Tyrian pouted audibly just so his grandmother could hear him and respond, which she did.
“Don’t worry, Ty-baby. If your mama won’t give you any money for apps, G-ma T will do it,” Mrs. Taylor oozed, rubbing Tyrian’s head.
Kerry took note of the clear infraction and simply added it to her list of reasons she hated this woman and was glad she no longer had to pretend she had any value to her. The woman next to her was still in that position though. And at that moment, Val didn’t know if she should continue her unspoken war with Kerry or unite with her in a stare-off against the woman who’d had her locking herself up in her bathroom each day.
“Come on, Tyrian,” Kerry said, holding her hand out for his.
The little boy trudged over to his mother, pouting the entire way.
“Poor thing,” Mrs. Taylor said, pouting too. “Makes me sad to see him sad. I don’t see why he can’t just live here with me and his daddy anyway. Wouldn’t that be nice? That way you and G-ma T can watch our General Hospital reruns together all night.”
“Yay!” Tyrian cheered.
“You watch General Hospital with him?” Val asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Taylor confirmed. “Watched it with Jamison, too. It’s good for them. Shows the boys how to love. And Jamison loved that wedding scene—when Luke and Laura got married. That boy watched it a million times. I always imagined he’d have a huge wedding—just like the one Luke and Laura had.” She cut her eyes at Val first and Kerry second. “When he finds the right woman.”
“Well, that’s enough,” Kerry announced abruptly.
“Oh, Ty, come give your gammy kisses.” Mrs. Taylor stooped down to stall the departure.
Kerry was running out of space on the insides of her lips to bite.
And then—as Tyrian gave “Gammy” her kisses, Mrs. Taylor repeated, “Maybe you could come live with us. Stay with Gammy and Daddy.”
Kerry let go of the inside of her lip. “Well, no, he can’t live with his daddy because he lives with his mommy. And he sees his daddy on weekends—when his daddy is free.”
Mrs. Taylor walked over and placed her body right in front of Kerry’s.
Val might have considered getting between them if a to-the-death fight wouldn’t lead to the total elimination of at least one person she no longer wanted to see on earth. Due to the current situation, she found herself on Kerry’s side.
“Are you saying my son is never around his son?” Mrs. Taylor pushed.
“Actually I didn’t say anything like that,” Kerry backed up—she had meant this but hadn’t expected Mrs. Taylor to repeat it in such a way that Tyrian would hear and understand. She decided that it would be best to cut the conversation short to avoid more consternation. She grabbed Tyrian’s hand and pulled him to her side.
But, Mrs. Taylor pulled him back.
“A boy needs his father,” she quipped.
“I’m not going to argue about that,” Kerry said, and then she added as if it was a new epiphany, “because I don’t have to. I’m not doing this with you.” She pulled Tyrian back to her side and started heading toward the door.
Mrs. Taylor laughed a laugh so deep at Kerry’s back it was more of a wicked cackle.
“So sensitive,” she said to Kerry. “That was always your problem. No backbone.”
Kerry stopped in her tracks and considered a few lines she could share that might defend her strength—the pool of power that had been but a dithering puddle when she’d first met this woman talking behind her back. It had since grown into an abyss that had given her so many options of defense against the powers of evil—one being walking away. She looked down at Tyrian’s eyes, saw them drinking in every one of her actions, and decided on a course: one foot in front of the other.
Mrs. Taylor was still cackling at her victory when Kerry was out the door and in her car.
Val was silent. Standing in front of the fresco like a pregnant paper doll.
“Thank God my son ain’t married to the stuck-up one anymore,” Mrs. Taylor said, really to no one, but it just so happened that Val was in the room. She sucked her teeth and let out a loud sigh like Kerry had been the aggressor in the exchange. “Straight-up simple. Like she has any business raising that boy. She needs to be somewhere figuring out what she’s going to do with her life. Can’t mooch off my boy forever.” She snapped her fingers in the shape of a Z at that last point and started toward the steps to head back to the refuge of her bedroom.
