Baby Momma Saga, Part 2

by Ni'chelle Genovese

  I know this heffa hasn’t made a sandwich or whatever and left this shit like this. It didn’t make any sense for me to be on a constantly shortening leash when Genesis let that girl get away with murder.

  Grabbing a cucumber and tomato out of the fridge, I sliced them up into a bowl with a splash of vinegar. This is all I’d been thinking about all day. I cleaned up whatever I used, leaving the rest of that mess exactly as I found it. Let Genesis clean up after her. My behind was ready for a hot shower and a good hour-long nap. Since neither of them liked anything I cooked, I wasn’t even going to waste my time trying to find a recipe to impress their fucked-up taste buds. They could order a pizza or get something from that new service that delivered damn near everything under the sun.

  I’d started toward my bathroom when an idea stopped my feet. Genesis always spent so much time in the bathroom with the door shut tight. I could stare under the door and see him pacing back and forth, or he’d be in one place for what would seem like forever. I tiptoed into his immaculate bathroom. Everything was in its place. The floor and mirrors were spotless. I looked in the medicine cabinet, disappointed to find nothing but Motrin and allergy pills. The linen closet was actually in the bathroom. I opened the doors wide and stared at his pristine, perfectly folded white sheets. All except for one at the very top. I had to use the second step as a foothold, but after I pulled myself up, I found it. It was a poetry book, or a journal of some kind, sitting on the top shelf underneath a crooked towel.

  I turned to page one. Genesis’s handwriting immediately leapt off the page.

  GENESIS KANE’S JOURNAL

  Chapter 65

  In the movies, the nigga always dies first. Those were my exact thoughts as I stood on the upper level of the parking garage beneath the downtown hospital. Ladybug, my tactical exploration robot, had run herself into a dead spot. I couldn’t remote control her from the surveillance van, so, of course, me and myself, aka the only nigga, had to step in for a closer look. Technically, I wasn’t the only nigga. There was my boy who was out sick, Warren, the blue-eyed bandit who we called Foreign. His moms looked like Weezy Jefferson, and his pops looked like Red Foxx. We swore up and down that nigga was the milkman’s baby. If I was thinking, I would’ve stayed home and called in sick too. A day at home with a whining woman and an even whinier baby didn’t seem so bad compared to the day I was having.

  The garage was silent as a tomb and hot as an oven. There were eight of us working the FBI Explosives Ordinance field office in Norfolk, Virginia. Overtime was becoming a popular subject with all the work we’d been getting thrown our way lately. Let’s just say, it takes a real special motherfucker to run in and finger fuck an explosive when everyone else is running away. No one could do what we did, or understand the rush you feel from death hissing down the back of your neck.

  My hand wandered aimlessly to my left side, to where I kept the five-pointed Gold Medal of Valor in my pants pocket. They give it to agents as recognition for extreme acts of heroism. It was awarded to my pops when I was nine. He was one of the best too, before he got killed in the line of duty. Now his medal went with me on all my bomb-runs. It was a good-luck thing. Morbid, I know. But it made me feel like he was watching over me, bringing me some guidance.

  It had to have been working because I was still alive. Earlier, the calls had started coming in one by one. Protocol required us to send at least two techs out to oversee bomb disposal, but we had all been dispatched to different locations. So far, all the other locations had come back as false alarms. I sure as hell hoped this was one as well. Sweat stung my eyes, forcing me to squint through the hazy visor of my blast suit. It was ninety pounds of fire-resistant Nomex and Kevlar.

  “Jarryd, what do you see, son? My neck been bothering me all morning.” Peterson’s voice crackled through the two-way com in my headgear.

  He called everyone son, even though most of us were in our late twenties, and he wasn’t any older than forty-five. He’d been through more than any of us, even did a short stint in Kuwait until he got caught in some crossfire. The only thing holding that nigga together was metal pins and grit; 148 of them ran up his spine. He always complained about his neck hurting right before some shit popped off. Hell, I trusted Peterson’s neck better than any bomb-sniffing dog.

