by Shana Burton
They sat on the bench holding each other with hands intertwined, looking out onto the still lake. Words were not necessary and probably would have ruined the moment. These thoughts were to remain hidden in the heart, never verbalized. Talking about it would make the temptation to act on it too powerful.
Not wanting to get too comfortable in Jamal’s arms, Catt rose and plunked their blanket down on the ground and rolled it out again.
“Why’d you get up?” he asked.
Catt shook her head. “It was getting a little too comfy for comfort.”
“Guess I’m too much of a heathen for you to sit with me for five minutes,” he joked.
“No, it’s not that . . .”
“Catt, I’m starting to think the only man you can stand being around for any extended period of time is Jesus!”
“While there are some things I refuse to compromise on, I’m learning to be more flexible these days.”
He agreed. “I have to admit it, you have chilled out some. If I could just get you to put the Bible down for two minutes, we’d be all right.”
“I’m willing to do that if you tell me something else that I want to know,” baited Catt. She propped her head up on her hands and stretched out on the blanket.
“What’s that?” asked Jamal, joining her.
“I want to know about the nightmares.”
“What, are you jealous because I’m not dreaming about you?”
She jokingly flung a stray twig at him. “No, I’m not jealous. I’m sure that more than one man is going home dreaming about Catt Cason tonight, but I’m more interested in your dreams.”
Jamal leaned back and pinned his hands behind his head. “It’s no big deal. I hardly even have them anymore.”
“But you had one the other day. It seemed really intense. What were you dreaming about?”
Jamal sighed and murmured, “My mother.”
“Your mother? I thought she was dead.”
“She is. She died about three years ago, but I still think about her.”
“You miss her,” concluded Catt.
Jamal sat up. “No, I said I think about her,” he repeated and got up to grab a soda.
“Umm, sounds like a story there,” replied Catt.
“There’s no story, not today anyway.”
Catt was in no mood to argue with him. Instead, she closed her eyes and let the weariness of the day expel itself from her body with each breath.
“So, I came way down here to watch you sleep?” he asked as she dozed off.
Catt yawned. “I’m just resting my eyes for a few minutes. You stay on the lookout for any avenging ducks.”
Jamal lay down beside her. “I think I could use a power nap myself.”
They both dozed off, but were awakened by Jamal yelling “No!” and being startled out his sleep.
Catt sat up, alarmed. “You had another nightmare, didn’t you?” Jamal exhaled heavily and disregarded her question. “I know that you had another one. You cried out in your sleep.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he stubbornly replied.
“Why do you always shut down whenever I bring it up? You’re going to have to talk about it sometime.”
“I’m dealing with it in my own way.”
“Yeah, with your women and your little accolades from work. But guess what, Jamal? It’s not working. The demons keep coming back.”
He knew that what she was saying was true, but he wasn’t ready to delve into that turmoil, especially not now. “I’m fine. It was just a dream.”
“Jamal, you’re not fine!” argued Catt. “Why won’t you let me help you?”
“There’s nothing you can do because there’s nothing going on. I just need to get out of here for a minute.” He staggered to his feet. “I’m going to walk around a minute. I need to clear my head.”
“You could talk to me,” she suggested. “Jamal, tell me about these nightmares. What is causing you to jump up out of your sleep in a cold sweat?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled. “I’m just stressed out about work. I need to be by myself for a while. I need to think.”
“Then let me come with you,” she pleaded.
“You can’t. Catt, the place I’m in right now is so dark that I don’t think you could handle going there with me,” replied Jamal, defeated.
Catt touched his face. “I can try. I just want to understand you . . . if you’ll let me.”
He dropped his head. “Don’t waste your time.”
Jamal darted across the field, still hearing the yelling, the pleading, and the gunshot in his head. No matter what he did, stifling the images that haunted him wasn’t an option. They visited him every day without fail. There were times when it was so overpowering that Jamal would break down crying, covering his ears and closing his eyes in a futile attempt to block it out of his mind. Most of the time, he would try to distract himself and repress the memories. Here lately, however, it seemed that he couldn’t escape fast enough.
Catt’s last words were still echoing in his head: I just want to understand you, she’d said. But how could he make her understand what he couldn’t put into words himself?
This was one part of himself that Jamal could never understand. Why couldn’t he just fall in love, be happy, and enjoy life like everyone else? After his father’s death twenty-two years prior, it seemed as if he could no longer relate to people in the same way, especially women. Despite even Tonya’s unwavering love and loyalty, something in him would not let him give himself completely to her—or any woman.
He longed to be happy and at peace. He couldn’t understand why this was seemingly more difficult for him than for other people, but he did know that the reason was intractably tied to his mother, the yelling, the pleading, and the gunshot.
Chapter 24
Jamal knocked on Catt’s hotel room door prepared to dish out an apology. He barely spoke to her after returning from his walk and continuing the ride to Baltimore.
She opened the door and looked him up and down. “Yes?” she replied coldly.
“You can drop the attitude. I came to say I’m sorry.”
Catt crossed her arms in front of her. “I don’t hear you saying it.”
“Can I come in first?”
