Love Me

by Diamond Johnson

  “Love you too,” I told her, and then I ended the call.

  Later that night

  “Is that bag heavy? Because if it is, I’ll hold it,” I asked my daughter, who was carrying a small backpack on her back from Justice with the letter J on it.

  I’d gotten it for her a few months ago for her birthday. I didn’t play that buying food at the concession stand at the movies because that shit was a complete rip-off. So, on the way over, we stopped at Family Dollar, and I let them pick up all type of junk. It was all stored away in Zakiya’s book bag. Crazy thing is, I’d been cutting hair nonstop since yesterday morning until this evening, so a nigga had money, but I liked to spend my shit like I was broke. I let my kids go crazy in Family Dollar, and I still ended up just spending fifteen dollars. Had gotten our snacks from the theater, fifteen dollars would have been the cost of my shit alone.

  “I got it, Daddy. I’m a big girl,” Zakiya said and playfully rolled her eyes at me while smiling at the same time.

  I looked down at her, gently pulled her to me, and kissed her little forehead. Both of my kids were everything to me, and I loved them equally, but my daughter would forever have a soft spot in my heart. She was the reason why I changed my life. Zakiya was every inch of her mother as she stood there with her fresh braids in her hair that were going to the side and wearing her denim dress from Guess, with a pair of red Converse on her feet.

  Like she was my little date for the night, I wrapped my arm around her and held onto my son’s hand. His little ass was damn near dragging us into the theater because he couldn’t wait to see the movie. Little ass wasn’t even alive when part one came out, but he was in such a rush to see part two. Since I booked our tickets online, all I had to do was show the lady up front the barcode, and we head toward the theater. We quickly found our seats, and I sat down in the middle of my kids.

  Zakiya picked out the snacks that she wanted from the backpack, and then she handed the bag over to Jr. I laughed because it seemed like they enjoyed these snacks better than the food court anyway.

  “I don’t even know why I had to come and see this movie with y’all. This movie is for kids. Look at all these little kids in here, Ma. I’m the only teenager in here,” I heard a voice behind me say.

  I prayed to God that this shit talking ass teenager was not about to sit behind me. I would hate for her to be talking throughout the movie and I have to tell her bratty ass to shut the fuck up. I wasn’t wrapped too tight, so I would sure as hell do it. I felt a purse hit me on the back of the head, and I turned around. The woman who did it was too busy wrapped up in sitting two other kids down that she didn’t even realize that she’d hit me. It was just my luck that this party of four, who hadn’t even been in this bitch for a full minute yet, had managed to sit behind me. She damn near knocked my hat off my head with that big ass purse of hers, but I knew how it was to have to handle more than one child, so I didn’t say shit. I just turned my ass around and focused on the movie that was getting ready to start.

  “Journey, please don’t start with me right now! You knew since this morning that you were going to come with us to the movies, so why start whining about this shit now? I don’t want to see this movie either, but the kids do. Be on your phone, take a nap, just please stop with the damn whining,” I heard a woman say.

  She was trying to whisper, but her ass was loud as fuck! There was no way in hell I should know that her daughter’s name was Journey. Motha fuckas were really talking loud in this bitch like we were at a fuckin’ park. I could hear my daughter making little grunting noises, so I knew that her little ass was just as annoyed as I was. Zakiya was every piece of me when it came to my personality, so I knew that she would turn around in her seat and tell them to shut their asses up too.

  Luckily, after the mom said her piece, I didn’t hear shit else from either of them. The movie started, and I threw my head back in my seat because I knew that it was only a matter of time before I fell asleep in there. I was never the type of person to sit up and watch cartoons. My grandma will tell you that I was four years old and asking her to put on Good Times or Martin. Because I was raised by my grandmother, I’d pretty much always had an old soul. Even to this day, I’ll bump a little rap music here and there, but nothing could compare to a little bit of Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergrass, and Al Green. That was the type of music that my grandma would play around the house when she would do her routine Saturday cleaning, so that was what stuck with me.

