by Naomi Wyatt
Tears came to my eyes as I whimpered, “I know.”
Immediately, he hopped over me, stood on the side of the bed and began to help me up.
But I refused. “It hurts,” I moaned, in pain.
“Come on, baby. We have to go.”
He started to throw on whatever pants, shirts and shoes that he saw. Then he threw the covers back, grabbed my shoes, and started to put them on my feet. I look around frantically, hoping that something was lying around that I could throw on over the panties and bra that I was wearing.
“Here. Throw this on,” Alex advised, handing me a long sweater dress from my side of the closet. We now lived together in his apartment in order to save money for the baby and our wedding. He had proposed on my birthday that September.
As I slid my arms through the sleeves of the dress, yet another contraction was coming.
I’m about to die!
I just knew that I was. This had to be death. I couldn’t possibly live through this pain.
“C’mon, sweetheart. We have to hurry. They’re coming quick.”
I always expected that through the pain and chaos, when I was in labor, I would be happy in expectancy of Little Alexis. But there was no excitement on our faces. Sure, I was in pain. Yet, I always expected that through the pain and chaos, when I was in labor, I would be happy in expectancy of Little Alexis. There was no happiness, though. The only feeling present was fear in both of our eyes as we wondered what could be happening to send me into premature labor.
Despite the deep breaths that I attempted to take during the contractions, the ride to the hospital was quiet. Luckily, our apartment was near campus, so the ride to the hospital was short. And once I was rushed into triage, it took an even shorter time for Alexis to come out.
My baby girl was stillborn. She never took one breath.
And right then, I felt as if I never wanted to take another one either.
****
I thought that was the worst day of my life, but, little did I know, three months later, I would experience much worse pain.
After losing Alexis, I had thrown myself back into school. I had even gotten a job as a receptionist on campus. I needed to stay busy in order to keep from revisiting the thoughts of losing my baby. As if that weren’t enough, I felt like I was also losing Alex.
He wasn’t the same anymore. The excitement was gone from our love. Our apartment was silent and it was obvious that things weren’t the same.
We had both looked forward to our baby’s arrival with great anticipation—even more than when we received our college degrees.
She already had a room decorated in a Minnie Mouse theme, my favorite childhood character. Her closet was filled with clothes that I couldn’t wait to dress her in. I wasn’t just in mourning; I was joining my daughter in death, and it was a slow death I was succumbing to.
Courtney put an arm around me as we walked out of the 940 building. “He lost his baby too, honey. He’s also suffering,” Courtney tried convincing me.
Courtney had just gotten off of work and I had decided to leave early. I couldn’t take sitting at that desk in my misery for much longer.
I sighed. “I know. You’re right. I just wish that in his sadness, he would be there for me. I need him.”
I wrestled stubbornly with the tears that were coming, but I lost that fight.
“Aaaw, honey bunches,” Courtney said, as he wiped my tears in the middle of the street. “Fuck him. If he’s not there for you, then me and Tanisha will be. Well, I will. Tanisha is too far up in Kenny’s big ass to give a damn.”
I laughed and lightly smacked his arm. “Stop it! He is not big.”
“You know that man is nice and plump!”
I was cracking up. Finally, I had the strength to keep walking. “I take offense to that, sir. I’m chubby.”
“No, you’re thick...” Courtney corrected me as he followed. “… with some baby weight–”
“Oh fuck you!”
“Nothing a little run on the treadmill won’t fix though, hunny! But Kenny? He is fat! Your girl is a chubby chaser!”
Courtney and I continued to giggle as we walked down Taylor. I didn’t know that meeting Courtney at work would be so much fun.
We were the same age. He was also a student at UIC. We clicked as soon as I started my job in the Dean’s office. I had already quit school, in preparation for Alexis. But I had continued to work my part–time job until Alexis was born. When Courtney met Tanisha, we instantly became the Three Musketeers… or Destiny’s Child, as Courtney liked to call us. He was Beyoncé… of course.
As I waited with Courtney at the bus stop for his bus, that would take him to the east side of the city, I sent Alex a text:
Hey, baby. How was your day?
We hadn’t talked since I left for work that morning, but that was normal when he was on–call. I wasn’t even expecting him to reply to my text message right away, but surprisingly, as Courtney’s bus came, he did.
“See you later, sweetie,” Courtney said, as he hugged me and kissed my cheek. “And try to cheer up.”
“I’ll try.”
I released Courtney so that he could get on his bus. As I did, I read Alex’s text:
Alex: Hey, love. It’s going good. Been a busy day, though. How is work?
Since he seemed to be in a better mood, I didn’t bother to interrupt it with mine:
Me: It’s going. Can’t wait to get home and lay with you. Pasta tonight?
Alex: Sounds great to me.
“Yes, he’s really in a good mood,” I said to myself, happily, as I turned onto Roosevelt. I figured that our night could be different. I would go home, take a warm bath, cook him dinner and just maybe we could make love.
We hadn’t made love in quite some time. First, I was healing from the labor. Then, both of our moods had been so shaky that we had probably had sex twice since Alexis died.
