I was given a second chance at life, so this time around, I didn’t want to be on the same bullshit I was on before this happened. All I cared about was getting my shit together, so I could take care of all three of my children. I was now a single mother, and I knew I had to get it together for my children. The second I finished my physical therapy, I wanted to get the hell out of Miami and take my kids with me.
“Khari, go to sleep and stop telling everybody’s damn business,” my mama fussed at my daughter.
Khari laughed, snuggled under me, and in less than two minutes, she was snoring. I knew she had been tired all along, but she was fighting her sleep, so she could stay up and entertain me.
“Where’s he?” I asked, referring to Billion.
“I called him. He said that he would be here later. He would come by and sit up in here with you at least once a week. I admired him for that because well... you know. Denim, I’m happy you’re up. I have been praying for this moment since the moment I called you on my lunch break, and you didn’t pick up the phone. I don’t need you putting yourself in situations where I’m forced to almost lose you again. I know you may not want to go back to that apartment, so you and the kids can move in with me. Hell, I would actually prefer it that way. I won’t mentally be okay after this happened for a while, so I just want to be as close to you as I possibly can.
“In a few months, you are going to be a mother of three children. I just want to tell you to focus on that. Keep it at that, and then everything else should fall into place. You have a second chance to do what you weren’t able to do the first time around,” my mom said.
For whatever reason, her words tugged at me, and it caused me to become a little bit emotional. Before I knew it, a tear had fallen from my eyes.
“You probably think I failed as a daughter, huh?” I asked as my voice cracked.
She quickly stopped doing my daughter’s hair and walked over to my bed. She reached down and wiped the tears that were steadily falling from my eyes.
“What? Denim, why the hell would you even think something like that? You are the only child that I got! Do you piss me off from time to time with some of your actions? Umm, hell yeah! Is your mouth slick to the point where I want to slap you in it? Damn right. That don’t mean that you failed me as a daughter! Everybody makes mistakes, but we learn from our mistakes, so that’s all that matters.
“You have this look in your eyes right now, and I can tell that this experience has scared you straight. I already know that you’re getting ready to do this good, spiral change in your life, and I’m dying to meet the new you. I’ll never think that you failed as a daughter. Always remember that,” she told me.
She leaned in, kissed me on my forehead, and then she went back to finish Rylo’s hair. I thought I was sleepy, but I couldn’t find it in me to fall asleep. I just ended up lying down for a couple of hours, dreaming about the day I would finally be able to head back home… well, my mother’s house because I knew that I would never step foot back into my old apartment again.
I was just about to reach for the remote, so I could turn the channel on the TV, when all of a sudden, I heard knocking at the room door. I assumed that it was one of the nurses coming back, but when I smelled that very familiar cologne, I smoothed down my dreads because I knew that they were all over my head. I didn’t want to look crazy in front of him for whatever reason. I saw the get well soon balloons in his hands before I saw anything else. Then he came into view.
“Get your ass up out that damn bed, Denim. I thought you would be up and running through this shit,” Billion came in the room, talking shit.
Although he came in joking, I saw in his eyes that something was bothering him. Billion had brown eyes, but sometimes his eyes would get so dark. That was usually when he was angry about something or feeling emotional, but he was the type of person who held his emotions in. I still laughed at him as he came in there, fuckin’ with me.
Khari heard her father’s voice, and she quickly jumped out of her sleep and ran over to him. Yes, we knew the truth about who Khari belonged to, but I would always refer to Billion as her father because that’s what he is. He had the chance to walk away from her once the truth was revealed, but he didn’t.
“It’s not that simple. I gotta go through physical therapy and other stuff to gain back strength in my legs,” I told him.
He tied the balloons on of the chairs, and then he stood on the side of the bed. I looked down at his well-manicured fingers, and that’s when I saw the wedding band. The things that my daughter had told me about him being married were apparently true. I would not speak on it, though. I had no right to.
“Nice of you to grace the world with your presence again. The kids were missing you,” he let me know, keeping it short with me. He eventually took the seat near my bed, and Khari went over and started talking to him.
I eventually lost the fight against sleeping and drifted into a peaceful sleep. I didn’t want to dream about my grandmother again. After seeing the happy look on both my mother and my children’s faces when I woke up, I knew this was where I was supposed to be.
“I’m leaving the hospital now. What’s good?” I spoke into the phone to my dad as I got in my ride.
It was a little bit after ten at night, and I hoped that my dad was calling me with the news I had been expecting since last night. A fuck nigga murdered my uncle, and I wouldn’t sleep until I handled that. There were niggas out in the world who were some fucked up individuals and did sly shit every day of their fuckin’ lives, yet they were still alive and pushing. I’ll never understand how a nigga like my uncle, who went out of his way to give back to the community, a man who turned down job opportunities to coach track at a couple of universities to open his own organization right in the same hood he grew up in, could be the man who was murdered, and his story was being talked about on the news.