But something was going on downstairs still. The outburst or random conflict or foolery—whatever anyone would call it—had led Kerry to walk away (an action Mrs. Taylor had predicted), but Val was a different creature. She wasn’t a Southern belle, she was a Southern gal, and though she’d been playing it safe to stay in the good grace of Mrs. Taylor and her not-so-obliging husband, any wise person could say of the situation, “It’s only a matter of time.” Now was said time.
“You didn’t have to say all that,” Val shot back, not in Kerry’s defense, but speaking in a way for a circumstance she could predict in her future. “Not in front of that boy.”
Mrs. Taylor stopped the same way Kerry had. “What?”
“That wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have spoken like that in front of that boy.” Val’s conviction didn’t waver. She was getting louder.
Mrs. Taylor, who’d made it a few steps up the staircase, turned around and headed back to Val ready for combat. “That boy is Tyrian. My grandson. I know what he can and can’t take. So you don’t need to add any amount of change to this conversation.”
“I don’t care who he is to you or anybody else; you don’t speak crazy in front of a kid,” Val snapped. “Who doesn’t know that?”
“I know one thing, and it’s that you have a whole lot of damn nerve if you think you’re just going to walk up in my son’s house talking about what I can and can’t say in front of my own damn grandson.”
“Wrong,” Val started, her voice confident she was about to one-up her opponent. “I didn’t just walk up into anyone’s house. I live here. This is my house. I’m the woman of this house.”
“Hell you are!”
“Hell I ain’t!” Val pointed to her face in the fresco.
Mrs. Taylor felt the jab, but it only made her more defensive. “What’s that cheap shit supposed to mean?” she asked after a pause. “You ain’t on the mortgage. The deed. The taxes. You’re just visiting.”
Val felt so small then. She could run right toward Mrs. Taylor’s stomach and tackle her to the floor.
“I mean, as smart as you were to get pregnant by my son—if that’s the case—you seem pretty light-headed to move into a house you don’t own fifty percent of. That’s rule number one.”
“Fuck you!” was all Val could say.
“I’m glad you said that,” Mrs. Taylor said coolly. “Get used to it. You’ll be saying that a lot. Stick around. You’ll see. I got rid of that Kerry. You think you’re safe?” Mrs. Taylor laughed like a heavyweight and started back up to her room. “Mama’s always on the job. Out the house, on the job”—she made it halfway up the steps and looked down at Val fuming—“in the house, on the job. Always on the job.”
Seemingly building upon a new talent, Jamison walked into the house after all of the fighters were back in their respective corners—Kerry at home serving Tyrian dinner, Mrs. Taylor in her bed, Val in her bathroom. He was still surprised by the silence that met him at the front door. He ignored the fresco in the living room and climbed the steps lightly so his mother wouldn’t hear him and request a visit to sit by her bed and watch General Hospital . He was waiting to hear back from Emmit’s guy with a response from Dax, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the mental gymnastics that would be required of him to sit and pretend he enjoyed anything about watching television with his mother.
When he got to the top of the steps and saw both his mother’s open bedroom door and his closed bedroom door, he considered getting down on all fours to lighten the impact his body
made against the wood as he passed his mother’s room to get to his. It seemed foolish, but it would be more foolish to get caught up in a verbal siege with his mother. Kerry had already texted him to say they needed to talk about his mother. He decided to try to make it to his bedroom on his tiptoes. But a few tips in, her television, which had been blasting so loud he was sure the neighbors could hear it, went to mute. He stopped in his tracks, frozen in fear like one of those fainting billy goats. He listened for her. She listened for him. Seconds passed. She gave up. Turned the television sound back up sure Jamison hadn’t come home yet.
“I want your mother out of this house!”
Jamison cursed himself once he’d made it to the bedroom and heard this. Escape one bullet to catch another.
“She is driving me crazy. She is just . . . you know what she is!”
Val was shouting these accusations from the bathroom just loud enough so Mrs. Taylor could hear her down the hall.
