Former Rain-Forsaken Box Set

by Vanessa Miller

  “He took the kids to the movies – a double feature,” she answered seductively.

  Disappointment spread across JT’s face. “I wish I could come see you, I really do. But I’m headed to a meeting right now. I wish you would have had him do that double feature yesterday.”

  “JT, you haven’t called or come by here since I got out of the hospital. Are you trying to avoid me?”

  “That’s crazy talk, girl. You’ve only been home three weeks; you’re not up to having visitors yet.”

  She screamed into the phone, “JT, if you don’t get over here right now, I will call the church and tell them all about us.”

  “Calm down. Why are you so upset?”

  “I’m not joking with you, JT. I need to see you right now.”

  He stopped his car and made a u-turn in the street. “I’m on my way. I’ll see you in a minute.” He hung up the phone and then dialed another number. When it was answered he said, “I’m running a little late. I have to take care of something before I can get over there. Okay?”

  The person on the other end of the phone said, “That’s too bad, baby. Well, I guess I’ll just have to find something else to occupy my time.”

  “Read a book,” JT replied. “You better not invite another man over there. Do you hear me?”

  She laughed, “Whatever, JT.”

  “No, not, whatever – go get a book and I’ll see you in an hour. Now I’ve got to go,” he said as he turned the corner onto a street he had become very familiar with.

  He pulled into the driveway, opened his cell phone and punched in a few numbers. When the call was picked up he said, “Hey, it’s me. Open the garage.”

  The garage door lifted and JT pulled his Bentley inside. He got out of his car and shook his leg so that he could straighten the creases from his three hundred dollar pants as he pushed the button to close the garage door. He then entered the house through the garage door entrance, took off his coat and walked into the house of one of his deacons. But Deacon Benson wasn’t at home; his wife Diane was waiting for JT in the living room.

  “What took you so long?” Diane asked as JT walked closer to her.

  “Stop playing, Diane. I have to be somewhere in less than an hour. What’s so important?”

  Diane was seated on the couch, and next to her was a basinet. She stood up, bent over the basinet and lifted the baby out of it. She handed the baby to JT and said, “I thought you would finally want to see your little girl. Lily has been waiting to meet her daddy.”

  “Hold up,” he said as he handed the baby back to her. “Don’t try to get nothing started, Diane. You know I’m not the father of your baby.”

  “You didn’t even look at her. Don’t you want to see if she looks like you?” Diane lifted the baby higher so JT could see her face. “Now how can you say she isn’t your baby?”

  As Diane lifted the baby in his face, JT was thinking back to the days he had spent time with Diane before she got pregnant. He realized with horrifying guilt that he was in the vicinity when Diana got pregnant. But he still wouldn’t look at the little girl’s face. “I think you need glasses, Diane. She looks like Deacon Benson.”

  “You didn’t even look at her.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  She came closer to him and put her baby in his face. “You’re lying, JT. This is your baby and you know it. Look at her!” she screamed.

  For other reasons very close to his heart, JT didn’t want to look at the little girl in front of him. But he turned his face toward the baby anyway. As he looked at her he remembered the flutter in his stomach the day he first looked at his boys. He didn’t feel anything right now, and took that as confirmation. He pushed Diane away from him and turned to leave. “I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you once you’ve regained your right mind. Obviously having that baby has destroyed some of your brain cells.”

  “What about Lily, JT? You can’t just walk away from your responsibilities.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with this.”

  Diane sat down, holding her baby close to her she began to sob.

  JT wanted to go to her and comfort her, but the woman had just accused him of fathering her baby. He would never come within striking distance of this woman again. He put his coat back on and left without saying another word.

  Driving down the street, JT thought about going home. But then he realized that he didn’t want to go home and get into another discussion with Cassandra. So he kept moving to his original destination. He pulled into the driveway where his meeting for the night would be held. He dialed the occupant’s telephone number and asked her to raise her garage door. JT didn’t like leaving his car exposed. He pulled into the garage, got out of the car, went into the house and walked straight into the master bedroom. Vivian Sampson, the new choir director at his church, sat on the edge of her bed with a black negligee on. Her legs were crossed, revealing how long and sexy they were.