  One of my of favorite things to do was sit outside on the balcony at my apartment and face a fat ass blunt while I bumped a little old school music.

  “Daddy, that little boy behind me keeps kicking my chair.” My daughter’s voice came through my ear, making me jump in my sleep.

  I rubbed my hand down my face and looked at Zakiya, who was pointing behind her to a little boy, who looked as if he was my son’s age. I was getting ready to tell her to be quiet because she was loud, but I saw him kick it again, so I said something.

  “Yo, can you please tell your son to stop kicking the seat? Switch places with his little ass or something,” I requested with hostility dripping from every word that escaped my lips.

  I probably wasn’t really even mad at the fact that her son was kicking the seat; if anything, I was annoyed as shit because I was in a deep sleep, only for my daughter to wake me up with this shit.

  “You don’t have to be fuckin rude about it! I would have understood your ass if you just simply told me that my son was kicking the seat! The last part was unnecessary!” she snapped back at my ass with just as much hostility in her voice.

  It wasn’t in my nature to sit and argue with no bitch. My baby mama will tell you for a fact that fuckin’ around with me, her ass will be going back in forth with a damn wall because I wasn’t the type to waste my time, energy, nor my damn breath arguing with no female because they didn’t know how to let shit go. It was dark as hell in this theater, and all I saw was a small body that had just talked back to me, so I figured the mother must have left or some shit. Then again, she referred to him as her son, so her little ass was probably the mother.

  “You and your whole family been doing a whole bunch of unnecessary shit since y’all walked in this bitch! Y’all came in here talking loud, you hit me in the back of my head with that big ass purse, and then your son is kicking my daughter’s chair. Sign his ass up for kickball or some shit if he wants to kick on shit!” I snapped back at her ass.

  A few people were telling us to be quiet, but it wasn’t them that made me stop talking. It was my daughter and my son pulling on my shirt and telling me to stop that made me turn around in my chair and leave the shit alone. I didn’t need to be talking to no woman like that anyway, so I let the shit go. She must have known that she was dealing with a nigga who wasn’t wrapped too tightly either because I didn’t hear shit else back from her ass.

  After that little incident, I couldn’t get back to sleep because too many thoughts were running through my head. The hood raised me, so I’ve seen some shit in my lifetime. Lil mama could have been texting her nigga and telling him the way that I just talked to her, and now I had to be alert just in case I had to beat a nigga’s ass. Lucky for her and her nigga, if she did have one, that moment never came.

  The movie had finally gone off, and the lights were now coming on in the theater. I was folding up the candy bags and the bags of chips that my kids had eaten from, so I could place it back in the backpack, while almost everyone else inside the theater was leaving.

  “I apologize for my son kicking your seat,” I heard a voice say.

  I looked behind me and saw that the woman was talking to Zakiya. Zakiya flashed a big smile and let her know that it was okay. The woman was smiling too, and then her eyes landed on me. That smile that she’d just given Zakiya quickly turned into a mug once she and I were peering at each other. I was laughing to myself because her little ass really thought she scared some shit. I loved crazy bitches, and this one right her
e looked like she was right up crazy bitch’s alley. Hell, she was probably the leader of the damn crew.

  She was probably pondering whether she wanted to curse me out or fuck me. I tend to have that type of effect on all women. Even women who take the strap and aren’t into men like that. Bitches had been calling me handsome since I could remember. I remember as a little boy, the women would tell my grandma how I was going to break so many hearts when I got older because of my good looks. When I was nine years old, I found myself wanting to grow my good grain of hair out and get dreads. That lasted until I was about twenty-six years old. Before I cut my dreads, they were way down my back.

