“So, how does it feel being a mother?” Yolanda asked Secret.
“Special,” Secret replied. “It’s a feeling I’ll never take for granted. Hopefully it’s a feeling that will always be with me so that no matter what, I’ll always be reminded of how special it is to be a mother, therefore being the best mother that I can possibly be.”
Not sure whether Secret was trying to throw a dig at her, she let it go. “Well, I’ll warn you, you’ve got your hands full. Miller girls are something else.”
“Hmmm, I don’t know. I felt like I was a normal kid, thanks to Grandma.”
Clearly, in Yolanda’s opinion, that was a dig. “Look, I think I better go.” She scooted to the edge of the couch with the baby. “I just wanted to stop by and see my grandbaby. That’s all.” She stood.
“But you haven’t even drunk your water.” Secret pointed to the bottle of water.
“I’ll take it with me. It’s hot out there.”
Secret stood and took the baby out of Yolanda’s arms. Yolanda picked up the water bottle and headed to the door.
“Well, you know where I live. If you ever need anything, need me to keep the baby while you work, go out, or do something, just let me know. Call me. My number ain’t changed.” Yolanda went to open the door, but it was locked.
Secret unlocked and opened the door for her mother. “Thank you for stopping by. I really do appreciate it.” And Secret really did appreciate the effort her mother was making. Lord knows it took everything in that woman to be cordial for five minutes.
“All right, well like I said, call me if you need me. You still have my number don’t you?” Yolanda asked Secret as she stood on the porch.
Secret nodded. Yolanda then walked to her car.
Secret closed the door and then said to herself, “Yeah, I got your number.”
Chapter 13
“Do you really want to eat here?” Katherine asked Secret as they headed to the Chinese restaurant at the strip mall the two had reconnected at a few months ago.
“I figured this is where we reconnected. Why not?”
“So you have no idea this is Lucky’s spot?” Katherine stopped at the door of the restaurant, throwing her hands on her hips.
“What do you mean? I never ate here with Lucky before.” Secret wasn’t lying. Lucky had never taken her here to eat before nor had he mentioned this place. It was Detective Davis who told Secret that she needed to come to the restaurant today to “just happen” to run into Lucky.
“Forget it.” Katherine shooed her hand. “What are the odds we’d run into him here today anyway?” She opened the door and went inside.
“Yeah, what are the odds?” Secret said under her breath as she entered right behind Katherine.
The sisters walked up to the podium where a Chinese woman stood. “Two today?” the woman greeted them.
“Yes,” Katherine replied.
The lady grabbed two menus. “Right this way.” She led Katherine and Secret to a table in the middle of the small dining room. After the ladies sat down, the woman placed a menu in front of each of them. “Can I bring you drinks?”
“A Coke for me,” Katherine said.
“Just water with lemon for me, thank you,” Secret replied.
The woman bowed her head, smiled, then walked away.
“I know one thing,” Secret said, “It sure does smell good in here.”
“Don’t get me to lying. They do have some good-ass food.”
The two scanned the menu as the woman bought their drink orders.
“Do you know what you like or need more time?” the woman asked them.
“More time,” the sisters said in unison, looking up at each other and laughing.
The woman left the two of them to observe the menu. Their heads were buried trying to decide which of the many delicious looking and sounding entrees they would order.
A couple minutes later the woman returned to take their food orders. Secret ordered General Tso’s while Katherine, still undecided, continued skimming the menu.
“Ummmm, okay, I think I’ll have the shrimp fried rice,” Katherine finally chose. She scanned the menu one last time just to be sure. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll have.” She closed her menu then looked up to hand it to the waitress.
With both menus in hand the waitress said, “Thank you. Your orders will be right out.” She walked away, giving Katherine a clear view of the door.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Katherine’s mouth dropped open and she all of a sudden looked flushed.
Secret’s back was to the door, so she had no idea what Katherine had seen that had her reacting this way. “What? What it is?” Secret said with concern.
“Well if it isn’t Kat,” Secret heard a male voice say behind her. She closed her eyes. She knew who that voice belonged to even without seeing his face. It was show time.
“If it isn’t the Lucky dog himself,” Katherine shot back.
“Surprise seeing you here.”
The voice was getting closer and closer to the table. Secret could feel the presence coming closer and closer as well until it felt like she was under the shadow of a giant.
“I can’t say the same,” Katherine said. She then looked over at Secret. “See, I told you we shouldn’t have come to eat here.”
For the first time, the gentleman who had been eyeballing Kat looked to see the person Kat was with. Secret looked up at him and the two locked eyes. Lucky stood frozen. Secret sat frozen.
Katherine rolled her tongue inside her jaw. “Mmm, hmmm. What’s a matter, Lucky? Cat got yo’ tongue?” She busted out laughing.
Neither Lucky nor Secret joined in on the laughter. The two remained staring at one another, waiting to see who would be the first to speak.
“Oh, yeah, how rude of me not to introduce you,” Katherine jumped in. “Lucky, this is Secret, my sister. Secret, this is Lucky.” Katherine let out a sinister chuckle. “Oh, but then again, you already know damn well who she is,” Katherine snapped at Lucky. “She’s your fucking baby momma, the one you left for dead in jail, you black son of a—”
“Katherine.” Secret put her hand up to silence her sister.
