“What is it?”
Chapter 30 – No Apologies Given
Dee waited for Jason’s answer, wondering what he wanted to say. She’d never heard him sound so serious before, and the tone of his voice worried her slightly. The fact he was having some sort of moral dilemma about it too made her even more worried. She waited quietly until Jason spoke.
“You know the night of your cousin’s engagement party?”
“Yeah” Dee replied, waiting to see where it was going.
“I was outside with Tip, and he went back in. Then I heard yelling and I saw Kiki and J arguing.”
“So?” Dee questioned, wondering why he was making a deal of it, after all, everyone argues.
“He had her pinned by her neck”
“What?!” Dee exploded, the words hitting her as soon as they were said.
“Please don’t freak out. He left as soon as I stepped in but, I was just a little worried that it wasn’t a one time thing”
“Don’t freak out?” Dee spat angrily, hardly hearing anything else he said.
“Dee. Listen to me. I spoke with Kiki and she said that it’d never happened before and he wasn’t like that but obviously, I don’t know him. I don’t want to speak out of term and get involved with something that’s not mine to get involved with, but...”
“But you did” Dee butted in.
“But I couldn’t live with myself if it was an ongoing thing and I could have stopped it. Especially now there’s a baby in the picture.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, though Jason could tell Dee was still there. He was starting to regret saying something over the phone, and knew he should have waited until he was with her in person, though the thoughts were nagging at him all the time, and he knew he had to say something soon. He’d wondered ever since the party whether to say something to Dee, after all, if it was a real domestic violence case then it was his responsibility as a civilian and a fellow human being and do the decent thing and raise alarm. However, if it was a one time thing of teenage love getting out of hand, then he didn’t want to cause anything unnecessarily. He’d thought about it ever since the party, and though he’d told Kiki he wouldn’t say anything, he couldn’t help but feel he had a horrible secret he needed to tell. He decided in the end that the pros outweighed the cons, after all, he could apologise for saying anything out of turn, he couldn’t however, apologise about lying to Dee and her family. When Dee had told him the night before about Kiki’s pregnancy, Jason knew this couple was in each other’s lives for good, and with a baby on the way, he needed to be sure that what he saw wasn’t anything more serious.
“I’m gonna fucking kill him” Dee said, breaking the silence on the other end. Jason’s heart pumped loudly in his chest, the coldness of her sentence filling him with a sense of dread. What would she do?
“Dee, please”
“Don’t fucking ‘please’ me” she replied. “No-one puts their hands on my family.”
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret” he told her, worrying that she was about to leave the conversation, and he wasn’t wrong. Seconds later, she told him she would call him later and ended the call. He could hear the anger in her voice, though it was almost too calm for his liking. If she was shouting and crying, he felt he could have talked her down, but her cool, calm tone suggested she’d already made up her mind. Instantly, he tried calling her straight back, hoping there was still a chance to calm her down, but the call just kept ringing, before sending him through to voicemail. In his hotel room, he sat worrying, waiting to hear back from her.
Jason had seen Dee angry before, and frankly, it had scared him. He’d never seen such a look of anger in a woman before, and especially as the things she’d been mad about weren’t even all that bad. He’d later learnt things about her, like the fact her brother taught her to fight as a young kid, and she’d been in her fair share of fights. It surprised him, because when she wasn’t mad, she had a sweet sounding voice and she was so unbelievably beautiful. You just don’t associate beauty with aggression, and it was hard to accept that she had two sides to her.
As Jason sat and waited to hear anything, he remembered a conversation he’d had with Dee one night about the first time they met in the club. She’d laughed about a customer she’d punched in the face on the dance floor when he got a little too friendly. It surprised him how she spoke about it, that it was pretty normal and even humorous. It was hard to believe that the same night he’d taken her to his hotel room; she’d broken some guys nose. Knowing that she was capable of doing that to a stranger, it made him worry about what she might do to somebody who hurt her family. He desperately wanted to know what she was going to do, but from the other end of the phone, he was no help. All of a sudden, he was regretting his decision to say anything in the first place.
