“Oh, shit, Qua.” I cried out just as I came in his mouth.
He stood there, with that cocky-ass grin he was known for, then removed his shorts and underwear as I anxiously waited on him to enter me. Qua wasted no time positioning me on my side and entering me slowly. In that moment I forgot about any stress I was feeling earlier. Qua switched positions: he pulled me to the edge of the bed, and then he pounded in and out of me, causing me to rock my hips and my big belly as I received every stroke of pleasure he was giving me. I felt his dick swell inside of me, which meant he was on the verge of cumming, and so was I. He let out a deep groan as he pumped with deep, long strokes until we both came together.
“I’m sorry, babe,” he said as he helped me up off the bed so that we could take a shower together.
“I’m sorry too. And I’m going to try to keep in mind that I’m pregnant,” I said, then kissed him on his lips.
After we got out of the shower, he oiled my body and helped me into my nightshirt. Then we both headed to the kitchen for some more of his mom’s food. Once we’d fixed our plates, we didn’t bother to sit at the table. We both went and sat on the bed and ate there while we watched a movie on the TV. After I finished eating, the movie was watching me as my ass dozed off.
* * *
When we got back home, I was the first to say that I was happy to be home—so happy that I was on my way to my parents’ house. I had missed my parents, but I had missed baby Andrea more. She was my li’l stinka butt, and I had hated not seeing her. Baby Andrea was fussy today, and my mom said she wasn’t feeling well, so I went upstairs to my mom’s bedroom to get the Children’s Motrin. Some things I saw on my mom’s dresser pissed me off. I grabbed them, and I took two steps at a time as I dashed back to the kitchen, where she was.
“Mom, what the hell is this?” I yelled, throwing the envelopes down on the kitchen table.
“Jakiyah, you need to lower your voice. And remember who the hell you’re talking to,” she said.
“Mom, what reason would you have to be accepting mail from Tamia?” I asked, lowering my voice this time, but the anger I felt was still evident.
“Jakiyah, what did I tell you about forgiveness? She wrote me, apologizing, so I sort of been mentoring her,” she said.
I looked at her, trying to figure out if my mom was losing her mind, because why would you want to mentor someone who had taken another person’s life? Tamia was someone who probably would have no problem murdering again, so why would my mom want to associate with that kind of person? Tamia was mentally unstable, and my mom needed to know how dangerous it was to continue communicating with her.
“Mom, you don’t need to be communicating with her. She’s unstable, and she’s a smart unstable. She’s manipulating you, and soon she’s going to play you into telling her whatever she needs to know to try to hurt us again,” I told her.
“Jakiyah, I’m not a fool, and I would never give her any information concerning any of us. And I doubt that she wishes to harm us. She just wants our forgiveness, and I believe that she deserves that,” she said, sounding like her normal crazy self.
“Mom, it’s okay to forgive, but accepting mail and corresponding with her is not acceptable,” I told her.
“Not acceptable to who, Jakiyah? Because at the end of the day, I’m grown and I make my own decisions.”
I was going to need my father and Ty on this one, because she really had done lost her damn mind, and I didn’t know what to do to help her find it. After giving baby Andrea some medicine and putting her to sleep, I went out front to call Ty. I needed him over here like yesterday. While I waited on Ty, I sat reading through the letters. I had a problem with how my mom couldn’t read between the lines. Tamia was playing my mother like a fucking game, and my mom was feeding into it. But what alarmed me most was the last letter. In it Tamia told my mom that they were considering her for outpatient treatment. Who the hell in their right mind would let her murdering ass out for outpatient services, when she had killed someone?
I didn’t know if there was any truth in what she had written, but I knew that I needed to contact someone, even if that meant pleading with Andris’s parents to team up with me to keep Tamia’s ass in there. She mentioned in the letter that her being off her medication was what had triggered her aggressive behavior toward Andris, as had remembering the traumatic event of losing her child, which she blamed him for. I swear, that was bullshit, and whoever her doctor or psychologist was needed to be locked in a damn institution.