Katherine’s mouth hung open midsentence, following her sister’s request.
“You’re out?” Lucky said to Secret, not the least bit fazed by Katherine’s mouth. After so many years of dealing with it, he was totally immune.
“Not ‘where the fuck is my baby and is she alive,’ no, you worried that she’s out.” Katherine couldn’t help herself.
Once again Secret held her hand up to Katherine.
Katherine bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m sorry, girl, it’s just that you are too nice. This mafucka needs to be wearing both our drinks.”
Both Lucky and Secret ignored Katherine’s rant as she continued to mumble under her breath.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Secret said to Lucky’s statement about her being out of jail. “No thanks to you.”
Lucky put his head down and brushed his nose off with his thumb. He looked back at Secret. “So, how did you get out?”
“Why? You still want her to be locked up serving time for your grimy ass?” Katherine clearly couldn’t control her anger toward Lucky and by now the customers were getting agitated by her cursing rant. She saw the owner, a Chinese man, coming out of the back. Katherine recalled the man as the one who had thrown her out of the restaurant the time she’d gotten into it with Lucky in there before. “Look, I lost my appetite,” Katherine told Secret. “I’m going to go wait outside in the car.” Katherine had driven. She took her keys out of her purse as she got up from the chair.
“Hey, didn’t I tell you no come back here?” the owner said once he spotted Katherine.
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” Katherine said before he could attempt to throw her out again. Katherine said to Secret before she walked out the door, “I got my cell phone right here in my hand and I’m watching the door.” She shot Lucky a look
of death and then exited.
Lucky stood over Secret while she kept her eyes straight ahead. Lucky finally broke the lingering silence. “The baby.” He pointed to Secret’s empty womb.
“She’s fine,” Secret replied short and dry.
“She? So it’s a girl?”
“Yes, she’s with my mom.”
“Your mom?” Lucky scrunched up his face. He knew about Secret’s fight with her mom and the turbulent relationship they’d had. Secret’s mother had never once come checking for Secret the entire time he had been with Secret so he was surprised to hear that she was back in Secret’s life.
“Yep. She came to see about me when she heard I was out, trying to make amends. So I figured why not.” Secret looked up at Lucky. “And I think everybody deserves a second chance.”
Secret’s last words clearly had Lucky feeling a little awkward as his eyes darted around, trying to look anywhere but at her. After a few seconds of silence, Lucky spoke. “So how did you get out?”
Secret looked him dead in his eyes and let out a harrumph. “So Katherine was right. You’re more worried with how I got out of jail than how the baby and I are doing.”
“That’s not true,” Lucky was quick to say.
Just then the waitress came back over carrying the entrees Secret and Katherine had ordered. Noticing Katherine was gone, she looked back and forth from Secret to Lucky like “what to do?”
“Can you actually put them in carryout containers please?” Secret asked. “I’m going to take them to go.”
The woman nodded and then walked away.
“I’m out on bond,” were the words Detective Davis had told Secret to say, so that’s what she’d said. “My public defender says I’m probably going to get off though. Some legal technicality, this being my first offense, I was pregnant, no history of any dealings with drugs. Blah blah blah.” Secret waved her hand. “I don’t know all that legal jargon; all I know is that I’m free now, free to be with my little girl.”
“Well, you know if you need anything . . .”
“You’ll come through for me like you have the last two months?”
Lucky washed his hand down his face. “You know I couldn’t come up to that jail and see you.” Now Lucky spoke almost in a whisper, leaning down toward Secret.
“Oh, and why not?”
“Come on, you know why.”
“Actually, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me,” Secret said. She matched his tone in a hard whisper. “Why did you let them take me to jail, Lucky? Why?” Secret fought back tears.
“Look, this isn’t the time or the place to—”
“But you owe me!” Secret shouted, no longer able to contain her emotions.
“I know, I know.” Lucky lowered his hands, signaling Secret to keep her voice down. “We’ll talk, but not here.” He thought for a moment. “You still have your apartment or are you staying with your moms?”
“I still have my own place, thank God.” Secret rolled her eyes, having blinked away her tears before they could ever fall.
“How about I stop by and we talk? Not tonight. I have something to do, but in the morning. Would that be cool?”
Secret thought for a moment. “I don’t know, Lucky. I mean you might show up with a duffle bag full of drugs and tell the cops it’s mine.”
“Hold that shit down,” Lucky said.
“Like I held you down?” Secret reminded him.
He looked into her eyes. “Yeah, like you held me down.”
The woman came back with two carryout bags for Secret.
“Thank you,” Secret said.
“It’s $21.87,” the woman told her.
Secret went into her purse but Lucky stopped her. “I got this,” he said to both Secret and the waitress. He looked at the waitress. “Put it on my tab.”
The woman nodded and then walked away.
“Oh, so Katherine was right, you are a regular here. Got yourself a tab.”