  My children’s good hair was all because of me. We lived in Miami, where it was hot year round this bitch, so I had to let go of the long hair. Now, I rocked a low cut with waves that were out of this world, making these bitches seasick whenever they saw me. Not even on some cocky shit, but I had good skin. My grandma was always putting me on to these black-owned products for my skin, which is why my shit had this golden look to it. I’d been growing my beard out for maybe the past five years or so, and it was full and healthy.

  When I wasn’t cutting hair or taking care of my kids, you could catch me somewhere in the gym looking like I was training to be on someone’s NFL team. That’s why I didn’t know why lil mama was looking at me with those big, beautiful brown eyes of hers like she could whoop my ass. I knew for a fact that I could pick her little ass up with one hand and toss her way across this damn theater if I wanted to. I had tattoos almost all over my body that I’d been getting since I was eighteen years old. Both of my kids took up the majority of my chest area, with portraits of them that were tattooed on me. I read some shit years ago about how a wolf is viewed in the animal kingdom as a bully, and because Bully was my nickname, I had a tattoo of a wolf on the outside of my right hand. My grandma hated these damn tattoos and talked shit each time she saw that I got a new one. The bitches loved it, though.

  “Now, I apologized to your daughter, and I want an apology from you for being disrespectful to me,” she had the nerve to say.

  I looked at the ring on her finger and saw that she was married. The second inference I was able to make was that she was backed up on getting her rocks off. Lil mama couldn’t possibly be getting fucked on the regular because she was standing here, willing to go toe to toe with my ass over something so fuckin’ minor. A woman who was getting fucked on a daily basis would have let this little incident slide, but she was keeping the shit going. She was pretty as fuck, though. Too damn pretty. So pretty, that I almost felt bad for talking to her the way that I did. Although her looks attracted me, I felt like that would probably be the only thing because that mouth of hers would easily get her ass fucked up.

  “I apologize, lil one. I hope your ass knows how to fight because you can’t go around talking to everybody like that and expect to walk away freely. I don’t put my hands on females, but I don’t think that every nigga you run across going to be ass respectful,” I let her know.

  She let out a sarcastic laugh, followed by her pushing a strand of her long hair behind her ear.

  “This is what you call respectful? You know what, fuck it! Enjoy your evening, sir,” she said, and then she grabbed her daughter’s hand, who had been pulling onto her mother’s jacket for the longest and trying to get her to stop so they could leave.

  I laughed while waving goodbye to her, knowing that it only infuriated her pretty ass even more. I hadn’t been turned on by a woman since ten years ago when I brought Breshay down to the trap house and saw how quickly she caught on to cooking up dope. Although I couldn’t stand a woman with a big ass mouth, that shit was sexy to see the way she was willing to stand up to a giant over her kids. She let me know right there what type of mother she was, which easily compared to the type of father that I was. Even with her son being in the wrong for kicking my chair, she was willing to go to war behind him.

  “Daddy, she was so pretty. Can I color my hair like that?” Zakiya asked me the second we made it inside the car.

  “When you turn thirty, you can. You’re right about her being pretty, but she almost caught these hands,” I joked, making both my kids laugh.

  I didn’t too much dwell on the shit because I doubted she and I would ever run into each other again. She looked uptight as hell, so it was that I would run into her at half the places I frequented. Although I no longer lived in the hood, I couldn’t keep my ass from that side of town, and she didn’t strike me as the type of person who would spend her free time in the projects. Besides, what the hell could I do with her married ass anyway? Fuckin’ around with her and that slick ass mouth, I’d be in somebody’s prison being bunkmates with my ole boy.

  4

  Takari Evans

  “Hello, I’m calling to speak with Mrs. Evans. This is the principal at Somerset Charter,” the voice said on the other end of the line.

  I knew this couldn’t be good news as I breathed a sigh of annoyance while throwing my head back against the bed rest. I had my daughter, Jada, in my arms, who’d finally gone to sleep after keeping me up with her all night due to the bad cold that she was fighting. I hated for any of my children to get sick because as a mother, it worried me, so these past few days had been stressful as hell.

