by Shana Burton
“Yes, so you understand why I’m not up for company today. I already have some.”
Kina was intrigued. “Well, who is he? Where did you meet him?”
Desdemona started physically shuffling Kina toward the door. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Hey, D. Where did you put my razor? I don’t see it where I left it,” called a male voice from another room.
Kina stood in place, listening. The voice sounded familiar.
Elvin emerged, clad only in a towel. “Why do you keep moving my stuff? I put it one place and find it in another.” He froze when he looked up and saw Kina.
Kina’s blood ran cold. “Elvin, what are you doing here? Des, what the heck is going on?”
Elvin reached his hand out. “Kina, I can explain.”
Kina moved toward him, still in shock. “So the two of you are sleeping together?”
Desdemona appeared unfazed. “This is why you should’ve called before dropping by.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand any of this,” stammered Kina, unable to process what she was seeing with her own eyes. “How did this happen? You asked me to let you move in, and I find out that you’re sleeping with my ghostwriter. What is this?”
“Relax,” said Desdemona. “Elvin isn’t sleeping with me. He works for me.”
The revelation did nothing to ease Kina’s confusion and anger. “Works for you how? As a male prostitute?”
“No, he’s more of an informant. Isn’t that right, Elvin?”
Elvin stood cemented in place, exposed both literally and figuratively. “Kina, it’s a long story.”
Kina took a defiant stance. “Oh, I have time. I want to hear this.”
Elvin tightened the towel around his waist. “Can I run and put some clothes on first?”
“No!” retorted Kina. “I wanna know what’s going on, and I want to know now!”
Desdemona sighed. “Elvin here is what many people would call an opportunist, but he’s not a very good one.”
Kina shook her head. “I don’t understand . . .”
“Well, Kina, I had to spice up your story, and your dull church life wasn’t giving me what I needed. When you dropped the little nugget about your in-laws hating your guts, I figured it would make for an interesting story line for you.”
“What?” asked Kina, astounded. “So you went and dug up this joker to give me a love interest?”
“Not entirely,” replied Desdemona. “I wanted to test those Christian values that you like to tout so much and see if you’d give them up for the right man. The fact that the man happened to be your late husband’s father was gravy.”
Kina glared at Desdemona. “How could you toy with my emotions like that? I thought we were friends!”
“Kina, I’m not one of your messy little girlfriends. This is a business for me. Writing is how I earn a living. Terrilyn wanted me to find your story, and I did. You should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?” repeated Kina with disdain. “It’s all I can do not to kill you!”
“Murder, Kina?” Desdemona shook her head, mocking Kina. “I swear, you Christians are about the most hypocritical people I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Kina focused her attention back on Elvin. “It’s clear Desdemona has no scruples and will do anything for money, but why did you do it, Elvin? What was in it for you? Are you that greedy that you’d use the memory of your son and your own grandson for a few measly bucks?”
“It didn’t do it just for the money,” Elvin tried to explain.
“I told you he is a very bad opportunist,” remarked Desdemona. “When I tracked him down, he was living in a homeless shelter after squandering his dead wife’s insurance money and losing his house. He needed somewhere to stay, so I offered him a roof in exchange for his services.”
Kina was heartbroken. “Is it true? Did you cut a deal with this woman?”
Elvin adjusted his towel again. “Kina, if you let me explain. . .”
“It’s a yes or no question, Elvin. Did she send you to me? Were you working on her behalf to destroy me?”
“It wasn’t like that. She said—”
Kina interrupted him. “I really don’t care what she said or what she promised you. I want to hear out of your own mouth whether or not you were a part of some scheme of hers.”
“Kina, you gotta understand. When she came to me, I ain’t have nothing! When you ain’t got nothing, there’s nothing you won’t do, because you don’t have nothing to lose. She said all I had to do was get close to you for a few weeks and that you’d be coming into a lot of money soon. She said I’d be set for life if I played my cards right.”
“And how much did it cost to play with my heart, huh? How much did you charge to get closer to your grandson?”
“If it makes you feel better, he didn’t come cheap,” Desdemona said, chiming in. “I had to clean him up, buy him new clothes, provide date money, and let him sleep on my sofa. Plus, I gave a thousand dollars seed money.”
Kina squinted her eyes in disbelief. “You sold your family out for a grand and a few suits?”
“I was desperate, Kina.”
“He still is. He knows it’s back to the homeless shelter once I return to Atlanta,” said Desdemona.
Kina’s eyes started to burn with tears. “It’s all making sense now. I see why you were so adamant about us moving in together. You didn’t want to build a life with me. You just needed someone else to mooch off of.”
“Kina, it may have started out that way, but the love I have for you and Kenny, that’s real,” professed Elvin. “You’ve got to believe me.”
Kina shook her head. “I will never make the mistake of believing anything you have to say ever again!”
“You know what we mean to each other,” said Elvin.
Kina looked at him with disdain. “You mean nothing to me.”
“As much as I’d love to see this soap opera play out, I have work to do,” interjected Desdemona. “Kina, I’m sure you can find your way home. Elvin, now that you’ve gotten caught with your pants down, metaphorically speaking, I have no further use for you. You’re dismissed as well.”
