Kismet 3

by Raynesha Pittman

  “But what about my memories?”

  “Easiest way for me to say it is, fuck your memories. You sacrificed those when you played with chance and copped this charge. You have to look at it like what it is.... The loss of your freedom to be there to make memories with him is a part of your punishment and keep pushing. Instead of stressing over what you can and can’t do, you should be plotting your next moves as a free man.”

  “I feel you. Do you have kids?”

  “Yeah, I have two and peep this shit.” I told him about my kids and the shit Savannah pulled with Sade while I was in jail. I wasn’t a talker, but I felt his pain.

  “What the fuck? She gave your seed away before you touched down?”

  “Yep, and when I read that letter, I was sure she was lying to fuck with my head. You know how women do when they get mad at you for some shit and see you vulnerable. I laughed the shit off, but after reading it a few more times, I had my boy look into for me, and he said he found her with no baby in sight. I got out and went on a manhunt for mine.”

  “So, is shorty still breathing?” he asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest as if my story were going to send him to handle Savannah for me.

  “Funny you asked that question, but I understand why. I’ll just say this. Shorty is about to be my wife, but I got my revenge where it hurt her the most. Fucked up as it may sound, that shit felt good.” I finished with a laugh that must have been contagious because he joined in.

  “And the baby? Did you get your daughter back?”

  “Yeah, but that shit is complicated too. I have full access to her, but I have to go through the people who adopted her for it. That’s why being in here again isn’t helping shit, but it’s my punishment for the decisions that I made. Every day I have to think about another man raising my daughter, and my daughter calling another nigga daddy when she has me ready to step up to my responsibilities. I’m right here when I need to be right there, you feel me?”

  “Yeah, I feel you.”

  He told me what he had done to get in here and how he had a court-appointed attorney handling his case. I gave him some advice and told him to get at my lawyer. Tez was a cool young guy. He just needed some guidance and to learn the difference between friends and foes.

  When I was done chopping it up with him, I decided to make that call to Savannah. As soon as we were done with our greetings and she had explained the incident with Memphis answering the phone, I went straight into my spiel.

  “Look, baby, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but you’re going to have to move back to Nashville. When I get out, I can’t leave the state until I’m off of probation, and that’s not for another four years.” Savannah had gotten so silent I thought she had hung up. “Baby, are you there?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’m here, Dre. My daddy said something like that might happen, so I knew you might say that, but, damn, Dre, back to Nashville?” I was thankful that her dad had prewarned her of possible outcomes. It made it easier to talk to her about it. “Why can’t you ask them to transfer your case to Washington? You can tell them it will help you get a new start.”

  “I don’t know enough about Washington to say transferring my case there would work in my favor.”

  “You have time to look in to it.”

  “Yeah, I do, and you have time to adjust to moving back to Nashville.”

  We went back and forth for a little about being transferred there. I told her why I didn’t want that, and she told me why I should want it. Her main issue was that she didn’t want to quit her job, and I understood that, but I couldn’t think of another way to get around her not having to. Then she shocked me.

  “How much time did the judge give you?”

  I didn’t know why I felt the need to lie to her, but it was out of my mouth before I could take it back. “Nine months to a year, depending on my behavior. Why?”

  Savannah didn’t hold back and showed me I wasn’t the only person with time to think and plan shit out.

  “Well, what do you think about this? We keep this house in Washington and rent it out so we can return when you’re off of probation. I move back to Atlanta and keep my position at William and Williamson’s while you serve your time. I’ll drive back and forth to Nashville to visit you while you’re in jail every weekend. That will give me time to try to set up a work-from-home deal with my company and only have to drive back and forth from Nashville to Atlanta for mandatory meetings. Once you get out, I’ll have a place already set up for us in Nashville while you serve your probation, and when you’re done, we take Andre Jr. back to Washington with us so we can be a real family with Sade. Then I can go back to the office there. What do you think about that?”

  I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t think of one good reason why I should object. I had to smile at the fact that Savannah didn’t want to sit around and live off of my money. She wasn’t like Tasha when it came to that, and her independence was a turn-on. I liked how she said she’d visit me every weekend while I was in jail, and I loved the part about us taking my son back to Washington with us to be a family with Sade. My only real objection was... Who would protect Savannah from harm while she was in Atlanta?

  Part Two

  Savannah

  Chapter Five

  Did You Really Think I’d Be Quiet?

  Jail had Dre tripping hard. What would make him think I’d be willing to give up all that I went to school for and worked hard to achieve to sit up under his mama while he served time? That wasn’t about to happen. I’m glad he agreed to my move back to Atlanta because the way I saw it, we only had two options. Either he’d agree to me keeping my job and moving back to Atlanta, or we’d have to call it quits. It wouldn’t be easy to walk away from the $175,000 I invested into us to get rid of Trisha or all the love I had for him, but there was no way I’d be an ex-drug dealer’s housewife. The title Trap Queen didn’t look good coming before or after my name.