Once Dee ended the call on her end, she stomped back into the house, her eyes seeing nothing but red. She was like a bull in a china shop, reading to stomp on anything that came into contact with her. She threw her phone down onto the kitchen counter and made her way to the front room. She saw nothing in her path other than her main goal, J. As soon as her eyes made contact with his across the room, she spat at him to stand up. Confused and possibly a little tipsy from Monique’s wine, he stood up.
“What the fuck?” J asked, seeing the look of anger on Dee’s face. She was like a tiger in the jungle that had just set its eyes on its prey. She could see him, and she was ready to pounce. In a few short strides she was in front of him, and since he only stood a few inches above her, she didn’t have to reach very far to punch his face with her all strength. It was over before Kiki and Monique could even react to what was happening. Soon enough, the women jumped up from their seats and raced over to J’s aid. Blood gushed from his nose and down to his lips, and now Dee had backed him into a corner of the room.
“You feel good about yourself intimidating girls?” she spat, and he looked at her with the same level of confusion that he had when she told him to stand up.
“Dee, what are you talking about?” Kiki yelled, trying to pull her sister away from her boyfriend, but failing miserably. Dee was stubborn in both attitude and strength, and once she had something in her head, it was hard to stop her.
“No-one EVER lays a finger on my family, you understand?”
“What’re you talking about?” J protested, trying to slip away to the side, but Dee put her arm out to block him in. Though he had the physical strength to move her, he decided to stay where he was; he wasn’t about to fight a woman, a pregnant woman at that.
“So you didn’t have my sister pinned by the neck at Rhea’s engagement party?” Dee asked him, and at that, Monique charged forward with the same look of anger on her face that Dee was showing, and it was clear to see they were mother and daughter.
“Dee, it wasn’t like that. Get off him!” Kiki protested, still trying to pull her sister away from her boyfriend.
Angered now by her sisters words, Dee pulled away from J and turned to her sister, moving the heat to her.
“So how was it Kiki? Did you ask him to do it? Was it a joke? ‘Cuz Jason didn’t see it that way”
“Jason told you?” Kiki asked, surprise in her voice, though she didn’t know how she would have known any other way.
“Yeah, he told me, ‘cuz he was worried it wasn’t a one time thing, so start talking”
“Somebody better start talking!” Monique yelled.
“Let me explain” J piped up, pinching his nose at the top in an effort to make it stop gushing. He looked utterly devastated, most likely not from the punch, but what was being said about him.
“No, I want to hear it from my sister first. Was it the first time?” Dee asked Kiki, who had now started crying.
“It was the only time, he’s not like that”
“But he was like that”
“He didn’t know what he was doing”
“How’s that?”
“He was fucked u
p out his mind”
“So you doing drugs now too?” Dee questioned J, turning back to him, and he looked like a deer caught in some headlights.
“Y’all better get out of here bringing trouble into my house” Monique yelled, ushering them out of the room and toward the front door. “Come back when y’all sort your shit out”
As Kiki opened the door for them to leave the house, Monique took a final look at J and told them to wait. Seconds later, she came back armed with tissues and handed a bunch to him, before looking him dead in the eye.
“If I find out you put hands on my daughter you better get yo’ ass so far away I can’t find you, ‘cuz so help me God I will cut your motherfucking balls off.”
It wasn’t unusual in their town to see people fighting on their own porch, or even out on the street, so when Dee, Kiki and J moved away from the house and down the street, nobody batted an eyelid. J held a tissue to his nose and did his best to wipe away the mess. At this point, he didn’t care much what he looked like but he preferred not to have blood running into his mouth as he spoke.
“Dee, I can’t say I didn’t do it, but I need to explain”
“I don’t really know what you can explain”
“Please” he begged, seeing she wasn’t going to make this easy.
