© 2019
Published by Leo Sullivan Presents
www.leolsullivan.com
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.
Toddrick “Miami” King
Shae was supposed to have been home damn near thirty minutes ago. I knew she’d clocked out at the job because she sent me a text message right before she did it. Maybe my new enemies had me thinking all types of crazy shit that could have possibly happened to her, which is why I had been pacing this fuckin’ living room for the past ten minutes. I’d sent her about three text messages, and I had called her phone more than ten times.
I felt like a lame ass nigga, damn near stalking my own shorty, but because of the fucked-up shit that happened months ago between her and Dino, I had to be overprotective like this. On top of that, I had my phone tracking her location, but that really wasn’t any help because I didn’t know if she wasn’t around service or what, but it couldn’t pick up a proper location.
To say I was stressed was a fuckin’ understatement. I had a blunt hanging from my mouth, and I was pacing this floor the same way I was three years ago when I was at the hospital with Tahira, praying to God that the baby she told me we had conceived really wasn’t mine. There wasn’t much in life that could cause me to stress, but when it came to my shorty, I’ll fuck around and catch high blood pressure behind her because I honestly just cared that much.
I was just about to call Jashae’s cell phone again, but all of a sudden, I heard a car door slam outside in the driveway. I glanced out of the window, and it was her getting out of her Lexus truck. First thing that I noticed was that she didn’t turn her car off when she got out. She probably was able to feel the heat of my eyes on her because, eventually, she peered over at me. I don’t know why, but I could just sense that she was about to be on some bullshit. I walked away from the window, just so I could meet her at the door. Stress, weariness, and maybe even a little bit of disappointment was written all over her face.
“Why the car still running? Your phone broke or something? You ain’t see a nigga calling you back to back for damn near the last forty- five minutes? The type of life we living, shorty, you not in no fuckin’ predicament to be ignoring fuckin’ phone calls! I thought something happened to your ass!” I barked.
At the same time, I snatched the phone out of her hands, only to see that she had a battery that was charged more than fifty percent. On top of that, I saw all of the missed calls and text message notifications on the home screen.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me why—”
“I have Trip’s daughter in the car,” she blurted out. Hearing her say that shut my ass right up. I even put the blunt out because I all of a sudden didn’t even feel like smoking that shit anymore. I stared at her for a good twenty seconds, just to see if she was bullshitting me, but the serious look on her face never changed. She wouldn’t even look at me; she knew that this shit was foul.
I personally knew how timid Shae was, especially with all the shit that had been happening in her life. The biggest one right now was her having to go to court in a few weeks for running up in Taylor’s mama’s shit. I knew that it had her stressing, so I was trying to be considerate of her feelings, but at the same time, I wanted to be selfish and say that I didn’t give a fuck about her feelings. She obviously didn’t give a fuck about mine when she decided to bring Trip’s daughter over here. I didn’t like that shit, and I wasn’t going to pretend that I did.
“For what?” I simply asked, carefully choosing my words.
“Miami, I don’t know. Trip’s mom left her in the garage at my job. I couldn’t just leave her there. Technically, that’s Vonte’s sister, and—”
“Yo, leave Vonte out of this shit. I see what you’re doing, shorty. Since you want to throw blood out there, then that’s Trip’s fuckin’ daughter! You’re not married to that nigga. Therefore, that doesn’t make you her stepmother. Because he got his ass locked up, and he serving a life sentence, we supposed to be the ones in charge of his child? Fuck outta here with that, man! Where her mama at?” I asked, and she shrugged as if she didn’t know.
“Toddrick, I don’t know! I’m calling Trip’s mom, and she won’t answer the phone for me. I even wrote Krystal on Instagram as I was driving over here, and she didn’t write back either. What did you want me to do, Miami, when I saw her outside my job? Nigga, you know me well enough to know that I wasn’t about to leave no fuckin’ five-year-old little girl in a fuckin’ garage!
“Look, I’m not asking for a damn lecture from you, and neither am I asking you to continue yelling at me because of what I decided to do. Are you going to ride around with me so we can find her mama or what? Miami, I’ll go with or without you, and you know I will!” she snapped.
I swear, the only reason I decided to go was that I didn’t want her riding around the whole fuckin’ Miami on her own trying to find Trip’s baby mama.
“Hold on, yo! Let me put on a shirt. Also, let me shoot a text to my baby mama and let her know that we not going to the dinner anymore. Or would you want to bring your stepdaughter with us, and we go and look for her mother later?” I asked, looking down at her.
I knew my choice of words probably pissed her off, but I didn’t care. She released a sigh and then pushed back a few loose strands of hair and put it behind her ear.
“Miami, please! If you want to be technical here, realize that I had two options. I could have chosen to not include you in any of this and went on my own to go and find her damn mama. Instead, I came to you with it, thinking that I was doing the right thing by not sneaking around about it. I don’t want to be in this situation as much as you don’t want to be in it! I have enough shit going on in my life right now as is, so I don’t need you make the shit worse. I’m sleeping at my grandma’s tonight when all of this is over too. You seriously just pissed me off for the rest of the fuckin’ day!” She tried to walk away, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her close to me.
