by Lady Lissa
A Mother Within Her
A Psychological Thriller by Lady Lissa
Copyright © 2018 Lady Lissa
Published by Unique Pen Publications, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locals are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents are entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
I just want to say thank you to my mom, sister, and children for always motivating me and pushing me to keep going. Shay Renee has been one of my biggest supporters and now she’s finally doing her thing. My son, Jacori, always has encouraging words for me, even though he has taken a break in his writing career. Trinity and Aubree keep me going crazy, but without them, I’d probably shut down. Thanks also to my son in law, Jarred for listening to my crazy ideas.
Thanks to all my readers and supporters who consistently rock with me and show me that you care. It always makes me feel special when you all contact me to let me know how much my books and stories mean to you.
Thanks to my bomb editor, Maria for making sure my work is A-1. Thanks to my team of ladies, Mel, Monique, Rere, Jessica, Chelsea, and Darnisha for sticking by me during those trying times. I truly appreciate y’all and y’all are definitely the true definition of a team. I love y’all more than y’all could know.
Last, but not least, Takiyah Adams, thank you for letting me use your beautiful name for my main character. I truly appreciate you.
I hope that y’all enjoy the book… happy reading!!
Prologue
Iman
I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my wife right now. We had been together all this time and even though I knew she had reservations about becoming a mom again, I didn’t know that it was this bad. Why didn’t I see the signs when we found out she was pregnant? I just assumed her attitude was due to her anxiety. Now that she was seven months pregnant, she still wasn’t as happy as I assumed she would be.
“Baby, I’m sure these are just your nerves. You’re just nervous about being a mom again. I can almost guarantee that every parent goes through the same anxiety no matter how many kids they have,” I tried to assure her.
“Why do you keep saying that it’s my nerves? It’s not my nerves!”
“It has to be your nerves. What other reason would you have to suggest that we put our baby up for adoption?”
“Iman, listen to me, please. I’m not ready to be a mom to two kids, two babies at that. I don’t wanna have this baby,” Takiyah stated. “Isaiah is still a baby himself.”
I looked into her eyes and saw tears in them. I could stare at her all day long, but I’d never believe she didn’t wanna be a mom again. I knew we just found out about the pregnancy, so it didn’t leave us with many options. I never once thought about doing anything other than welcoming this baby, just like we did Isaiah. I remembered how Takiyah reacted when she found out she was pregnant the first time.
Of course, she was nervous. It was her first time becoming a parent. But, I certainly didn’t expect her to react like this now. We now had experience at raising a baby. She shouldn’t feel this way right now. She had said she didn’t want to have the baby on more than one occasion, but I didn’t think she meant it. I still didn’t think she meant that now. Our baby was due in a couple of months. We had gone shopping and even decorated the nursery.
“Takiyah, do you love me?” I asked as I stared intently into her misty eyes.
She wiped her tears away and said, “Of course, I love you.”
“Don’t you know how much it means to me to have a family of my own? I mean, it’s not as if we aren’t married, baby. We’ve been married for over a year now. This is normal for married couples who love each other,” I said. I moved closer to her, placed my hand on her belly and continued. “I love you more than anything. I can’t wait until our little girl is born. We’ll have our set, a boy and a girl. You guys are my whole world, baby.”
“I know how much you wanna have another baby…”
“Not another baby… this baby. We’ve already named her and everything. How can you expect me to just give her away to strangers?”
“I’m not ready…”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. I already answered that question,” she said.
“But do you mean it?”
“You doubt that I love you?”
“I just don’t understand why if you love me like you say you do, you wouldn’t want me to be happy. I do everything in my power to make you happy. All I want is this one thing from you… to give birth to our daughter so we can extend our family,” I said.
She breathed in deeply as she stared at me. I hated to come down on her this way, but she wasn’t acting like herself. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but she needed to get it together. Our baby girl would be here in a couple of months, so she needed to get out of whatever this funk was that she was in.
I pulled her into my arms and held her close. “I love you, Kyah. I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” she whimpered as I held her.
I rubbed her back. It was just nerves. It had to be. Once our baby was born and she held her for the first time, she would feel better. All her concerns and anxiety would disappear.
Chapter one
Takiyah
Growing up in a household with only one parent was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I knew that different situations arose for different households, so my situation might not be like other people. My mom raised me and my three sisters by herself because when we were younger, my dad went to jail on a drug charge. When my dad was around, things were more mellow and family oriented. With my mom being stuck to raise the four of us on her own was worse than I could have imagined.