Jamison started on a softer note, “She’s in her room.”
Val came barreling out of the bathroom ready for a fight. “Yeah, right now.”
“And you’re in your room.”
“Right now!”
“You only have to deal with her a little while longer. I’m getting a nurse and—”
“That’s not enough,” Val charged. “She’ll still be here. And if she’s here, I can’t be.”
Jamison sat down on his bed and remembered how many times he’d had this same conversation with Kerry.
“She’s my mother.”
“You keep saying that. But I’m your wife,” Val said before pointing to her stomach. “And this is your child. I thought you said you wanted to work on things. For it to get better.”
“I did,” Jamison agreed.
“Well, this ain’t better. Not for me. Maybe for you, because you’re never here anymore.”
“Oh, don’t start with that, Val,” Jamison ordered.
“It’s the truth. You’re not here. And I have to deal with her constantly threatening me all the time.”
“Threatening? Really?” Jamison grinned.
“Yes. Really. Everything she says to me has some kind of threat in it. And there’s only so much of that shit I’m going to take.” This last line had a little back-street Memphis in it.
“Please stop.” Jamison got up and walked toward the television to get the remote control.
“You need to deal with her before I do.”
Val kept talking, but it was only a soft echo of syllables in Jamison’s ear. He’d turned on the news and was watching to see if the clip Dax took of him at the prison was airing. Dax wasn’t live in the parking lot at the jail, so his story would likely run on the evening news—if Emmit’s guy didn’t get to him in time.
Val was still talking while walking around the bed where Jamison was sitting, watching each story like he expected to see his face pop up.
Val exhausted all of her claims and subclaims and threats and promises and sequestered herself in the bathroom again by slamming the door.
Jamison didn’t budge. He was a man involved in a fight with a monster who was bigger than two women fighting over his affections. He wasn’t sure who that monster was, but every day he was seeing its big footprints spread out more clearly over his. It was trying to crush him. It was everywhere in his life. But invisible in his world. As he watched, waiting to see his face, he thought, what if what Ras had said was true? All of it. That meant the monster was close. Right up on him. Breathing in his face.
As Val came out of the bathroom to add a few more charges to her list of demands, Jamison’s phone started ringing again. He held up his hand to stop her from talking.
“Get down here. We’re at the Rainforest. Come alone,” a nondescript voice ordered before clicking off.
Jamison felt a hit in his gut that would later haunt him as he tried to recall why he’d gone to the Rainforest that night. A second-guessing he’d only felt three other times in his entire life.
“What? What is it?” Val asked. In the months they’d been together, she’d memorized about six of his expressions. One was fear—she’d seen it when she’d told him she was pregnant. She was seeing it right now.
Jamison said nothing.
“What’s going on?” Val pressed.
Jamison got up from the bed and started for the door. He grabbed a black hoodie from a chair beside the bed.
It was then that she noticed he’d never taken off his shoes or opened his jacket.
“Jamison?” Val called to his back. “Jamison?” But he kept walking after mumbling something about being home later.
Val turned to the television in time to see the same man who was walking out of her bedroom, walking out of the county jail downtown, in the same suit.
Lairs. Caves. Cabins. Clubhouses. Tree houses. Bars. And boats. Places where men’s worlds collide in a mishmash of bad ideas and testosterone-laced dreams come to life. Sometimes this meant a good time. Beer pong and toga parties. Game night. Truth telling. Sometimes this meant a bad time. Fights to the death. War. Rape. Rebellion. The Rainforest had seen both. Sometimes all in one night. Men called brothers would start the night smiling, shoulder to shoulder congratulating one another, toasting to a life that exceeded their parents’ dreams. Hours later and a few drinks in, these same brothers could be tussling over a wife, a car, a drug deal or a loan gone bad. By sun-up, there could be blood on the floor. But then, someone would mop it up and start it all again.
When Jamison got to the Rainforest, he knew not to expect the early-night feeling. The sun was just going down, but he knew none of his brothers inside were hugging or toasting. There would be the late-night feeling. The bad time.