I was so close to her that I could smell her breath, and her mouth wasn’t even open. Our noses were touching and everything.
“I look like I’ma willingly let you sleep in a different space from me? You sleeping in the exact same spot that you’ve been sleeping in for the past few months. Go get back in the car. You done had her in there too long by herself.” I said what I had to say, and then I let her go.
She went back in the car while I jogged upstairs and went inside my drawer and threw on the first shirt that I could find. We were supposed to have been on our way to dinner, yet here we were again, picking up the missing pieces for Trip and his bullshit! Once the alarm and everything was on in the house, and I made sure that I had my gun on my hip, I walked out the door. I went over to the driver’s side of Jashae’s car and pulled it open. She was already sitting down, with her seatbelt on and everything, ready to pull out with or without me.
“Get in the passenger, and I’ll drive,” I let her know.
She sighed, and then she took the seat belt off. I knew she was mad at me. I could tell from her body language alone. Once she was out of the seat, she went over and got into the passenger seat while I was still standing and looking at the little girl in the backseat. Her seatbelt was on, and she was lying with her head on the window. There sat one of her bags on the floor while she had the other one in her lap, and she held onto it as she slept. I didn’t know how to feel about this, and
at the end of the day, I had to keep in mind that she was a little girl who didn’t have a say so in any of this shit. So, it wasn’t her that I was mad at.
I jumped in the driver seat, put my seat belt on, and shot out of the driveway. Shae directed me the whole ride to Trip’s mama’s house. Of course, when we pulled up, there weren’t any cars in the parking lot. How grown ass people would think that it’s okay to just leave a fuckin’ little girl in a garage as if she was a stray dog was beyond me. I swear, some women aren’t worthy enough to let cum be dropped off inside of them. Instead, they were better off swallowing it because then they bring the children into this world and make fucked up choices where the child has to be the one to pay for it.
“Wait right here. I’m going to knock,” I said, although there weren’t any cars in the driveway.
The home had a one car garage, and there was a chance that her car could have been in the garage. We weren’t in a good area. I knew that for a fact, so I made sure that Jashae locked the doors when I got out. For five minutes straight, I banged and kicked on this fuckin’ door, and no one ever came to answer it. I wasn’t even all that mad because I had a feeling that this would happen. I headed back to the car, and for about a minute, neither Shae nor I said anything.
“We can try Liberty Square. Krystal was living there the same time that I was living there back in the day. Maybe she still lives over there, or someone there may know her,” Jashae suggested.
Instead of saying anything, I just headed in that direction. Liberty Square was our childhood. That’s where I moved to when I met Trip and Jashae. Trip’s mother’s house wasn’t that far from it because within five minutes, I pulled the car into the old, rundown apartment homes. Looking in the rearview mirror, I could see that the little girl in the backseat had woken up. I watched her body language, and it screamed so many things, but the biggest scream of them all was fear.
Jashae must have peeped that I was looking at her because she eventually turned around in her seat, and she looked in the back.
“Is this where you live?” Jashae asked her. It took her a little minute to answer Shae, but when she did, she just shrugged.
“Come on. We’re going to find out,” Jashae said and opened the passenger side door.
I shut the car off and got out as well then watched as Shae helped the little girl out of the backseat, holding onto her tiny hand. It was the first time that I actually saw her attire, and all I could say was that her mama needed her ass beat for even having her child out here looking like this. I mean this with absolutely no disrespect, but it looked like Shae had literally picked this little girl up from the streets. I had to eventually stop looking because that shit was just pissing me the fuck off.
“Does any of this look familiar to you, Maya? Do you live here?” Shae asked.
“Myyy… myyy… Naa… Nana.” She pointed with her small finger to an apartment that wasn’t too far from where we were standing.
I immediately picked up on her stuttering when she opened up her mouth to talk. I can’t even lie, that shit kind of pulled at my heart because I could see her struggle to force out the words to properly answer Shae’s question. I remember being in middle school, and this boy who took a few classes with me used to stutter really badly. The kids picked on him every chance they got, and seeing how scared and timid she just was to talk, I wondered if she was being bullied because of her speech, even though she was so young.
My eyes eventually left them and wandered around to what was happening in front of me. This shit looked exactly the same as it did years ago when I lived there. Niggas were posted on the walls selling dope. Dice games were going on, little kids were running outside barefoot, and the majority of the people were outside sitting on their balcony.
This was why I always made sure to give back to the hood any chance that I got; just for these people to have some kind of hope. Every year before the first day of school, I pulled up in a U-Haul truck with nothing but bookbags, shoes, supplies, and everything else that these kids would need to have a successful school year.
I shook my head at some of the shit that I saw, and I was glad that Shae and Maya weren’t looking at what was happening on the sides of the buildings that we just passed because there was a fuckin’ crackhead sucking in the corner. More than likely, that was her way of paying for her drug of choice.