  I squinted through one eye, keeping the other closed. I always forgot how hot it got inside these suits until my black ass was back inside one, cursing because we didn’t have the newer air-conditioned ones.

  “One minute, sir. Right now, I can’t see shit for my own sweat.”

  My heart was karate-kicking the inside of my chest, making my breath come in short, garlic-scented spurts. Lunch had consisted of garlic-knots from a little hole-in-the-wall Italian spot that we went to every Friday called Feldecci’s. They were always on point, but I don’t think there was anything on the menu that wouldn’t leave your breath humming for the rest of the day. That wasn’t the worst of it; the real problem was me. I was shaky and unfocused from slamming back Monster energy drinks to compensate for lack of sleep. This wasn’t the kind of job that allowed for a nigga to not be well rested, but try explaining that to a crab-assy bundle of constant tears and shit.

  My new baby boy, Jarryd Junior, was eleven or thirteen weeks; hell if I know. I can’t keep track of that shit. Tima’d been celebrating everything from his first shit to his first sneeze. Let me know when that little nigga hits one, aka twelve months, so I can crack a beer or something. Since the day he was born, I hadn’t eaten, fucked, or slept the same. How was having a baby supposed to be this big joyous occasion when all it did was managed to erase all the joy out of my life? Now there was just constant pressure to earn more and buy the best of everything. When I wasn’t working or stressing about work, you’d think I’d get to relax, but, nah, I was expected to spend every free minute with that little nigga.

  We had the biggest house in one of the best neighborhoods, and now she had this grand delusion of getting an even bigger house in a neighborhood the director of the FBI probably couldn’t even afford. All that shit was starting to make me bitter and cynical. I’d even googled whether it was normal for a man to hate his own baby. It didn’t feel natural. All the sites said I was most likely suffering from some kind of male-postpartum depression. Fuck that, I’m a damn man. Men don’t get depressed or upset. Only a woman would write some bullshit like that. Men get angry; we get mad, and if I was feeling any kind of way, I was pissed the fuck off. Not fucking depressed.

  Tima used to draw a nigga baths at night with candles and wine. She used to cook four-course dinners, and now she be on this four-day dinner routine. That’s what I call it when she makes some shit and stretches it out so we have it every day except Friday. Back in the day, a nigga was taken care of. I ain’t mind handing over a paycheck or buying her anything under the sun when I wasn’t eating spaghetti four days a week. I wasn’t mentally prepared for this life of baby talk, baby proofing, and baby bullshit.

  “Son, are okay in there?” Peterson sounded on edge. “Akins is on his way back since his call was a false alarm. We can bring him in if you aren’t up to snuff. I’m sure the new baby is wearing you down.”

  My mind was all over the place. I’d started to tell Peterson I wasn’t on my A-game, but I manned up. Nah, there was no way I’d admit to getting mind-fucked by an infant. Unlike parenting, I’d been doing this type of stuff my whole career. Everybody can’t do what the fuck I do. Niggas run screaming out of the places I voluntarily walk into.

  “I’m solid, sir, just hot as fuck in here. This ninety-degree weather ain’t helpin’.”

  I flexed my fingers, hyping myself up as I maneuvered through rows of cars toward the crumbling column in the center. Ladybug sat waiting in a puddle nearby. I removed my ID badge from the utility holster on my side and inserted it into her driver. “Don’t worry, Lady, you just sit here and watch me work. I’ll be right back.” Yeah, I talked to her like she was a real person. I talked to anything with ar
tificial intelligence. If there was ever a robot uprising, your boy would be safe. I’d tried to explain that shit to Tima, but she’d just get pissed off. Let her tell it, I talked to my machines more than I talked to her or my own son. You damn right; my machines had enough sense not to talk back.

  Ladybug’s system recalibrated with a series of loud clicks and whirrs. NASA held the original patents for her design. She was made for exploring planets and collecting samples. We kept a lot of the original specifications so she could run on autopilot or remote control. After her reboot, she’d automatically trek back to the recon van.