Elvin’s mouth gaped open. “I don’t have nowhere else to go.”
Desdemona scooped up his shoes and handed them to him. “You know what they say. You don’t have to go home, but you’ve got to get outta here!”
Elvin had no choice but to accept his fate. He took the shoes and disappeared into the bedroom to get dressed.
“I’m not going anywhere, not yet,” insisted Kina. “I want my friends to know what you did.”
Desdemona shrugged. “Then tell them.”
“Lawson said she had her suspicions about you. I see she was right.”
“There’s no crime in being very good at my job, Kina. This wouldn’t have even been necessary if you were good at yours.”
“What job is that, Des? As a master manipulator?”
“As a person who knows how to get a story and make things happen.” Desdemona thought it over. “Matter of fact, call your friends. Tell them to meet at your place tomorrow. This should be interesting and definitely something worth writing about!”
Chapter 40
“Despite my best efforts, how did I manage to become
just as screwed up as you?”
–Sullivan Webb
Later that night, Sullivan found herself at a seedy bar downtown with an even seedier companion.
“Can you believe I’m sitting here having a drink with you? Now I know I’ve hit rock bottom!” Sullivan looked down into her empty wineglass and signaled the bartender for a refill.
Her mother concurred. “That makes two of us. Another blackberry margarita for me too.”
“You’ve sat across from worse than me, Vera.”
“As have you,” noted Vera, running her finger across the salt-rimmed glass.
Sullivan raised her glass. “Touché. Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to know wh
at it means.”
“Sullivan, you know we can sit here and exchange insults all night, but I’m sure that’s not why you wanted me to meet you here, so what gives? And make it quick, because I have things to do.”
Sullivan watched as the bartender refilled her glass. “Despite my best efforts, how did I manage to become just as screwed up as you?”
Vera rolled her eyes. “Maybe we need to stick to exchanging insults.”
“I’m serious.”
“Sullivan, I didn’t screw you up. Even if I did when you were younger, you’re a grown woman now. Any screwing up you did after you left my house is all on you.”
“Why don’t you understand that I’m screwed up as a grown woman because of what you did when I was younger?” Sullivan looked up at her mother and asked the one question that had weighed on her practically her whole life. “How could you let those men do that to me?”
Vera sucked her teeth. “Do what to you, Sullivan? Give you money? Buy you designer clothes and expensive gifts?”
“Don’t sit there acting like they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts!” raged Sullivan. “It’s insulting! Those were guilt gifts for me and ‘Hush your mouth and pretend you didn’t see nothing’ tokens for you.”
“Nobody did anything to you that you weren’t asking for,” ranted Vera. “I’m not to blame for you being hot in the pants!”
“What?” Sullivan asked incredulously. “I was a child, and you allowed grown men to take advantage of me and didn’t lift a manicured finger to help! You didn’t protect me. You let pedophiles disguised as boyfriends do all kinds of horrible, vile things to me! I was your child, Vera. Why didn’t you protect me?”
“Sullivan, with so many of those nasty li’l boys in the neighborhood you used to run around playing doctor with, how was I supposed to know you didn’t like it or that you didn’t encourage it?”
It took every ounce of her strength for Sullivan not to toss her drink in Vera’s face. “Don’t shovel that BS excuse at me. You knew better, and don’t you dare try to deny it!”
Vera wanted to say something crushing to Sullivan, as that was her usual defense mechanism. Instead, she yielded to honesty. Vera’s eyes veered over to Sullivan. She gulped down her margarita, needing whatever liquid courage it would provide. “I thought it was normal,” stated Vera.
Sullivan released a low scream. “On what planet is a grown man being with a naive young girl normal?”
“My mama always had men in the house, and they did the same thing to me. When I went to her, crying about it, she told me there was nothing wrong with it and that her uncles and cousins had done the same thing to her. She said she liked it because afterward they always gave her money and presents. She said that sex and money is what being a woman was all about and that if I acted right and kept my mouth shut, I could get money and pretty new things too. She made it seem okay, like it wasn’t that bad, since they weren’t beating me or trying to hurt me. My grandma’s husband beat my grandma to death when my mama was thirteen. To her way of thinking, if a man wasn’t trying to kill you, he wasn’t all that bad.”
“So you went along with it,” stated Sullivan. “You shut your mouth and did what you were told, just like I did.”
Vera nodded. “I did. That’s what I thought you were supposed to do, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry about it,” she said, recalling the past. “I hated it. When I saw it happening to you, I don’t know. I just . . . I guess a part of me wanted you to suffer the way I did. I wanted everybody to suffer, especially after your sister died and your daddy treated me so badly. Something burned out and died inside of me. I didn’t care about nothing or nobody, including myself.”
“But I was your daughter, your own flesh and blood. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”
Vera shook her head. “Not when you’re in the kind of pain I was in.”
Sullivan wasn’t moved. “I don’t care how much pain I’m in. I could never do anything that heinous to Charity.”
