“What else he been filling your head with?” Lu’ana asked. “I know he’s got something up his sleeve.”
“He said I should get a job, okay? Said he could get me a job. Said I should be working and not wasting my time in school. That I could be making a lot of money right now.”
Dewi got up from her chair and walked around to stand behind Da’von, her hands resting on his shoulders. “What kind of job?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. I told him I had to at least finish this semester of school first.”
“Do you think it’s something illegal?”
He hesitated. “He told me it wasn’t.”
“Do you believe him?”
Another pause. “No,” he quietly admitted.
“Then why,” Nami practically screamed, “would you even think about it?”
“Because I missed having a dad, okay? I love you, sis, but you’re not a father.”
Silence settled over the room for a moment. Dewi finally took over again. “Da’von, you need to tell Jarome that you are done with him. That he is not to call you, or text you, or contact you ever again. And you need to end contact with him. Understand?”
“He’s my father.”
“He ain’t no father of yours!” Malyah yelled. “He gave up that right when he quit being there a long time ago.”
Beck stepped in. “Da’von, unfortunately your father has an extensive criminal record. Does he even have a job now?”
“Well, no, but he’s looking.”
“How do you think he got the money he gave you?” Beck asked. “How did he afford to take you out to eat?”
Da’von didn’t answer.
“Answer him,” Nami demanded.
Dewi looked down at Da’von, her hands still on his shoulders. “Tell them the truth, Da’von. That’s why we’re here. They love you and they’re worried about you. There’s no reason for you to be upset with them.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. He’s probably still in the gang. I told him when he first contacted me that I didn’t want anything to do with a gang, and he told me that wasn’t why he contacted me. He just wanted to get to know me. He said that he was sorry for what happened.”
“Do you believe him?” Dewi asked.
He shrugged.
“I know you want to believe him,” Beck said, “but people like him, they don’t magically change. If he’d changed, he would have approached your sisters and apologized to them first.”
Dewi squeezed his shoulders. “Da’von,” she said again, her tone sounding slightly deeper this time. “Take out your phone.”
Nami and her sisters watched as he did.
“Put it on speaker mode and call him.” Behind Da’von, she held up a hand at the sisters to indicate for them to be quiet.
When the man answered, he sounded bright. “Hey, son. Why ain’t you been answering my texts tonight?”
Da’von licked his lips. “I don’t want you to call me or text me again,” he said. “I don’t want any contact with you.”
Under the table, Nami had laced fingers with Beck. He squeezed her hand when she started to say something.
Like day and night, their father’s voice changed. “What’d you just say to me, boy?”
“I said,” he repeated, his voice sounding stronger, “that I’m done with you. No more calls, no more texts.”
Now a threatening tone entered Jarome’s voice. “Your bitch oldest sister have something to say about that?”
“Don’t you call Nami that. Don’t you call any of them that. They were there for me. When you first contacted me, I thought you really had changed. But you haven’t changed, have you?”
“You put that bitch on. You let me talk to her. I’ll handle this. You can move in with me and—”
“No, Dad. I ain’t moving in with you. I don’t want to be around you. Stop texting me, and stop calling me.” Tears coursed down his face as he hung up.
Immediately, the phone rang again.
“Block his number in your contacts,” Dewi gently said.
Da’von did.
“If he contacts you again from a different number,” Dewi said, “you will immediately block those numbers, too. Understand?”
“I will.”
“How badly has he been talking about your sisters?” Dewi asked.
“I told him early on to not talk about Nami like that. It’s like he blamed her or something. I told him she raised me, that I’d never be in college if it wasn’t for her. None of us would have made it to college. But he hates her and I don’t know why.”
Nami didn’t know if Dewi had hypnotized her brother or what, but she wasn’t about to interfere with whatever was happening. On her other side, Malyah laced fingers with Nami and squeezed.
“Why does he hate Nami?” Dewi asked.
“Because she’s successful. Because she didn’t need him.”
“Did your father ever take responsibility for his actions?” Dewi asked.
After hesitating, Da’von quietly answered. “No.”
Dewi tipped her head toward Beck.
“Da’von,” he said, “people who are in trouble will say a lot of stuff to try to get their way. You have a solid track record with your education. Where does your father live?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t take me there. He took me to some woman’s apartment over in Seminole Heights a couple of times, said she was a friend of his. But he’s not living there.”
“Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to be wrong. I wanted him to be different.”
Dewi pointed to Reggie.
“Da’von, I love you like a little brother. I know I’m not your father, but anytime you need me, I’ll be there for you. You have to know that.”
“I just wanted a dad. I’ve never had one.”
Dewi pointed to Lu’ana. “I’m so upset with you right now, I can’t hardly see straight,” she said. “You’ve been lying to us. You put Bebe at risk. Don’t you understand the kind of people he knows? Thugs. The kind of people Nami tried to keep us safe from when we were growing up in the projects.”
“Not everyone was bad.”