She was stressed and uptight. Watching my mom struggle to raise us girls by herself, with all the stressing and hollering she would do at us made me realize how hard single mothers had it. My mom used to snap at us for anything. Like, if we left the cap off the toothpaste, she yelled. If we didn’t put the glass in the sink, she yelled. If we forgot to sweep the floor, she fussed. And don’t let us leave a light on, she’d go ballistic about her electric bill. One thing I realized from those days was that I never wanted kids when I grew up.
I never wanted to be the reason my kids cried themselves to sleep. I never wanted to be the reason my kids were scared when a pot clattered, or a door slammed. I wouldn’t say that my mom was abusive, but on several occasions, we got our asses torn up. It seemed as if nothing we did was right, but I understood it was because she was under a lot of pressure. Hell, we were under a lot of pressure too, living in the damn projects and having to defend ourselves from kids who had no home training and shit.
I used to listen to my sisters talk about how they couldn’t wait to have kids when they got older. I wasn’t about to say that shit. I was afraid of my mom because I didn’t know if we were going to get Suzy Homemaker or Mommie Dearest when she came home from work. One afternoon, my sisters were chatting it up about the future…
“I can’t wait to be a mom,” my sister, Harmony said.
I looked at her with my mouth hung wide open. I stared at her like she was a beast with two heads because I couldn’t believe she wanted kids. I sometimes wondered if the four of us were even raised in the same household. I knew that we had because I shared a room with Nya and Lyric and Harmony shared a room. I just wondered how she could feel that way after everything we had been going through.
> Not only was our mom a screamer, but she was also on government assistance. Yea, we lived in this bullshit, crappy apartment in the projects on Section 8. Not only that, but she received food stamps to help her feed us. Luckily for us, the food stamps came on a debit card instead of those paper ones my grandmother used to have. My mom had already followed in my grandmother’s footsteps, but I wouldn’t be following them.
“Not me. I’m never having kids,” I expressed as I rolled my eyes and smacked my teeth.
“What?! Why not?” Lyric asked.
“Do you see how hard mom struggles to take care of us? Do you see the stress she’s under and how much she yells at us for little things? That will never be me. She is showing me what not to do when I get older. No sir, not me,” I said as I shook my head from side to side.
“Mom may struggle, but I’m sure she didn’t intend to raise us by herself. I mean, it’s not her fault that dad got locked up. He made the decision to sell drugs for us to have a better life…” Nya was saying before I jumped in.
“Better life? Look around you. You call this hell hole a better life?” I scoffed.
“You didn’t let me finish. But he got busted!” Nya said as she looked at me, aggravation written all over her face. “Sometimes, things happen that changes the direction people originally planned. As far as us living in a hell hole, mom is doing the best she can. You should learn to show a little appreciation.”
Nya said that with such an attitude, I just stopped talking. I knew they didn’t like to hear me say stuff like that, but it was true. They all wanted to walk around with blinders on and act like our mom was mother of the year. “You’ll change your mind when you get older,” Lyric said. “I want at least two or three.”
I didn’t bother to respond because I didn’t want Nya jumping down my throat again. I just kept quiet, picked up my book, and started reading. They could have as many kids as they wanted, but I wasn’t having any. I just didn’t want to go through any kind of struggle or be faced with raising kids on my own.
I never wanted to put children through the struggle and heartbreak we had to live through. I thought mothers were supposed to be nurturing and caring. Sure, our mom had those qualities, but when my dad was around. She was happier with him than she was without him. She tried, but she lacked in some areas. My best friend, Noreen had one of the best moms. She was the epitome of a wonderful mother. My mom could learn a lot from watching Noreen’s mom.
Don’t get me wrong, I still loved my mom. I just couldn’t wait to move out of her crappy apartment and on my own. I had three sisters, Harmony, Lyric, and Nya. Nya was the oldest, and Harmony was the youngest. I was two years younger than Nya and Lyric was one year younger than myself.
As we grew older, things got a little easier for my mom. She got promoted at her job a couple of times and told us we were moving. I rejoiced the day she told us we were moving out of the projects. I felt like George and Weezy when they moved on up and couldn’t wait to see where we were moving. I prayed that we were moving into a house with a backyard and garage. However, all we did was move into another apartment. It was a better apartment than the one we left, but it was still an apartment.
To me, once you have three or four kids, it was time for apartment living to be a thing of the past, but whatever. By the time I was ready to go to college, we weren’t struggling anymore. We still weren’t in a house, but we were living better. But growing up in an apartment with mom yelling and screaming all the time, eating oatmeal, grits and bread on the daily didn’t make me want to have any kids of my own.