  JT leaned against the bedroom door and licked his bottom lip. “Ms. Sampson, is your choir ready for the Bishop’s musical next month?”

  Vivian put her hand on the pole of her canopy bed and struck a seductive pose that allowed JT a fuller view of her bountiful breasts. “Yes, pastor, my choir is more than up for the challenge.”

  JT closed the bedroom door and stepped into a fire that more than consumed him. It left him weary and conflicted. By the time he left Vivian’s bed to go into the bathroom and clean himself, his head was pounding. He opened her medicine cabinet and took the Tylenol out. But when he closed the cabinet door, he found himself staring at a pockmarked face monster that laughed at him in the mirror.

  Closing his eyes, he shook himself. He then slowly opened his eyes, praying that he would see a reflection of himself. But the monster in the mirror grew more hideous. The pockmarks on his forehead grew into horns and the greenish-grey eyes that looked like his darkened as the whites of the eyes reddened as if fire shot threw them. JT backed away until his body was against the wall. He turned his head, not wanting to see the monster in the mirror again. Because he knew deep in his gut that the monster was him. He slid to the floor and leaned against the sparkling white tub.

  JT.

  JT heard someone call his name. He searched the small bathroom but found no one. Then it struck him, and he knew he was hearing the voice of God.

  When you called out to Me, I delivered you. But you have forsaken Me. And I will deliver you no more.

  Tears flowed down his cheeks as he accepted God’s judgment. “What happened to me?” JT well remembered the day he’d called out to the Lord. He had wanted out of the life he’d been forced to live so bad that he would have crawled all the way to heaven on bloody knees. “How did I get so far away from You, Lord?”

  Chapter 4

  June – 1993

  Walking into his mother’s house was like seeing an unwanted prophecy come true. He’d told her that shooting that stuff in her veins would kill her. Now he was standing over his mother’s body. She was lying on the dirty orange carpeted floor. As he leaned down to lift her in his arms, a roach crawled from under her. “Mama, wake up. Do you hear me, Mama?”

  The lids of her eyes parted. Then he saw her eyes roll backward as her body went limp. “No, Mama, don’t do this to me.”

  The needle she used to send her happy juice flowing through her body was on the ground next to her. The rope was still knotted and tied to her arm. JT shook his mother. “Wake up. Do you hear me? I said wake up?”

  But her body was stiff. She was gone. He took the rope from around her arm, put her needle in the trash, then picked his mother off the floor and gently placed her on the couch. He didn’t cry as he called for an ambulance. He had practiced for this event ever since he was nine years old when his mother first put that needle of death in her arm. He was twenty two now, and all cried out about the sunken in cheeks that destroyed the beauty of the woman who used to reside in his mother’s body. All cried out about the missed hi
gh school graduation and subsequent wedding she missed because she was so high she didn’t realize that she was going to miss important events in her son’s life. One after the other.

  He picked the plates off the floor that held the contents of half eaten food and scraped the contents in the trash. He then took the dirty cups and empty boxes of frozen food and threw them in the trash as well, tied the trash bag and threw it in the dumpster in the back of her house. He couldn’t give her a peaceful life, couldn’t stop her from shooting poison into her body, but he could give her a bit of dignity in death.

  When the paramedics arrived and asked him what happened, JT told them, “I don’t know, when I came in the house she was laying on the couch like that. I thought she was sleep, but I couldn’t wake her.”

  The paramedics exchanged glances, but said nothing. They wheeled his mother’s body out of her rented home. JT closed the door behind them and walked away without looking back. There were no memories in that house he would cherish. Christmas and birthdays went unnoticed. No scrapbooks of laughing children or smiling parents would be retrieved from his childhood home. His memories of this place were as bleak and dirty as the carpet he’d found his mother on.

