by Pace, Pepper
Jalissa placed her lips on the top of her baby’s soft downy curls. He had silky black hair more like Dante’s than like her reddish brown tresses. He looked like Dante—as if a clone machine had created a little replica of the man.
Another tear dripped from her eyes and splashed the blanket, which swaddled her newborn.
Dante hadn’t come.
She’d called him yet again, leaving the message that the baby had been born. It had been weeks since she’d talked to him. She’d left him a few messages but when it seemed that he had dismissed her she had stubbornly stopped phoning him. If he wanted to have cold feet and play games than she was going to be too far above it to let it bother her.
But deep down his lack of response had left her feeling deeply wounded. Despite her proclamations that having a boyfriend was jive, she’d connected to Dante and had opened up to him, had allowed him to fill in some missing parts that neither her mother nor Vanessa could ever reach.
She’d dared to dream that she, Dante and their baby could be a family.
She’d allowed him to have his cold feet. She knew that he was making plans, had been talking about ways to make money because he had a ‘crumb snatcher’ to take care of. Only he sounded proud and she thought she could tell that he wanted her in the equation.
How could she have been so wrong about so many things?
She kissed her sleeping son’s head again. The ache in her heart ran so deep that this day that she had looked forward to for so long was shadowed in bitter regrets. She had never felt so alone. No one was here to share this with her, not even her mother who had sent her to the hospital in a taxicab claiming that she’d be up there once she got some things together.
She still hadn’t arrived.
Jalissa had called the gang and while each was excited none had made any indication that they intended to come to the hospital to share this moment with her.
Jalissa squeezed her eyes closed. Vanessa was supposed to be here with her exclaiming about how beautiful the baby was. She was supposed to be making plans about how they would make sure her son didn’t turn out to be like so many other kids that raised themselves because their parents were disinterested or too busy making ends meet. On some level she even thought that she’d probably co-parent with Vanessa in the event that Dante bailed on her (the way he evidently had).
She recalled the way Vanessa had stormed into the apartment. Her posture, her expression was like some foreign entity—almost like that movie The Exorcist where the devil had taken over the body of a little girl. Only Jalissa knew that it wasn’t something bad that guided Vanessa.
It was the truth.
Jalissa could barely consider Vanessa’s accusations—accusations that had to be true. No, Jalissa had never doubted them. She had always known that her mother was capable of the worse treachery.
But what was she supposed to do?! She had gotten pregnant at the age of sixteen, knew nothing about raising a baby, had dropped out of school because she couldn’t get to classes on days when she was too sleepy, too sick or too swollen.
Was she supposed to cast her lot with Vanessa and then walk out the door and move in with the two of them? She was stuck with her mother because the girl knew nothing else. For all her tough talk she relied on her mother to take care of her.
There it was.
Jalissa had tried to steer clear of her mother’s wrath even at times that her own rage and disappointment had caused her to lash out and show her contempt. But in the end her mother was all she had—and that was never made more clear than when Vanessa’s grandmother had taken her away.
Jalissa lowered her eyes. But no, she had not spoken up for Vanessa, had not protected her from her mother’s jealousies. Her mother had barely concealed her dislike for Vanessa—had at least pretended to love Aunt Leelah. Jalissa had begun to think that her mother was incapable of experiencing any type of love that wasn’t half filled with dislike. And perhaps the reason she hadn’t stood up for her cousin is because in some ways Jalissa had felt vindicated that not everything came easier to her pretty cousin. But it was unconscious. Jalissa’s love for Vanessa was rock solid—even if it was tinged with some dislike.
She was learning a lesson at a very young age that some never learned. That love was sometimes shadowed by hate.
It took Vanessa to hang up the phone in her ear to cause the young mother to realize that fact.
Jalissa wiped her eyes free of tears. She vowed that she wouldn’t be like her mother. She had surely headed down a path that would have lead her in that direction. But it was Vanessa’s influence that had taught her to want for more. She had made mistakes in the past but she was trying to want more for herself and for her son.
Chapter Three
“We have to think of some way to make ends meet,” Vanessa said worriedly.
She had her legs crossed and was jiggling her foot anxiously. Scotty looked up from his seat on the couch where he was studying his ledger. The ledger contained all of his transactions from the drugs that their crew sold, the money that came in, the division of profits and how Miss Gloria used the funds that he deposited into her account.
There wasn’t a penny that Scotty didn’t know about. When it came to finances he was probably obsessive compulsive. And it wasn’t that he was cheap or stingy but he needed to have a breakdown to the penny of every cent he managed.
Vanessa was now in that breakdown, but she was as frugal as he was. And that made Scotty very happy.
Vanessa was sitting at the dinette watching him as he sat on the couch working on his finances.
“We are making ends meet. We’re nowhere near the poor house, babe.” He replied.
“Money is going out but it’s not coming in.” Vanessa said.
Scotty drew in a long breath. “True, and we can’t stay this way forever. But there is no rush. You need to trust me on this. There is money.”
“I’m going to get a job. It’s about time that I did.”
