by Joy
Once again Dollar had to stay strong and fight back tears. “I’m sorry, Mama,” Dollar said, breaking down. “Can you hear me, Mama?” Dollar cried. “Do you hear me, Mama? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I miss you, Mama. I love you so much. I wish I could do everything all over again. I would do what you did, Mama. I would work at every fast food chain in the city. I would catch the bus, ride a bike, walk even. I would be just like you, Mama. But things are different now, Mama. Klein and I, we didn’t need no daddy. No man was as strong as you, Mama. No man.”
By this time Dollar was crying and snottin’ uncontrollably. His body trembled as he sat on the ground before his mother’s grave, pouring his heart out to her, holding a conversation with her that he should have had with her years ago.
“I did wrong, Mama,” Dollar continued. “But I ain’t no killer. I ain’t never took another man’s life. You didn’t raise a perfect son, but you didn’t raise no killer, either. I just want you to know that. I just want you to have that peace of mind.”
Dollar paused and collected himself. “I guess all you got now is peace. Please forgive me for not being strong like you. I’m about to do something that I know you wouldn’t be proud of, but I promise you, Mama, after that, I’m gonna make you proud. I know I’ve got some nerve asking you to forgive me for a wrong I ain’t even made yet, but it’s something I just got to do, Mama. I’ve lost everything: you, my brother, and Auntie Charlene,” Dollar said looking over at his aunt’s headstone.
“All this loss can’t be in vain. It just can’t be,” Dollar sobbed. This time Dollar couldn’t control the flow of his tears.
“I miss you, Mama. God, I miss you. I miss your smile. Speaking of your smile; I met a woman, Hennessey. You’d like her. She has your smile. She’s a good woman, Mama. I can see me with somebody like her. I think . . . No, I know I need somebody like her. She’ll keep me on my toes just like you did, Mama. I wish you were here. Oh, Mama.”
Dollar kneeled over his mother’s grave for almost an hour crying. His once silent shouts were now heard throughout the cemetery grounds. Dollar couldn’t hold back his cries, his yells, his wailing. He didn’t care who saw a grown man crying. He had held in so many tears for so long. It was time. It was long overdue.
Just as Dollar wiped away his last tear he felt a hand on his shoulder. He knew the touch. He needed the touch. So, Dollar grabbed the hand tight and began to cry even harder.
“I . . . I,” Dollar stuttered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I . . . I love you.”
“Bro?”
Upon hearing the voice, Dollar looked up and saw his baby brother. Dollar had been oblivious that Klein had arrived for his usual Sunday afternoon visit and had been standing over him during his pleas to their mother.
“Doc, I’m . . . I’m . . .”
Klein walked over, kneeled down and put his hand on Dollar’s back. “It’s all right, big bro. We gon’ be all right. Everything is good. We got each other . . . again,” Klein said as he sat down next to his brother and held him tight.
CHAPTER 26
The Confession
Dollar banged outside of Tommy’s door for at least ten minutes before it cracked open. Tommy stood in the doorway with a white towel wrapped around her hair and another one tubed above her breast.
“Why you knocking like you the police?” Tommy said.
“Why you fronting like you didn’t hear me out here?” Dollar replied.
“I was in the shower, duh.” She let Dollar inside. “The girls are at school, so it’s not like they could answer the door for you.”
“I been calling you for the last few days,” Dollar said. “You ain’t got none of my messages? I stopped by the club and you weren’t there. Didn’t Storm tell you?”
Tommy closed her eyes, turned her back to Dollar, and took a couple steps away from him. She was prepared to lie to Dollar. Instead of a lie, the truth came out.
“Yeah,” Tommy turned around and said. “I got your messages. Look, Dollar. This one just doesn’t feel right and I’m not down with you trying to pressure me.”
“I’m not trying to hear this, Tommy.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you,” Tommy said.
“Tell me what?” Dollar shouted. “Oh, you bailing?”
“It’s not even like that. But I’ve thought about it like you asked me to and my answer is still the same.”
