Baby Momma Saga, Part 2

by Ni'chelle Genovese

  “Don’t even worry about that shit, babe. You go wherever she tries to take you; act like everything is fine. Nobody’s gonna hurt you or my baby. I’ll handle it,” Genesis answered in a dry, emotionless voice.

  I almost fell out right where I stood. I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong, and now it might cost me my life.

  NOVIE

  Chapter 68

  Going Home

  I took the stairs two at a time, locking my door behind me. My heart was beating so fast I felt light-headed. As bad as I wanted to break down, throw shit, hell, throw both Genesis and Kenisha, this wasn’t the time. There was an old gym bag underneath my bed. I grabbed it and began slinging clothes into it as fast as I could. There was still time for me to save myself. Genesis was waiting for me to run with Kenisha, but if I left without her, it bettered my chances of getting away.

  Genesis shouted through the house that he was leaving for work. He was trying to keep up appearances, which was fine with me. It gave me time to get my shit together and get out. Kenisha thumped up the stairs.

  “I’m going to pack and get my stuff together, Novie,” she shouted through my bedroom door.

  I didn’t respond back. I waited until I heard her bedroom door slam shut before I grabbed my bag and crept down the stairs. There was only one place I could think to go. Hopefully, my presence was still welcomed. My heart hurt, my spirit felt crushed. That nigga played me with his sixteen-year-old niece, right under the same roof as me. If this wasn’t the most shameful, disrespectful shit I’d ever dealt with, I don’t know what was.

  Thankfully, Kenisha’s bedroom was on the backside of the house. I put my car in neutral, letting it roll down the driveway quietly. I didn’t put it into drive or crank the engine until I was safely in the street. Genesis’s house loomed above me. It didn’t look like home anymore. It looked like a cage of lies, a stronghold of secrets and insecurities. I started driving home, to my real home. It was the only place I had left to go.

  It was almost dark when I pulled up.

  After a deep breath and several Visine drops in my eyes, I climbed out and walked up the cement steps onto the front porch from my childhood. The doorbell was loud enough for me to hear it chime outside as I pressed the button. Chairs scraped against hardwood flooring, followed by heavy steps in the direction of the door. The front porch light flickered on. I squinted against its brightness, waving at whoever was looking through the peephole with a fake smile glued to my lips.

  “You finally decided to climb up out of Genesis Kane’s ass. You must be in trouble.” Daddy opened the door slowly with a sour scowl on his face.

  I wrung my fingers together, feeling how it felt when I was eight all over again.

  Momma walked up behind him. “Who the hell’s at the door at this hour . . .?”

  Her face lit up when she saw me through the storm door. She pushed Daddy out of the way and launched herself through the door.

  “My baby girl is back! Oh my God, look at you, baby. Hug your mother, girl.”

  She pulled me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe. Happy tears welled up in my eyes as I hugged her back while staring at Daddy over her shoulder. It seemed like no matter how right I thought I was, I was still choosing to side with the people who were the worst for me. I’d done it consistently from day one with Swiss, and I was still doing it now. Genesis was just another notch on my bad call list.

  It was time for me to learn how to forgive. I owed my parents the mother of all apologies. They’d only been trying to protect me, and now I could see it for what it was, because I would do the same thing for the little girl or boy that I had growing inside of me right now. I stepped out of my momma’s arms, giving my daddy a cautious glance. One side of his lip slowly cracked into a lopsided smile. His eyes were sparkling with tears that he wouldn’t shed because he was a rock, and rocks didn’t cry.

  He hugged me, picking me up off the ground, swinging me back and forth in his arms before he set me down with a kiss on my forehead. He knew something was wrong, and he also knew that he’d given me the tools and the mind-set to deal with just about anything.

  “Doesn’t matter what it is. You know it’ll get handled, baby girl,” he said in a gruff voice.

  I nodded in agreement before shuffling past him into the living room. Egyptian musk hit me square in the nose before I even had both of my feet in the door.

  “Hi, Tariq.”