  Numbly, he got in his car and headed home. Mona was all he had now. He’d married his prom date after she called four weeks after prom claiming to be pregnant. JT and Mona had not been a couple during high school. He’d dated Erica Swell. Erica had been a cheerleader and he had been a football player. Erica was a Christian girl with plans to save herself for marriage. JT tried his best to wait, but during their senior year Mona kept making promises – telling him what she would do for him, so he broke up with Ericka before the prom, figuring he would be able to get back with her once he’d had his fun with Mona. But Mona got pregnant and JT began having dreams of a little girl calling him daddy. So he did the honorable thing and married Mona three months after he graduated from high school.

  Mona lost the baby right after they married. His mother doubted if she had truly been pregnant in the first place, and used that as her excuse not to show up for his wedding. Sometimes JT wondered if Mona had played him also. But he’d already lost Ericka and given up a football scholarship, so the last thing he wanted confirmed was that it was all for nothing. He’d gotten a job as a custodian and made the best of his life. He’d even become fond of Mona and was hoping that she would get pregnant again, soon. So it was with a heavy heart that he drove home to his wife, looking for comfort.

  What he found when he arrived home was the opposite of comfort. Well, somebody was being comforted, it just wasn’t him. JT opened the back door and heard the sound of love making coming from his bedroom. Stunned and already in a grieving state, he closed the door back and sat down on the stoop outside. He figured he would wait until they were finished, then go inside, get his gun out of the closet and shoot them.

  Jimmy Littejohn, JT’s friend from high school pulled up behind his car and jumped out. “What’s doing, man?”

  JT didn’t respond. He put his head in his hand and let it slide backward through his high top fade.

  “What’s wrong, JT? Why you acting all numb?” Jimmy asked.

  “My mother died today.” He looked toward the back of his house and added. “Oh yeah, and Mona is inside have sex with someone. I’m just waiting out here until they finish so I can kill them. You got any bail money?”

  “No way, man. You kidding me?”

  JT shook his head and ran his hand through his fade again.

  Jimmy grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him off the stoop. “You’re coming with me.”

  JT shook him off. “Naw, man. I’m waiting right here. I want them to see my face when that dude is finished having his way with my wife.”

  “Man, do you know whose car that is?” Jimmy pointed at the black Camaro boldly parked in front of JT’s house.

  JT gave Jimmy a dumbfounded look, and then shook his head again. “Nope, but I’m sure I’ll find out when I shoot him.”

  Jimmy grabbed his arm again and pulled him toward his car. “Fool, that is Lester Grayson’ car. The way I see it, if he is in there with your wife; let him have her-or he’ll kill you and take her anyway.” Jimmy kept pulling JT. “Now come on, let’s go.”

  JT knew all about Lester Grayson. He was the kingpin around town. He made his money off the weaknesses of people like his mother. That fancy Camaro and the Ford Explorer Lester drove around town in like a big man, was bought by dead people. Dead people that Lester murdered with his gun or with his dope. JT walked over to the Camaro and kicked it. The alarm on the car went off.

  “Okay, JT, you’ve had your fun.” Jimmy pulled him toward his car, opened the passenger door, and pushed JT in. Jimmy ran to the other side and jumped in. They sped off just as JT’s front door opened and an angry Lester ran out with his 9mm at the ready.

  Chapter 5

  “Did you see how that fool ran out of your house with his pants falling down?” Jimmy laughed as he hit the steering wheel.

  “Yeah,” JT told him. “If it wasn’t my life, it would almost be funny.”

  Jimmy turned to his friend. “Look, man, don’t sweat it. Mona’s been cheating on you since you got with her. We all wondered why you married her in the first place.”

  He wondered how come no one bothered to inform him that his wife was the welcome mat for the city of New Orleans. He leaned the passenger seat back and closed his eyes. He’d given up a college scholarship and the girl he’d loved since ninth grade to marry Mona. And she repaid him by sleeping with the man that sold poison to his mother.

