“Okay.” Kera sounded like a kid.
“One . . .” The room began to count together. “Two . . .” In unison they paused. “THREE!”
Kera opened her eyes and saw all the gifts for her child. Her eyes immediately welled with tears. Kera’s aunt began to take photos. Kera reached for Red and embraced her so tightly she smeared mascara all over Red’s favorite DKNY T-shirt.
“Wait, girl! You all emotional and shit,” Red snapped.
“That’s a pregnant woman for you,” someone said.
“Red, I can’t tell you . . .” Kera started but began crying again. Kera never had it so nice. A nice plush crib, surrounded by friends and family. A baby daddy, who in private claimed the child, and now nice gifts. It seemed that things were looking up for her. As everyone began to grab a gift and take it upstairs, Kera’s tears went from joy to regret. Red had proven she was her friend. How could she have done what she did?
She excused herself, rushed to the mailbox and looked inside. Red noticed her actions and asked her what she was doing.
“I was wondering if the mail came.” Kera played it off, walking back up the driveway.
“Oh, yeah, it’s on the table next to my purse.”
• • •
Kera looked through the mail and saw it was all for Red. She had left the letter addressed to Bacon for the mailman to pick up as he delivered the mail. She knew he picked up early and would do it, she had hoped, while Red was gone. And he had. However, now she was regretting her sneaky decision. How could she do this to someone who thought so much of her to get her all of those gifts?
Kera began to cry more and the tears began to spark suspicions. Red knew those were no longer tears of joy, but she just didn’t know what the bitch had done. Red’s eyes met Kera’s and Kera assumed it was to say “our friendship is true.”
She knew only time would reveal. Red grabbed her items and headed upstairs, faking fatigue.
When she got to the top of the stairs, Kera’s tearful eyes were still on her back. Red managed to smile and blow a kiss at Kera. Only Kera didn’t know that the kiss had sealed her fate.
• • •
Red sat in her chaise longue and removed her shoes and massaged her toes. One day she would have to give up her heels. She decided to sort through the remaining mail. The large manila envelope was from Triple Crown Publications. She decided to read that one next. Inside she found a press kit with a cover letter. Red read the letter with great interest.
Dear Ms. Gomez,
We received your submission of Bitch Nigga, Snitch Niggaand loved it! We want to discuss making you a Triple Crown author. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Kammi Johnson
Office Manager
“What?” Red said, talking to herself. She looked at her watch; it was after business hours, so she would have to call the next morning. She sat at her desk and wrote Bacon a short note telling him that Triple Crown Publications had, in fact, contacted him and that he needed to call her collect as soon as possible.
That news put a smile on her face. Red didn’t bother to read the other letter from St. Martin’s Press. She didn’t want any bad news. Besides, Bacon wanted Triple Crown Publications and it seemed as if some of his prayers had been answered.
• • •
Every day Red waited anxiously for Bacon’s call. It normally took the mail about two days to get to him. On the third day she got a call from him early in the morning.
“Collect call from a federal institution. Will you accept?”
“Yes,” Red said groggily into the receiver.
“Bitch, get yo’ shit and get the fuck out my crib. If you ain’t out by noon today, my niggas gon’ come by and put yo’ ass out.”
“Excuse me?” Red sat upright, wide awake now.
“You heard me. I got your tight-ass letter and—”
“Wait, nigga. What letter?” Red asked, jumping from the bed, rushing to her closet and discovering the pages torn from her notepad. Oh, so that’s what Kera’s tears were for.
Red knew she had to do something—and quick.
“Wait, Bacon. I wrote that letter after I got your letter.” The phone went silent. “Remember that foul-ass letter I got before I came to visit you?”
“That was months ago, Red.”
“Yeah, and I wrote you back and had it addressed to be mailed to you, but then I came to see you to see if it was still good, you know . . .” Red softened her voice. “And it was,” she continued, “so I was going to toss the letter when I got home and didn’t. The housekeeper must have mailed it for me out of courtesy or something. I don’t know how it got mailed, but I plan to find out. Anyway, baby, that letter is old. Look at the date.”
