by Zuri Day
“You’d do that? You’d leave LA and move here?”
“Not move,” Shayna clarified. “But I could probably arrange to spend a good amount of time down here, get to know my sibling and reestablish a connection with my mom. The way we used to be when you and I were growing up.”
“She’d like that,” Jarrell said.
“You think so?”
“I know so,” he assured her as he pulled out his wallet to pay the check. And so would I.
47
Three days passed before Shayna caught a flight back to Los Angeles. Ironically, Michael was arriving home the same day, at about the same time. They’d ridden together in his town car, to her house, where she was staying just long enough to get her schedule situated with Coach, pay some bills, check in with her roommates, and throw a few clothes together into a suitcase. Then she was heading back to the airport and back to Vegas. And even though Michael had asked her the question what seemed like a million times, the answer was the same as the first time: “I don’t know how long I’m going to be there, Michael. I guess as long as she needs me.”
Michael tried to remain calm. He’d told himself that he was tripping, that he was being inconsiderate given that Shayna’s only living relative was critically ill. But his drawers had been in a bunch ever since he’d called Shayna’s phone and Jarrell had answered. Why had she let that asshole answer her phone? She’d told him, but before he could stop the words, they came out of his mouth. “Tell me why Jarrell had your phone again?”
Shayna pulled—translated: yanked—a sweater off a hanger. “Why? Have you forgotten the answer I gave you an hour ago?”
“Come on, Shayna, I—”
“I told you, Michael. I had gone into the room to see Mom. My phone was in my coat, which was next to where Jarrell was sitting. I didn’t ask him to answer it. I told you that I don’t know why he did. Maybe he thought it was one of my roommates, who knows? Maybe he thought it was you and wanted to piss you off.” She huffed out of the walk-in closet and tossed the clothes in the suitcase lying on the bed. “Looks like he succeeded.”
“Baby, I’m sorry about your mom and I know he’s her husband’s brother, but I just don’t trust that dude. He’s the type who will try and take advantage of the situation.”
“How’s he going to do that?” Shayna walked into the bathroom, tossed the necessary toiletries into a bag, walked out, and placed them in her carry-on. She said this, but once she’d gotten on the plane her mind had gone back to the times that Jarrell had hugged her—especially the last time when she felt him kiss her cheek. She’d asked him about it.
“Girl, you’re trippin’,” had been his answer.
“I’m still with Michael—happily so.”
“No doubt. And I’m with baby girl.”
“Where is she?”
“She had to work and then she’s going out of town. Don’t worry about her though; we’re good.”
That’s what Jarrell had said and Shayna wanted to believe him. And even though she felt now was not the time to tell Michael, she too had reservations about Jarrell’s helpful ways. What she didn’t doubt was that he loved her mother. And right now, that’s who Shayna had to focus on. Bottom line.
“Remember when we first got together and I found out about all of your women?”
“Shayna, this isn’t about me—”
“No. It’s about trust. And just like you asked me to trust you when it came to all of the lovers that came before me, I’m now asking you to trust me with the one”—strong forefinger in the air for emphasis—“other man that I’ve had.”
Her argument was sound, but this didn’t make Michael feel any better. If possible, he’d put all of his meetings and appointments on hold and head straight to Henderson. But he couldn’t. The event of the football season was happening in two weeks. Skipping the Super Bowl was not an option. Aside from the two clients who’d be playing in the big event, the days leading up to the Sunday prime-time game were awash with networking, partying, and lining up deals. Michael had planned to take Shayna, who along with him had been invited to sit in the XMVP-hosted suite. When the women found out he was rolling solo, especially any exes who might be in attendance, things were going to get crazy. He already knew.
He walked over to where Shayna stood zipping up her luggage and put his arms around her. “I’m trying not to sound unreasonable, baby. I know your mother is the priority. I just lo—”
He stopped.
She stopped.
Did the earth stop spinning? If Michael were getting ready to say the L word, then the axis on old terra firma might need to get checked!
Shayna recovered first. “You just what?” There was a hint of a smile and a sparkle in her eye as she asked this. No pressure much.
“I just lo . . . okay at the situation and—”
“That’s not what you were getting ready to say!” she exclaimed, delivering this keen observation with a slap on Michael’s arm.
The tension was broken. He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I love you, Shayna Washington. There, I’ve said it. Now, will you somehow find a way to stay away from Jarrell while you’re handling your mom?”
Shayna sighed. “Hmm, now you’re getting a little taste of how it feels to have somebody clamoring all over your significant other.”
Good mood shifted, smile replaced. “Oh, so he has been trying to talk to you.”
“No, Michael! I’m just saying that how you’re feeling now is how I felt when we first started dating—what wiggled in just a little bit when Ms. Boobs came around the corner from your living room.”
“I wasn’t there, Shay.” And when I was there, I made sure the women put their tops back on.
“I know.” She raised up on tiptoes and gave Michael a kiss.