  I felt like Dre was trying to be slick. He tried to feed me a fast line about quitting my job and moving to Nashville being my only option. How could he see me moving to Nashville as the only option? I think his true intentions were to have his ghetto-ass, Bible-thumping mama babysit me while he did his time. Once again, that shit wasn’t going to happen. After talking to her on the phone the few times I did, I couldn’t believe she was kin to him. Besides being a street pharmacist and the use of bad grammar or hood talk every now and then, Dre had a class about him that I couldn’t see him getting from her.

  From our very first conversation, I knew Mama Dee, as he told me to call her, and I weren’t going to get along. She was too outspoken and ran her mouth about things she had no business being involved in.

  “So, Georgia, where did you and my son meet?”

  This would make the fifth time I would have to correct her on my name. “It’s Savannah, and did he not tell you that already? We met years ago in Nashville.”

  “Uh-huh, so y’all met years ago, is that right, Augusta? But how long have y’all been together?”

  “You probably didn’t hear me all the other times I said it with you being up in age and born and raised in the South, but my name is Savannah, and we’ve been together for about the same length of time. We never called it dating or being together. We aren’t old, nor do we believe in that traditional stuff you Southerners do. We met, and a few years later, we got engaged.”

  “You mean you don’t believe in the traditional stuff because I raised my son to have morals and to stand by his beliefs and traditions. Do you have a job, Atlanta? Or what did you do for a living before my son had to start providing for you?”

  “Let me stop you right there because your son doesn’t have to provide for me. I have a career. I provide for myself. I guess there are a few traditions I do believe in, like if a man thinks he’s going to call me his woman and wants me to act as such, then he needs to handle all my needs. Whether or not I can handle them shouldn’t be a concern to a real man, and seeing I’
m only a wedding day away from being your son’s wife, he has bills he needs to pay, and my name is Savannah.”

  “Sounds to me like you don’t know what it is you believe in, Marietta. You say one thing, and then you say another. How did you get my son to agree to marry you when you sound like you don’t know what you really believe in when it comes to life?”

  I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell she turned her nose up at me like I wasn’t good enough for her baby boy. Did she think I wasn’t good enough for Dre? Bitch, please. It was me that had to lower my standards to be with him. If she couldn’t tell that by our telephone conversations, she was dumber than I thought she was. That’s why I didn’t bother answering her. If she had questions, she needed to ask her son about them.

  “I guess you don’t have anything left to say then, do you, Leery?”

  “It’s Savannah, and, no, I don’t. Not until you put on your hearing aid or talk to your son.”

  I never pictured Dre as being a mama’s boy, but the more I talked to her, the more visible it became. She started throwing around hood ethics mixed with what she thought was Southern hospitality. I took it all as insults. Dre should have given her a brief summary of me before asking me to contact her, and she would have known better than to offer me to join in her hood lifestyle. If he had told her a little bit more about me, it would have saved her feelings from being hurt. Come to think about it, Dre couldn’t have told her anything about me at all. After all these years and a baby later, the gangster mama’s boy had kept me a secret. Now I know why... because he didn’t want her to look bad. Look at her and the little she had compared to me. I wouldn’t have wanted him to hurt her feelings with rants and raves over the professional intellect of his fiancée either.

  “Well, Alpharetta, I have to get off this phone and go attend to my grandson. You have my number. Call me when you need to. I’ll go ahead and still get the extra bedroom together if you decide to change your mind and not waste all that necessary money that could be spent on my granddaughter on a hotel room.”

  I hung up before I had to cuss her out over my name. I still can’t believe she asked me to stay with her in a house across the street from the projects. Who did I look like being caught on South Ninth and Shelby Avenue? There’s a reason why they call that side of Nashville, “The Bottoms.” I’d been over there before when I was in college at TSU with a friend to pick up some weed, and I will never step foot over there again. We hadn’t been in those projects but five minutes, and I witnessed a fight followed by gunshots. That’s definitely not the place for me, and I wasn’t going to sugarcoat that to spare her feelings.

  She didn’t sugarcoat me either, calling me “another floozy” and questioning if I knew how to cook, clean, and mother a child. Why should I have to sugarcoat my words and give her more respect than she was willing to give me? We both were grown, and I don’t give a damn whose mother she was. Respect ran on a two-way street, with traffic moving on both sides. Then when she was done with all the shit she talked, she tried to apologize and offered to cook me dinner at her house. What part of I’m never coming to your house wasn’t she understanding? Of course, I turned her down in a nice way and told her we could have lunch by whatever hotel I stayed in downtown. She started her shit talking all over again about the type of woman her son needed. Fuck what she thought her baby needed because my man felt differently.

  Some people just have no class about them, and I’d have to accept that my soon-to-be mother-in-law was one of those classless people. The only part that confused me was if she really had all of Dre’s money, why didn’t she ask her baby boy for some of it to move someplace else? I’d come visit then. I can’t grasp why she wouldn’t want more for herself and her grandson. She raised Dre in the projects, and now she thought she’d upgraded by raising her grandson across the street from the projects. Andre Jr. would definitely be moving back with us when we left Tennessee. I couldn’t allow history to repeat itself with my stepson. Her small-minded ass would not hold another black man back from having and getting more, not if I had a say-so.