  He was sitting on the couch in the semidark living room with the remote in one hand and a blunt in the other.

  “Welcome back, Nono,” he called out, using the nickname I went by as a kid.

  I shuffled in the direction of my bedroom, suddenly anxious to get some real food and some much-needed rest. It was safe here. If Genesis tried to send anyone out this way, Daddy would respond with an army of niggas.

  Everything was laid out almost exactly as I remembered it. Momma had changed the color scheme of the kitchen from peach and blue to black and red. All of the carpets were now a blended light oatmeal color instead of the deep navy blue that used to run through the whole house. Momma was going a mile a minute about everything from the day she realized I was gone up until the day she’d called me. I was so tired I couldn’t hone in on a single word. My mind was ready to recharge.

  “Okay, Momma. In the morning, Momma, I’ll tell you and Daddy everything, I promise. I just need to get some sleep, okay?”

  I smiled at the collection of stickers I’d stuck all over the outside of my bedroom door back in the day. Momma had obviously thought against redecorating it. I recanted that thought as soon as my hand turned the knob.

  “Baby, before you get upset or whatever, let me explain.” Momma walked into the room and stood with her arms spread wide.

  Gone was my queen-size bed and armoire, a small red Corvette-looking thing with a mattress on top sat in its place. My armoire was replaced with a tiny red and blue desk. The baseball glove-shaped lamp sitting on top of it cast shadows across the whole room. I couldn’t step inside until I knew what was going on.

  Momma walked over and held my face between her warm hands. “We named him Justus. You kept saying it over and over when they first dragged you out of the water. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  My eyes ran back and forth over hers. I was trying to make sense out of what she was saying and what I was feeling. The questions all lodged themselves somewhere in between my brain and my mouth. They fought their way through my subconscious mind. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? Did my son survive, and then die, or did they make him a room and give him a funeral?

  “Please, Momma, just tell me what this is.”

  “Come here, Novie,” Daddy spoke from behind me.

  My legs felt like they weighed a ton as I moved toward him, questioning him with my eyes.

  “Bryan Novellus Deleon just turned four not too long ago. They saved him, Novie, they saved your son.”

  I always thought the women who fainted or hand-to-forehead swooned in those old-school romance novels were always full of shit. That was up until I’d gotten the most shocking surprise of my life, and my world went black.

  When I came to I was laid out on a bed in the guest room. One of Grandma’s old brown and burgundy quilts was pulled up to my chin. The house was so small that the acoustics were damn near perfect for eavesdropping. I stared at the light coming from underneath my bedroom door, listening to everyone arguing over and about me in the kitchen. It was obvious that I wasn’t the only one with mixed emotions about being back home. And I had a son. He’d lived all these years without me even knowing he was alive. I’d been beating myself up and mourning a loss that never happened. They should’ve told me.

  On the one hand, I could feel hatred swell up in my heart toward them. They knew the guilt ate me alive, but they let me stay in that state of mental purgatory. All it would have taken was a word, a phone call. I was robbed. My baby was robbed. There were so many parts of his life that I’d missed and
would never get back. I buried my nose in his pillow and inhaled. He smelled like Swiss, or maybe that’s how I wanted him to smell. I curled into a ball, and I cried for the baby I had who I didn’t even get to name.

  “You need to tell her when she wakes up,” Momma said in quick whisper.

  I sniffled into my baby’s pillow and calmed myself down so I could listen. The clink of a bottle let me know that the men were taking shots. Momma was most likely having a glass of wine since she never drank hard liquor.

  Tariq cleared his throat loud. “I don’t think we should say anything just yet. She’s obviously been through a lot. Might need a minute just to adjust to all this.”

  “And when she starts asking for him, what do we say?” Daddy asked.

  “You’ll say whatever’s true,” I announced as I walked into their argument about me. “So who is the ‘he’ you’re talking about? And where is my baby boy?”

  Their eyes all dropped in unison. I got an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know they hadn’t made a fit out of telling me Justus was alive, only to finally admit that something had happened to him.