“I did do it –and I know this ain’t no excuse but I don’t remember it at all. Keeks had to tell me the next day what happened, ‘cuz my brain was gone”
“How long you been taking drugs?”
“I don’t do that shit no more. Not now we gon have a baby and everything. I just, it helped me for a lil’ while”
J looked emotional as he spoke, yet the tears in his eyes didn’t waver Dee’s expression, who was still looking at him with her lip curled up.
“Things was hard at home, and I just saw a way out for a lil bit”
There was a pause of silence.
“I never meant to hurt her”
At that, Kiki stood on her tiptoes and threw her arms around him, kissing his neck as she spoke in his ear.
“It’s okay baby”
Dee watched her little sister hug her boyfriend, and suddenly she saw it for what it was. She’d just punched a 16-year old boy in the face and made her pregnant sister cry. Hell, she was six and a half months pregnant and was going around punching people in the nose. She took a step back and reality checked herself, suddenly, she felt a fool. He made a mistake, but he wasn’t the type to hit women.
“Come and clean yourself up” Dee told J, as she headed back toward the house. No apology was going to be given, because that wasn’t Dee’s style. She saw apologies as a sign of defeat, a sign that you had something to be sorry for, and while she may have regretted flying off the handle a little bit, she didn’t regret trying to protect her sister. She would protect her family till the very end at all costs.
Chapter 31 – Painful Memories
It had been an emotional night, and while they’d hoped that was the end of it, it seemed Monique had other things in mind. Though Monique had caused utter chaos and devastation in their lives while they were growing up, since she’d gotten clean she’d turned into a different woman; a woman that didn’t want drama in her home, a woman that wanted an easy life, and she was damned if she was taking shit from anybody these days, even if it was her own family. Whilst the three of them had stepped outside to sort out their own problems, Monique was sorting out some problems of her own, on the phone to Debbie Banks. Whatever possessed Monique was unknown to the others, but she’d found it appropriate to phone the worst mother of the century and tell her about the trouble J had brought into her house. Monique told Debbie she didn’t appreciate the drama, and asked her whether she was aware her son was aggressive to girls. Most mothers would defend their child to the high heavens, even if you’d just told them they’d committed the worst of crimes, but not Debbie Banks.
Debbie Banks was not happy to have another mother calling her up on the evening to tell her what a bad child her son had been. She was not impressed that it had interrupted a night with her latest boyfriend and she was not impressed that the mother in question was Monique Thompson, someone who had looked after Jon a lot when she didn’t. For Debbie, the phone call wasn’t an innocent excuse to have an argument as Monique had envisioned it, it was the defining moment she decided she’d had enough of her son once and for all. She hadn’t wanted him when she gave birth to him at fourteen, and she sure as hell didn’t want him at 30 years old, when she was in the prime of her life. High on drugs and angry at the interruption, Debbie gave Monique some choice words before she started bagging up all of J’s belongings and throwing them into the street. Debbie slurred at Monique that J had better get there quick to collect them before the homeless set on them.
At that moment, Debbie Banks became more cold, heartless and ruthless than she had ever shown herself to be. She was tossing her son aside as if he had never meant anything to her, and it was questionable whether he ever had. Monique then had the heartbreaking task of telling her daughter’s boyfriend what had just happened, and the look on his face made her decision for her in a heartbeat. She was going to move him into her home.
“She’ll probably change her mind” J had said, used to Debbie’s sudden outbursts and overreactions.
“Honey, she ain’t changing her mind” Monique told him, and the teenager looked as if somebody had stabbed a knife in his gut as the reality set in. Monique imagined he wasn’t actually too hurt about not living with her anymore, after all, what child could love a mother like that, but she could see the rejection on his face. No child of any colour, sex or age wanted to feel rejection. Rejection meant you weren’t good enough, you weren’t loveable, and you weren’t wanted.
