“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, knowing full well now what Tyler meant.
He laughed, still knowing me better than I’d like him to. “Play with me if you want,” he said. “But once you get married, you’ll see what I mean. More professional opportunities will start to present themselves, friendships, more powerful alliances will be made, all because of that woman.” Tyler moved closer to me, looked directly into my eyes. “And maybe some old relationships can be rekindled.”
81
The next day, Eric sat in the passenger seat of Cobi’s Mercedes.
He was dressed in a dark jacket, tie, and white shirt. He rode beside Cobi quietly as his brother drove him to the family law court building.
“So, just like that?” Eric asked, this morning, while he was standing in Cobi’s room, letting Cobi knot the tie around his neck. “If the judge says my rights should be taken, that’s it.”
“Yeah,” Cobi said. “Just like that.”
“I’ll never be able to see my little girl again.”
Cobi looked Eric in the eyes, tightened the knot in his tie, then said, “Let’s worry about that if it happens.”
“No,” Eric said, grabbing on to one of Cobi’s wrists. “Does it really mean what she says it does, if she wins?”
“Yeah, Eric. Jess’s fiancé can adopt Maya. You will no longer have any rights pertaining to her. You’d only be able to visit her if Jess and her boyfriend allow it.”
Those words echoed in Eric’s head, no matter how hard he tried to force them out.
Cobi pulled the key from the ignition of the Mercedes and said, “We’re at the courthouse, Eric. It’s time to do this.”
82
The hearing took place in a small room. Jessica Freeman and her supporters sat on one side of a long conference table. Eric, myself, and Austin Harris sat at the other end. In front of us, on the other side of the table, sat an older, clean-shaven man. His name was Judge Peters.
Beside Jessica sat a tall, good-looking, attentive man who held her hand. Jessica’s mother was there, as well as a younger sister and a girlfriend.
Everyone was briefed by the judge as to how the hearing would proceed. Testimony would be heard from Jessica and those who represented her, then Eric and anyone who represented him. Sadly, I was the only person to speak on his behalf. After that, the judge would render his verdict.
“I don’t feel good about this,” Eric leaned over and whispered to me.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I said, steadying him, holding on to his arm. “I told you, I trust Mr. Harris. He’s a good attorney.”
Jessica’s little sister, Lisa, was called to speak first. The judge asked her to give her account of how Eric treated his daughter.
Eric leaned over to me again. “Why they asking her that? She know how well I treated Maya. Ain’t that just gonna help my case?”
“Let’s hope so, Eric,” I said.
Lisa stated her name and swore that the testimony she was about to give was truthful.
She began by saying, “One day I stopped by Jess’s house, because I knew she had to work and Eric would be there by himself with the baby. When I knocked on the door, nobody answered. I didn’t leave because I knew Eric didn’t have a car, so wherever he went with Maya, I knew it wouldn’t have been far. Five minutes later, Eric walked up to the door, but I didn’t see the baby with him. I asked him where she was. He told me he had only planned to be gone twenty minutes, so it was easier leaving her at home.
“The second he opened the front door, we could hear Maya screaming. She was only a year old. Eric had left her home alone in their bed, and she had fallen to the floor.”
“What?” Eric said loudly, astonished. He clamped his hand down on my arm. “No!”
“Eric, what’s wrong?” I whispered.
“That’s not right,” Eric said to me then to our attorney.
“Mr. Harris,” Judge Peters said. “Is there a problem with your client?”
“That never happened. I ain’t never leave Maya alone, and she knows it,” Eric said, angrily cutting his eyes at Lisa.
“Your Honor,” Austin Harris said, “the witness’s testimony is false.”
“Miss Hampton,” Judge Peters said to Lisa. “You are aware that you are under oath, and that there are harsh penalties for perjury.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Lisa said.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, I’m certain, Your Honor.”
The judge inhaled deeply, looked at both parties, then said, “Fine, continue.”
“What?” Eric said, his voice loud, filling the entire room. “I ain’t do nothing—”
“Mr. Harris, are you going to contain your client, or will we have to continue without him?” Judge Peters said.
“But Judge,” Eric said, “she’s lying. She knows I never did anything like—”
“Mr. Reed,” the judge said. “It seems your attorney didn’t explain to you how these proceedings work, so I’ll do it this one time. I ask each witness for their account. They tell me what they believe is the truth and the whole truth. After which, it will be up to me to decide whether or not someone has lied and whose case I favor. Every witness is entitled to state what they believe is fact without being interrupted, just as you will when the time comes. Is that perfectly clear, Mr. Reed?”
Eric didn’t answer, just sat there scowling at Jess and her sister.
“Mr. Reed, you will answer the question.”
“Eric,” I said, nudging him. “You need to answer.”
“Yes,” Eric grunted. “It’s clear, Your Honor.”
Jessica’s fiancé’s testimony was short. He said he loved Maya from the very first day he met her, and if he was so blessed, and given the opportunity, he would adopt her and raise her as if she were his own.