“Uh, don’t you have something that you want to say to me?”
“Yes,” she said. Michael smiled. “I wonder where the girls are? I need to talk with them before my flight leaves.”
“Somebody considers themselves a comedian.”
“Ha! I’m just messing with you, Michael.” The sound of keys jingling in the door signaled her roommate’s arrival. “Do you have to leave or can you hang out for a while with me and my friends?” she asked.
“I’ll make time.” Shayna turned to leave, but Michael reached for her arm. “I’m going to miss you, Shayna. Don’t stay too long, okay?”
“Okay.”
48
Beverly sat in her pink satiny tower, otherwise known as her king-sized bed. She’d just gotten released from the hospital and had been given instructions for strict bed rest. Getting up to use the bathroom was pretty much it. Otherwise, for the next eight to ten weeks, her bed was her new throne. She looked around the room and wondered how she’d gotten here. Getting pregnant to keep her husband had sounded like a good idea at the time. But things had changed in the twenty-five years since her last pregnancy. Namely, her body. She hadn’t planned on being sidelined, with even less of an opportunity to keep tabs on her husband than she’d previously had. Larsen had been attentive, for the most part, but the way he’d been talking and texting on his cell phone, she wondered who else was on his mind. Shayna’s visit was probably the best thing that had come out of her sickness. It hadn’t been her idea, but having her daughter here had turned out to be a good thing. And maybe it was the way her hormones were fluctuating, but last night they’d connected on an even deeper level than her previous visit. Beverly had to admit that her daughter had grown up to be an amazing woman, and didn’t miss the irony that she was just now actually realizing this fact.
Reaching for one of the dozen or so magazines on the bed, Beverly picked one up and began flicking through it. But she wasn’t really seeing the pictures on the pages. Her mind’s eye was going through the photos of her own life, memories that had been dredged up by Shayna’s questions, both from her last visit and this one, memories that she’d buried a long time ago. Not so much
the things that she’d shared with Shayna, which were bad enough, but that which had remained unsaid. She’d told Shayna the truth about the uncle who’d assaulted her. She left out the part about how her mother tried to help her and Beverly refused, why the reason she went to stay with her father had less to do with her being a daddy’s girl, which she was, and more to do with her being wild. Wanting sex, liking it, and not wanting to be under her mother’s strict hand. Beverly’s father had taken her in and then pretty much left her alone. He was too busy setting up his own house to notice what was going on in Beverly’s world. Shayna had not been her first pregnancy. She didn’t feel her daughter needed to know that either. It was a secret that not even Big Mama knew about. Beverly knew that she hadn’t been the best mom, and wasn’t the best daughter, but she also knew that at all times of her life, at any given moment in her past or her present, she was doing like everybody else was doing . . . the best that she could.
And it wasn’t all bad. Lying back, she thought of what had turned out to be a great time. Shayna’s recent visit.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
It was after midnight, but because sleeping was just about all she’d been doing, Beverly was wide awake. “I’m okay. Where’s my husband?”
“He said he had to make a run. One of the drivers called in sick.”
“Where’s Jarrell? Why didn’t he go?”
“We sent him to get the food, remember?”
Beverly nodded, then winced a little as she shuffled the pillows.
Shayna was immediately by her side. “Hold on, Mom. Let me help you.”
“I would rather Jarrell had done the run. I want Larsen here. Where I can keep an eye on him.”
Given her mother’s condition, Larsen’s faithfulness or lack thereof was the last thing that Shayna wanted to discuss. But clearly her mother had other ideas. “Why do you think he’s cheating? Maybe he’s working, just like he said.”
Beverly snorted. “I see there’s still some things about men you need to learn.”
“Not all men are bad, Mom.” She talked about Michael, and shared some of what she’d learned about his father, Sam Morgan. “You’ve never wanted to talk about my father, Mom. Why not?”
“Oh, Shayna . . .”
“I’m not asking for a year-by-year account of his life. Or even about your relationship with him. But no matter what you felt about him, he was my father, Mom. You’re getting ready to have Larsen’s child. Would you not want the baby to know its father? Unless there’s something dark, or evil . . . like he was a rapist or murderer or something. And even then—”
“No, Shayna. He was none of those things.” Beverly let her head fall back. She looked at the ceiling so long that Shayna thought she wasn’t going to answer. “I loved your father,” she said at last. One tear rolled down her face, and then another. And then her mother was sobbing, with her head in her hands.
“Mommy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She climbed onto the bed and over to her mother. She hugged her before repositioning the pillows and running her hand over her mother’s shoulder and back. “Shh. We don’t have to talk about it.”
Beverly gazed at Shayna through her tears. “Yes, Shay. We do need to talk about it.”
“But it’s making you so upset. Why would you want to continue?”