  “Tell me what happened!” I slammed the side of my fist against the wall.

  Momma set down the glass of wine she’d been sipping. “Novie, sweetheart, you might want to sit down.”

  “I’m fine, just tell me whatever it is that y’all are trippin’ over.”

  “A month ago we were celebrating Bryan’s birthday. I invited all the neighborhood kids over. We even had a few extra ones crash the party, but there was plenty of ice cream and junk food to go around so I didn’t even—”

  “Ma, just tell me what the hell is wrong.”

  She wrung her hands in front of her. “I tried to tell you when I called awhile back. See, the thing is, his daddy came asking for him a while ago. We couldn’t deny him the right to see his son. He’d visit off and on, but something wasn’t ever right with that nigga. Then he stopped visiting altogether. Shandy brings this little boy named Aris to Justus’s birthday party. They were playing and getting along, and next time I looked, they were gone,” she ended with a teary sob. “That bitch stole my grandbaby. We got guys looking everywhere, and nobody knows anything.”

  For the second time in one day I almost fainted, but anger kept me standing my ground. Swiss knew! He knew about Bryan the whole time, and that’s probably what he wanted to tell me too. I never in a million years would’ve expected the person who I called sister, who I loved like a sister, to play me to the left.

  I looked at my parents and Tariq sitting at the table.

  “We will get Bryan back. He has to be here, so he can meet his little brother or sister.” I patted my still flat belly with a small sad smile on my face.

  This time, the chair slid across the floor and a glass hit the ground at the same time as my momma.

  NOVIE

  Chapter 69

  No Justus, No Peace

  One thing at a time. A woman can only deal with one thing at a time. Genesis was still in the forefront of my mind, but now I also had to deal with the issue of my snake-in-the-grass ex-best-friend. Shandy was crazy. She had to be. She had the nerve to take my child. We didn’t judge her or pass her off to the next person. All we’d ever done was treated her like family. What happened between me and Swiss, and what happened to us was our business, not hers. But she wasn’t going to make me feel guilty for the rest of my life about an accident that took the same person away from me too. Family forgave each other, but bitches did bitch-ass shit. They’d clap and run for cover when you clapped back.

  I waited until Momma was back to herself an hour later. Daddy and Tariq had gone to check on the latest harvest. They needed to stay on top of this new crop of guys or they’d take too many breaks and take twice as long to bundle up the product.

  “Momma, you know Tariq helped me escape, right?” I asked her.

  She shifted the icepack on her forehead, giving me a confused look. “No, he said he was jumped when he stepped out to go to the grocery store. That you had some guys waiting to rescue you.”

  I laughed. “Shandy might be as loud as a group of guys, and she might even eat like that. But no, he wanted to holla at her so bad she distracted him so I could get away.”

  Realization set in on her face before the words were fully out of my mouth.

  “We’ve had a few guys watching her momma’s place. They were trying to find Swiss just in case the story his momma got was fake.”

  “No, Ma, he really did pass away. I was driving the car when it happened. But Shandy, she was pissed at me for a whole ’nother reason. If she didn’t go to her momma’s house, there’s only one other place where I’d look for her.”

  “Your daddy and Tariq are gonna be gone for at least another hour.”

  I climbed into the passenger’s side of my momma’s Chevy Blazer.

  “When are you gonna upgrade this thing?”

  She smirked at me. “That’s why all those young fools get caught up. Nobody looks for somebody who does what we do driving this,” she pointed out.

  Momma was right. The reason they’d stayed under the radar for so long was because they worked smart, and they weren’t flashy. I knew all that shit too, but being around niggas who made flashy dumb moves made me forget all my training.

  “What is he like?” I asked after a few minutes to break up the silence.

  Momma smiled at nothing in particular. “He reminds me of you when you were that age. He’s extremely smart; he knows how to work his iPad and pick the movies he likes. One time, I told him not to go out the gate and to stay in the backyard and play. When I came back, not even ten minutes later, he was on the other side messing with the roly polies. That boy has a smile that makes my heart melt. When I asked him what he was doing out in the yard, he said he didn’t go through the gate. He climbed the fence.”