“I didn’t know better then, but I do better now. Sullivan, I . . . I was wrong. You’re right. I didn’t look after you like I should have.” Vera avoided eye contact with Sullivan. “I wasn’t a good mother to you.”
Sullivan folded her arms across her chest. “I hope you’re not waiting for me to disagree.”
“I’m not. A good mother wouldn’t have allowed you to go through that.” Vera waited before going on. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help you, because I was so messed up myself. I guess in a way I even tried to break you because you had something, a light and a fearless spirit, that I never had. A part of me was jealous of that.”
“Jealous?” Sullivan’s eyes widened. “Vera, all I ever wanted was for you to love me, for you to be proud of me.”
“Sullivan, you didn’t need nobody like me to be proud of you. I was a mess!”
“But you were my mother. What child doesn’t want approval from her mom?”
Vera’s eyes welled with emotion for her daughter. She affectionately reached out for Sullivan’s hand. “Of course, I’m proud of you. You’re a good woman . . . most of the time. You have a big heart, and you’re good to your friends. You love your husband, and you’re one hundred times the mother to sweet Charity that I ever was to you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was a bad mama to you. You deserved better. I hope you can forgive me.”
Sullivan broke into a half smile. “Why did it take you thirty-four years to tell me that?”
“I’ve been busy. Better late than never, right?” Vera grinned.
“That’s what they say.” Sullivan thought about Charles. “But that’s not always true.”
“Depends on what you’re talking about.”
“My marriage. It may already be too late to salvage it.”
“Sullivan, I was dead wrong for letting those men hurt you, but I have a second chance to get it right with Charity. I’d never let anybody hurt her, not even you, by being fool enough to leave her daddy. I grew up without a daddy, and so did my mama and her mama and so did you. It doesn’t have to be like that for this child. She can grow up knowing what it’s like to have a man’s protection. She can know what it’s like for a man to touch her with love, not with lust. She can know what it’s like to be a daddy’s little girl, instead of some grown man’s woman. Don’t take that away from her. Go to your husband, Sullivan, before it’s too late. That man loves you! He may be tired of you and your shenanigans, but he loves you. The fact that he didn’t leave you years ago—shoot, the fact that he even married you—proves that he loves you.”
“What if I can’t make him happy?” Sullivan asked in a small voice. “What if I’m not enough? Maybe losing Charles is my ultimate punishment.”
“Punishment for what? Being an idiot?”
“For all the people I’ve hurt in the past.”
Vera rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how this God of yours works, but I don’t think He’s sitting up in heaven, worrying about what you did and people you hurt years ago. He’s more concerned about what you’re doing now. That’s what matters, ain’t it?”
Sullivan nodded and laughed to herself. Who would’ve thought someone as worldly as Vera could sum up the grace of God in such a succinct way while sitting in the middle of a dusty bar?
“I must say,” mused Sullivan, “this might be the most meaningful conversation we’ve ever had.”
“And now it’s coming to a close,” said Vera, hopping down off the bar stool. “Cliff is coming home tonight, and I want to be there when he gets there.”
“Cliff is coming home? Go quick, fast, and in a hurry!” directed Sullivan. “Who knows when that might happen again?”
Vera stared at Sullivan for a moment.
Sullivan frowned. “What?”
Vera didn’t say anything. She simply kissed her daughter on the cheek and hurried out.
Sullivan was stunned. Any sign of affection from Vera was almost as unsettling as her making sense while waxing on about
the grace of God.
Sullivan figured that if by some miracle, she could make her relationship with Vera work, there was hope for everything else in her life, including her marriage to Charles, assuming he’d still have her.
Chapter 41
“I don’t know if I’m ready . . . if I can be a good mother.”
–Reginell Vinson
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Reginell asked Mark as she dusted off the coffee table.
“No, all Namon said is that he and Shari were coming by to see us.”
Reginell panicked. “You don’t think there’s something wrong with the baby, do you? It’s not like Namon to come home in the middle of the week.”
“Namon said her last doctor’s visit went fine.”
Reginell gasped. “They probably found out the sex of the baby and want to tell us in person! This is so exciting!”
Mark smiled. “I appreciate that.”
“Appreciate what?”
“You being excited about this baby coming. Everyone else sees him or her as a burden. You’re the only one who has seen this baby as a blessing right from the start.”
“I can’t help it. I love kids. Not being able to have one of my own makes this one that much more precious to me.”
There was a knock at the front door.
“Don’t tell me that boy has lost his key again,” groaned Mark. “If he can’t keep up with his keys, how’s he supposed to take care of a child?”
Reginell laughed. “You stay here. I’ll let him in.”
Mark greeted Namon with a hug. “Glad you made it down safely.”
“Thank you,” said Shari.
“What are you? Five months along now?” Reginell ogled her blossoming belly. “You’re getting so big, no thanks to the baby’s grandmother.”
“Reggie, don’t go there.” Mark offered them a seat. “So what’s this all about, Nay? What’s going on?”
Namon rubbed his hands together nervously. “Shari and I have an announcement.”
Mark closed his eyes. “You ran off and got married, didn’t you?”