  I’d never doubted that Dre had money before. He was paying the bills and buying everything else that we needed after I got out of the hospital. But knowing he banked with “Hood Mamas-R-Us” confirmed that I wasn’t about to quit my job to depend on him. I’m used to being my own provider and having a security blanket of knowing I can provide for myself. Keeping my job kept me secure, and I couldn’t wait to get back into my old office in two weeks—no hood day care for me.

  At the announcement of my return, Mr. Williams, who was a founding partner of my firm, was excited to hear I was coming back. I wish I could say the same for the other two partners. Mr. Williamson, who was the other founding partner, was concerned about me abandoning our Washington location with the lack of leadership.

  “Are you saying that you don’t approve of my return or that you won’t approve of it?”

  “I’ll approve it, but I don’t approve of it. You transferred to Washington to manage your own office, which has run successfully under your leadership. I don’t believe it will continue to produce the numbers we have seen without you.”

  “If the numbers drop, I’ll be on the first flight back to Seattle,” I assured him. “The success of all of our locations is and will always be my number one priority.”

  “Glad to hear it. Now, hurry back. A few things were neglected in your absence. I can’t wait to have you back.”

  The newest partner, Stephanie, my ex-secretary, ex-lover, and ex-friend, was downright in disagreement about my return. She tried stating facts, lies, and getting the West Coast clients involved to force the partners to reject my return, but it didn’t work. It was my fault that she felt the need to attack me, and it was also my fault that she had the power to have her voice heard by my partners.

  I was feeling horrible about everything I had done in the past once my supposed mother cleaned out my account. It made me reflect on why she had done it and how Karma played a nasty role in it. Guilt weighed in heavy, and with Dre back in jail, that guilt made me recommend that we make Stephanie a partner. After all the fucked-up shit I put her through and did to her over the years, I felt like it was a small step at apologizing. That ho didn’t even send me an email thanking me for upgrading her, but I deserved it. She was shining like the star she was in her new position. With the apology I extended rejected, I found comfort in knowing it would piss her off that I was coming back to dim that shine. Stephanie wasn’t a factor, and I loved proving that to her.

  Mr. Williams’s overly flirtatious ass had no problem with telling me what Stephanie had to say about my return. He quoted her as saying, “Why do we keep allowing Savannah to control the progression of this company? We, as professionals, should not have to shift our business’s structure around her personal issues, and furthermore, her work ethics should be in question after the California incident. We all think highly of Savannah, but for the last five years, her soap opera of a personal life has leaked in and infested our company. May I remind you that it was all of my legwork as her assistant that got us the contract with Strax Industries in the first place, because, once again, Savannah had personal issues to deal with that were more pressing than this company’s growth. When will we force her to keep her personal life as just that: personal?”

  He said Stephanie’s words held no weight with him, but Mr. Williamson had eaten every word she fed him. It didn’t surprise me in the least that she’d try to prevent my return. It seemed Stephanie had forgotten that she had crossed me first by trying to steal my man and my identity. I can credit a lot of the success I’ve had with the company to her assisting me, but she needed to remember who got her as far as she is now. I will devote every second that I’m back reminding her and showing her who’s the bigger asset to the company. Now, we were equally yoked within the company, neither having more power than the other because our company threw out that seniority policy years ago. If she kept the bullshit going after m
y return, I’d be plotting on getting her fired next. I hope she hadn’t forgotten who she was playing with.

  Before leaving Washington, I parked Dre’s vehicle at my father’s house to be shipped to us at a later date. As for my Cadillac, back to the dealership it went. Mr. Jacobs had no problem with buying it back from me. All I had to do was mention my crazy fiancé that had previously visited him, and he was cutting me a check for it.

  “I normally don’t buy vehicles back at the price I sold them, but I understand your unique situation and thank you for keeping it in such great condition. By the way, how is your fiancé doing? Hope all is well between the two of you and that he is fully aware of your visit here today. I wouldn’t want him to feel disrespected.”

  “He’s fully aware.” Which I said in truth, but the bitch he was displaying bugged the hell out me. We had sex once before, and I couldn’t stomach knowing that I fucked a chump. I had to mess with him. “He actually told me if you didn’t buy it back at the price that I paid—or more—that he would come and negotiate a price that you’d both agree on. He seemed anxious to see you again. I’m sure he won’t be disappointed that you gave me this check, although he did tell me to request cash.”

  “Cash? You didn’t ask for cash. If you can wait for a few minutes, I can give you the money. I’ll just need to—”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. This check is fine,” I interrupted.

  “No trouble at all.” He almost ran out of his office and returned ten minutes later with a large package-sized envelope.

  “This is all of it, and please make sure you tell your fiancé I said hello.”

  “I sure will.”