My uncle ain’t fuck with nobody. He might have fucked a couple of nigga’s bitches, but that was it. I’ve watched this man take money out of his pocket to give to kids he didn’t even know, just because he heard them saying they hadn’t eaten anything. Mind you, my uncle wasn’t a rich ass nigga, but he still did what he could. I just wanted to go back into time and wish I never received that call from my dad, telling me that my uncle was murdered.
Yesterday was going so fuckin’ good too. My wife celebrated her birthday, and I had her smiling all fuckin’ day. I spoiled her to the point that many people would shake their heads in shame at me and tell me that one person didn’t need all that shit, but this was Normani’s first birthday with me, so I wanted to go all out for her. We finally made up and went a whole day without going at each other’s throats, then I got hit with this bullshit ass call from my dad.
After I dropped Normani off yesterday at the house and walked her inside, just to make sure she was straight, I pulled off and went into hunting mode because I was killing whoever the fuck did this shit. I made a vow to myself that I would never take another life because I would have to answer for this shit one day, but this shit right here was personal to a nigga. They took somebody with the same blood running through his body as me. If I was fucked up about this shit, then you could only imagine the way my dad was feeling. He and my uncle were brothers, but they had a relationship like best friends.
I had never in my fuckin’ life seen my dad shed a tear. He was the reason I wasn’t in tune with my emotions either. Yesterday, when those detectives put a sheet over my uncle’s bullet-riddled body, I watched my ole boy drop to his knees as he broke down crying, holding his little brother in his arms. I’d been in a zone since then, and I swear I hadn’t slept yet. Now that my dad was calling, I was hoping that he was going to deliver some news that would make me feel just a little bit better, although I know I would never get my uncle back.
“1596 NE Drive. Meet me there. I’m doing this shit with or without you,” he spoke into the phone, and then he hung up.
I threw the phone down on the seat
and pulled out of the hospital parking lot in a hurry. Denim’s mother had called a few hours ago, screaming in the phone and letting me know that Denim had finally woken up from the coma. When she called me, I was in the projects, where my uncle was murdered last night, trying to find out if anyone saw what happened last night, but motha fuckas were acting like they didn’t see or hear shit.
After driving around for hours and still not coming up with anything, I took a break to check up on Denim. My wife wasn’t home. She was out with her sister and her mother. I all but forced Normani to get out of the house today, because if I hadn’t, she would not do shit but stay inside all day and worry herself sick about what I was out in the streets doing.
What I was doing right now was the same fuckin’ thing I would be doing if somebody ever did some shit like this to my wife or any other person I loved. I just hoped this address that my ole boy just gave me was some solid shit because I wanted the motha fucka out by the time we buried my uncle next week. So, with the music down low, I drove and used the time to gather my thoughts, hoping this shit ended tonight.
It took me about fifteen minutes to make it to the address that my dad had texted me. We were in an area with run-down homes that were right in the projects. I circled the block twice because I wanted a clear shot of the house, so I could see what we would be up against before we went inside. There were lights on inside the house and one car parked in the driveway. That one car parked didn’t mean shit because niggas these days weren’t getting no real money, so it could be one car, but fifty niggas could be inside.
I parked a couple of blocks down, and at the same time, my ole boy jumped out of the shadows. He was dressed in all black, just like me, blending in with the darkness. This shit we were doing right now wasn’t new for either of us. Was it something that we hadn’t done in a long time? Yeah, and for my father, it had been longer because he retired from the streets way before I did. Shit, six years ago, before I went in, I was still doing jobs, dressing in all black, and pulling up on niggas.
“I got a call from a homie from back in the days. He got word from one of his lil niggas, and he said that the person who killed my brother was a nigga whose bitch Malcom was fuckin’. Not only did he kill my brother, but he killed the bitch too. They say that this is an old house that he grew up in with his mama. His mama died years ago, but he kept the house. His name is Mack. He’s supposedly laying low, and he plans to get the fuck out of town first thing in the morning.
“This don’t have to be a blood bath, killing a bunch of unnecessary people because he should be the only one inside. At the same time, I don’t know that for sure, so when we get in there, blast that motha fuckin’ gun on anybody standing. I just lost my fuckin’ brother, and I’m not about to lose my only child next! This shit is personal. I had every intention of doing it on my own, but I was told that you were in the hood today, asking questions, so I knew you were going to find a way to do this shit with or without me. He was like a second father to you, so I get that you are seeking vengeance too. Let’s go,” he said and pulled out his gun from the waistband of his sweats.
My gun was in tow too, and we walked over to the house that I’d already passed. There was a door on the side of the house, and my dad pointed toward it. We quietly walked over, and he took a side while I took the other. My father brought his hand up, and he counted down from five. Once he got to one, he raised his foot and kicked down the door. The second the door was kicked down, there was a figure standing right by the door who had been waiting for us.
Pow! He fired his gun, sending off that weak ass shot. Before his bullet could even touch the ground, I pulled my trigger, sending out a headshot and making pieces of his brain fly on the dirty, white walls in the house.
“That ain’t Mack! Come on. He in this bitch because I saw a light flick in the back room!” my dad said in an aggressive whisper.