“No, not everyone was bad. But don’t you remember those little gang-bangers in high school? How they picked on you when you got good grades? Remember that? You know why they picked on you? Because you were better than them and they knew it. They were trying to drag you down to their level.”
Malyah jumped in without waiting for Dewi’s cue. “Hey, you weren’t the only one who got picked on. I faced little bitches in high school who called me names too, okay? Because I didn’t want to have a guy before I got my education. Because I wanted to go to college. I was never so glad to move out of that last place to where we are now. It’s nice not having to worry if I’m going to get raped trying to get from the damn car to my front door at night. Half the girls I was friends with in high school, they have one or more kids now. Only about four of them actually made it to college, too.”
Malyah pounded her fist on the table, making dishes and everyone else jump. “Dammit, Da’von, Nami worked her ass off to give us a chance for a good life. Don’t you dare disrespect her by throwing it away!” She grabbed her napkin and dabbed at the tears in her eyes.
Nami took a deep breath and focused on Da’von. “I love you, baby boy. I love you more than myself. If I didn’t love you, all three of you, I never would have kept fighting. I would have let the state take you all away from me and I would have stayed in college. But I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. I promised Momma I would take care of you. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you make me break that promise. Now you have to promise us, all of us, that you will have no more contact with that man. At all.”
When her brother started crying, she knew they’d gotten through to him. He never cried. “I’m sorry, Nami. I just wanted a dad.”
“Now, what’s all this?” Badger quietly asked from the door
way. He walked in. “The wee one fell right to sleep,” he said to Lu’ana and Reggie. “Like an angel.” He walked over to Da’von. Dewi stepped aside as Badger rested his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “I know ye don’t know me very well, son. And I can’t say I know much about yer past, but if ye ever need a man’s opinion, I always have an ear for ye.”
“And me,” Martin added, finally speaking up.
“Me, too,” Ken said.
Beck nodded. “And me.”
“A man is only as good as his oath,” Badger continued. “What kind of man do ye want to be? Do ye want to be upright, faithful, good of heart, well respected, like your brother-in-law and the others, here? Or would ye rather be the kind of man whose own children have to turn their backs on him, because his word isn’t worth the dirt on their shoes?”
“Promise us, Da’von,” Nami said. “Promise us you’re done with him. No more. And if he contacts you again, you tell us and let us handle it.”
“I promise,” he said. “I’m sorry, Nami. He told me he changed. I wanted him to be changed so I could show you all you were wrong about him.”
Nami and her sisters got up and rounded the table. Badger and Dewi stepped out of the way as Da’von stood and they all hugged.
“I know, baby boy,” Nami said. “I been where you are now. I wanted him to change so damn bad. For Momma’s sake, if nothing else. But he never did. You just have to accept it’s nothing to do with you, and all about him. He ain’t right in the heart, to leave his family the way he did. He would say he’d changed, and get Momma’s hopes up, and go right out and do something else and get arrested again. All he ever did was hurt this family. He ain’t never supported it, never supported us. Him wanting you to quit school? Why would he do that? Huh?”
“I don’t know. He never said. Just said I needed to be working.”
Dewi, watching on from outside their family group hug, spoke up. “Just like those kids in school,” Dewi said. “He wasn’t happy you are already a better man than he is. He wanted to bring you down to feel better about himself. You listen to your sisters. They love you.”
Nami looked over at her and reached out a hand. Dewi offered her a smile as she placed her hand in Nami’s. Nami squeezed it, and leaned in to whisper, “Thank you,” in her ear.
* * * *
Before they finally left for the evening, Dewi pulled the sisters aside. “Keep checking Da’von’s phone,” Dewi said. “Don’t block the number from your whole account yet. Make sure he’s keeping his promise. I think if you go a couple of weeks with nothing, then it’s safe to say the talk worked.”
“And if we don’t?”
Dewi shrugged. “Then we talk to him again. Or we go talk to Jarome.”
When her sisters headed toward the foyer to say good night to everyone, Nami hung back. “What did you do?” Nami whispered. “Was that hypnosis or something?”
Dewi shrugged, a playful smile curving her lips. “I’m persuasive. What can I say?”
Nami knew there was more to it than that, but she wouldn’t question it. If it worked, it didn’t matter why.
Especially if it meant her brother wouldn’t follow in their father’s steps.
On the way home, Da’von spoke up from the backseat. “I’m sorry, sis. I never meant to do something so you wouldn’t be able to trust me.”
“I know, baby boy. I know.”
“Just keep your promise,” Malyah said. “Don’t let that man into your life. He’ll ruin it without an apology or a look back.”
When they arrived at their apartment, Nami sent her brother and sister inside first.
Once they were alone, she let Beck pull her in for a hug. “Do you think it’ll work?” Nami asked him.
“I’d be shocked if it didn’t.”
“What’d they do?”
She didn’t miss the way he tensed. “Who? Do what? We just talked to him.”