I was so relieved when I made it to our apartment building. Though every inch of our apartment reminded me of Alexis, I only felt like I could breathe when I was in those four walls. Any other time, I was faking my way through the day.
As I unlocked the door, I could feel the hot water of my awaiting bath. It was still very early in the day, so I had time to soak for at least an hour. I thought of the wine that I would pour as I unlocked the door, and my body already had begun to relax.
Hell, I think I need some tequil–
“AH!” I gasped and clutched my chest in shock.
My eyes bulged as I stared at them. Alex was making a very bad attempt at throwing his clothes on. The woman sat frozen. I too was frozen. I was too late to see what they had been doing, but since she was butt naked on my couch, I could imagine. Since she was so naked, I stood there stuck; amazed at how opposite she was of me. She was Korean. She was thin. Her body was like someone had drawn her. She had abs! Like I could count them! There were four!
Before I knew it, my purse dropped to the floor. Instantly, Alex called my name in a warning tone. “Yanna–”
“Don’t!” Finally, I found my voice, which scared missy enough for her to finally start putting her fucking clothes on. “No,” I told her. “You can stay. I’ll leave.”
They both looked at me crazy as I picked my purse up from the floor. I probably looked scary. I probably looked weak. But I had no more strength left to give him or her. After dealing with the pain of losing my child, I was pretty much numb.
“Yanna, wait,” I heard Alex say, as I walked towards the door.
“Fuck you, Alex.” I kept walking, but I could hear him right behind me.
Once in the hallway, he was on my heels, and he closed the door to the apartment behind him. My eyes focused on the beads of sweat that were pooling on his bald head.
“Damn, you were fucking the shit out of her, huh? Guess that’s why you haven’t been fucking me.”
He reached for me and had the nerve to say, “Yanna, I’m sorry. I love y–”
“Don’t
you dare! Don’t you fucking dare say that you love me while that bitch is lying on my couch!!”
“I was fucked up! I– I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to get married or to be a father–”
“What does that have to do with any of this?!”
Then, it was as if a light bulb went off in his mind and he realized that he had said too much.
“How long have you been fucking her?!”
There was so little consideration in his heart for me that he had the audacity to be honest. “For about five months. Right after I proposed.”
My heart ached as my eyes winced at him. “Why?”
“I just told you; I wasn’t ready for all of this. I wasn’t ready to settle down, to have a baby–”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore, do you?”
The irony in my question left us both speechless. I fought tears as I realized that his own tears when I lost my little girl were obviously fake, since he didn’t even want her anyway.
Again, I opted to leave. He called after me, “Yanna, wait.” But his feet went no further than a few feet away from the front door.
When the present pain in my chest told me that my heart could not additionally be broken, the fact that he would not leave that doorway to fight or beg for me broke, not my heart, but me. “I’ll be back in a few days to get my things.”
Rocco de Michele
By the time that I was twenty–four, I was running my own operation. In the eyes of an Italian family, it showed disloyalty, and had it not been for my mother I would have been completely cut off.
The de Michele family was one of the oldest and most dangerous Italian crime families in America and Italy. My father was born in Italy. After marrying my mother in 1982, he became a boss and moved to Chicago to take over for my uncle who was retiring his position as boss of the de Michele family.
At the time, my father was nineteen and my mother was a mere sixteen. Like many families, the de Michele family was known for extortion, money laundering, and the list of racketeering went on and on. That was how my father obtained his wealth. His way of business was to force people to give up their money by threatening them in one way or another.
He had protection rackets, where he told shop owners that they needed to pay him a certain amount of money weekly so that he could "protect" them from criminals who might demolish the shop or hurt their family, the subliminal message being that members of the de Michele family were said criminals. In addition to drugs, prostitution and gambling, the de Michele family paid off truck drivers or dock workers, who would "misplace" crates and shipments that later ended up in the hands of the de Michele family. The stolen goods could be anything from stereo equipment to cars, guns – you name it.
One of the most notorious de Michele family schemes was the infiltration of labor unions. For several decades, every major construction project from Chicago to Florida was controlled by the de Michele family. My father paid off or threatened union leaders to get a piece of the action whenever a union group got a construction job, and he sometimes made his way into the ranks of leadership himself. And once my father had his grip firmly on a union, he was able to control an entire industry. My father would get workers to slow or halt construction if contractors or developers didn't make the right payoffs, and, because of his rank in leadership, he had access to huge union pension funds. At one point, he could have brought nearly all construction and shipping in the United States to a halt.
He was a boss of his time, and the connections of the de Michele family were worldwide and went back to Italy.
As times changed, so did the mafia. My father still resorted to a few gambling and construction schemes. However, he had gained enough money and power over the years to stay low and out of the eye of the Feds, which was heavy on the tail of the Mafia.
With my family’s reputation, I had been able to subcontract many of the latest projects in the last year. It pissed my father off that I had gone over his head and done my own thing, but I still harbored ill feelings towards Pops that had led me to begin my own operation when I was in my teens. Beyond the subcontracts, I controlled the drug market in the Midwest. But I didn’t deal in petty street drugs or small amounts of weight. I sold large quantities of high–end drugs to politicians, executives, doctors; you name it. Violence in the mafia had changed drastically since the 80’s, but people still required and sought protection from the gangs in Chicago and the surrounding cities.