  “All right, Ladybug, you watch my back.” I gave the metallic claw on top of her canister a fist-bump before moving on.

  I checked the numbers on each column until I got to the one with D8 stenciled in faded red letters. The red paint flaked off the side. Someone had made a 9-1-1 call saying there was a suspicious object sitting in front of it. I squashed the fear gripping at my insides and cleared my dry, scratchy throat as I laid eyes on it.

  “Sir, this is some devilish but beautiful shit. Are y’all getting this?” I angled my head to make sure the camera mounted on the side of my visor could pick everything up. “The detonator has a bilateral release trigger. One side is an explosive, and I’m talkin’ citywide radius. But the other one is some kind of haz canister, and I don’t know what the fuck’s inside it,” I replied, anxious to either get out of there or get to work.

  Peterson made a deep, gravely sound in the back of his throat. It was a cross between a grunt and groan. I’d heard it before. A year ago, I’d been awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for diffusing a similar situation near the Federal Building downtown. It was a lot bigger and nastier than this one; anything could have set that shit off.

  “Well, all right, Jarhead.”

  Peterson called me by my old nickname, making me feel more like my old self and less like the old man I was being forced to become. Before I joined this bomb squad that my wife wanted me to quit, I was a marine specializing in explosives. My ace back then was a goofy nigga named Chief. He saved my ass so many times and vice versa, we swore if one of us ever hit the lottery or got rich, we’d come back for the other one.

  “Don’t stand there clutchin’ your nuts, split some wires,” Peterson ordered. “I don’t know about your house, but it’s wet-mouf-Wednesday up in mine. I’ve got to get my ass home before the old lady has too many mojitos. She’s sloppy and slobby after three. My balls don’t take too kindly to cold drool,” he barked in what was an obvious attempt to lighten up the tension in the air.

  Everyone was holed up in the surveillance van topside watching the feed from the camera mounted to my head on a closed-circuit network. Every time I diffused a bomb, I’d fast-forward to afterward in my head. I imagined myself celebrating in some big old encouraging titties. I didn’t celebrate at strip clubs anymore; you get a wife and a kid and somehow, everything that was once a reality became fantasy. But the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could throw back a cold beer and maybe talk Tima into giving me some head.

  The headgear was making it too hard for me to focus. I’d sent my spare drones out for repair. Budget cuts had everything stuck in a holding pattern somewhere. Ladybug being out of commission meant I was the damn drone today. Even though it was a stupid move, I removed my headgear, placing it on the ground beside me. Peterson’s voice was a muffled string of what I could only imagine to be f-bombs and curse words. He could string together words that’d make you feel lower than dirt and more useless than shit.

  The air was still and thick with the smell of exhaust and concrete. Sweat poured down the back of my neck. Normally, adrenaline rushes would send me into a calm, methodical trance. But that wasn’t happening today. I sucked in a few shaky lungfuls of air, hoping it’d squelch my nerves.

  I knelt as carefully as I could in front of the white tank with death flashing all over it. The device wasn’t wired like anything I’d ever seen before. A sinking panicky feeling started to roll itself around in my gut. My brain was processing everything at warp speed, connecting lines and wires to switches. This wasn’t your normal, everyday device. The orange-tinted lights of the garage reflected off the flawless chrome valves. Every piece of metal was perfectly polished. There wasn’t a fleck of dust or an oily fingerprint anywhere on it. It was finely detailed all the way down to the wooden crate it sat on top of. I tried to get a look underneath it for a fail-switch.

  If I didn’t have perfect 20/20 vision, I might’ve missed the clear wire running along the underside of the device. It was thinner than fishing line and slightly shaking, which was weird because there was no breeze in the parking garage. A hundred questions drifted through my mind as I rose on shaky legs. Peterson needed to know about this. I was reaching for my helmet when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. My eyes locked with his; dread filled me to the core of my being.

  “Don’t move,” I said in a calm, quiet voice.

  The man standing across the garage stared back at me. His yellow Polo shirt was dirty and ripped around the collar. Blood ran from his nose, and his left eyelid was swollen to about the size of an egg. What the fuck is he doin’ in here? They said the garage was all clear.