“I guess that explains the FOR SALE sign in your front yard,” Dollar said, nodding toward the sign of abandonment. “Fuck you, Tommy!”
“Dollar, please,” Tommy said as Dollar began to walk away. “It’s not what it looks like. I’m doing this for the girls.”
“Naw, fuck you. I did eight years for you. I gave you eight years of freedom on these muthafuckin’ streets and this is how you gon’ repay me?”
“And I cried for you every day for eight years.”
“Nigga, you cried,” Dollar said.
“You made that choice,” Tommy said. “I showed up at the courthouse prepared to admit my guilt.”
“Here we go,” Dollar said, downplaying Tommy’s dramatics.
“You are so fuckin’ clueless, Dollar. You’re too worried about your own muthafuckin’ self to notice anything or anybody around you. You haven’t even taken the time to notice me,” Tommy said softly as she approached Dollar.
“As luck would have it, I’m back out here on the streets, but I was willing to trade in my life for you, T.”
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“What do you mean ‘why’?” Dollar said. “You was my partner, my dawg, my boy. You know what I’m saying.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be all that. I never wanted to be those things to you; being your partner, dawg, boy. I wanted to be your girl,” Tommy admitted. For so long she had wanted Dollar to notice the feelings she had for him. She wanted him to stop mistaking her love for him as though she loved him like a brother. She wanted him to just wake up and realize that she loved him like a lover.
“You are my girl,” Dollar said, reaching out to put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder.
“I mean your girl girl,” Tommy said, trying to overcome the embarrassment of showing her true feelings, which was something she had never been good at.
Dollar was speechless. He just stood there dumbfounded.
Tommy, misconstruing Dollar’s silence, moved in closer to him. She couldn’t have been any closer to Dollar. The towel was still wrapped around her. She could feel his heartbeat as he could feel hers. With her eyes open, she leaned in and allowed her lips to touch his. She was hoping for some kind of response. There was nothing but awkwardness. She pulled back and just shook her head. Tommy stormed away to her bedroom. A few seconds later she returned with a shoebox that she slammed down on the table. “There!” Holding her towel up, she began pacing back and forth.
“What’s this?” Dollar asked.
“It’s for you,” she said.
Dollar walked over and took the lid off the shoebox. The shoebox was filled with stacks of envelopes that were held together with rubber bands.
“Those are letters that I wrote you while you were locked up,” Tommy said. She walked over, picked up the box and shoved it into Dollar’s arms. “After the first dozen or so were returned, I still kept writing. I just never mailed them. Those letters are a diary. A diary of a woman in love with your black ass.”
“Tommy, I don’t want to do this,” Dollar said, trying to give the box back to Tommy.
“Well, you are,” Tommy insisted by pushing the box back toward Dollar. “One minute I think you’re spending the rest of your life in jail and then one day you just show up on my doorstep ready to hustle. You never even asked how I’d been. I mean, we never just spent time together.”
“What do you mean? I spend more time with you and Ral than anybody.”
“Yeah, me, Ral, and a slew of hoes, but what about me? What about just me, Dareese?�
�� Tommy said as her eyes watered. “Tell me why you did it. Tell me why you really did time in prison for me, Dollar. I mean, I really want to know!”
“Tommy, what do you want from me, for me to tell you a bunch of shit that you want to hear like I do these other hoes on the street?” Dollar shouted.
“Say it,” Tommy said, snatching Dollar’s face up by the chin. “Why’d you do it? Just say it. Just say it! Had the tables been turned, I would have done the same thing for you. Do you know why I would have done it for you? Because I loved you. I love you, you fucking asshole.”
Tommy stood before Dollar crying. The only thing she wanted him to do was to put his arms around her and hold her. He didn’t even have to say the words back to her. She just needed him to show his love by comforting her. She had concealed her feelings for Dollar for years. She had acted like just one of the boys almost all of her life just to be close to him. The charade was over.
