To Build a Vow

by Chencia C. Higgins

  Frustrated and unable to grasp a secure hold on my patience, I snapped at her. “Love has nothing to do with it Ja’mya! Love wasn’t enough to keep Lisa here, with me!”

  “But Mommy said—” Her mouth clamped shut mid-sentence. My brows furrowed. Just what had Lisa been telling her?

  “But, what? What did she say?”

  Ja’mya shook her head. “Nothing, Daddy.” She leaned forward, hugging me around my neck and pressing a kiss to my cheek, then she stepped back out of my grasp. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

  I frowned. “What about dinner? It’ll be ready in about half an hour.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I nodded toward the counter. “What about your homework?”

  “I’ll do it upstairs.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “So, are you going to bed, or do you just need an excuse to get away from me, since I didn’t give you the answer you were looking for?”

  Her eyes were wide and panicked, giving me an answer even as her mouth hung open. I shook my head and stood up. “Fine, bye.”

  Immediately, she scrambled to gather all of her papers and scurry out of the room. Snatching the box of broth off of the counter, I went to the stove to continue making dinner. About twenty minutes later the sound of the doorbell surprised me. The person at the door surprised me even further. I stepped back, giving Lisa room to come inside.

  “She called you?”

  Lisa nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  She glanced around the room. “I just didn’t know if you had company, with me showing up unannounced and all.”

  I snorted. “And yet here you are, unannounced anyway.” She bit her lip. “How’s ol’ dude?”

  Her eyes flew up to mine. “Uh…”

  “Right. It’s fine to fish for information, but being forthcoming about the nigga you left me for is too much? Got it.” I turned and headed back into the kitchen calling over my shoulder. “You know where her room is.”

  I assumed that she went upstairs, where she had been summoned. Surely Ja’mya was pleading her case to Lisa in the same way that she had attempted with me. A few weeks ago, she might have had my ear. Before going down to visit my brother, I would have gobbled up the declaration that Lisa still loved me as if it were manna from heaven. Now, thankfully, my head was a lot clearer.

  Ma and Ja’mya had been right; going to Cabo was a much-needed trip. Not only was the change of scenery helpful, but Jereth had provided a perspective that really helped me to see my situation for what it was. It was past time for me to start putting myself first and I didn’t see how that was possible if things went back to “the way they were” as Ja’mya had questioned.

  I was counting down the seconds on the timer so that I could pull the pan of breadsticks out of the oven when the sound of my name being called made me turn around. Lisa stood at the entrance of the kitchen with her arms wrapped around herself. Wiping my hands on a kitchen towel, I raised my chin.

  “What’s up?”

  “Ja’mya’s asleep.”

  “Hmm. So, she was tired, then?”

  Lisa shook her head. “Not quite. She cried herself to sleep, actually.”

  “That’s a damn shame.”

  Lisa giggled and I had to chuckle. It wasn’t really funny but I guess seeing the humor in a situation was good. The timer buzzed and I pulled the bread from the oven as well as moved the pot on the stove off of the fire.

  “What are you cooking?”

  Switching off the knobs on the stove and oven, I threw an answer over my shoulder. “Just something simple. Mushroom rice and breadsticks.”

  “No vegetables?” Her voice sounded closer and I glanced back to see that she was seated at the island. I pulled three bowls from the cabinet and started to spoon food into them. “Mushrooms, onions, and garlic don’t count as vegetables anymore?”

  “Green vegetables, J.”

  I rummaged around in the spice cabinet until I found a jar of dried parsley. Sprinkling the herb over one of the bowls I turned around and placed it in front of Lisa. She looked up at me in surprise.

  “There’s your green vegetable. You hungry?”

  Her eyes darkened as she ran her gaze down then up my body before quirking a brow and licking her lips. “I could eat.”

  I laughed and backed away from the island, immediately recognizing the response as one she had given me years ago after I cooked for her the first time when we were still in college. I filled the second bowl, covered it with plastic cling wrap, and put it in the microwave. I don’t know who Ja’mya thought she was trying to fool, but she didn’t sleep well on an empty stomach. I fully expected her to hit the kitchen in a couple of hours in search of something to eat.