  I couldn’t wait to meet this little person who sounded like he was the best parts of me and Swiss all rolled into one little being. A part of me was worried about how I’d get him from Shandy and whether he’d like me once we met. I didn’t even know if I’d be a good mommy or where we’d go after this. We wouldn’t be staying at my parents’ forever. In the space of a night, I’d gone from no babies to having a toddler and a baby. My life had a crazy way of never going the way I expected.

  It didn’t look like anyone was home when we pulled up at Tariq’s place. There weren’t any cars in the driveway, and no lights were on inside. Genesis called my phone, making us both jump.

  “Girl, you still got that damn thing?” Momma grabbed my phone slamming it onto the dashboard before snatching the battery out of the back and throwing it out the window.

  “If whoever you’re running from has even a lick of sense, they can track you. Get a new phone and a new number.”

  I hadn’t even thought about it. But knowing Genesis, if he was calling now, it was only because he’d realized I’d left him and his precious Kenisha. The reality of my life was slowly starting to sink in. I was about to be a real full-time single mom with two kids. But I’d also been kidnapped, shot at, beat up, and I survived a jump from a bridge. As scary as being a single mommy sounded, it was nowhere near as scary as all of the other shit I’d survived. For the first time ever, I could honestly say that I was ready to take on the world. And Shandy was my first stop.

  The plan we came up with really wasn’t much of a plan. Momma was gonna go up on the porch and ring the bell and knock like she had an emergency and was looking for Tariq. We only hoped that Shandy would answer the door. I pulled the blazer off, parking down in front of a house a few doors down. I made sure I had the keys and all before creeping around the side of Tariq’s place. There weren’t any lights on at the front of the house, but there were plenty on around back. The doorbell echoed through the house, and I stood on my tippy-toes to peek in between the small crack between the blinds.

  It was the room from my nightmares. The one I’d laid in for months while Tariq
watched over me. Shandy’s silhouette was all of what I could see at first. She climbed off the bed, taking the sheets with her, leaving some dude naked on the bed. I squinted to see where she was going . . . but not before I saw my daddy sit up on the bed. I dropped into the bushes beside the house with my heart in my throat. I could hear movement from the window on the other side, and I eased up. Tariq had a handful of wheat-colored hair wrapped around his fist. Sweat poured down his back, pooling in the dip above his ass. Heather’s head was tossed back; her eyes were closed in ecstasy. There were two identical cribs in the room with them, and my heart stopped in my chest. I know these niggas were not fucking in the same room the babies were sleeping in!

  Momma was on the porch knocking and ringing the hell out of the doorbell. I slid around the side of the house and caught her attention.

  “Abort mission,” I whispered, scared that she’d spook Shandy into running with the kids.

  “Huh?”

  “Shhhhh. Abort mission.” I pointed in the direction of the Chevy.

  The woman had the nerve to shake her damn head at me.

  “Yo’ daddy will bring Tariq out here so we can handle this shit,” she hissed at me in a sassy whisper. She pulled out her phone dialing Daddy’s number.

  I cringed.

  “What the fuckin’ fuck,” Momma blurted out from the front porch.

  Daddy’s phone had started ringing from inside the house. “Footsteps in the Dark,” by the Isley Brothers played loud and long in the house.

  Momma hung up, and the song stopped. I leaned against the side of the house. Shandy was the worst kind of friend a bitch could ever have. I probably wouldn’t even get the chance to kill her for all the bullshit she’d done. Not if Momma got her hands on her first. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I stood waiting, but was completely unsure of what I was waiting for.

  NOVIE

  Chapter 70

  Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself

  My blood turned to ice water in my veins. A hand closed over my mouth and something was thrown over my head, and handcuffs were tightened around my wrists. Rough carpet scraped up my arms and elbows. I hit whatever it was so hard it hurt my ribs.