Chapter Forty-Four
Ty
Jakiyah called me, upset about my mother corresponding with Tamia’s crazy ass, and I didn’t blame her, because my mom should have known better. I didn’t know what was going on, but my mom was losing her mind, and now this had convinced me even more that maybe her ass was unstable too. I didn’t understand what would possess her to want to have any kind of relationship with the girl after what she did to me. I wasn’t interested in arguing with my mom, but I had to go to my mom’s place because Jakiyah needed me. I was well aware that trying to get through to my mom was going to be like pulling teeth.
“Hey, Mom. What’s going on?” I asked her after walking into the kitchen, her favorite place.
“If you’re here to give me the third degree, like your sister did, don’t bother. You two are going to stop acting like you don’t know who’s the parent,” she said.
“Honey, you know you have no business talking to that girl after what she done to Ty,” my father said as he walked into the kitchen. He greeted her with a kiss.
“Who didn’t Jakiyah call! And I’m not going to allow you all to gang up on me,” my mother fussed.
“Mom, we are not ganging up on you. We just want you to realize that this girl is dangerous,” I told her.
“She’s no longer dangerous. She admits that what she done was wrong, and all she wants now is to right her wrongs and ask for forgiveness,” she said.
I got up and walked into the living room, where Jakiyah was stationed. I just couldn’t remain in that kitchen without saying something that I knew that I would regret later.
“Jakiyah, I really think that Mom is really losing it. Some of the shit that comes out of her mouth just don’t make no damn sense,” I mused.
“Now you see what I be talking about. Now, something is up with Mom, like she bumped her damn head or something. She really had me thinking that I need to take baby Andrea home with me, because if she wants to put her life in danger, I be damned if I sit back and let the baby be in harm’s way.”
“How are you going to take care of the baby and your six months pregnant?” I asked her.
“Well, unless she cut out this foolishness, I’m going to have to do what I have to do, because Mom still looking at Tamia as her damn friend. I’m going to see if I could contact someone, because I’m sure that Tamia shouldn’t be contacting her after what she did to you. She’s the mom of a victim, so that alone is a reason for her to not write mom,” she said, pissed off.
I stayed at the house for about another hour. After Jakiyah threatened to take baby Andrea, my mother finally agreed that she wasn’t going to accept any more letters from Tamia. I didn’t know if I believed that she would stop all contact, but I was praying she did, because Tamia’s ass wasn’t dealing with a full deck. I didn’t bother to stay for dinner. Chanel was cooking dinner, so I bounced after saying my good-byes.
As soon as I walked through the door, the smell of some good cooking hit me and my mouth began to water.
“Smells good, bae. What you cooking?” I asked Chanel before grabbing her from behind and kissing her on the lips.
“I did something different. I was tired of fried chicken, and I know you are too, so I made oxtails, cabbage, rice and beans, and some plantains,” she said. “Oh, and for dessert, I made banana bread to go with some vanilla-bean ice cream.”
“Damn. What did I do to deserve all of this?” I asked, then kissed her on the neck.
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sp; “Do I need a reason to get in the kitchen and cook for my man?” she asked, getting defensive.
“Yo, what’s up with you? You just took that shit all the way left,” I said, looking at her ass sideways.
“I’m sorry. It just came out the wrong way. I didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s just eat,” she said, turning back to the stove.
We sat at the table and ate in silence, and that never happened. Chanel always had some story to tell about her workday. I kept watching her, and I could tell that something was bothering her, because this was not my Chanel. My Chanel had always been the chatty type, so I needed to know what was going on with her.
“Chanel, what the hell is going on with you?” I asked her.
“Nothing is going on with me, Ty. I’m fine,” she lied. But it was written all over her face.
“So, if nothing is wrong with you, why the hell you cook all this food, just to pick over it? Stop playing and tell me what’s going on with you,” I said, getting frustrated.
“I’m pregnant,” she said just above a whisper as she looked at me with a nervous expression on her face.
