by Tracy Brown
“He was heated. Elliot—his connect—wanted to kill him and Wizz, and I was on the run. I didn’t know if Elliot might want to kill me, too. I took the money, and got the hell out of dodge. I went back to Brooklyn, and I was getting high again. Then I got arrested, trying to buy crack.” She shook her head, still disturbed by the fact that she had fallen so far down that she had been getting high while she was pregnant with her beloved only child. “I went to jail, and that’s where I had Sheldon. Jamari waited until after I gave birth, and then he snatched him from me. He took custody, and painted me as a horrible person. I guess I was, but I needed help. I didn’t need to have my lifeline taken away from me.” Jada felt that Born had also taken her lifeline away once. But Jamari was the one who had tried desperately to break her spirit. “He took my son when Sheldon was all I had to live for. He kept him from me for the whole time that I was locked up. The nigga dragged my name through the mud, and all that. He made me regret the fact that I got pregnant.” She saw the expression on Born’s face change, and she clarified her statement. “I don’t regret it now. But back then I did. I was so mad, because if I had known the whole story, I never would have gotten in so deep with him.”
Born understood what she meant, and he hated Jamari even more for putting Jada through so much hell. He felt better hearing that Jada had had no clue about Jamari’s beef with Born before she got involved with him. He just wished that she hadn’t gotten involved with him at all. “So how did you get your son back?” Born looked incredibly moved by her story. He loved and adored his son like no one else. To be deprived of being a part of Ethan’s life would have killed Born. He empathized with her situation, wondering how a nigga like Jamari could be so cruel. Then he realized that he, too, had once been just as cruel to Jada.
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “I had to fight to get him back. Jamari told them that I was using crack during my pregnancy, but he didn’t tell him that he was the one giving it to me! When I mentioned that in court, he called me a liar. He was the worst.” Jada paused. “It wasn’t that I didn’t realize that I had done wrong. Using crack while I was pregnant was like putting a loaded gun to my baby’s head, and I realized that. I knew that I was wrong for that. But I was sick, and Jamari took no responsibility for his role in my addiction. He had never once tried to help me. All he wanted was to control me. Sunny kept me from losing my mind, because she told me that if I crumbled, if I gave up, then Jamari had won. I didn’t want him to win, but he was making it so hard for me to fight. But I got back on my feet one step at a time. I stayed clean, got an apartment, and I started with supervised visitation. The social worker sat and watched how I talked to my son, how I played with him, what my home looked like, how much food was in the fridge, and all that. Then I got unsupervised visits. A social worker would go and pick Sheldon up from Jamari and bring him to my house. I was so glad that they assigned us a go-between. I couldn’t stand the sight of Jamari, and I didn’t want to have to see him every time I wanted to see my son. And then somebody killed the muthafucka.” Her voice was flat as she said this, and both she and Born knew that that had been one of the best days of her life. “I guess he got what his hand called for.” She sipped her drink again.
Born watched her closely. He was looking for a sign that Jada was leaving out part of the story. “You went to see my moms the day that Jamari got killed.” Born watched the surprise on Jada’s face emerge, and then quickly disappear. Jada hadn’t thought Ingrid had told Born about that visit. Ingrid had surely not missed the coincidence in the fact that Jamari was killed within minutes of Jada’s departure from her apartment.
“Yeah. I did.” Jada said it, but didn’t elaborate.
Born smirked. “Did you do it?”
Jada looked away, and wanted to tell Born the truth. But that would mean incriminating her friend. And even though she trusted Born not to tell another soul, Jada couldn’t risk getting Sunny implicated in Jamari’s murder. There was no statute of limitations on homicide. “Nah,” she said. “I didn’t kill him. But I was glad that somebody did.”
Born nodded, and took another swig of his drink. “So you and Sunny gonna take that shit to your graves, huh?” He asked the question, and smiled. Then he sat back in his seat.