Bacon pulled the letter out of his khaki pants. Red had dated the letter, a month ago.
Red could hear him breathe a sigh of relief. She breathed one herself. His niggas putting a bitch on the street? That caught her attention real quick. She hadn’t thought of him doing it, but it certainly was an option. After all, it was still his house.
“Anyway, you calling me with all this beef and I got good news for you.”
“What news you got for me?” Bacon asked suspiciously.
“I heard from Triple Crown.” She paused.
“And?”
“And they want to offer you a book deal!” Red screamed into the phone.
“Word?”
“Bond, nigga.”
“They gon’ put a nigga on?”
“Yep!”
“How much money they talking, ’cause that book don’t come cheap.”
“No money yet; they want me to call, but I wanted to talk to you before I did that.”
“Cool. Look, call them and spit it at them. Let them know I need at least ten thousand. But shit. Do the damn thing. Handle it.”
“I got you.”
“That is good news. A nigga needed that. I ain’t heard from the lawyer and I needed somethin’ to brighten my day.” Bacon paused. “How you doing, otherwise?”
“Well, I hope you come home, ’cause you going to be a father.” Red hadn’t planned on telling Bacon she was pregnant. She wanted to let her fingers do the walking for the first abortion clinic. She needed, for once and for all, to stop him from thinking about putting her out again. “Yeah, and you trying to put me out in the streets after you done knocked a bitch up.” Red threw it back at him.
“Naw, baby, it ain’t like that. It’s just that you be fucking with a nigga’s head.”
“How? I’m right here, right now.”
“So I knocked you up? Finally you got a baby to slow that ass down.”
“No, I need a family, and with you away, I don’t know about this baby. I can’t have no baby alone.”
“I keep telling you that this lawyer supposed to make it happen with the DNA.”
“Okay. When is that gon’ happen?”
“Let’s not get into that. I’m about to be a published author.”
“Yeah, baby, you are.”
• • •
“Triple Crown Publications. How can I help you?”
“Ummm, can I speak to Kammi Johnson?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Raven Gomez regarding the manuscript Bitch Nigga, Snitch Nigga.”
“One moment.” Red was put on hold before the call was answered again.
“Hi, this is Kammi.”
“Hi. This is Raven Gomez.”
“Nice to speak with you, Raven. I’m the office manager and we want to make you an offer for the book you wrote.”
“That I wrote? Um, well, I didn’t write it,” Red stammered.
“Well, then I need to speak with the author. I can only make the offer to the author or an agent. Are you the agent?”
“No, I’m . . . the author. I mean I want to write under an alias. I don’t want anyone to know that I wrote it.”
“That’s understandable. It’
s a hot and spicy book.”
“Thank you,” Red answered, nervously.
“What’s your pseudonym, then?”
“Lisa Lennox,” Red said, using her club name.
“Lisa Lennox . . . nice. We work with a lot of pseudonyms in this industry. From now on, when you call the office just refer to yourself as Lisa. This way you stay anonymous.”
“Okay.”
“We want to offer you a twenty-five-thousand-dollar contract for a one-book deal for the title Bitch Nigga, Snitch Nigga.”
Red could not believe her ears.
“Yes!” she screamed into the phone, balling her fist and pulling her elbow down.
Kammi was used to excited authors. It was one of the pleasures of her job at Triple Crown Publications. “Well, I will get the contract in the mail and overnight it to you today,” she said, smiling.
“Thank you!”
Red exchanged all pertinent information with the office manager. Within seconds, she began to calculate how she would doctor the contract to make it look like Triple Crown only offered $10,000, and how she could pocket the remaining $15,000. This was working out just fine.
Red wrote a letter to Bacon detailing the terms of the deal and asking him to call her ASAP!