“Because there is something I need to tell you. Something you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
Beverly looked away from Shayna as fresh tears followed. “I don’t know any other way to say it except straight out.” Shayna’s heartbeat raced as she thought of the possibilities. Had her mother been raped, and that’s how she was conceived? Was her father also a relative, and was she the product of a sexual assault? In the span of a few seconds she thought of one outcome after another, each one worse than the next. But nothing prepared her for the truth when her mother spoke it.
“Shayna, your father is alive.”
49
Your father is alive. The words were an ongoing mantra in Shayna’s ears, continuing well after the conversation with her mother had ended, a long time past when she’d left the room so that her mother could sleep. Four simple words, yet their combination so impacted her world that there was barely room left to breathe, none left to think. Shayna knew this because from then until now she’d tried to process the words her mother had told her, had tried to go from realization to rationalization, tried to figure which emotion she should hang on to the longest: anger, sadness, confusion, all of the above?
Your father is alive.
She had not even cried yet, and she felt she should. All these years that she’d longed for him, had ached for knowledge of the other half of Shayna, dreamed of what it would have been like to talk to him, hear his voice, know his full name. Not what it would have been like, what it will be like. Maybe it was the impending birth of a life from a man whom Beverly loved and wanted to be around the child, maybe it was her love for Larsen and desire—no, desperate need to keep him—that had finally loosed this particular part of her mother’s tongue from the place of secrets it had occupied for twenty-five years. Whatever the matter, Shayna now knew more than she ever had about the man who helped make her: Antonio Bell, whom most of the world called Slick.
“I met him at a club,” Beverly had told her. “I was barely out of high school and he was twenty-five.” Shayna hadn’t missed the irony that she was learning this truth at the age her father had been when he and her mother had met. “I was crazy about him right away and even though my friends warned me not to do it, I got with him that very night. We were hot and heavy, and then I was pregnant. Everything happened so fast, which is why I had no time to learn that he was married, with a baby already on the way.
“I was so in love with him, Shayna. Your father was my life, my very breath. I told him I was pregnant, and that he would have to make a choice—her or me. He chose her, and it devastated me, took me to a place I never thought I could be. I hated him, for years, and wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me, which I’m sorry to say that I used you to do. I saw him one day, shortly after you were born. When he asked about you, I lied and said I’d miscarried. He didn’t learn about you until almost a dozen years later. By then he was locked up, so it was easy for me to ignore the messages he sent through his cousin, my only remaining contact to that life. Several years after that, he stopped trying to contact me. And I tried to forget the awful thing I’d done.”
“But all those years I asked about him, how could you tell me he was dead?”
“I never said that word.”
“You implied it! ‘The streets took him.’ That’s what you said. When you said there was no way I could ever see him, that he was gone forever, what did you think that would mean to someone who was eight, ten, fourteen years old!”
A premature contraction had happened then, doubling over Beverly and ending the conversation. Well, almost. Shayna did have one more question before she left the room. “How do I find my father?” to which Beverly had replied, “I’ll help you.” And Shayna gained a parent . . . just like that.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Shayna hadn’t heard the front door open, hadn’t been aware that Jarrell had walked into the room. “Is it Beverly? Did something happen?”
Shayna snorted. “Beverly’s fine.”
Jarrell walked over to the light switch and turned the dimmer to its first position. He continued across the room and sat next to Shayna on the couch. “Doesn’t look like you’re fine.”
“I’ve been better.”
“What happened, Shay? Something with you and your dude?”
Shayna slowly shook her head. She hadn’t even thought of what this news might mean to her career, and to her relationship with Michael. With information available at the tip of one’s finger about all of the world and everybody in it, there were a thousand ways that this news could get out. How will Michael feel knowing that the father of the woman he’s dating is a felon? H
ow will my sponsors feel? Will the Triple S brand be affected and if so, how? And then Shayna realized that in this moment she didn’t give a damn about how the public, her supporters, or her boyfriend would feel. This was an “all about her” moment right about now.
Jarrell inched closer. “What happened, Shay? You’re scaring me.”
Shayna’s eyes were wide and fearful as she turned them on her childhood friend and ex-lover. “My father isn’t dead, Jay. I found out tonight that he’s in prison. He’s been alive all of these years, Jay, all of this time.” With that simply delivered truth, something burst inside Shayna’s chest and one lone tear gathered at the corner of her eye. It felt so good falling that another one joined the party and soon she was letting out the anger and frustration and surprise. And she was doing so wrapped in Jarrell’s arms.
50
Michael sat in the coolness of his shaded patio, watching the ripples of water cascade over the edge of his infinity pool. It looked so peaceful, that blue liquid ribbon, totally unlike the tumultuous fire burning in his heart. It had been thirty minutes since he’d gotten off the phone with Shayna. And still, he hadn’t moved. Of course he’d been shocked to hear the news of Shayna’s father. But that wasn’t what had bothered him the most. What had him now fuming was how many times in the retelling of the last two days’ chain of events Jarrell’s name had been mentioned.