Jada looked at him, not blinking for several moments. She didn’t know how Born had figured out the truth. But she sure wasn’t going to elaborate. “Me and Sunny will take a lot of things to our graves. Death before dishonor, you know what I’m saying?”
Born nodded again. He had taught her well. What Jada didn’t know was that Ingrid had watched the entire episode play out from her apartment window. She had seen Jada and Jamari arguing and she was preparing to go out there and help. Then she had seen a very attractive and well-dressed woman come to Jada’s aid. Ingrid saw the exchange between the three of them, and saw Jamari get shot and the two women make their escape. It didn’t take Born very long to surmise that Sunny had been the woman Ingrid had seen. He smiled, knowing all that Jada wasn’t saying.
Jada directed the conversation to safer territory. “If it wasn’t for Sunny and her mother, Marisol, I don’t know if I would have made it through all that. Sunny helped me out a whole lot. She took pictures of Sheldon, and brought them to me. She was my only hope for a long time. For that, I will always be grateful to Sunny. For real.” She sighed. “I got my GED, and I petitioned for sole custody of my son. But they gave me a hard time about it. I had to live with my mother in order for me to have Sheldon with me. They wanted to be sure that he was living in a stable environment, and I had been unstable for so long. So I lived with her until they said that I could raise him on my own.”
Born nodded. “So that must have been awkward at first. You and her living under the same roof after all those years of not even speaking to each other. What was that like?”
Jada shook her head. “At first, it was real tense. I wouldn’t talk to her. I thought she was wrong for shutting me out. But I realized that she was angry with me, too, and she had every right to be. So once we finally started talking, we both got to say some things that needed to be said. We got to reconnect as a family. And I’m grateful that we got the chance to do that before she died. I’m glad she got a chance to see that I turned my life around.”
Born looked at her, truly proud of what she’d done for herself. “So, do you ever get tempted to use drugs now?”
Jada looked at him, knowing that he wondered if she was clean for good this time. “No. I don’t get tempted at all. When I think of all the things I did to get high, and to stay high … I would never put myself or my child through that again. Sheldon is all the reason I need not to ever go back to that life again. I love him too much for that. When I look at him, I don’t see his father. I see my baby, my son. I was so far gone that I put his life in jeopardy. I owe him my very best for the rest of his life. I don’t want to let him down like I did in the beginning. He’s my everything.” She felt herself getting a little misty-eyed, and she looked away briefly before continuing. “I never want to be without him again.” Jada told Born about her mother helping out with Sheldon while she got her life together. “I went to college, and graduated with a degree in journalism. Me and Sunny are collaborating on a book now. I think it’ll be a bestseller.”
Born smiled. “I bet it will.”
Jada smiled, too. “I’m living a very different life than the one I once lived. I’m not gonna fuck it up again.”
Born listened quietly, soaking all of it up. His mind was like a sponge, absorbing each detail. He had known that Jamari had taken custody of Jada’s son. But he had not known the lengths to which Jamari had gone to ensure that Jada was humiliated every step of the way. Knowing her story—knowing that Jada had been subjected to humiliation at the hands of men for most of her life—he felt sick to his stomach with pity. He was mad at himself for all the pain he had caused Jada. He was also somewhat mad at her for falling prey to a nigga as corny as Jamari. He hated Jamari for taking her child
away from her, because Born knew that Jada—like him—needed her child to survive. Born felt that Jamari had taken advantage of Jada’s weakness, and had used it to feel powerful for the first time in his life. His rage was evident on his face, and Jada spoke on it.
“Cat got your tongue?” She sat back, drained her glass, and looked at Born dead-on. She smiled at him, looking relaxed from the effects of the rum.
Born recalled saying that same thing to her so many times over the course of their relationship. He used to always use the phrase when an awkward silence fell between them, because he knew that Jada would be far off in her mind, deep in thought. Hearing her say that now—“Cat got your tongue?”—it made him smile inside.
Jada read him perfectly. “I remember,” she said. “I remember everything.” She stared at him, wondering about Anisa. “Earlier you said your heart is off-limits because of how I hurt you. So how is it that you have a son with the woman who took my place?”