Bacon had a book deal. Or better yet, Red aka Lisa Lennox had a book deal.
CHAPTER 15
Cheaper to Keep Her
Hello?” Kera answered the phone.
“What’s up?” Mekel asked.
“Nothing.”
“I want to see you.”
“When?”
Kera had played her hand well. She didn’t push Mekel to accept responsibility. This was the one thing that was most attractive to him. The average woman would have brought the drama, yet Kera played it cool. The way she accepted her responsibility and took care of her own problems became enticing to him.
“Meet me at the House of Pancakes on Seven Mile,” Mekel instructed.
“I—I don’t have a ride that can get me there anytime soon. I’m too big to be on the bus. I’m due any day now,” Kera replied honestly. She knew that at nearly nine months, bed rest was the best she was going to get. She didn’t have time to run the streets.
“Besides, Mekel, what you need to say to me that you haven’t in the last nine months?” Kera was suspicious. Her thoughts were, Don’t start no shit, won’t be none.
“Naw, it ain’t even like that. I need to talk to you.”
“You know where I’m at.” Kera paused. “Or are you afraid to be seen over here visiting me?”
Mekel knew the Seven Mile House of Pancakes was almost an hour out of the way. He was just trying to avoid conflict. He didn’t have time to hear Terry’s mouth. As the months went by she had become nothing but a nuisance. Anything attractive that Mekel once found in her had been erased by her bark.
In fact, he found Terry to be so insecure that it became just plain ugly. Mekel couldn’t understand how Kera’s pregnancy had broken her. He didn’t understand that the fact that Terry couldn’t have his kids ate away at her. With her tubes tied, twisted and burnt, it would take an act of God to reverse a decision that had been made three years ago.
“No, it’s not that I don’t want to see you. It’s just . . .” Mekel paused.
“Just what, Mekel?”
“I just don’t need the bullshit in my life.”
“And I do? I don’t need you calling me with this. I don’t bother you. So why the hell you calling me now?” Kera began to get upset. “Mekel, it’s too late for an abortion. So, what? You calling me to suggest that I give the baby up for adoption? Nigga, please.”
Mekel knew that everything Kera said was correct. The right to life was a woman’s choice, and a man had no right to make that decision for her. As a man, he knew that all he could do was be responsible for his seed and help her whenever and however he could. He wasn’t going to go out of his way, but he wasn’t going to dog Kera, either. He wanted her to know that.
“Look, Kera, what time can I come by? I want to see you. I’ll come to you.”
It didn’t make Kera any difference, yet she was relieved that he was showing concern. “Stop by in an hour.”
“See you then.” Mekel hung up the phone and opened the door of the bathroom where he’d sought refuge to make the phone call. He looked at Terry sleeping soundly in his bed. He leaned his large frame against the door and hesitated. Mekel knew that what he was about to do just might cause him to lose the opportunity to ever see her peaceful again.
The more he tried to hide his issues, the more they continued to haunt him. Every young black man in the ghetto knows that a child needs his father. Yet there was something that was torn in him. How could he give someone what they didn’t have? How could he do what he had only been shown, which was to do what was easiest?
“Terry,” Mekel whispered as he nudged Terry awake.
“Yeah, baby.” Terry’s voice was muffled as she wiped sleep out of her eyes.
“I need to make a run.”
“Where? What time is it?” Terry asked, looking at the clock on the sleek nightstand, then back at her man. She noticed that he was fully clothed.
“I need to go see Kera.”
“What?” Terry screamed. She jumped up from the bed and searched for her clothes. “I’m going with you.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
“What in the fuck you got to talk to dat bitch about?”
“Terry, here you go.”
“Here I go? No, nigga! I forgave you ’cause I thought you made a mistake and was through with the ho, but I ain’t gon’ stand for this family gathering shit.”