He put down his pencil. “What kind of job?”
“Singing. Performing.”
He smiled. “That sounds good. I’d like to see you perform. I wish I had caught one of your shows. I bet you were amazing.”
She smiled and some of the tension that had been on her face for the last few days seemed to fade a bit. “I did pretty good. But since I knew that I didn’t want to go on to college I turned down a lot of offers to attend schools for performing arts.” She shrugged. “I don’t care about that. I wanted to dive in and work and I need to get off my butt and do it.”
She eyed him carefully before continuing. “And plus, I don’t want you going back to selling.”
He shook his head and opened his ledger again. “I told you that was over.” He looked at her. “That sixty thousand was never a factor for me. We can make this work, Vanessa and we don’t need anything from your grandmother to do that.”
Vanessa was silent for a while. “She was never going to give me that money, was she?”
He didn’t want to answer but she waited for so long that he finally did. “Probably not, at least not all of it. If I was your grandmother I wouldn’t have given it all to you either,” he said.
She rocked her head to the side in shock. “Why, because you think I’m too young and dumb?” She bit out.
“No. Because you are too giving and loving.”
She mulled that over. “I might help people but not to the point that I would blow all my money.”
He turned his attention back to his ledger and tapped his lip with the pencil eraser. “When you have more than someone else people begin to think you owe them. You don’t owe anybody shit.”
Vanessa chuckled. “Well I suppose that’s right Scotty. But you help people not because you have to, but because you care.”
He looked at her again. “Well one thing is for sure, I would have never promised you something only to snatch it from you when it was time to collect.”
Vanessa twirled her engagement ring as
she thought about how Scotty had told grandma that he was her fiancée. Grandma would surely realize that at least some of the time that she had spent away from home had been spent in the company of Scotty. There was no doubt that her grandmother felt that this was just another example of her ‘irresponsibility’.
Vanessa hadn’t talked to Jalissa or her grandmother since the confrontation, which had been three days ago. Since then Vanessa had time to think about how she had handled it all and if there was anything she wanted to do differently.
There wasn’t.
“Look, I have some ideas on how we can keep our finances manageable. I’ll be starting the fall semester at UC. Beady is already living on campus with a full ride.”
“Right.” Vanessa stated.
“Well … we can give up the apartment and move in with Miss Gloria. We can take the third floor. There are two rooms and a full bath up there.”
“What about EJ?” She asked. She didn’t imagine that he’d be happy about giving up the larger upstairs to relocate to just a mere bedroom. He was soon to be fifteen and him and his friends were always up there listening to loud music and smoking cigarettes. Scotty would threaten to brain him if he was discovered smoking anything harder than cigarettes.
Vanessa hadn’t seen much of EJ over the years. He was white and life had probably not been easy for him in the projects either. But unlike Scotty, EJ seemed perpetually angry. His face always settled into a scowl even when he wasn’t annoyed.
Scotty shrugged. “He’ll deal with it. Besides, it wouldn’t be forever.”
She thought about living under another woman’s roof before and after marriage with Scotty. It wasn’t anything that she looked forward to, but whatever needed to be done in order to take financial stress off Scotty was well worth it.
She nodded her agreement and then rose from her seat at the dinette. She settled on the couch next to Scotty who smiled and clasped her hands in his.
“How will we,” her face warmed, “you know… with all those people in the house?”
“You,” he placed a kiss on her nose, “will have to learn to be quieter.”
“Me?!” Vanessa exclaimed in disbelief. “You breathe so hard, Scotty, you sound like an old man walking up five flights of stairs!”
He threw his head back and laughed. “We’ll turn on the radio or television set when we make love, okay?”
She nodded and then he kissed her again.
Scotty spotted his brother sitting at one of the tables already eating the Kentucky Fried Chicken that he’d asked his brother to meet him at. Scotty didn’t bother to go up to the counter to order anything and just met Phonso who gave him a wide grin and then licked chicken grease from his fingers.
“Yo, bro. What’s up?”
They slapped hands and Scotty took a seat across from Phonso.
“We haven’t talked in a while.” For them ‘a while’ was nearly two weeks. The brothers were used to communicating a few times a day back when they both worked in the drug trade. There was no need for that now that Scotty had left being a drug dealer to the past.
At eighteen the younger Tremont was handsome. His biracial background had given him a milk chocolate complexion and dark hair that curled naturally the way some guys spent mass money to achieve with Jheri curls. His dark brown eyes were nowhere near the same color of Scotty’s cornflower blue but the similarity in brow, eye shape and facial structure left no mistake that the two were definitely brothers.
Phonso’s expression grew serious. “Have you talked to G lately?”
Scotty shook his head. “I don’t think I’m his favorite person right now. Why?”
“He’s been using that new shit; the crack. And man, he’s using it like a fiend. In New York they call people like him crackheads.”
Scotty’s brow furrowed and he leaned forward. “G can’t be a junky that quick …”
Phonso slid a French fry through a glob of ketchup that puddled one corner of the paper tray containing his meal and then he plopped it into his mouth and chewed absently.