I didn’t know what to say about her being pregnant. We weren’t trying, and she’d been on birth control, since we’d been sleeping together without a condom, so I was a little shocked. I didn’t want to take too long to respond. I didn’t want her to think that I was upset about it because I wasn’t just a little curious as to how we got caught up.
“I know what you thinking, and I don’t know, so that will be a question for the doctor when we go to see him,” she said, knowing me all too well.
“It’s a legitimate thought because you have been on the pill since we stopped using condoms. So yeah, the doc is going to have to explain some things,” I told her.
“Well, he’s going to tell you that birth control is ninety-one percent to ninety-nine percent effective in preventing pregnancy. However, that still means there is a very small risk of pregnancy, and it just so happened that we are that small risk,” she said, sounding like she had read that shit straight from Google.
“Yes, I googled it,” she said, again showing me that she knew me so well.
“Well, I guess my baby is having my baby, and since you’re so good at reading my thoughts, you should know that I’m happy. Now can we go back to eating this good food, before it gets cold?” I said, then dug right back in.
I didn’t know how I felt about having a baby right now, and I knew that I had said that I was happy, but I just didn’t feel we were ready to have a child right now. I knew how Chanel was, so I knew that she was going to want my last name for herself and the child. That meant she was going to expect a marriage proposal. I had settled down and had stopped creeping in these streets, but I wasn’t ready to get married. I was still young, but I knew that excuse wasn’t going to work with her, especially since she knew that Jakiyah had got a proposal. After we finished eating dinner, she heated up the banana bread and put the ice cream on top. After dessert, we were both in relax mode and chilled on the couch, with the television on. The TV watched us, as we both were lost in our own thoughts.
Chapter Forty-Five
Jakiyah
Qua and I had been getting along so well lately, and I was enjoying not being my normal hormonal self, which caused us to argue just about everything. I’d been spending a lot of time at my mom’s house since I hadn’t been back to work. I was seven months pregnant now, and this new patient that they had assigned me to had only wanted a damn maid. The work had taken a toll on my back, so I was now officially on maternity leave. Qua couldn’t be happier. He’d been trying to get me to stop working since he found out I was pregnant.
My mom felt that I was there to babysit her, but I really wasn’t, and I tried to explain to her that I was just there to offer a hand with baby Andrea and my father since I had more time on my hands. My father’s health has been failing for the past few weeks, and I had just honestly been helping her out. I’d also been checking the mail on the low, but she didn’t need to know that.
I wanted to have a conversation with her today about Andris’s mom, because when I’d reached out to her about Tamia, we had got to talking, and she had expressed how much she missed her son and not spending time with her granddaughter. I’d had to take a minute to think about how I felt when I lost my sister. My first thought had been to hold on to the one thing that I had left of my sister. I had told Andris’s mom that I would talk to my mother about bringing baby Andrea to visit. Hopefully, my mother, who was always talking about forgiveness, would have no problem forgiving and would let the baby spend time with her father’s side of the family. Just as baby Andrea had offered us comfort after Cydney passed, I believed she would do the same for them, so I just hoped my mom would allow that to happen.
I went upstairs to check on my father after noticing he wasn’t in the living room, sitting in his favorite chair in front of the television. He was in his bed, sleeping, but something seemed off about his position on the bed. It looked like he had fallen on the bed instead of getting in the bed. I nervously walked over to the bed, my hands shaking. I checked for a pulse, being that I didn’t see his body moving from breathing. He didn’t have a pulse, and he didn’t respond when I called out to him, so I screamed for my mother, and she came rushing up the stairs.
“Jakiyah, what’s going on?” she asked, out of breath. Then she grabbed her chest when she realized that I was standing over my father’s lifeless body.
“Mom, call nine-one-one,” I said as the tears fell, because I already knew that he was gone.
* * *
We were all in the living room now, still waiting on the coroner to arrive. We’d been waiting for over an hour now, and all the while my father’s body had remained upstairs, making the situation that much worse. My mom had been given a sedative, and she was now upstairs, in my old bedroom, sleeping. That was a good thing, because she was losing it. I had never got the chance to speak to her about the baby and her visiting Andris’s mother, but I called Andris’s mother and asked her if she could pick the baby up and look after her for a few days, because no one was stable enough at my mom’s house to care for her right now.