Lucky ignored her comment. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Secret took in a deep breath and then exhaled. She didn’t say another word to Lucky. She placed both bags on one arm and her purse on the other. She cut her eyes at Lucky, got up from her chair, and brushed by him. The second she got out of the restaurant she let out a deep breath. “Oh my God,” she said to herself. She placed her hand over her heart. She could feel it beating darn near out of her chest. She swallowed, juggled her purse and the bags, and went to the car.
Katherine was waiting in the driver’s seat with the windows down listening to music.
“Is that Marvin Sapp?” Secret questioned the music blasting from the radio.
Katherine reached and turned it down. “Girl, yes. I needed Jesus after dealing with that rat bastard.” She twisted her body around and looked at Secret as if she’d lost her mind. “And you need a little thug in you. Girl, had he left my ass for dead in jail, you would have been picking my acrylic nails out that son of a bitch’s body like you was picking cotton.”
Secret just shook her head and cracked a smile at Katherine. “Clearly you should be listening to the song ‘I Need Just a Little More Jesus.’”
Katherine laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” She turned the music completely off. She looked down in Secret’s lap at the carryout bags. “Good, you brought the food out. I’m starved.” Katherine reached for one of the bags to check the content to see if it was hers.
“Oh, got your appetite back I see,” Secret said.
The sisters figured out whose entree was whose and began to dig into their meals with the plastic wear the waitress had supplied.
“Mmm, this is good,” Secret said after tasting the first bite of her delicious meal.
“Told you, girl. Chinese folks know how to cook up a cat.”
“Uhhhhh,” Secret said.
“Meow,” Katherine joked just as she was about to take her second bite of food. She suddenly stopped before the forkful of food made it to her mouth. She scrunched her face up like she’d seen two flies humping on a mound of dog poop.
Secret was laughing at Katherine’s cat imitation but it died down once she saw the serious look on Katherine’s face. This was the second time this had happened in the last half hour.
What now? Secret thought, and then she said it out loud.
“I think I’m about to lose my appetite again.” Katherine shook her head. “I can’t stand that grimy scum bag. You think Lucky is a piece of shit; his boy Major put the S and the T in shit.”
Secret turned to see a dude walking across the parking lot, looking as if he was headed for the Chinese restaurant. It was him again, her baby daddy. “You know him?” Secret asked.
“Yeah, don’t you recognize him? That’s Lucky’s best friend, Major Pain.”
“Oh, yeah, that is him isn’t it?” Secret played along as if she knew who he was. Well she did know who he was, Dina’s father, but she’d had no idea that he was Lucky’s best friend. It hit her; the only two men she had ever slept with in her life just happened to be best friends.
“Don’t he get on your fucking nerves?” Katherine rolled her eyes and then went back to eating her food.
“Well, you know, I don’t really know him like that. I think I only saw him like once. Lucky never really had me around any of his people.”
“Consider yourself lucky, no pun intended. You ain’t missing nothing and you didn’t miss nothing. They are both cut from the same cloth.” Katherine looked to the restaurant even though Major Pain was long gone inside. “Was my self-esteem really that low that I felt the best I could do, the best I could ever do, was Lucky’s sorry ass?”
Secret didn’t reply.
Katherine looked over to Secret. “Oh, sis, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting he’s your baby daddy.”
The door kept opening where Secret could tell Katherine the truth, that Lucky wasn’t really Dina’s biological father. But then she might have to tell her who was, and she didn’t really want to go there, not right now; maybe
not ever. This game of cat and mouse was just beginning and she wasn’t yet sure which direction things would go in.
Let Katherine tell it, for years Lucky had been her drug of choice and she the fiend. How did Secret know Katherine wouldn’t fall back under Lucky’s spell and get back with him, exposing any- and everything Secret shared with her? She didn’t know. So for now she wouldn’t show her hand to anybody, just play the cards Detective Davis dealt her.
“So what are you going to do about Lucky?” Katherine asked. “I mean, he is your baby’s father. I know I want you to go First 48 on his ass, but that’s not who you are. You the type who practices that forgiveness shit. And I get that.” Katherine pointed a stern finger at Secret. “But don’t you go getting caught up romantically with his ass again. Coparent and leave it at that.”
“Why?” Secret was quick to ask. “You still want him or something so you don’t want me messing around with him?”
“Puhleeze with a capital P. You’ll never catch me fucking around with him again. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but after what he did to you, that was it.”
Secret nodded, but Katherine couldn’t tell whether she believed what she was saying.
Katherine closed her food container up, bagged it, and placed it in the back seat. “See-See, I know we haven’t been close in years, but you have to admit that when we were little we had a bond, yes?”
Secret nodded.
“I was so mad at my mother for so long for making it so that I couldn’t see you anymore. You were my best friend. I loved you so much. You were always so nice, sweet, and kind.” She chuckled. “Me and the twins, we used to tease you behind your back. We would say you sounded like a white girl.”
Secret let out a light laugh.
“You were so happy and carefree. I didn’t just want to be with you; I wanted to be you. You turned out good, sis. Graduated high school. Hell, I didn’t get past tenth grade.”
“Really?” Secret was surprised to hear this. She had no idea her sister hadn’t graduated high school; then again, how would she have known?
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