that he’s the father they wish they had. I think about the way he was a parent to you and Naomi, and although I didn’t agree with a lot of his parenting methods, I followed right along, letting him be the dictator for a lot of thin
gs.

  “I wanted us to be a family that gave people something to look up to, and because of that, I stayed, and I took things that I knew wasn’t right for me to put up with. To be honest with you, Normani, I lost your father the moment his father died. I never really got him back after that,” my mom said, exposing things I didn’t even know.

  My grandfather had been dead since I was a kid. You mean to tell me that my mother did all this suffering for years, and she just took it? Wow. I wished I could have heard her cry. I wished I could have heard the things she was nonverbally saying, so I could have helped out. My mind traveled back to a couple of years ago when my mother preached on Ephesians 5:25, where it talked about husbands loving their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church. I remember that sermon verbatim because it’s like her soul was crying as she preached in front of everyone. She seemed to be talking directly to my father.

  My other was crying out in a room filled with so many people, letting us know that all she wanted was for her husband to love her, and I didn’t even catch it. It had gone right over my head. Now that I think about it, that was the last time I had seen my mother preach. I wondered if he had anything to do about that. Something else she said had me raising an eyebrow too.

  “Ma, has he ever put his hands on you?” I asked. I just really wanted to know.

  “Which time?” she responded.

  I heard the hurt that came out when she said that. It felt as if my heart had dropped right in the pit of my stomach. I put my hands over my mouth, unable to believe any of this.

  “I don’t want to sit here, Normani, and taint the image that you have of your father, and—”

  “Ma, the image that I have of him has been tainted for months! He is no saint in my eyes. This man is terrible! Is he the reason you stopped ministering and singing? Ma, you are the best preacher I know! Better than him, and you know it!” I said.