Tommy looked up at Dollar. The expression on his face told the story that he hated to see Tommy hurting like this. He had never had a single inkling that Tommy felt this way about him. He stared into Tommy’s eyes, trying to absorb her hurt. Tommy took Dollar’s comforting gesture the wrong way and, once again, pressed her lips against his and just began to kiss him. He tried to fight her tongue but inhaled it instead. Dollar closed his eyes and kissed Tommy like a preacher had just granted him permission to kiss the bride. Suddenly, Dollar opened his eyes, snapped out of the fairytale and back to reality. He immediately pushed Tommy away.
“Dollar, I don’t want to confuse things. I just wanna—” Tommy said as Dollar cut her words short.
“I know what you just wanna. You just wanna trick your way out of your debt to me like you do with those fake-ass ballers in the club. This is one debt you can’t repay on your back, Tommy. I need you in order for this shit to go down, so you can cut this big act you’re putting on,” Dollar said, throwing down the shoebox filled with the letters.
Dollar saw stars. He didn’t know what had hit him. It took a few seconds before he realized that it was Tommy’s uppercut that had him stunned. When he threw down those letters he might as well have punched Tommy in the stomach. He threw the letters down like trash. She’d given him her heart in those letters. It was like he was throwing her away too.
“Get out,” Tommy said, swallowing a few tears along with her pride. She was crying so hard that she thought she would become intoxicated from the salt from the tears that had made their way from her eyes to her tongue.
“Thomasena,” Dollar said.
“Get the fuck out, Dollar!” She pulled her fist back again.
“I’ll go,” Dollar said, licking the blood from his lip. “But I need you, T. Eleven o’clock. I need you there, T. You owe me. Put all this bullshit aside, dammit, you owe me, T. You know you do!”
“You’re unbelievable,” Tommy said. “Do you think I’m one of these women you manage to wrap around your finger and control? Well, I’m not, Dollar. I don’t owe you. I don’t owe you shit. You made a decision years ago, you live with it.”
Dollar could see the pain in Tommy’s eyes as she stood before him opening up her soul. This was so hard for her. It hurt her and he knew it. She’d survived by being a closed book. At that very moment she was wide open and he could see that Tommy loved him with pain.
“I’m not trying to hear this, Tommy,” Dollar said, going back into hardcore mode. “You’ve got a choice to make: your debt to me, or these bullshit feelings you think you have for me.”
“I love you. Loving you is my choice.”
“Will you shut the fuck up with that shit, Tommy? Don’t do this. Don’t go catching feelings and fuck up things.”
“I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you. You can’t tell me you’ve never felt it,” Tommy persisted, unable to control that life-altering thing called love.
“Save that bullshit for a nigga who gives a fuck. Save it for one of them tricks down at the club. Save it for someone who loves you back, ’cause I don’t.” Dollar paused. His words cut Tommy like a knife. “I’m doing this shit with or without you, Tommy. You riding?”
Tommy stood frozen. Blood oozed from her ego. She had been shot down at high noon. She was dead and therefore couldn’t speak.
“Fine,” Dollar said as he stormed out of Tommy’s house, slamming the door behind him. Dollar stood on the other side of the closed door. He couldn’t believe Tommy had tried to drop the love bomb on him. He knew Tommy loved him, but never like that.
Mixing love with money was a definite no-no. Besides, Tommy was like one of the boys and Dollar just couldn’t get past that. Crossing the line of a friendship was surely the end of one. Yeah, Dollar loved Tommy, but not like that. He loved her like a little sister. He loved her like she was blood. Once the friendship line was crossed, things would never be the same. Tommy meant too much to Dollar for that.
Dollar’s rejecting Tommy was killing her softly. She probably hated his guts. But their love ran deep and he knew that, although she was mad at him now, she would get over it. If he were to cross the line just to appease her emotions, he would eventually break her heart. He had to choose the lesser of the two evils.
Instead of turning around, going back into Tommy’s house and satisfying her feelings, which the dawg in Dollar was barking for him to do, he walked away. He walked away with a genuine friendship that he could take to his grave no matter what.