I was that protection.
“Rocco, come.”
I entered Pops’ office at the club hesitantly. Every time he wanted to meet with me, it was some bullshit.
I sat in the seat opposite his desk. He offered a cigar, but I declined while I adjusted my cap.
“Why don’t you wear a more sophisticated hat? A fedora or something?”
I cracked a cynical smile. “I think my fitted hat works. What’s up? Why’d you call me here?”
“I want you to do me a favor,” he smiled.
My eyebrow rose suspiciously.
“Tia is coming into town–”
“Urgh. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“She’s fond of you. You’re single. I want grandbabies–”
“You want to get on her father’s good side, right?”
Making the Governor’s daughter happy would have given my father political clout in Florida that would ignite many of his operations in that state. Though his business dealings covered much of the United States, a great percentage of them were in Illinois and Florida. With his hands in the cookie jar of the sunshine state, he would be set.
He nodded with a telling smirk.
“My dick isn’t for sale Pops.” Before he could respond, I stood to exit.
“I want you to be happy more so than anything else.”
Ha! I didn’t believe that for one second. Though I had many chances since, I always felt like he’d taken my chance at happiness. Though she was only three years old when it happened, I knew that Yanna remembered that day that my father called her names every time she looked at me.
Just the thought of her made my heart feel something that it hadn’t felt since the last time I’d seen her. They say that the world is small and Chicago is even smaller, but I had yet to even see a glimpse of that woman. Not that I tried that hard. We were adults. I imagined her somewhere in college and in love; a vast difference from the life that I was living. But sometimes I allowed myself to fantasize about her. Then, like I did as I walked out of my father’s office, I shook it off.
Present day…
Chapter 8
Yanna E. Hill
“Is this not the best view in the world?”
As I looked towards the ocean at Roc as he dipped in the ocean to cool off, I had to agree. “It sure is.”
I could feel Tanisha staring at the side of my face. I didn’t even give her my attention as I smiled at the sight of water glistening all over Roc’s body.
“Gosh, he’s gotten so tanned these last few days.” I literally let out a feminine growl as staring at his perfectly tanned skin did something to me. The Dominican sun had him looking more Italian than ever.
“Can you focus on anything besides Roc?” Tanisha teased.
Still staring at Daddy, I exhaled and admitted, “Not until I get home.”
“Whatever,” I heard her mumble.
“Okay, fine,” I said, finally giving her my attention. “If you want to talk about something, let’s talk about you and Gabe.”
Tanisha sucked her teeth. “Fine, go back to slobbering over Roc.”
“Oh no, no, no! You want to change the subject so bad, lets.” I smiled mockingly at her as I sipped from my fifth Mama Wana of the day. “What have you and Gabe been doing for the last three days?”
Now, Tanisha was avoiding my eyes. As I stared at her still wearing the same teasing smile, I noticed the glow on her face. We had been in the Dominican sun for three days. We both had a glow. We looked more chocolate than e
ver. But Tanisha had a special look on her face. Behind her Brazilian curls that Courtney had sewn in for her the night before we left, I saw a genuine smile as she stared at Gabe.
Like Roc, Gabe was a big guy, but he was about an inch shorter and an inch wider than Roc. Roc didn’t need security but instinctively Gabe always acted as such because he appeared as such. He had just as many tattoos as Roc and had the same domineering, calm and confident demeanor.
With a slick tone, Tanisha finally admitted, “The same thing you and Roc have been doing.”
“You don’t know what me and Roc have been doing.”
“Oh, yes I do. I heard ya.”
My mouth dropped to the sand. “You lie.”
“Yes! Yes, Daddy! Oh, Daddy!” she mocked me. “Right there, baby!”
I gasped and playfully threw sand at her. She jumped and ran just as Roc and Gabe came towards us. Gabe caught her with opened arms. Roc and I watched each other with devious smiles. Evidence of what we had been doing for the last three days was all over our bashful faces. We had made love on every inch of this resort— in the cabana, on the beach, outside of our room on the balcony in the Jacuzzi.
My body began to leak as Roc seemingly glided towards me.
“Goddamn, my man is fine,” I muttered to myself. After five years, I was still so amazed by him, so at awe of him. Usually, in my past, I would be scared to be so in love, so infatuated with a man. My love would be mixed with anxiety and fear because no man had ever reciprocated the same love. But that was so far from the case with Roc. With Roc, my love was as confident as he was, because on some days, if possible, he loved me more than I loved myself.
“What are you looking at?” I teasingly asked, as he was finally in range of my voice.
“You,” he smirked, as he climbed into my beach chair with me.
I giggled as he placed kisses on my neck. I know to the couples surrounding us, he looked like the biggest tanned, tattooed kid they’d ever seen. But that’s how we had been acting on that resort, on that white sand; like happy teenagers that were finally out of the eyesight of our chastising parents.