  I fixed my own food, sans parsley, and ignored how right it felt to have Lisa here, in our kitchen, laughing with me about something silly. It almost felt like a regular night between us and that should have annoyed me but it didn’t. It just was. I tried to quiet my mind and just eat in silence, but apparently, Lisa had other plans in mind.

  “J…”

  I groaned. I should have known better. Every time we were alone now, she wanted to talk. It was ridiculous of me to expect anything different.

  “What’s up?”

  She twirled her fork in her hand. “We never really had a chance to talk about what happened at the repast—”

  I shook my head. “It’s all good.”

  Mirroring my action, she gave me a side-long look. “No, J, it’s not. I went there to check on your well-being and I ended up screwing you in a stranger’s bathroom. That is far from ‘all good’.”

  “Lisa, I promise you that when I say ‘it’s all good’, I mean it. It’s water under the bridge. I’m not worried about it. Now can we please just let it go?”

  She gave me a stubborn look. “Fine. Then I can finally give you an explanation for every—”

  I moved off the stool and strode across the kitchen. “Oh, come-the-fuck-on, man! You wanna do this shit right now? Seriously?”

  The clang of her utensil hitting the ceramic bowl echoed in the room. “Yes, I do. It needs to be done.”

  I ran both hands down my face, trying to remove the sudden exhaustion that came over me with her words. “Not tonight, it doesn’t.”

  “Then when J?! Any time I try to talk to you, you either cut me off or refuse to answer the phone in the first place! When will you give me a chance to explain everything?”

  “Never!” My nostrils flared as rage bubbled inside of me at her audacity. Every instance of me rolling over and letting her have her way regardless of how I felt about it ran through my mind. No wonder she felt entitled; I’d made her this way. Unlucky for her, she put the old Jeremiah in the dirt months ago. “I don’t owe you shit, least of all ‘a chance’! You had an opportunity to explain everything to me in the beginning, but you chose not to. As a matter of fact, you would ignore my calls, delete my messages, and do everything imaginable to keep from talking to me, despite me begging you for even a minute of your time. Now, though, when I tell you that I’m good on all of that bullshit—that the reasons don’t matter to me anymore—you wanna fall over yourself trying to give me an explanation.” I waved my hand. “Naw, you got the wrong muthafuckin’ nigga tonight.”

  I stood on one side of the kitchen, my face right with anger and my hands fisted and tucked into my armpits under my folded arms, and she stood on the other side, face wet with tears and nose sporting the gloss of fresh snot beginning to run down her mouth. As much as I didn’t want to, I hated the sight of her looking like that. I had to physically will myself not to go to her and do my damndest to erase all negativity.

  “I’m sorry!” She cried.

  “Yeah.” No argument from me there. She’d done me dirty but wanted to come crying to me for forgiveness. I wonder if things with her dude were falling apart. Maybe he wasn’t capable of dealing with how spoiled she was. I bet it was really easy
trick off on a woman when another nigga was still providing all of her material needs. I was angry all over again. If she thought I was about to take her back after she left me to go lay up with some random ass dude, she had the game fucked up.

  “When I went to Houston on my girl’s trip, we went to a candy store where a woman was doing palm readings in the back.”

  The abrupt change in subject threw me, and I was quiet for a moment as I tried to figure out what she was talking about.

  “All four of us had our palms read, and everyone’s reading had something to do with love, except mine. My reading said that you would die if I didn’t leave you.” Her eyes were clear and unwavering as she held my gaze and spouted nonsense.

  I scoffed. “You expect me to believe that? That you ended us because of a palm reading?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, J, but it’s the truth. I didn’t want to believe the reading at first but when the other predictions started to come true, I had no choice. I was terrified but I couldn’t chance it.” She came around the island but stopped two feet in front of me. “It was so hard to leave you. Hurting you felt like I was carving my own heart out with a plastic spoon, but I couldn’t let you die if I could help it.”