“I know what a dope fiend looks like. Scotty, G’s losing it. No, he’s lost it.”
Scotty didn’t speak for a long time. Garry James was Scotty’s best friend. The two had been like brothers since elementary school. There were times when Scotty had to get away from his older brother’s abuse and it was G’s home that he escaped to. G’s mother used to refer to him as her white son.
“Shit,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to him but you know as well as I do …” he trailed off. Once a dope fiend, always a dope fiend. At best you could hope to never touch the stuff but a recovering addict was just one joint away from falling right back down the rabbit hole.
Phonso leaned back in his chair, his meal forgotten for the moment. “He’s fucking up the business, too. Dawson’s co-signed us-”
Scotty blew out a deep breath. Now they would be in the drug supplier’s pocket. Scotty made a fist and lightly pounded the tabletop.
“Shit. Is he keeping up on his payments?”
Phonso lit a cigarette. “I’ve been making sure we are. Look this crack cocaine has regular users but people aren’t buying massive quantities of it the way they do with weed. I mean we’re talking about your single user purchasing a rock just for their personal use. Crack cocaine isn’t a high that you share with your buddies.”
Phonso was speaking quietly now, careful of the ears that might be listening. “In other words, we ain’t getting rich off the shit. But G is buying up so much crack that he’s using for himself and not supplying the weed that is our true customer base. Dude, our customers are starting to buy from Bam and his boys downtown.”
Scotty rubbed his hand through his hair.
“Scotty, I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’m worried about G but the way he’s fucking up, I’m also worried about myself.”
“What do you mean?” Scotty asked quickly.
“Well he’s let some boys in from Downtown to try to get more crack customers. He said that since he’s the only one in town moving it, then it’s not like crossing out of our territory.”
“Oh? That’s exactly what he’s doing. Did he ask Bam and his boys if it was okay?”
“Apparently Bam don’t care because it’s just a small number of buyers. But if this crack shit grows, then before too long he’s going to want to sell it—and then he’s going to have to get rid of us.”
Scotty watched his brother, feeling torn. Phonso was much too old for him to demand that he leave the drug dealing behind. Besides, who was he to tell his brother what to do in light of the fact that they’d been selling drugs together for years? And now that he’d gotten out of the life didn’t mean that he could walk around dictating what others should do.
Yet this was something different. Things had gotten out of hand in just a few short weeks and since he could no longer trust G’s judgment Scotty wanted his brother as far away from the possible fallout.
Phonso leaned forward. “Come to the party tonight. G thinks we can get more customers if we let people have a taste of crack—I don’t think he’s wrong about that. I know you’re not in the dope game anymore. But come and see with your own eyes.”
“Where?” Scotty asked.
“The spot in Findlater Gardens.” Phonso replied. Findlater Gardens was just another area of the projects of Winton Terrace. A smart drug dealer never let their customers know where they lived or cooked their dope. And Findlater Gardens is where people came to find the dope when it didn’t find them first.
Scotty was watching Phonso closely. He knew his brother well enough that if he lied about the following question, Scotty would know it.
“Have you tried smoking crack?”
Phonso chortled mirthlessly. “No, bro … I’m afraid of it. It’s like that movie where all humanity is turned into aliens because of one little spore that spread and infected the human race. That’s what I think is going to happen to us all because crack cocaine is that spore.”
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br /> “I’m going too.”
Scotty scowled at Vanessa. “I don’t know why you’d want to do that. I told you this is just business.”
Scotty had just gotten out of the shower and the argument was still continuing as if it hadn’t stopped.
His mistake was in using the word ‘party’. It made Vanessa think that he was going there for that purpose.
He’d come home after his meeting with Phonso and had announced that he would need to stop by the party.
Vanessa had been busy boxing their things up. They wanted to be moved in to Miss Gloria’s house by the weekend and while there wasn’t all that much to pack, it still had to be done.
She had her hair up in a high ponytail and she was wearing shorts and a flowing peasant blouse. She had a smudge on her nose and dust bunnies clung to her in spots. She gave him a stern look at his announcement.
“Scotty, tell me the truth. Are you going back into that life?” She brushed back a strand of sweaty hair that had fallen into her eyes. She was hot, annoyed that she was going to have to put her dreams of starting out in their own home on hold. But more importantly she was afraid that Scotty was going to be tempted by the easy money.
He shook his head and walked into the kitchen. The response was not only a denial but also frustration at her lack of trust. Every time she asked the question she showed that she didn’t have faith in his abilities to take care of her—of them all.
“Vanessa, I don’t intend to lie to you about anything. I’m going to that party because Phonso told me some disturbing things and I’m only going for that purpose.
Vanessa got up and followed him into the kitchen where he went for a glass of ice water.
“I’ll go with you. What time-“
“No.”
Vanessa wasn’t sure if she heard him right. Did he actually just tell her no as if she was a five year old asking for a cookie before dinner? She watched him as he silently gulped down his water and set the glass on the counter before he continued.
