“Oh, so you’re looking at a pay day. You don’t actually love the man.”
“I do love him, and the fact that he’s a doctor is a nice bonus.” She laughed.
It took everything in me to keep from slapping Bree’s gold-digging ass into next Tuesday. It’s hard enough as it is to get a black man with all of these white bitches snatching them up like they were candy from a piñata. Bree gets a good man and all she can see are dollar signs. Hood bitches like her give real sisters like me a bad name.
Kashawn was always at the apartment fixing stuff, cooking, cleaning, and deep-dicking Bree between it all. Her bedroom light stayed off and I was privy to her moaning and groaning like a porn star. I was officially through when she broke the news of their engagement.
Bree came to breakfast that day, giddy as a schoolgirl. I didn’t think anything of it. She always acted that way after the pipe Kashawn was laying down between her legs.
“Notice anything different about me this morning?”
“You got your teeth whitened?”
Bree shrugged. “No, girl, guess.” She rested her hand on her face to get me to notice the bling that was on her finger.
I put on one of my Emmy Award-winning performances and played it off like I was happy for her. “Oh, my God, girl, did he propose last night?”
“On bended knee and everything.”
“Congratulations, Bree. Oh, my God.”
“Thanks, girl. It looks like we have a wedding to plan, maid-of-honor.”
“For real, you serious?”
“I can’t think of anyone else but my bestie to stand by my side at my wedding.”
The thought of Bree walking down the aisle in some virgin-white wedding dress tickled the hell out of me and she was dead set on wearing just that like she was the poster girl for virtue. The only thing funnier would have been her wobbling down the aisle several months knocked up.
“We haven’t set a date yet, but you know I’ve always wanted a spring wedding.”
“So I guess this means you will be moving out.”
“Yeah. Kashawn and I are going to go look for a bigger place on Saturday.”
“So are you going to quit dancing at Risqué?”
“Yeah. Blue-Black won’t like it, but I don’t give a fuck.”
“He’s going to hate losing his cash cow,” I said, throwing in a dig.
“He’s got plenty of girls to take my place. He won’t miss me. He’s always telling me that I’m a pain in his dick anyway, so…”
“Damn, B, it’s going to feel funny not having you around. I’m going to miss our late-night talks.”
“Well, I’m not gone yet, and our late-night talks aren’t going to stop just because we don’t stay together anymore.”
“I guess,” I said.
I was laying the shit on thick. The truth was, I was happy to see them go. The walls were paper thin and I liked not having to listen to Bree and Kashawn moaning and groaning like they were auditioning to be in some porn film.
The wedding was held at their house, this huge mansion in Killearn Estates, a well-to-do side of town. The backyard was the size of a golf course. Some of the girls from Risqué were bridesmaids. Classless cunts in expensive dresses. White and lavender were everywhere. Not the colors I would have chosen, but the look was cute. Kashawn spared no expense for Bree. Mama Liz didn’t like her at first, being that she was a dancer, and hasn’t gotten over it, I don’t think. Yvonne wouldn’t let up, either, mean-mugging Bree at every turn. Real or not, I teared up when they exchanged their vows. I stood staring at how handsome Kashawn was, thinking that it should have been me standing where Bree was, in a Vera Wang gown in front of 300 guests.
All this because she shook her titties in his face, I thought.
That wedded bliss shit lasted all of three months before Bree tired of playing housewife and started club-hopping with me. It wasn’t long before she started wagging her ass to every dick that swung across her face.
It kills me what she’s doing to Kashawn. She didn’t deserve him that night at the club, and she damn sure doesn’t deserve to have the man’s hand in marriage. It was time Kashawn knew it.
6
KASHAWN
The party was winding down into the evening. People were starting to clear out, thanking Ma and Uncle Ray-Ray for all the good food. Deanthony and I were sitting at one of the patio tables cluttered with red Dixie cups and paper plates with fish bones and soiled, crumpled-up napkins. I was picking food out of my teeth with my index finger when Tyrique came up behind me and slapped me hard on the shoulder.
“We still going fishing on Saturday, right?”
“After all the fish, oysters and hushpuppies you consumed, you still want to go fishing?” I asked.
“Yeah. Ray-Ray says they’re really biting this year. I want to go out and catch me a bucket of bream. Your uncle said he would clean ’em and fry ’em up for me.”
“Okay, come by the house around six a.m. I got this new bait I want to try anyway.”
“Don’t flake out now like you always do,” Tyrique warned.
“D, you want to come with us?” I grinned.
“Naw, fishing ain’t never been my thing.”
“Right, not since you fell over in Lost Lake that time and almost drowned,” I said.
Tyrique and I bust out laughing.
“Now he won’t go near water,” I said.
“You know I would rather eat the fish,” Deanthony said. “I don’t have time to be sitting in a boat trying to catch them.”
“I feel you on that, bro,” Tyrique said, he and Deanthony coming together in a knuckle bump.
“I’ll leave all that up to y’all, the pros.”
“Listen, y’all, I gotta get outta here,” Tyrique said. “Ebonya will have my ass if I don’t get home.”
“How are she and the baby doing?” I asked.