  “So, there wasn’t another man?”

  Her lips turned down with regret and she shook her head. “There wasn’t; there has never been and there never will be. You’ve always been the only man for me, J.”

  My eyes flit around the room. The whole thing sounded wild and unfathomable, but her face was so earnest. She really believed what she was saying.

  “You can’t control something like that, Lee.”

  “J, she told me that if I didn’t turn my back on you, despair would follow. She told me that I had months—no—weeks before death arrived. Look at me, J. Hear me when I tell you this. The shooting happened exactly two months after the reading.”

  I stood cemented in place. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, with that information. If what she was saying was true—if I deigned to believe her, then…Was Lisa the reason why I wasn’t at that house that night? Was all of this just a ploy? Did none of it matter? My mind was racing and I needed a minute to get a hold of something concrete.

  “Say something.”

  I focused my bouncing eyes on the woman in front of me who’d devastated me with her rejection. Although her intentions hadn’t been crystal clear, I had been coming to terms with her decision and figuring out how to be Jeremiah without Lisa. But now…now the story had changed and I was left scrambling in an attempt to find my footing. I needed a minute and I told her as much. Gratefully, she nodded.

  She didn’t press me for an immediate answer. She didn’t demand to know where I stood. She didn’t ask me what this new knowledge meant for “us”. She simply nodded, grabbed her keys off the counter, and left.

  ♥♥♥♥

  That minute I’d asked for stretched into a few days, but it was the best I had to offer. To her credit, Lisa didn’t hound me. Not verbally, anyway. What she did was make her presence known physically. She started bringing Ja’mya home every day and walking her inside, instead of dropping her off at the door as she’d done over the past few months. That first day after her revelation, I’d been shocked to see her walk in the house after using her key for the first time in what felt like ages.

  She’d smiled at me, said ‘Hey’, and confirmed that Ja’mya had everything before she turned around and left. By day three I’d had enough. How was I supposed to process everything with her invading my senses at every turn? It was bad enough that my thoughts were once again consumed with her, but to have her in my sights, and smell her light fragrance in the entrance of what was our home was just too much.

  I distracted myself by going back to work. When I entered the Hawkins Realty building and headed to my office, I could hear the sound of my mama’s voice. I deposited my laptop on my desk and went to greet her. She was just saying her goodbyes into her cell phone when I knocked lightly on the ajar door and stepped in. With a smile on her face, she stood, hugging me and kissing my cheek.

  “Well, good morning, J. It’s so good to see you, baby.”

  I sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Thanks, Ma. It was time for me to get out of the house.”

  She nodded. “I agree. Well, since you’re here, I can let you know that we’re going to put the house on auction.”

  I didn’t need any additional details, instinctively, I knew which house she was referring to.

  “They’re agreeing to that?”

  “Her sister is over her estate and was the one who contacted me. She wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible, which is understandable. After everything, I don’t anticipate any successful open houses on that property, so going to auction will be the best bet.”

  I nodded absently. I agreed completely with her assessment but thinking of that house and the tragedy that took place there brought my thoughts right back to what Lisa had unloaded on me the other night. According to what she’d said, if she hadn’t left me, I would have been at that open house. And if I had been at that open house, I wouldn’t be here today. That was heavy.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  I blinked and Ma’s soft smile came into focus. I returned the expression. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  Her brows rose. “Try me.”

  So I did. “Lisa broke up with me because she had a palm reading that said I would die if she didn’t. The open house shooting was exactly two months after her reading.”

  “My God!”

  I expected my mama to either burst out laughing or scoff in disbelief. What I didn’t expect was for her to cry out and start praying.

  “Thank you, Father!”

  Surprised, I watched while she raised her hands in the air and turned her face to the ceiling, her lips moving silently. When she finished, she wiped her eyes with a small purple towel lying on her desk and shook her head. She came around her desk and pulled me into a tight hug.

  “Ma, you really believe that? I know palm reading ain’t Christianity.”