Born grinned a little, flattered that she was still jealous after all this time. “Nobody ever took your place. That’s first of all. And Anisa never even came close. She just got pregnant.” He loved Ethan with all his heart, and took the role of fatherhood very seriously. Born had always felt like his own father had disappeared when he needed him the most. He was determined not to disappear from Ethan’s life, despite the fact that his relationship with Anisa was basically over. “Anisa takes pretty good care of him. But, even though she may not have been the woman I wanted to have my child …” Born looked at her suggestively. “I’m glad she had him for me, because he made me want to turn my life around.”
“How is he? Is he bad, or is he a good kid?” she asked, wishing all the while that he was her child.
Born noticed the sadness in her eyes as she asked the question. “He’s good. Ethan really has a lot of my ways, a lot of my habits. He’s something else.” Born smiled, thinking of his boy. “How is Sheldon doing? He’s healthy and all that?”
“He’s great.” Jada, too, smiled. “He’s so beautiful, and so smart. He has such a crush on Sunny that it’s ridiculous.” She laughed.
Born laughed, as well. He could see how a little boy would have a crush on Sunny. She always dressed sexy, and D.J. had told Born about his “funny feelings” whenever Sunny came around. Sunny had remained a part of D.J.’s life after Dorian’s death. When he and D.J. got together, he often told Born about his visits with Sunny and his little half sister, Mercedes. But Born hadn’t had the pleasure of crossing paths with Sunny in years. “Good ole Sunny! How is she? She still the same live wire she always was?”
Jada nodded, as their second round of drinks arrived, a rum and Coke for her, Hennessy straight for him. “She’ll never change too much. Having Mercedes calmed her down, but Sunny still has the same loud mouth she always had. But I love her to death. She helped me out a lot with Sheldon when I was in trouble.”
Born smiled. He cleared his throat, and tried to sort through all the things they’d discussed. “What do you tell your son about his father? Does he ask you about him?”
Jada nodded. “Yeah, he does, sometimes. Like any kid, he wants to know what his father looked like, and why he’s not around anymore. Of course he was too young to remember Jamari, because he died when Sheldon was a toddler. I just try not to talk shit about him around my son. That’s not easy to do, because I still have hate in my heart for him. I just tell Sheldon that his father loved him very much. But he wasn’t living his life right, and he died young. That’s all I can tell him right now. Someday, when he’s older, I plan to tell Sheldon the whole story. I know it won’t be easy. But I’d rather him hear it from me than from anybody else.” Jada often worried about the day that she would have to explain her past to Sheldon. She and Sunny went about raising their children, and Sheldon and Mercedes didn’t know about the past that both their mothers kept secret. Sunny often joked that one day she’d tell her daughter the story of her life, and poor little Mercedes would never be the same. Jada, however, dreaded the inevitable day when she would have to reveal to her son that she’d once been a crackhead. But she took comfort in one simple fact: She wasn’t a crackhead anymore. And she never would be again.
“You know, I named him after the only two men I’ve ever loved in my life. My father, and you.”
Born put his drink down, and looked at her. “Are you serious?” Born looked at her as if he wasn’t sure if he should take her seriously. He was flattered, though, and he smiled, once more revealing those beautiful dimples Jada loved so much.
Jada nodded. “Yup. His name is Sheldon Marquis.”
“Wow,” was all Born could think to say in response. But he couldn’t stop smiling. He knew that must have made Jamari sick!
Finally, their food came. Born, as usual, bowed his head, and prayed. Jada prayed, too. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you pray, Jada. You born again now, or something?” He asked this as he poured salt on his mashed potatoes.
She looked at him, and spread butter on her potatoes. “I pray every day. I used to go to church with my mother back when I lived with her. She was really into church, and all that, and I guess some of it rubbed off. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to get clean and stay clean if it wasn’t for God. He’s important in my life, but I wouldn’t say that I’m born again. I don’t wanna lie like that. I don’t want to pretend to be so devout, and then do dirt when the prayer is finished … like some people.” Jada winked at him, suggestively, and shoved a forkful of chicken in her mouth.