Catt waited a few seconds before widening the door enough for him to pass through, then closed it again. “Now, you were saying . . .”
He faced her. “I’m sorry for the way I acted earlier. I know you were only trying to help. I was being a jerk, and I apologize. Hopefully, you can find it in your very loving and generous heart to forgive me.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
He sighed. “No, Catt, I’m being 100 percent sincere. I shouldn’t have stormed off that way, leaving you vulnerable to another assault from the mob of angry, vindictive ducks.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “All right, you’re forgiven this time; just don’t make it a habit.” She sat down at her small table, which had pictures scattered across the top.
“Hey, what you got going on over here?” asked Jamal, picking up one of the pictures.
“I’m scrapbooking. I’ve been collecting pictures from all of the beautiful places we’ve seen. I wanted to go ahead and preserve them while the memories are still fresh.”
He looked over at her photo album and noticed a picture of a little girl in afro-puffs holding up a fish. A man was crouching down behind her beaming proudly.
“Is that you?” asked Jamal, pointing to the picture.
“Yeah, that’s me and my dad.” She smiled and lifted the picture out of the album. “It was taken near my grandmother’s house. I spent practically every summer there catching fish at the creek with my dad or running around with my cousins. I was about eight years old in that picture. It was my first fish.” She handed the picture to Jamal.
“Sounds like you had the perfect childhood. I was lucky just to survive mine.” He studied the picture. “They should have known you were go
ing to be trouble even back then. What kind of little girl holds a dead animal like that with such bravado and pride,” he teased.
“I was a sweet, adorable child,” she bragged.
“Yeah, but I bet you went through that ugly phase as a teen.”
“Who?” she scoffed and flipped through the pages until she came to one of a lanky teenager wearing a pastel-pink, bouffantlike gown with a red sash across the front and a tiara. She was holding a bundle of roses and standing on a football field.
“I’ll have you to know that you are looking at Miss Sophomore for the Homecoming Court of Englewood High School. There isn’t a drop of ugly on this queen!”
“I guess you were all right. You were a scrawny ol’ thing back then.” Jamal continued to look through the book.
“Don’t hate just because your adolescence was plagued with acne and awkwardness.”
“Please—I was the man in high school.” Jamal stumbled across her senior prom picture. “I guess this was the boyfriend, huh?”
“Yes, his name was Jerrod Brown. He was our class president. We were madly in love and were supposed to get married and have a thousand babies,” she reminisced. “Unfortunately, we broke up two weeks after graduation.”
“He was a punk,” grumbled Jamal.
“He was not!” she squawked.
“Look at him, that played-out fade, the lame tux. He couldn’t handle you.”
Jamal flipped to the next page. “Are they your parents?” He pointed to a young couple in wedding attire. The woman bore a striking resemblance to Catt.
“Yeah, it was their wedding day.”
“You look like your mom. What does she do?”
“She rests in peace now. She died a few years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s tough when you lose your parents. You become an orphan. You’re no longer anybody’s baby after that,” he added. Jamal turned the page. A yellow piece of carbon paper was folded inside. He opened it and saw that it was a hospital receipt with The Summit Women’s Center on the letterhead.
Catt instantly recognized the paper and snatched it from him. “I forgot that was in there.” She balled up the paper and threw it in the trash. She seemed uncomfortable and nervous.
“It looked like it was from a doctor’s office. Were you in the hospital?”
“It was outpatient surgery. I was only there a few hours.”
“Why did you have to have surgery?”
“I just did, all right?” she said in a huff and closed the book before taking it from him.
“I wasn’t finished looking at it.”
“Yes, you were. It’s time for you to go.” She was flushed and trembling.
“Go?” he asked surprised.
“Yes, I don’t feel good. I have cramps.”
“You didn’t five minutes ago.”
“Well, I do now!” she insisted.
Jamal stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I guess you’re having a Midol moment, huh?”
She flung her hand. “Whatever, Jamal. Can you leave now? I really don’t feel well.”
Sensing that she was anxious for him to leave, Jamal didn’t press the matter. “All right, I’ll see you in the morning. Get some rest,” he said and left.
Catt walked to the trash can and smoothed out the receipt and looked at it again. She saw her name and that it was dated eleven years prior. Her eyes moved down to her height, weight, and other vitals, and stopped at the section classified as “procedure.” To the right of it, the nurse had checked the box labeled “abortion.”
She balled the paper back up and put it into the trash. She didn’t want anybody to know, especially Jamal. Even if he accepted her having the abortion, he’d never understand about the child’s conception. She’d thought that in leaving the university, she could leave that shame and those painful memories behind too but soon discovered that the past wasn’t a place; it was a part of her that she could not escape no matter how far she ran.
Life had also taught her to guard her heart, especially with a man like Jamal, a rule that she was guilty of ignoring by getting dangerously close to him. She could feel herself starting to care for Jamal in ways that she shouldn’t, but withholding her feelings wasn’t as easy as it had been before she met him.
“Don’t go there with him, Catt,” she warned herself. “He can’t do anything for you but hurt you. You can never let yourself get hurt like that by any man again. Plus, if he knew the truth, he wouldn’t have anything to do with you anyway, not after what happened to Kennedy.”