As Monique and Dee watched J and Kiki walk out of the door ready to collect his things, Dee made a bee-line for the door, shutting it over before she lay into her mother.
“Did you see his face?” she yelled, furious with her mother’s actions.
“Why you yelling at me?” Monique retorted defensively.
“’Cuz you just fucking told his mom some shit she didn’t wanna hear and now she kicking him out”
“Oh, so it’s my fault his momma don’t care about him?”
“It’s your fault that you just called her for nothing, he was sorry! What you expect her to say?”
“I don’t know” Monique shrugged, picking up the glass of wine she was drinking before the nights events kicked off. Dee watched her mom intently as she took a sip.
“Damn it mom, could you put down the wine for five minutes and speak to me?”
“Don’t you speak to me like that!” Monique roared, as she slammed the glass back down onto the table, causing wine to splash everywhere.
“Look what you made me do!” she practically screamed at her daughter, her face full of rage. She stood up from her seat and for a matter of seconds; the women had a visual standoff, until a small figure appeared in the doorway.
“Why shouting?” Tushaun asked timidly, rubbing his eyes sleepily as he watched the events unfold.
Dee’s heart sunk as she wondered what her son had heard or seen between them, and quickly, she rushed over to him, scooping him up in her arms.
“I’m sorry baby, were we loud?”
Tushaun nodded, staring ahead at Monique. As Dee followed her son’s gaze, she saw the frosty look Monique was sporting on her face, and she turned her body away so he couldn’t see it anymore.
“Come on baby” she told him, as she carried him up the stairs, but instead of putting him back to bed, she sat him there while she gathered a bunch of his things. She put some shoes on his feet and put a coat on him over his pyjamas, grabbing his favourite soft toy he slept with.
“We’re gonna go stay at mommy’s tonight”
“Why?” Tushaun asked.
“Because mommy wants big cuddles tonight”
Tushaun seemed to accept this excuse, and nodded in understanding, though Dee knew it must ha
ve been confusing for him. Truth be told, she just wanted out of this drama filled house and she wanted her son out of it with her. She didn’t want him to be woken up by anything else that night and she didn’t like the frosty look on her mother’s face. Dee’s stress levels were elevated, which people always told her wasn’t good for the baby. She headed back downstairs and told her mom Tushaun was staying with her tonight. With that, she left, leaving an angry and confused Monique shouting at the door.
Dee felt like the worst mother in the world as she carried her son through the brisk weather in nothing but his pyjamas and a coat. She looked at his face to see him struggling to keep his eyes open, every now and then they would shut over but the coldness in the air and the movement in his mom’s arms would keep him opening them again. Dee walked as fast as her baby bump would let her, wanting nothing but to get back to her house and forget the mess of the night.
Dee knew her mom wasn’t all bad, and truth be told, deep down, she loved her more than words, but she often told people what a terrible mother she was. Sometimes, she was, and memories of childhood had been ruined because of it. Dee was nine years old when her 13-year old brother was killed. It was a shock to everyone, something no-one expected; something no-one could have predicted. Dee would never forget that day, because it scarred her for the rest of her life. Sometimes she still saw her brother, lifeless, cold and bloody. She remembered Jarrell carrying his twin brother in his arms and placing him on the sofa. Mario’s head lolled to the side, he was dead, just like that.
When Monique heard her son’s yelling, she immediately made her way to him, wondering what all the noise was about. As soon as she saw her teenage son’s bloody body limp on the sofa, she let out a shrill scream. It was like no noise she’d ever made before. Her mixed emotion of shock, panic, fear and utter devastation had her lying across his body sobbing, knowing he was gone. Everything in her told her he was gone, and though she called an ambulance, she told them her son was dead. The words stuck with her for the rest of her life, and Monique never truly got over it. She searched for anything and everything to make that hole in her heart disappear, but nothing did. Not even her own children could make her see the better side of life. Most days she wished she would have died instead of her son, or at least died with him, because she felt her heart did.
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