Born laughed, loudly. “Wow!” he said. “I forgot that you got all that mouth. You really do know how to put a nigga in his place.”
She smiled. “I was only speaking hypothetically,” she lied. “I wasn’t talking about you in particular.”
True to form, Born filled his mouth to twice its capacity, and proceeded to chew with his mouth half open. Jada frowned in disgust, and he seemed pleased by this, smiling as he chewed.
“I missed your old stankin’ ass,” he said.
Jada laughed. “I missed your old stankin’ ass, too.”
Born drank some water. “So, tell me this. I know you told me you got your degree, you’re writing a book, you bought a house, and all that. So you got a man?”
Jada nodded. “Yup. His name is Sheldon. My son is my man, and I’m totally committed to him.”
Born smiled. “I hear that.”
Jada laughed. They shared their meal, and some small talk about the other aspects of their lives from the time they’d been apart. And they began to reconstruct the friendship they had once had, before disappointment got in the way. Born told Jada about how he’d been arrested and incarcerated. He told her about the time he’d spent in solitary confinement, rethinking the direction of his life. He explained that he had gotten out of prison, and opened a sneaker store, then bought a barbershop. How he’d continued doing business with Dorian’s crew until it became apparent that D.J. had a gift that couldn’t be ignored. He told Jada about his new role as D.J.’s manager, and about how that had been enough to finally get him out of the drug game.
Jada smiled. “You’re the perfect manager for him.”
Born smiled, too. “Yeah, I got love for the kid. I won’t let nobody take advantage of him, or exploit him. I feel like I owe it to Dorian.” He looked at Jada, knowing that she had witnessed him mourning the loss of his boy. Jada knew his history. She had held him when he got weak enough to cry over the loss of his friend, and she didn’t need any further explanation. Born was glad to be sitting there with Jada, enjoying a meal and making amends. He was amazed at how mainstream their lives had turned out, with him working in the entertainment industry and Jada having a career of her own. It seemed that they had both learned from their mistakes, and made the best out of bad situations.
By the time they finished eating, they had fallen back into their old ways—somewhat. Their conversation had turned to the good old days. They reminisced on the times they had shared when they had bee
n happy, and such a good team. They laughed at old jokes and recalled things that had been special to both of them. Jada realized how much she had missed him, and their love. She enjoyed watching the way he moved, the way he talked, his voice, and his laughter. And as they ordered another round of drinks, Born found himself wishing that things had turned out differently between them. No one had ever made him feel the way Jada had. He had never loved a woman as completely as he had loved her. Seeing her now reminded him why he had loved her so much.
Jada stared at him, wishing they had never parted. She had one more bone to pick with him, though. “When you threw me out, it seemed like you had Anisa waiting in the wings to take my spot. Are you sure you never cheated on me with her?”
Born frowned. “I never cheated on you, Jada. I was faithful to you always.” He saw the skeptical look on her face, and got defensive. “Is that what you thought? That I cheated on you?” He shook his head. “I never played you. Never.”
“Well, shit! You started seeing her damn near the day after me and you broke up.” The contempt was so evident in Jada’s voice as she spoke. In her mind, she thought, You didn ‘t even wait!
Born sensed her disdain, and he looked at her dead-on. “I know you’re mad at me for that.”
Jada started to deny it, but it would have been pointless. “You gave it all to her, Born. Everything that used to be mine. She got your attention, your lifestyle, your friends, your son.” Jada fumed inside. “I hated her. I hated you. You would see me, and you just walked on by like I was a stranger. Like I was never your girl, and we were never in love. You kicked me out of that house, and out of your life. All our mutual friends became your friends and her friends. I was on the outside looking in. And I thought you were being so cruel. It took me a long time to stop feeling like that. I had to understand that you just moved on.”