After Quentin, Jessica’s best friend, Jackie, was called. The heavy woman spoke with hate and conviction when she said, “I was right there when Eric said he didn’t want that baby, that he never wanted it. Little Maya was right in front of us. Jess was feeding her, and that fool, Eric, just walked back and forth yelling how he didn’t want to be responsible. He kept saying it wasn’t his baby anyway, and why couldn’t she just take care of it herself, because he never asked for the little bastard. That’s right,” Jackie said. “He said, little bastard!”
“This ain’t right. This ain’t right,” Eric kept saying under his breath to me. The emotion in his voice sounded like he was near tears. “Why are they lying like this? Mr. Harris, you gotta do something.”
“Eric,” Austin Harris whispered, turning to him, sympathy in his eyes. “Like the judge said, we have to give them their say, and then you’ll have yours. It’s all we can do.”
Jess was next to testify. She stared at Eric, and the look said she would do everything in her power to ensure that Eric never saw his child again.
“I cried every night,” Jessica said. “Wanting Eric to just accept our baby, but he wouldn’t. It didn’t bother me that much when he called me names, when he ignored me, or yelled at me. But when he did that to Maya, I couldn’t take it. I hung in there, because I told myself she would need her father—want her father.
“I remember after I had the baby, he never told me or Maya that he loved us. He acted like we were a burden, like his life would’ve been so much better without us.”
“She’s lying!” Eric yelled, shooting up from his chair, stabbing his finger at Jess. “You know I would never—”
“Mr. Reed!” The judge yelled right back. “This will be your final warning. You will take your seat and respect this hearing, or you will be removed!”
I grabbed my brother by the arm and forced him back into his seat.
“Miss Freeman,” Judge Peters said. “Please continue.”
She did. “Despite that, I stayed with him. When he was locked up, I stayed and carted Maya down to that prison every two weeks. But one Sunday at church, I met Quentin.
<
br /> “We became friends. I realized I was not a burden, that my child was not a burden,” Jessica said, wiping tears from her face. “I wanted Eric to be there for Maya. Like I said, I begged him, but he wouldn’t. So I decided to stop forcing him. I stopped taking Maya to that prison, and on that day, I told myself I would never again drag my child to that place to see someone who didn’t even want her.”
After Jessica’s case had been heard, I spoke on behalf of my brother.
I did so after hearing the horrible things Jessica and her family had accused my brother of. I knew that he was not capable of those things. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew just by the way he spoke about his daughter, that he could never treat her like that. But Eric was an ex-convict. And as I spoke, I feared that when having to decide whose side to believe—that of an upstanding woman like Jess, who worked to put herself through college while raising a baby, or a man who spent the last three years of his life in prison—they would naturally believe Jess.
After my testimony, the judge asked if Eric had anything to say.
He was so angry and hurt, all he did was shake his head, smear tears from his eyes, and mumble, “They lying. They all lying.”
It was no surprise to me, after the judge took a short recess to deliberate, that he came back with a verdict in favor of Jess. Jess had won, and as of that moment, Eric no longer had the right to father his child.
I drove Eric home afterward. He sat silently, bent over, his head in his hands the entire trip. I wanted so much to say some comforting words—anything that would make him feel better, but I knew there was nothing that could be said to ease the pain of losing his daughter.
I pulled up in front of the mansion and cut the engine. I turned to Eric. He was sitting straight now, looking out the window at the house.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said, his voice low, emotional. He did not look at me.
I reached over, placed a consoling hand on his arm. “It’ll get better. We can try—”
“Try what, Cobi? This morning you just told me there wouldn’t be shit we could do if the judge took my rights. Did that all of a sudden change?” Eric said, anger in his voice, a tear coming to his eye.
I looked at him, not knowing what to say.
“Did it?” he yelled.
“No.” I felt like a failure for not being able to stop this from happening. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”
“Don’t mention this to me no more. Forget about me ever having a little girl, okay,” Eric said, pushing open the car door. “And I’ll try and do the same.”
83
After the last argument Blac had with Theresa, he had been making a point to stay away from her.
He had heard all that mess Eric was talking. Did he love Theresa? Was it worth treating her better? Blac didn’t know about all that. He was too busy and too focused on trying to get Cutty’s money so he could save his ass.
Like Blac had told Eric, Theresa was cool enough, but he didn’t think she was so cool that she could go bossing him around and demanding to know exactly when he would walk in the house. That’s where he drew the line.
Earlier, Blac had taken the bus down to the Greyhound station.
He could’ve simply called down there and found out how much a ticket to Racine, Wisconsin, would’ve cost, but he needed to get out of the house. Going down there would make him feel like he was one step closer to actually getting out of Chicago.
The old man behind the counter told Blac the ticket would be $99 one way.
That was doable, Blac thought, walking to a corner of the bus station where he saw a bench. He pulled out his cell phone, had a seat, and dialed his sister’s number. When he heard her voice on the other end, Blac smiled wide and said, “Hey little sister, what’s going on?”
She sounded ecstatic to hear from him and to find out he was released, which made Blac even happier. He listened as she told him how much she missed him and how much Johnny had been asking about him.