“Terry, I gotta be a man about this and see what’s going on. As a woman—my woman—you shouldn’t want it any other way. I mean, wouldn’t you want just one of your baby daddies to handle his business? At least that’s what you always bitching about, how they don’t do what they supposed to do.”
Mekel’s words silenced Terry. That was the problem. Terry had two baby daddies who gave her three kids. Both of the men were deadbeats. That shit was what made her have her tubes tied in the first place. Not that she didn’t want more kids. She just didn’t want to get stuck anymore, and the pain of raising her children alone led to her decision. But now she’d found Mekel, it was too late, and she’d be goddamned if Kera got what she couldn’t have.
“But, you said that you weren’t the father,” Terry said, sobbing.
Mekel attempted to caress her shoulders. “Still, T, there are ways to find that out.”
“No! Fuck dat bitch!” Terry began to scream and throw things around the room.
When Mekel snatched his keys to leave, Terry threw the television remote at him.
“Leave. Go to your bitch then, you fucking liar.”
“Terry, pack your shit and be the fuck out of my place by the time I return.”
With that, Mekel turned to leave.
All Terry heard was the door closing and the sound of her heart beating louder in her chest. She had fucked up. She had sent her man out into the arms of another woman—a woman who was carrying his child.
Since Mekel told her to leave, Terry knew that she would have to beg and plead to get back in his good graces again. She knew that included her acceptance of his child, who was coming any day now. Terry began to pace the floor, becoming more and more hysterical. She was consumed with how she could change things.
“That fuckin’ baby,” Terry yelled to no one in particular. “If I can only get rid of that baby. If I can only get rid of that bitch.”
Terry frantically dropped to her knees and started searching underneath the bed. She pulled out an Adidas shoebox and dug beneath some paper and found the solution to her problem. Mekel’s problem solver, his nine millimeter.
Terry removed the clip to make sure there were bullets inside. She pulled the chamber back to check that there was one in the chamber. Next, she rushed putting her clothes on and grabbed her things to head
to Red’s house.
“Bitch don’t even have a fucking car and he chose her over me,” Terry fumed as she drove her Escalade out of the apartment complex into the morning air. If she could get there first, this would all be over.
• • •
Kera’s heart began to beat fast as she saw Mekel’s car pull in front of the house. She didn’t want him to ring the doorbell and awaken Red and Sasha, so she’d waited for him in the foyer. Kera had showered and combed her roller wrap down. She wore a purple baby-doll shirt that flattered both her complexion and her protruding stomach.
When Kera opened the door, her smile warmed the frustrations that Mekel carried with him. Kera knew this was a hard visit and she made certain he would not regret coming.
“What’s up,” Kera asked, making small talk.
“You,” Mekel answered, following her into the great room. “This place is nice,” he complimented.
“Yeah, it’s pretty. Red has good taste.”
“So, how you feeling?”
“Tired a lot, and ready to drop this load.” Kera rubbed her stomach. She walked over to Mekel and asked, “Wanna feel your baby move?”
“Can I?” Mekel gently held out his hand. Touching her stomach brought all the masculinity out of him. It was amazing. He had never been that close to a pregnant woman before. He had met Terry after all of her kids had been born. As he rubbed Kera’s stomach, she pressed his hand harder against it. The baby began to move around.
The beautiful thing about Kera and Mekel was that nothing was planned, nothing was forced. Everything flowed easily.
“You know, Kera, at first I thought I felt comfortable with you ’cause we were in Vegas, away from everyone, a little high, but being here with you now, I feel the same way I did then. You just real cool to be near.”
“You know, I feel the same,” Kera responded. “But I didn’t want to cause you any problems. And you know, you can’t start something when you’re in the middle of something else.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I didn’t press the issue.”
“Me, too. Besides, Mekel, I have seen so much pain in my life that I didn’t want to cause any drama and don’t want the drama. You know, I’m just trying to raise this baby.” She patted her stomach, a look of contentment spreading over her face.
The Dirty Red Series Page 12