“That’s your nana?” Shae asked Maya once we arrived at an apartment where I swear it had to have been more than thirty people standing outside by the back door.
The nana that Shae was asking Maya about didn’t look like your average grandma. You know, the ones who actually looked like they could be your nana instead of your young ass mama? If this was Maya’s grandma for real, she looked young as hell. She was sitting down in a chair, with a grown ass man between her legs, as she braided his hair. A blunt dangled from her mouth, and she had a bottle of Hennessy between her legs, which I watched her take a swig out of as we approached.
“Miami! Can we get a picture with you?”
Damn near five grown ass men walked up to me, phones out, ready to get a picture, but I wasn’t on that right now. I thought because I had my hat so low on my head that people wouldn’t have been able to spot me, but I was wrong.
“Not right now. I’m busy” I said, but it wasn’t in a rude way.
Not sure if they respected what I said, or they just simply didn’t give a fuck that they couldn’t take a picture with me, but they just eventually walked away.
“No! No! No! I don’t know who you are, but don’t drop that little girl off with me! It’s a church down the street where you can leave her ass right there on that fuckin’ step, but she can’t come here! Her funky ass mama brought her ass over here a few days ago and talked to me like I didn’t push her ass out of my coochie, so no, I’m not doing no favors for that bitch! If your plan was to drop her her off, circle back because I don’t want her,” the woman who Maya referred to as her nana yelled.
I wanted to take my gun out and pistol whip her dumb ass for saying that stupid shit in front of this little ass girl.
“Do you know where Krystal is then? Listen, I don’t want to be in this mess, as much as you don’t want to be in it, but she was dropped off at my job a few hours ago, and I’m just trying to return her to some type of family. Where is your daughter?” Jashae asked. I could hear it in her voice that she was annoyed by this entire thing.
“I don’t know where the fuck Krystal is! A few days ago, when she brought her ass over here, she was asking me if I could permanently keep Maya because she was planning to move to Atlanta to dance, so Atlanta is my best bet. Look, Krystal don’t give a fuck about this little girl. I guess she thought having a baby by that jail bird was going to change something. I love Maya, but I can’t keep her. I’m living in a two-bedroom apartment, with four of my grown ass kids and three of my grandchildren in here with me. Drop her ass off at the church, but I don’t want her,” she carried on.
Maya stood there next to Jashae, as if none of this shit fazed her. As if she was so fuckin’ used to people disclaiming her.
“Yo, let’s go!” I said to Jashae because if that stupid bitch kept on talking, I couldn’t promise what I was going to do with my hands or what was going to come out of my mouth for that matter.
I could tell by the look in Jashae’s eyes that it was so much more that she wanted to say, but she dropped it. When we got back in the car, I swear we were right back to square one. The doors were closed, and it was just the three of us. Out of nowhere, Jashae just burst out crying. I pulled down on my long chin hair and released a sigh.
“Why you crying, Jashae?” I asked.
She quickly wiped her face and then shook her head no, as if it was nothing.
“Talk to me, shorty. What’s up?” I pried, pulling on her hands, that were covering her face in an attempt to keep me from seeing her cry.
“I don’t know what to do… I can’t… we can’t just drop her off anywhere. I know this
is not what you want, Miami. It’s not even what I want, but don’t make me do this,” she cried, looking at me with sad eyes.
Big tear drops fell from her eyes when she looked at me. Shae’s heart was one of the things that made me fall in love with her in the first place. I say that shit all the time that her inner and her outer beauty was some shit that attracted me to her from the get-go. Here she was, didn’t even know the first thing about this little girl, and her heart was so fuckin’ big that she couldn’t just drop her off. Any other woman would have left Maya in the garage where she’d found her.
I used my hands to wipe away the tears on her face, and I didn’t say shit. First off, I would never make my shorty do some shit that she didn’t want to do, so why the thought of me having her just drop Maya off somewhere even registered in her mind was beyond me. I turned toward the backseat and looked at Maya, who had been looking in the front seat at Jashae and I the entire time. She was a pretty little girl, which is why I was having a hard time understanding how anyone could just throw her to the wolves like that.
“You hungry, Maya?” I asked.
Her head was down, and she shrugged like she didn’t know if she was hungry or not. I let out a laugh. All the while, my eyes were still on her.
“You hungry or not, lil mama? What you want to eat?” I asked.
Her head was still down, and she hadn’t said anything yet.
“Pizza,” she literally mumbled. I mean, I practically read her lips to see what she said because that’s just how low she was.
“Pizza it is then. You want pizza, shorty?” I asked Jashae, and she let me know that pizza was fine.
I had a little spot in Miami that I liked to go to, which was called, Andiamo! Brick Oven Pizza, so that’s where I decided to take them. The entire way to the restaurant, no one said anything. I was pretty sure that everyone was wrapped up in their thoughts about what was going to come after this. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what the outcome would be. Not to say that there was anything wrong with Maya, but lil mama wasn’t my daughter, and neither was she Jashae’s daughter. Not to sound selfish, but I just didn’t see how she should be our priority.
Down With the King of the South 3 Page 1