Ty was upstairs with my dad and was just sitting there. He refused to leave him, and it broke my heart to see him so broken, as he was usually the strong one. I called German and asked him to come over, because I knew that when it was time to remove my dad’s body, Ty was going to lose it, and I was in no condition to stop him. We had to wait until my dad had an autopsy before we could bury him, but they believed that he had had a heart attack. I was beating myself up, wondering whether I could have saved him if I had checked on him sooner.
The coroner arrived about forty-five minutes later, shortly after Qua showed up. Just as I had thought, when they tried to remove my dad, Ty flipped out. I thanked God that Qua had arrived when he did, because German would not have been able to handle Ty on his own. Chanel couldn’t even get him to calm down, and I was holding on by a thin thread, trying not to lose it myself, because I felt like dropping to the floor and kicking and screaming for my father to just wake up.
“Are you okay?” Qua asked me.
I just shook my head no, because I wasn’t okay.
“Babe, I’m so sorry for your loss. I wish I could take your pain away,” he stated.
I buried my face in Qua’s chest as they carried my father’s body down the stairs and out of the house to the awaiting van. Qua held on to me as my body shook uncontrollably. I couldn’t get it to stop as I wailed loudly for my father. Later, Qua rocked me in his arms up in my old bedroom, and I eventually fell asleep. I did not wake up until the next morning. Qua had to be to work at 6:00 a.m., but he didn’t want to leave me. I told him to go ahead and assured him that I would be okay. After I expended a little more effort at convincing him that I was good, he left. His boss was a pain in the ass when the workers had last-minute call-ins, and even though Qua didn’t care, I didn’t want him to get in trouble.
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Chapter Forty-Six
Jakiyah
Ty and I arrived at Browne Funeral Home. I knew I had to be the strong one, because he was already freaking out. I was numb to everything that was being said, as I was having a déjà vu moment, reliving when I was here, in the same position, when my sister passed. After we took care of business there, we went back to the house to deal with my mother. My mom looked like she had aged overnight, and I felt so bad for her because I couldn’t take away the pain she was feeling right now.
When we got to the house, she was sitting in my dad’s chair, trying to feel that closeness that she was missing. This broke my heart too, and I knew she wasn’t going to be the same without him. He could calm her craziness when she went overboard with it or when she needed to be told that she was wrong, but we no longer had him to balance us out as a family. She kept asking me about baby Andrea’s whereabouts, so I called Andris’s mother and she said that she would come right over with the baby and that she understood. I assured her that this wouldn’t be the last time that she saw baby Andrea, and she couldn’t stop thanking me. She said just having her for that one day had caused her to smile, and she hadn’t smiled since the day her son died.
By the time I finished making my mom some tea and getting her two aspirins for her headache, baby Andrea was home. She lifted my mother’s spirits. I went upstairs to go through my dad’s closet to find him something to be buried in for the funeral next week. I tried to prepare myself mentally for this task, but it didn’t work, as the waterworks started. I could smell the cigar smoke mixed with Old Spice on some of his things, and all the memories of Ty and me teasing him about still wearing Old Spice caused me to smile. I missed him so much, I wished that I had spent more time with him. Whenever I’d visited, I stayed in the kitchen with my mother and never went in the living room to sit and watch one of his favorite programs with him.
I wiped my tears as I carried his things downstairs and to my car. When I went back inside, I let my mom know about all the arrangements and what I had decided to bury him in, to see if she agreed or wanted to make any changes. Ty had been quiet the whole time and was just watching television and messing with his phone, but I could tell that he was hurting and didn’t know what to do with himself. He told me that Chanel was pregnant but that he hadn’t got a chance really to digest how he felt about it, because of dad’s sudden passing. I was happy for him, but I was sad that dad wasn’t going to get to know our children and that our children would not get to know their grandfather.
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