I stepped over the dead body like it was nothing, and we walked further into the house. Once inside, bullets flew in every direction, and this was where me and my ole boy had to separate. I took cover behind couches, tables, whatever I could find as I busted my gun. I was hiding behind a dingy ass, green couch as bullets flew in my direction. I thought about the wife I had back at home, who would lose her fuckin’ mind if I didn’t make it out of this shit, so I looked out, got a clear shot of the figure, and…
Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!
Both me and my dad bust at him, taking him on from different angles. The body dropped to the ground, and I jumped up, rushing over to the body, still carrying the gun in my hands.
“That’s him?” I asked my dad while standing over a dead body like it was nothing.
“Yeah. Check all the rooms. Make sure nobody else is in here,” he said.
As I stood over the man responsible for taking away a nigga who meant so much to me, I thought back to last night and how I had to stand over my uncle with all those bullet holes in his body. Still with the gun trained on the body that was before me, I entered more slugs into his body because I felt like the ones from before weren’t enough.
When his body looked like it had endured the same number of bullets that my uncle endured, I finally walked away from him and went to check the other rooms. I looked under beds, inside closets, inside showers, and everything, but there wasn’t anyone else in the house. By the time I made it back to the front where my dad was, he was already dousing the house in lighter fluid. He was getting ready to burn this motha fucka down.
Damn, watching him do that shit just brought back a flood of memories. In no time, he had both bodies doused, the floors, and pretty soon, he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the floor. What started as a small fire would pretty soon have this entire home in flames. Like nothing even happened, we walked out of the house and took the same walk that we’d taken to get there.
“This don’t make me feel no better, but at least I handled who was responsible for killing my brother. Malcom was supposed to have buried me, not the other way around. Get home safe, son,” was all he told me, and then he disappeared back into the darkness.
I could look into his eyes and tell that my dad wasn’t okay. I had never really seen him that state before. It was hard for me to even reach my arms out or anything to give him a hug because, shit, I was hurting too. Imagine the hurt that would come later this week when we had to plan his funeral.
Feeling defeated, I hopped in my car, and as I pulled out, I could see the house in the distance as the fire rose higher and higher. I was surprised when I looked down at my phone, and my wife hadn’t called or texted me. I think it kind of hit her last night that I would do what I had to do and that my mind was made up, whether she agreed with the shit or not. It was after midnight, so she was more than likely sleeping anyway.
On the way home, I had to pass by the park that my uncle owned, and I won’t even lie, a nigga shed a couple of tears when I passed by it. Just the other day, I was out there with him, chopping it up. It was so crazy the way God worked, man. He knew I would lose my uncle within a matter of days after we linked up, and that’s why He put me in a position to go over to the park and see him in the first place.
The tears fell, and I didn’t even bother to wipe them. All I could think about was how I had warned my uncle that night about trusting the bitches that he ran around with, and now look what the fuck happened. He left behind no kids, no grandkids, nothing, so there would be no one to carry on the legacy of his business. I didn’t know shit about training no young boys to get them to become a star track athlete. What I did have was money, so I could probably hire some coaches because I couldn’t let everything that he built just go down to shits like that.
I eventually made it home and pulled my car in behind Normani’s Tesla. My wife now had two cars parked in the driveway, although she had three in total. She kept the pink G-wagon at the townhouse. The same townhouse that was being put on the market. Although I was going through what I was going through, I didn’t want to pause the pr
ocess of Normani selling the townhouse. Nor did I want to stop shit from getting in motion for the home that my wife really wanted.
I got out of the car and walked up the driveway. Seconds later, I let myself in the house. I could smell whatever Normani had cooked earlier, but I had no appetite to eat anything, so I just kicked my shoes off at the bottom of the stairs and did a light jog up to the second floor. None of my kids were there tonight, so the house was super quiet. Both of my kids liked to sleep with the TVs on in their rooms at night, but as I walked through the hallway to get to my room, I heard none of that.
I made it to my bedroom, and the TV was on, but it was muted. I gazed over at my wife, who was sleeping on my side of the bed like she always did whenever I wasn’t around when she fell asleep. She was peacefully sleeping, and before I rid myself of my gun and set it on the dresser, I walked over and kissed her on her forehead. I made my way into the closet, where I set my gun on top of the dresser and shed my clothes, so I could go into the bathroom and take a quick shower. Once I was standing under the showerhead, I let the water beat down on my back.
I felt like no matter what, bad shit would continue to happen. No matter how good of a man I was becoming, no matter how much I was progressing as a father, bad shit just had a way of following a nigga. I wanted to get to a point where I could go a whole month without some fucked up shit happening. I needed to pray a little longer and speak a little louder because when I asked God to watch over me and mine before I went to bed at night, I didn’t know if He was hearing me.
I finished with my shower and stepped out, wrapping the towel around my waist. It took me another ten minutes to finish in the bathroom, and then I walked out in only my briefs and headed to the bed. I turned the TV off with the remote and climbed in, scooting Normani over, so I could have some space to lie down. She stirred in her sleep when I did that, and I turned her around, so her back was facing me, and I was able to spoon her.
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