She recovered the receipt from the trash can again and decided to hold on to it as a reminder that she had to keep her guard up at all times or risk repeating the mistakes of the past.
Chapter 25
“You got everything?” asked Jamal, then strapped on his seat belt.
“Yep,” replied Catt, buckling hers.
Jamal pulled out onto the highway. “All right. Looks like we can say ‘adios’ to Milwaukee.”
“Not a moment too soon!” retorted Catt.
“You didn’t like it here?”
“It’s not the city. I’m just tired of riding. The irony is that I love to travel, but this is too much of a good thing.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. If you drive the rest of the way, I’ll take you fishing. You can add that picture to your photo album.”
“You just negotiated your way into driving us back to Charlotte!” Catt giggled. “I don’t fish anymore. I haven’t fished since I was a little girl.”
“Fishing is one of the few pleasant memories I have from being a kid. My family was nothing like yours,” he told her again.
Catt looked down at her hands as she spoke. “You know, um, what you said yesterday . . . it isn’t exactly true.”
“What did I say?”
“About me having a perfect childhood.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. I didn’t—far from it to be honest with you.”
“Obviously no childhood is perfect, but I’m sure yours came a heck of a lot closer to perfection than mine,” declared Jamal.
“It’s all relative, you know. My demons may not be your demons, but we fight them just the same.”
He cocked his head to the side. “What demons could you have possibly had in the holy household of the Casons?”
“Just because my dad’s a preacher doesn’t mean we didn’t have our share of problems. I believe the devil probably attacked us more because of it.”
Jamal exhaled. “All right, I’ll bite. So what happened to you that was so terrible?”
“We’re a lot more alike than you think, Jamal. For starters, I had issues with my mother just like you did . . . I did something else too.”
“You did what?”
Catt hesitated before answering. She bit her lips to keep them from trembling. Then she took a deep breath. “I killed my cousin.”
Jamal swerved a little, not expecting to hear anything that traumatic. “You what?”
She nodded. “I told you, my life hasn’t exactly been a fairy tale.”
Jamal slowed the car down. “Okay, seriously, Catt, did you really kill your cousin?”
“In terms of legalities, no. Technically, I didn’t kill him, but I do feel responsible for his death.”
Jamal heaved a sigh of relief. “Why do you feel responsible?”
“It’s like I said, my family has had its share of demons to fight. One of the biggest ones we’ve had to face is drug abuse.”
“Drugs?”
“What I tell you goes no further than this car!”
“It won’t. After all we’ve confided in each other, do you really think you have to tell me that?”
Catt braced herself to reveal a family secret that very few were privy to. “My mother was a drug addict, Jamal.”
His jaw dropped. “What?”
“Yeah, it went on for a couple of years. I was young at the time and didn’t really understand what was going on. My parents were living a dif
ferent life then too. They weren’t Pastor Jeremiah and First Lady Ola Cason during those days, just Jerry and Ola, two young, struggling parents who didn’t know the Lord.”
“Wow, I never would’ve guessed it. The way you talk about them, you would think they’ve always walked the straight and narrow.”
“Not always, trust me. When they were younger, both of my parents were heavy drinkers and partygoers. I think my mom started dabbling in drugs shortly after I was born. She was going through postpartum depression. Rather than getting the proper help for it, she self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. At one point, it had gotten so bad that we had to move in with my grandmother. That’s when I had the situation with my cousin.”
“What happened?”
“My parents did a great job of hiding how bad things were from me. I mean, I knew that they were arguing about my mother spending all the money and hanging around strange people, but I was a kid. To me, drug addicts were other people, not my family members, especially not my mother. I knew she drank, and I knew she smoked. I just didn’t realize it was crack.”
Catt closed her eyes and thought back. “It happened during the time we were living with my grandmother. My grandmother kept my cousin Jimmy during the day while my aunt Debbie worked. He was a year older than me, but I was bigger. I was always kind of big and strong for my age.
“Anyway, one day, one of the little kids in the neighborhood asked if my mother smoked crack. The mere fact that he’d asked me that was enough to earn him a beat down. I guess he could sense that, because he wasted no time divulging his source of information. He said that Jimmy had been running his mouth, telling everyone who would listen that my mama was some junkie.
“I was furious! I couldn’t believe that my own cousin was out spreading lies about my mother, and I was intent on making him pay for it. I tore out, combing the neighborhood looking for him. Eventually I spotted him throwing rocks into the ravine at the end of the street, an abandoned area in the neighborhood. A passing hurricane had just dumped several feet of rain into the city that week. As a result, the ravine had filled with water. The water was rushing down the creek to the mouth of a ditch.
“When I saw him, I made all kinds of threats to kill and make him regret the day he was born.” Catt’s eyes began to water, and her voice quivered. “I told him to take back what he’d said about my mother, to say it wasn’t true. Then he told me he overheard my mother and grandmother arguing because Big Mama wouldn’t give her any more money to buy dope. Then he said, ‘My mama said Auntie Ola is a crackhead! I know it’s true ’cause that’s what everybody says.’”