  Jerrod left the house early this morning after letting me know that he had a very important meeting that he was putting together at the job, so like always, nothing came before work. Even last night, when Jada came into our bedroom crying about her nose being stuffed up and how hard it was for her to sleep because of the cold, that still wasn’t enough for him to get up with me and help tend to our daughter. It was me who had to get out of the bed at two this morning and lay with my daughter in the den as I tried my best to console her and make her feel better. Because Jaden nor Journey was sick, they both were able to get on the bus this morning and go to school. Just when I finally had a moment to close my eyes, I got a phone call from my daughters’ school. From the school principal at that.

  I could just hear the disappointment in her voice, which let me know that this conversation wouldn’t be a pleasant one. This wasn’t the first time that the school had called about my daughter, but it was usually from one of her teachers, telling me how nasty my daughter’s attitude was toward them in class, or how she doesn’t know how to shut her mouth in class either. Journey wasn’t a bad child at all; I just felt like she was forcing herself to grow up, and that she wanted to be grown so damn bad.

  “This is Mrs. Evans. Is everything alright with Journey?” I asked.

  At the same time, Jada turned her head against my chest in her sleep. I soothed her back with my hand in an attempt to get her to stay asleep for the time being.

  “Journey is here in my office right now. Apparently, she asked her fourth period teacher if it was okay for her to use the restroom, and after being gone for over ten minutes, she still hadn’t managed to make it back to class. I just happened to be coming back from my lunch break, and I caught your thirteen-year-old daughter in the hallway making out with a boy. We take these matters very serious at our school, which is why I felt the need to call you so that you could have a talk with her. The only consequence that Journey will receive for her actions today is an after-school suspension, so if you can find time in your schedule to pick her up at 4:30, that would be great,” the principal said.

  I was shocked. Shocked beyond belief that this was what this lady was calling me for. I would have been more at ease if she was calling me to let me know that my daughter had skipped fourth period. The principal, Mrs. Vasquez, was a Spanish woman and as she told me the things that she’d caught my daughter doing, I couldn’t help but feel like she was judging me. Talking to me like I was one of those women who was raising a grown ass daughter.

  “Put her on the phone. I want to talk to her for a second,” I let Mrs. Vasquez know.

  I heard some shuffling around, and then Journey’s voice came through the line.

  �
��Hi, Mommy,” she whispered.

  “Don’t ‘hi mommy’ me, Journey! You might as well turn that phone off right now because I promise that you won’t be getting it back! What the hell is wrong with you? I do not send your little ass to school to be in the hallways kissing these ugly ass little boys! I send you to school so you can receive your damn education! You know what, I’ll deal with you later. I don’t even have the strength to do this shit right now!” I spat and then I hung up the phone.

  I guess a part of me was a little naïve because I just didn’t think that my daughter was talking to boys, let alone kissing them in the hallways. I didn’t want to be that mother who went through my child’s phone, so when she told me that she was on the phone with her homegirls from school, I believed her. I remember how tough and strict my best friend Brooklyn’s mother used to be on her when we were younger, and because of that, Brooklyn hated her mother. She used to get upset with the fact that her mom was always trying to trace her every move and how she had so many rules. I promised myself that when I had kids, that I would try to be as lenient as possible. The things that Brooklyn used to say about her mother, I would die if any of my kids ever talked about me in such a way.

  I tried to call Jerrod and let him know what was going on, and he quickly shot me a text back, letting me know that he was busy but still asking if everything was alright with Jada and me. Since the little dispute that he and I had about a week ago, things between us hadn’t really been the same. I didn’t know what to think of my husband anymore. That comment that he made about me not having rights to anything really struck a nerve. The comment that he made about him taking all three kids if I ever decided to leave him wasn’t sitting well with me either. For the first time in my life, I had to really question the person that I married and ask myself if this was a good decision.