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She looked up into his blue eyes. In the lights from the parking lot, they looked almost midnight blue. Slipping a hand around his neck, she pulled him in for a long, slow kiss. “I don’t care what they did, as long as it works.”
Chapter Twenty
No, Nami didn’t know, didn’t want to know, why Dewi’s talk with Da’von had worked. But nine days later, by the time she got up that next Friday morning, checked the phone records first thing, as had become her new habit, she saw that Da’von still hadn’t had any contact with the man since that night the previous week. A few strange numbers had shown up in that time, as a text or a call to Da’von’s number. But only once each, meaning Da’von had blocked them.
Nami didn’t know why Dewi’s talk had worked, but she also realized it didn’t matter why it had worked.
Although she still struggled against that green-eyed monster that made her want to hate Dewi for her previous relationship with Beck.
This, however, had changed her perception a little.
Okay, had changed her perception a lot. Obviously the others cared about Beck very much to offer to help the way they had. On that basis alone, she knew she’d bite her tongue clean through, but she’d tolerate Dewi. Not just for Beck’s sake, but for Da’von’s as well.
It was the least she could do. Especially since Da’von had talked to Beck, and Ken, a couple of times on the phone since that night. Da’von had even asked Ken for some help with an assignment from one of his classes. Beck had joined them twice for dinner at Lu’ana and Reggie’s house, and Da’von had acted warm and friendly toward him both times.
Her brother was reaching out—and keeping his word to block Jarome—which blew Nami away with gratitude.
The problem with Dewi is me, not her. I’ll just have to make myself get past it.
As Nami was getting out of her car that morning before picking up her bus, her phone rang. That early, she knew it couldn’t be good news.
And when she saw the caller’s phone number, it confirmed her suspicion.
Jarome Drexler.
She almost sent it to voice mail. Instead, she decided to go ahead and answer it.
“Yes?”
“What did you do, you little bitch?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why does Da’von keep blocking me on his phone?”
“He told you he didn’t want to talk to you no more. And neither do I. Stay out of our lives.”
“You have no right to interfere in my relationship with my son.”
“I have every right, you selfish bastard! You hang around with criminals, you’re trying to get Da’von into that damn gang of yours, and I won’t have you ruining his future.”
“He needs to be earning money. He said you don’t even let him work.”
“No, because he’s in school.”
“You fix this, Nami. You fix—”
“I’ll fix you, you come calling ’round again. You leave him alone. He told you himself.”
“You had something to do with that.”
“Yeah, I did. Not just me, my sisters, too. I raised him, if you’ll recall, because Momma died and your no-good, worthless punk ass was in jail. You ain’t a father. You’re a sperm donor. Not even a good one.”
“I’m warning you—”
“You warn me all you want. I’ll call your probation officer and tell him you’re harassing us. Don’t make me send you back to jail, asshole.”
She hung up on him.
Damn, that felt good!
For years, she’d dreamed of having that conversation with him. Well, she’d had dreams of delivering that message in person, followed by a stinging slap across the asshole’s face, but that would do.
When her phone immediately rang again from his number, she silenced it. She knew she could block the number, but that would have to wait until later, when she had time to go in and do it on her account app. She’d have to wait until her lunch break to call Beck and update him about the call.
When her phone vibrated that Jarome had left her
a voice mail, she ignored that, too.
Don’t want that waste of skin ruining my mood today.
She had a good job—well, a steady job—she had her family…
And she had Beck.
Life. Is. Good.
* * * *
At her lunch break a little after eleven that morning, she waited until she was inside the drivers’ lounge to check her cell phone. There was one flirty text from Beck, and several more missed calls and voice mails from Jarome.
She almost deleted those without listening to them, then decided she might want to know what he said so she could tell Beck.
The first one Jarome had left, after she’d hung up on him that morning, was another veiled threat. Then another call demanding she talk to him.
And another.
And another, with the warning to tell Da’von to text or call him.
Then one that chilled her, left only fifteen minutes earlier.
“Listen to me, bitch. Me and Malyah are sitting here with some of my friends and catching up. You give me my son by the end of the day, or my friends will enjoy getting to know Malyah better. No cops, either. Do this the easy way, Nami. Don’t be stupid. Da’von’s a man, and we was gettin’ along just fine before you interfered. If you don’t, if you make me hurt her, Lu’ana and that baby of hers will be next.”
She tried calling Malyah’s number several times, each time the call going to voice mail immediately, as if the phone had been turned off.
Her sister never failed to answer, or at least text her back, when she called. Even if it was just her short-hand code for a meeting, or that she was driving.
And she never turned her phone off without notifying Nami first.
Cold, sharp, painful fear filled her. She wanted to dial Jarome’s number back, then hesitated.
The cops?
What would she tell them? And what would they do, anyway? She had no doubts some of the gang-bangers the son of a bitch had hung around with before wouldn’t hesitate to kill Malyah, or at the very least rape her.
And their “no snitches” code would mean not a damn one of them would speak out against any of the others.
Geek Chic Page 16