  Jimmy drove JT around town until it got dark. He then pulled up in front of a drug house on Canal Street. He opened his glove compartment and pulled out two guns. Handed one to JT and said, “Let’s do this.”

  JT put the gun back in the glove compartment. “Man, what are you talking about? Do what?”

  “Don’t you want to get even with Lester for messing around with Mona?”

  “Sure I do. But what does that have to do with me picking up that gun?”

  Jimmy pointed in the direction of an old dilapidated house. “That’s one of his major crack houses. If we hit it, I guarantee o’Lester will hurt a lot more than he did when you kicked his car. Now what do you say?”

  JT thought of his mother stretched out on that dirty floor, needle next to her body. He thought about the sounds his wife made while laying with another man. He pulled the gun out of the glove compartment. “Let’s do it.”

  They walked onto the porch and banged on the door a couple of times. One of Lester’s soldiers came to the door demanding, “What y’all want?”

  Steve-O was at the door. Jimmy knew him from around the way. “Steve-O, man, what’s up? We need to get on. You gon’ help us or what? We got the money.”

  Steve-O gave them a gold toothed grin as he opened the door. Jimmy could see by the bulge in his jacket that he was packing. So he quickly scanned the room to see if any of his boys were house-sitting with him. When he only saw a couple of crack heads on the floor too busy getting high to notice them, he whipped out his gun and cracked Steve-O across his head, knocking him to the ground. “Get his piece,” Jimmy told JT.

  When JT finished patting Steve-O down he retrieved two guns and a pocket knife.

  “You think you gon’ get away with this? Man, Lester gon’ kill y’all,” Steve-O stated.

  Steve-O got smacked in the mouth with the butt of JT’s gun just for mentioning Lester’s name. “Shut up. Now get up and get us the money, or you’ll be too dead to tell Lester what went on here tonight.”

  Steve-O was bad, but he wasn’t crazy bad. So he pulled out his money bag and handed over fifty thousand dollars. “Thanks, man. I’ll check you later,” Jimmy told him as he and JT backed out of the house. They hit three more of Lester’s houses. Jimmy didn’t want Lester to feel all the pain. Sometimes innocent bystanders have to learn that life sucks just like the rest of the worl
d. At least that’s what Jimmy told JT to explain why they were stealing a car after hitting their third house.

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t mind wronging Lester, but the person who owns this car probably has a family to feed. Probably has to get up and go to work in the morning.”

  “Yeah, you right. This Buick is a family man’s car. You wouldn’t catch no hustler in it, that’s for sure.” They drove away from the Buick and then Jimmy spotted a tinted out Deville with hydraulics two blocks away. He turned to JT and asked, “Is it okay if we borrow that one?”

  “Man, whatever,” JT told him. Unfortunately for JT, Jimmy wasn’t finished. They stopped at a Wal-Mart and bought two ski masks and hit the fourth house. Why hadn’t Jimmy been smart enough to pick up the ski masks before they hit house number one?

  This was JT’s first, second, third and fourth felony. And he was already tiring of the criminal life; kind of wished that some crime stopper would put an end to his car jacking, dope house robbing spree. But he never wished for Lester to be at the fourth house waiting on them, or that he would take a bullet as he ran like Edwin C. Moses going for the gold. As he dove through the window of the rented Deville he had one prevailing thought: How had Jimmy the guy who would rob his mama and still sleep as if he were lying on clouds; the master mind behind this crime spree, beat him to the car? And how come he didn’t have a bullet in his behind?

  “He got me,” JT hollered as Jimmy sped down the street.

  Pop, pop, pop. Bullets hit the car.

  Jimmy floored the pedal, trying to get out of Lester’s way. Once they had put distance between them and lead poisoning, Jimmy said, “Let’s just ride until morning, so we can get as far away from this place as possible.”

  “I need to get to a hospital, man!” JT screamed at him.

  “If I take you to a hospital in this town, you won’t be attending your mother’s funeral, you’ll be having your own.”