“She’s due next month, so she’s feeling anxious.”
“That’s cool, T. Congrats, man,” Deanthony said.
“ ’Shawn, don’t play now. Don’t forget, man. Saturday morning, six o’clock. Don’t let me have to wake your ass up.”
“Man, just come on by. I gotcha.”
I fished another Corona out of the wash basin of ice and screwed off the top.
“Please tell me that you have not ended up like that pussy-whipped brother,” Deanthony said.
“Who? Tyrique? Why does he have to be pussy-whipped?”
“ ‘I gotta get home to my wife or she’ll have my ass.’ Trust. Tyrique is pussy-whipped.”
“Why you don’t have nobody? You need to slow your own roll. You aren’t eighteen anymore. Go make an honest woman out of somebody, have a few kids.”
“The last thing I want is some shorty and some crumb snatcher spending all my money. Nothing against what you and Bree got.”
“We’re going to try and have a kid next year.”
“You would make a great daddy,” Deanthony said. “Unlike me, you have the patience for fatherhood.”
“So how is Hollywood treating you? How’s the acting going?”
“Slowly but surely. I’ve been an extra in a few action films and I’m shopping this script I just finished around to a few producers, so I have some stuff in the works.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you’re doing well for yourself out there.”
“Yeah, my agent is trying to get me this gig on Banshee, this hot new show on Cinemax.”
I didn’t believe one word that was coming out of Deanthony’s mouth. He was just posing as usual, trying to make himself sound like he was somebody important. I indulged my baby brother anyway.
“I’m glad that things are going well for you.”
“I’m happy, ‘Shawn. Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”
“Well, me, Ma, and Unc was anything but happy when you packed up and left without saying so much as boo.”
“Kashawn, come on, man. Don’t start. I explained why I had to l
eave, that I needed to find my own way.”
“For months we didn’t know if you were dead or alive,” I said. “I was the only one here who could settle Ma down. I had to clean up your mess as usual. She was worried sick, all of us were, and you couldn’t so much as pick up the damn phone to let us know that you were all right.”
“Don’t start that mess,” Ma said, clearing cups and paper plates from the patio table. “He’s home now and that is all that matters.”
“No, it’s cool, Ma. D was just telling me how good he was doing in Hollywood. He’s going to be on this new TV show.”
“Congratulations, baby,” Ma said, snaking her arm around Deanthony’s shoulders. “Is it Tyler Perry’s House of Payne? I love that Mr. Brown. He is too crazy.” Ma grinned. Ma was the kind who was quick to forgive. It was too bad I didn’t inherit that same trait.
“No, Ma, it’s a new show on Cinemax called Banshee.”
“Oh, don’t think I’ve ever heard of that one, baby.” Ma turned to Uncle Ray-Ray and asked, “Do we have Cinemax, Ray?”
“Yes, but you don’t ever watch nothing on that channel. After Wheel of Fortune, she’s dead to the world.”
“Oh hush up. Deanthony, baby, you let me know when it’s on, and I’ll watch you in it. I’m so proud of my boys, I don’t know what to do.”
“Why don’t you explain why you abandoned your family and never looked back? What gives, little brother?”
“I told you, man,” Deanthony said.
“I told you, boy, not to start that mess in my house. Deanthony doesn’t owe you, me, none of us an explanation. He is his own man,” Ma said.
“No, Ma. He owes everyone at this table an explanation for why he was gone for so long, why he took off without so much as a postcard for three years.”
“You need to drop it,” Deanthony warned.
“Only Deanthony can be gone this long, then blow back into town and everyone can conveniently act like nothing happened, but I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.”
Uncle Ray-Ray came over to join us at the table from cleaning the grill. Deanthony’s voice went up a few octaves, sounding like he was about to do something.
“You want to know why I fucking left.”
“Watch your language in my house, boy,” Ma scolded.
“Maybe I got tired of living in your shadow, of being the black sheep.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Daddy had to be in control of the purse strings. Instead of letting us decide what we wanted to do with all that money. I figured you would follow in his footsteps, ’Shawn. After all, you’re just like him. Mr. Could-Do-No-Wrong, Mr. Tallahassee All-American.”
“You know that ain’t true,” Ma said.
“You’ve always played favorites,” Deanthony said.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you just come and talk to me instead of running off?” I asked. “And I don’t care what Daddy put in the will. You’re my brother. I wanted you to enroll in medical school with me.”
“You don’t get it, ’Shawn. I got sick of doing what you wanted, of living in your shadow. Why can’t you get that? I wanted to go in another direction for once. What was so great about him anyway? The man wasn’t even our real daddy.”
“Hush. That’s enough,” Ma said. Ma cut a look at Deanthony like the scab of her deepest, darkest secret had been picked open.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tell him, Ma,” Deanthony said. “No time like the present.”
“I said hush.”
“Mama, what is he talking about?” I asked. She looked at me with a kind of puppy-dog sympathy. “Ma, tell me. What’s going on?”
“It’s true. Edrick wasn’t your real daddy.”
“What? Ma, what is he…” I looked at Deanthony and lunged across the table at him, tackling him to the ground. “Fuck you, you’re lying.” Deanthony blocked my first punch, throwing me off of him.