  She released me and chuckled. “Boy, God gave me good enough sense to recognize a sign when he puts it in front of me.” She leveled me with a serious stare. “It wasn’t your time to go and he made a way for you to avoid death’s snare.”

  My bones chilled at her words. Death’s snare. That was exactly what Lisa told me the palm reader had said to her. This wasn’t a coincidence and that wasn’t a common phrase. Damn, did I really have to get my heart broken just so that I could live?

  “Is that all she said?”

  “That’s it, but hell, that’s enough. I’ve been trying to figure out for months what I’d done to make Lisa flip on me so quickly, so completely. Now, that I finally know, it’s crazy as hell, but I’m glad to know I didn’t push her away.” I shrugged, a wry grin on my face.

  Ma pursed her lips. “That damn girl!” She muttered.

  I frowned. “What is it?”

  She shook her head. “I told her to say something. I tried to give her time to do it, but since she still hasn’t, it’s on me. I told her.”

  Sitting forward in my chair, I peered closely at her face. “Ma, what are you talking about?” Her mutterings were disjointed and I couldn’t figure out what she was referring to.

  “Lisa is pregnant.”

  I sat back heavily in my seat. “What?”

  Ma’s eyes were lit, not with sympathy, but heat. She was pissed. “Yep.”

  “How—I mean, how long—”

  Understanding what I was trying to ask, she cut me off. “I found out the night of the shooting.”

  The night of the shooting?! That was three weeks ago!

  I ran my hands down my face and groaned. What the fuck man! The bombs just kept dropping. When did I ever complain that my life was boring and lacking in drama? When did I pray for something akin to “excitement”? I didn’t. I just wanted my peaceful, normal life back. I didn’t ev
en know how to feel about this newest development. Part of me was ecstatic; I’d been wanting a second child—a son—for a while now, and to hear that I was getting my wish was fantastic. The other part of me wasn’t so sure that now was a good time to bring a baby into the world, not with things so blurred between me and Lisa. Then there was the part of me that said it didn’t matter what I wanted because my seed was coming, despite how I felt.

  That was the part that was pissed that I was just now finding out about this. Lisa had stood in my face days earlier and told me a story worthy of a fantasy novel, yet she couldn’t fix her mouth to tell me she was carrying my baby. I felt the familiar burn of rage course through me as I tried to figure out my next move.

  “J!”

  My mama’s sharp voice cut through the sound of blood rushing in my ears. I flicked my gaze to her.

  “You need to calm down. Being angry won’t help anything.”

  Fuck that! I was well within my right to be angry. She’d had three weeks to sit on knowledge about my child, but I was supposed to be okay as soon as I heard it? Fuck. That. I stood up and left. Within fifteen minutes I was parked outside of the local gym that was owned by one of my line brothers. I quickly strode through the building and into the locker room, where I got a change of clothes out of my personal locker. I needed to do something with this anger that I felt. If I didn’t, it would consume me.

  When I exited the locker room, I headed for the section that held several punching bags hanging from reinforced chains hooked into sliding mechanisms on the ceiling. I grabbed a roll of tape and a set of gloves and prepped for an intense session with my favorite brand of therapy. The moment I started punching the bag, I could feel the tension mount. I punctuated each thought with a punch to the bag.

  Lisa. Punch.

  A baby. Punch.

  The break up. Punch.

  A baby. Punch.

  The palm reading. Punch.

  Lisa.

  Lies.

  A motherfucking baby.

  Punch. Punch. Punch.

  I don’t know how much time I stood at the bag, trying to offload all of my emotions into it, but after a while, my shoulders started to throb and my hands felt numb. Good. From the punching bag, I jumped on the treadmill and cranked up the incline until I was running like my life depended on making it up a mountain. I needed the workout because my mind was still buzzing. When my thighs felt like they were on fire, I decreased the incline and ran for another eight miles before slowing to a light jog. The cooldown ended and I stood on the treadmill, soaked in sweat, chest heaving, heart pounding, and mind still racing. After a shower, I put on my clothes from before and got in the car.