  I edged toward him, trying to figure out if he was a victim or the perp. I followed the line from where it started to where it rested in his bloody hand. His eyes were panicky and glazed with pain, but he didn’t make a sound. If he yanked or dropped that string, we were done.

  I decided to skip protocol and reason with him. There wasn’t going to be any time for me to call this in.

  “You don’t have to do this, man. I’m sure we can solve whatever the problem is reasonably.”

  Sweat gleamed on his forehead. A nasty purplish-blue knot was forming at the right side of his temple. His lips barely moved. “Run.”

  In antiterrorism training, they teach you to remain calm and give whoever it is whatever they want.

  I held up my hands. “All right, man, in a minute. Tell me what you need and I’ll go get someone to help.”

  “I didn’t do this. I . . . I woke up in the trunk of a car. They busted my hand up and made me hold this wire . . . I can’t keep holdin’ this.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. There wasn’t going to be enough time for me to get topside and bring down help. Ladybug was still sitting where I left her booting up. She weighted eight hundred pounds; there was no way I’d be able to get her over here fast enough.

  “Okay, okay. Just stay calm. I’m gonna make sure that both of us will walk out of here.” My words sounded way more confident than I felt.

  I inched my way closer, mentally running down the odds. Can’t cut the wire, can’t remove it from his hand. Can’t guarantee there’ll be enough time to diffuse the device before he drops the wire. This is a lose-lose situation.

  “Evacuate the hospital. Let me die.” His words were breathless, urgent gasps.

  “We’ve already done that, my dude. Everybody’s gone except you and me. I got this, I’m not about to let you die.”

  I was finally close enough to see his hands. How he managed to hold anything was an act of God himself. His fingers looked like they’d been run through a sausage grinder. I made an effort not to wince or make a face at the white bone sticking out where his index finger should have been. Every nerve, every cell in my being was screaming for me to get the fuck out of there.

  Blood-splattered papers littered the ground, indicating some kind of a scuffle had gone down. A wallet laid open at my feet. I picked it up, scanning over his driver’s license. His name was Genesis Kane. I gave him a friendly, encouraging smile. Hopefully, I could bring him around, give him a sense of security by using his name. Maybe it would rehumanize him if he heard it. Maybe it would give him some hope.

  “I’m Jarryd,” I introduced myself. “How about we work on getting you out of this mess, Mr. Kane. Can I—”

  A blinding yellow flash lit up the garage. It shook the
ground and the concrete pillars. The sound of the blast pounded against my eardrums. It felt like an oven had opened behind me as heat rushed against the back of my neck and head. Something told my brain they were flames, but it all happened in a frame of time too short for me to react to. I felt searing heat, jarring pain, and weightlessness, and then I didn’t feel a thing.

  When I finally managed to open my eyes, I thought I was dead. Dust tickled the hairs in my nose. It felt like there were layers of it crammed up there. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing, and my eyes burned like I’d dipped my head into a pool of saltwater. I drifted in and out of the darkness, waking up in small enough stretches to feel a new painful sensation in a different part of my body. I couldn’t tell if I’d been asleep for a few minutes or a few months. It took several minutes for me to realize I was lying down in a hospital.

  The television was the first thing to break through the dull ringing in my ears. “The FBI have recovered the body of one of their own from the blast zone. Investigators have now identified the human remains uncovered not far from where investigators say the device detonated. Special Agent Bomb Technician Jarryd Keening’s ID was found close to the center of the blast radius. There were no other casualties, although several bystanders on the street were injured.”

  I stared blindly at the TV, barely able to make out the face of the woman reporting the news. What looked like Peterson’s ugly mug darkened the screen. He recited a prewritten speech about how good of a man I was. How I was a fallen hero who’d made him proud.

  What the fuck? Why would everyone think I was dead? I wasn’t fucking dead! I tried to sit up and fell back from the pain that shot through my shoulder.

  A cheerful nurse breezed into the room in a blur of pink scrubs and caramel skin.