“Stop it!” Ma yelled. “Y’all are brothers!” Ma ran off toward the house, sobbing.
I felt Uncle Ray-Ray tug me by my collar off of Deanthony like I was a sack of potatoes. “You two, break this shit up. What the hell is wrong with you, boy? He’s your brother and it’s your birthday.”
“No, he started it,” Deanthony said. “I’m gonna finish this shit.” Deanthony attempted to lunge at me, only to be yanked back by Uncle Ray-Ray.
“Go and see how your mama is doing, D!” Uncle Ray-Ray shouted.
Deanthony walked off. “Fuck with the bull, boy, you get the horns,” Deanthony warned.
“I said git.”
“Tell me he’s lying, Uncle. Tell me he’s full of shit.”
“Sit down, ’Shawn.”
“No, fuck that. I want to know what he meant by that.”
“It’s true. Edrick wasn’t y’all’s daddy. He adopted y’all when your real daddy made it clear he didn’t want to be a father to you boys, so my brother adopted you when you were just babies.”
Uncle Ray-Ray’s conformation was like a punch in the stomach. I paced the backyard, reeling from the news I had been given. I looked at Deanthony consoling our mother.
“So who the hell is my real father?”
“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t want to be a father to you boys.”
Anger had a firm hold on me and worthlessness was seeping in like a poison. “My whole life is a damn lie.”
“Your mama loves and cares for you and Deanthony, and, as far as I’m concerned, you’re my family, blood or not.”
I picked up one of the patio chairs and flung it into the pool. I kicked the grill over, sending hot ashes and charcoal into the water.
“Kashawn, calm your behind down,” Uncle Ray-Ray said.
Ma stood on the porch, sobbing as Deanthony watched in silence.
“Why, Ma? Why did I have to wait all of thirty fucking years to hear that I was the son of a man who didn’t want me?” I shouted. I took my anger out on an oak tree that grew in the corner of the backyard. I punched it until my knuckles bled. Ma held onto Deanthony like he was her protector from the bastard child of the family. “I gotta get out of here. I can’t be here right now.”
“Kashawn, you’ve been drinking. Let’s sit and talk about this.”
“No, fuck this. I’m done.”
“Please, baby, don’t leave,” Ma said.
“I can’t even look at you right now, Ma. You carried on a lie for this long. What else are you lying about?”
I left her standing in the middle of the backyard, crying, but no one was more hurt than me. That house of lies was the last damn place I wanted to be.
7
DEANTHONY
Ma placed the platter of half-eaten birthday cake on the kitchen counter, while Uncle Ray-Ray started washing aluminum pans and silverware. Neither one of them uttered a word.
“I’m sorry, Ma.”
She looked at me with contempt in her blood-shot, teary eyes, as if she wanted to rip my tongue out of my head. “Is that why you came back here, to stir up trouble?”
“Me? What about Kashawn? I came here to see my family. He’s the one who started in with me. I’m sorry I told him. It’s just that he’s always comin’ off like he’s holier than thou.”
“How do you know how he acts? You’ve been gone for three years.”
“Jesus, not you, too.”
“It was not your call, boy, to tell Kashawn nothin’.”
“Come on, Ma, you were never going to tell him. You should have—”
Before another word came out of my mouth, Ma slapped me across the face.
“Don’t you ever…ever tell me what I should and should not do in my own house, boy. You understand me?”
“Just like old times.”
“If that’s an apology, you can get out of my face right now.”
I looked at Uncle Ray-Ray who didn’t say a word like Ma slapping me was what I deserved. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come back here to
start anything, but you know how Kashawn is always pushing buttons. I came back here because I missed my family, like I said.”
“Well, this is one hell of a homecoming.”
There was nothing else I could say. Ma was pissed. I thought about going to Kashawn to apologize, but fuck that. I thought about it, realizing that I had nothing to feel sorry for. The truth was finally out. No matter how it came out or who told it, it was out. If it’s one thing I have learned, a lie can never last. He started that shit. I was sick of Bree playing Barbie to his phony-ass Ken. He was a bigger fool than I have always thought him to be if he thought he could please a woman like Bree. I stormed out of the door.
“Where are you going?” Ma asked.
“I need to get some air if that’s okay with you.”
8
UNCLE RAY-RAY
Kashawn and Deanthony reminded me so much of me and Edrick. We were always fighting about something. Toys, cars, girls. If it was there to fight over, we fought over it. I couldn’t help but look at them and think of my daughter, Joelle. She would be a few years younger than them if she had lived. Twenty-six years old to be exact. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t think about her and Danita. I can only hope they’re looking down from heaven, proud of the man their daddy and husband has become.
“Get some help, Ray, or I’m taking Joelle and going back to Atlanta,” was the last thing Danita had said to me a week before I lost her and my baby.
I had spoken to her the night of the accident, telling her that I had decided to seek help for my drinking. I’d told her, “I don’t want to lose you and Joelle. You two are my whole world and I’m willing to do anything within my power to get clean, and be the man, the husband and the father to our baby, that you want me to be.”
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