“Yeah, I got the letter you guys sent me with the picture. He’s gettin’ big, ain’t he?” Blac said, pressing his other hand to his ear, trying to hear his sister over the noise of the bus station.
She asked him when he was coming to visit Racine.
“I want to do more than visit. If you still sayin’ it’s okay for me to live there, that’s what I want to do.”
Blac held the phone away from his ear a moment, smiling, while Wanda howled with excitement.
“But it’s gonna probably be another couple of weeks before I can come. Got some stuff in Chicago I gotta finish, then I’ll be headin’ over.”
Wanda asked him if they were dangerous things. Blac sensed worry in her voice.
“Ain’t nothin’ you have to be concerned about. Big brother gonna be just fine, and then I’ll be there in the country with ya’ll where I can stay out of trouble. Okay?”
Wanda seemed to be okay with Blac’s assurances. She told him to hurry and that she loved him, and when his nephew came home from school, she would tell him that he called.
“Love you, too,” Blac said, disconnecting the call and slipping the phone back in his pocket.
When Blac stepped off the bus a block away from Theresa’s house, the sun had already started to go down.
It was still early, so he didn’t expect to hear Theresa’s mouth, but as he walked slowly along the sidewalk, he thought more about what Eric said. He really questioned now whether Theresa was wrong to expect the few things she had asked.
It had been late when he came in that night, and well . . . he had been out doing things he shouldn’t have been doing. So she did have reason to be suspicious, Blac told himself as he walked onto the path that led up to the door.
If things were the other way around, wouldn’t he have expected to know where she was going, or at least, expect her in at a decent time? Damn right, he would’ve. She would’ve had to have told him exactly where she was, with who, for how long, and knowing Blac, he probably would’ve had her take cell phone pictures and send them to him, to confirm that her ass was where she said.
Blac laughed as he pulled his key from his jeans and prepared to slip it into the front door lock.
But before he did that, he finally accepted he had been wrong. Theresa loved him. He realized that. She was only acting that way because she cared about him and wanted him to be a better man for himself and for her. So Blac decided, starting tonight, he would ease up, and actually try to give her what she asked.
Blac sunk the key in the lock, turned the knob with an actual smile on his face. He told himself he would surprise Theresa with his new attitude. But after opening the door, it was Blac who was surprised when he saw Theresa walking into the living room from the kitchen, carrying a cold glass of cola for a large potbellied man sitting on the sofa, watching TV.
Blac closed the door, pausing a moment to try to understand what was going on in front of him.
“Hey, Blac,” Theresa said, setting the glass of soda down on a coaster before the man.
The guy had broad shoulders, a round head of freshly buzzed hair, and fat cheeks like an infant.
“Who the fuck is this?” Blac said.
“This is Franklin,” Theresa said, sitting on the sofa beside him. “He was just going to finish his refill of pop, then he was going to go.”
“Hold it. He ain’t going nowhere till I know why he here now.”
“It’s cool, brah. I don’t mean no harm,” Franklin said, offering a fat-fingered hand for Blac to shake.
“Trust me, doughboy, I ain’t fearin’ no harm from you,” Blac said, ignoring the hand. “But somebody need to speak up in this house, before I—”
“You aren’t doing nothing, Blac,” Theresa finally said. “If you have to know, Franklin is the last man I dated before you got out of prison. We dated for a year.”
Blac felt his body warming with jealousy and forced himself not to do anything physical about it.
“I would still be with him, but he started taking me for granted, treating me like I didn’t matter—kind of how you’re treating me now—so I let him go. That was six months ago, but he’s been coming around, saying that he’s changed, and asking for another chance. I asked him to come here tonight to tell him I’d give him one, but only if you don’t start acting right.”
“What?” Blac said, unable to believe what he was hearing. He stepped closer to the sofa, his fists clenched at his side. “You tryin’ to play games with me? You know what I’ll—”
Franklin stood from the sofa, his wide body now between Blac and Theresa.
“Ain’t no disrespect, brah,” Franklin said, more serious. “Theresa with you now, I know that. It’s your situation to mess up. But if you think I’m gonna stand here and watch you threaten her, you got another think coming, motherfucker.”
Blac walked right up in Franklin’s face, stared him dead in the eyes. Franklin wasn’t trembling and seemed ready to back up what he was saying.
Blac turned to Theresa. “So this is who you want?”
“No, Blac. I want you. But I’m not gonna pretend that you’re treating me right when you’re not.”
“Fine. Fuck it! Fuck you, and this fat-ass honey-bear-bottle-looking motherfucker!” Blac said, then stormed out of the house.
84
I met Blac at the W Hotel again. We showered together, and he made love to me like it was an event in the Summer Olympics and he was trying to win a gold medal.
Afterward I was famished. I devoured the panini sandwich I ordered, but Blac did nothing more than pick at his spinach pizza.
We were both wearing the hotel’s plush white bathrobes.
“What’s wrong? You’ve barely said two words to me all night. Something on your mind?” I asked.
Blac looked up at me, as if wondering whether or not he could tell me. “I’m having problems with the woman I stay with. She put me out.”
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