As Jamison walked up the driveway in a hooded black sweat suit he’d purchased on his way to the Rainforest, he noticed Emmit and Scoot’s cars parked beside each other. A silver Maserati was behind Scoot’s car. The lights upstairs in the house were dark and Jamison realized he hadn’t seen the old woman who lived upstairs in months, maybe years. Aside from what people told him, he couldn’t really confirm that anyone lived upstairs.
Inside the basement, the only person in the front room was a boy in a fraternity shirt standing guard over the liquor and set to eye heavily anyone who dared walk in. When he saw Jamison’s black hood, the frail, inexperienced thing, whose first sexual encounter had been right there in that bar room, stepped out from behind the bar with intention.
His heart thumped in pitiful fear of the possibility of action. He heard his mother’s voice: “I didn’t send you down there to Atlanta to be running the streets with no fraternity.” He could hear those words but not feel them. His heart was with his big brothers then. Mother’s love and direction would have to wait. So, the boy was about to scream out for his big brothers when Jamison pulled his hood down and shined familiar eyes on him.
“Oh,” the boy uttered with his fear dissipating so quickly he suddenly had to urinate. “Brother—everyone’s in the back.” He pointed to the back room. He knew not to say Jamison’s name. Not that night.
Jamison nodded and returned the hood to his head before padding slowly across the sticky bar room floor toward the hallway to the back room. Brother Renaldo’s old papier-mâché palm tree had dust balls dripping from its fading green leaves, making them appear heavy and sleepy like the Spanish moss growing on a swamp cypress tree.
Emmit was standing in the hallway talking to another brother, Sampson Davis. They were speaking in low voices, and were also dressed in black.
Emmit stopped talking when he saw Jamison. He reached out to him like he was a father or a priest about to bless someone.
“Brother, you’re here,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jamison answered. He hugged Emmit and then Sampson, who was saying something about the water being turned off. “What’s going on? Did your guy speak to Dax?”
“Yeah, he’s here,” Emmit said.
“Who?”
“Dax.”
“Dax is here?”
“Well, some things happened and—”
“What things happened?” Jamison cut Emmit off with his eyes broadening and his voice louder. “Why is Dax here?”
“Calm down.” Emmit held his hands up to stop Jamison this time.
Jamison noticed that his sleeves were rolled up.
“Why is he here? That doesn’t make any sense,” Jamison said.
“Brother Sampson, give us a minute,” Emmit said.
“Fine, but ya’ll need to decide what to do about getting this water back on. Ya’ll will need to clean things up tonight before you leave,” Sampson said before walking off.
“Clean up?” Jamison repeated to Emmit. “What’s going on?”
“Look, Dax wouldn’t cooperate,” Emmit started to explain.
“I predicted that. Fine, we move on,” Jamison said. “Where is he?” Jamison tried to get past Emmit, into the back room where the guys usually took the girls and pledges.
“Stop!” Emmit warned. “It wasn’t that simple. He threatened my guy. Said he’d seen him before. Said he knew who he was.”
Jamison fell into the wall. His heart ran hot. He felt like he was underwater.
There was a scream from the back room. Both men turned to look. There was threatening silence.
“I said this was a bad idea. I knew this was a bad idea,” Jamison said. He’d made the phone call to Emmit in the car out of fury, out of anger. He’d wanted Dax stopped and he’d known he could do it. That was the power he had. The power Emmit had told him he’d have to fight to keep at some point. Getting power. Keeping power. Maintaining it. Wasn’t the way it looked in movies. It wasn’t about handshakes and cutting scholarship checks. Votes. It was about striking. Cutting off. Hoarding. Being hard. He couldn’t be afraid. This was how it was done.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Emmit spat. “You knew what this was. What it is.”
“No! No!” Jamison tried to catch breaths he didn’t know he was losing.
They stood there for a while listening to whimpers. The sounds of men’s feet moving around on a concrete floor.
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