Dollar had just treated Hennessey to dinner at the same hotel restaurant where they had their first date. Dollar was cleaned up well; suited up with a hat to match. Although he ordinarily didn’t get hardcore GQ, it was as if he subconsciously wanted to show Hennessey that he had another side to him that could perhaps be molded.
Hennessey, sporting a satin-like Oscar de la Renta pant and top set, rambled on and on the entire time during dinner about how well Dollar’s investments she had made for him were doing. Dollar hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He couldn’t stop thinking about his fight with Tommy.
After dinner, Hennessey talked Dollar into a trip to the park behind the hotel building where she continued chitchatting about his portfolio. “I’m glad to hear those investments you made are looking real good,” Hennessey said to Dollar as she pitched a penny into the fountain.
“Me too.” Dollar had spoken with his personal banker and relayed to Hennessey that all was looking good.
Hennessey pitched another coin into the fountain.
“What was that one for?” Dollar asked.
“Huh?” Hennessey said.
“The coin you just threw into the fountain; what did you wish for with it?”
“If I tell you, then it might not come true.”
Dollar dropped his head and stared off into space.
“Here,” Hennessey said, placing a penny into Dollar’s hand.
“Oh, you want me to make a wish too?” Dollar asked.
“No, that’s a penny for your thoughts. You probably only said ten words max at dinner and now you’re sitting here like you just lost your best friend. Like P. Diddy was lookin’ after his and J Lo’s split,” Hennessey joked. “What’s going on?”
Dollar wanted so badly to spill everything that was on his mind to Hennessey. He wanted to tell her about his bid, and about how he came about being a free man again. He wanted to share with her about Mya’s pregnancy and the abortion he was forcing her to have. He wanted her advice on his situation with Tommy. He wanted to tell her about his brother and his mother. He wanted to tell her how he was really starting to have feelings for her.
Hennessey could sense Dollar’s hesitation. She knew he wanted to talk. If only she could just get him to. “I know you think I’m just some stuck-up broad who works in a bank who probably ain’t never did a day without. But that’s not true. Shit ain’t always been easy for me. So you can talk to me, Dollar. You’d be surprised that I just might be able to understand and help you out.”
Dollar looked at Hennessey sittin
g there in her $200 Italian shoes and top designer outfit. He thought about how hard his mother had worked during her life and was never able to afford items like that. Dollar began to laugh.
“What?” Hennessey said. “Did I say something funny?”
“Oh, you’ve had it rough all right. The world can just look at you sitting there and see right away just how hard you’ve had it. Let me guess,” Dollar said as he began to read Hennessey like a book. “You were born into a middle-class, two-parent home. Your mother’s pregnancy with you was planned. Her and your father were married at the time and they probably still are to this day. As a little girl you took tap and ballet. Your mother put you in all sorts of beauty pageants of which, by the way, you always placed top three. You won spelling bees and shit throughout grade school and was captain of the cheerleading squad in high school. You were voted most likely to succeed and even gave the commencement speech at graduation. You turned down your acceptance to Yale and Harvard so that you could go to school close to home. You graduated college, on a full scholarship of course, at the top of your class and never once had to go job hunting because offers came pouring into you. Yeah, what a hard-knock life.”
“You know what? Fuck you,” Hennessey said as she pointed her finger into Dollar’s chest. “I’ve tried to be nothing but kind to you and all you want to do is stand here casting these aspersions about me.”
“Oh my,” Dollar said, covering his mouth as if he were the monkey who could speak no evil. “I’m casting aspersions. Is that the same thing as casting stones? The next time I want to have a conversation with you I guess I’ll have to bring my dictionary, seeing I didn’t go to college and all.”
Dollar was cracking himself up. This showed by the way he hunched over in laughter while holding his stomach. Of course only he knew that his mind was so heavy that he was laughing to keep from crying.
“I know what you’re doing,” Hennessey said. “I see right through you, Dareese. You tryin’ to run me off because you’re scared.”