*****
During my junior year in college, I met Iman. He was so handsome that when I looked at him, I just knew that I was drooling. I must have stared at him for a good three weeks before he finally approached me. When I saw him walking towards me, I almost ran towards the other direction. However, I decided to just play it out. I mean, I had been looking at him all that time, so what was I expecting him to do?
“S’up?” he asked, trying to act all cool and shit. That turned me on even more.
“Hi,” I replied as I moved a wisp of stray hair behind my ear.
“My name is Iman, what’s yours?”
“Takiyah,” I responded with a smile.
“Ta- ki- yah, huh?”
I nodded my head yes. “That’s an interesting and beautiful name. I ain’t never heard of no chick with a name like that before,” he said with a smile.
“That’s a good thing then. It means that I’m one of a kind.”
“Yea, I guess you could say that.”
“I just did.”
“Uh huh. I see you got a lil sass to you,” he admonished.
“I guess you could say that,” I responded.
“Ha, I just did.”
We laughed about that for a minute before he asked, “So, Takiyah, where are you from?”
“From here,” I said. “Well, not from this particular city, of course. I’m from a small town about an hour away.”
“Cool. I’m from Mississippi.”
“Oh, okay. Have you always wanted to attend LSU?” I asked.
“For as long as I could remember, I’ve wanted to be a Tiger, and rep the purple and gold. Hence, the jacket I couldn’t wait to buy,” he said as he widened his arms. I couldn’t help but smile at him. He was just too cute and I loved the vibe he was giving me.
“I see. So, Iman, what’s your class ranking? I’m in my junior year.”
“Wow! I’m also in my junior year!” he exclaimed in excitement. “It’s crazy how we’ve never spoken before now.”
“I was just waiting on you to make that move,” I said with a smile.
“Well, I’m glad I did.”
“Me too. So, are you living on or off campus?” I asked.
“On campus. I wanted the whole college experience, ya know? I wanted to be around for the panty raids, campus parties, ya know… stuff like that. I didn’t think I could get that if I lived off campus in an apartment.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. I had been living on campus since my freshman year. It wasn’t a luxury apartment or a house, but I was on my own and it felt great. Iman and I talked for over an hour that day, exchanged numbers, and started dating soon after. I couldn’t get enough of Iman Adams, and he couldn’t get enough of me either.
*****
By the time we graduated college, we were all in love and totally smitten with each other. I had graduated with a degree in pharmaceutical medicine, so it didn’t take me long to find a job. I worked for a pharmaceutical company and loved my job. It involved a lot of traveling, but I was given a company car, so I didn’t mind. Iman had graduated with a degree in engineering, so it didn’t take him very long to find a job either. He had decided to move to Louisiana since he had gotten used to the state over the last four years. I was happy about that.
It didn’t take long for the two of us to find an apartment and move in together. I hated the short time that we had to spend apart from each other. Three years into our relationship, we were living together as one. I loved Iman and wanted to be around him every chance I got. The two of us settled into a happy life; working Monday through Friday and off on weekends. Those were the best times; that meant we could spend all day together, cuddling or having a date night. It didn’t matter what we did as long as we were together.
We were sitting on the sofa one evening, cuddling and watching a movie when he brought up the subject of marriage. I knew we’d eventually have that conversation because that was what people did when they were in love. They got married and lived happily ever after.
“You wanna marry me?” I asked as I turned to face him.
“Of course, I want to marry you,” he said in his Mississippi drawl. “Did you think we’d just play house forever?”
“No, I mean, we just moved in together and stuff…”
“Babe, we moved in here almost four months ago. I love you. You don’t love me?” he asked as his smile fad
ed.
“Of course, I love you. I just didn’t know you were contemplating marriage, that’s all.”
“Well, isn’t that the next logical step? When people are in love, ain’t that what they do?”
“I suppose so. I mean, my mom and dad were never married. My mom struggled to raise the four of us girls all on her own,” I said.
“I know that. You only told me like a million times,” he said with a smile.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, babe. I love to hear stories about when you and your sisters were growing up. It makes me feel closer to you,” he said as he brought my hands to his lips. “I love you so much, Takiyah. I want to marry you one day and have a family with you.”
What had he just said? He said he wanted to marry me and have a family with me. Oh no! That wasn’t going to happen. There was no way that I was ever getting stuck to raise kids by myself and struggle the way my mom did. No way on earth.
“Uh Iman…”
“What is it, baby? Did I say something wrong?” he asked, a look of confusion etched on his handsome face.
“Well, you mentioned marriage, which I’m willing to think about. But then, you want to bring kids into the conversation. I don’t think I’m ready to have any children,” I said.
I didn’t want to say something that would cause me to lose him. I really loved Iman and I knew that I’d be severely heartbroken if I was to ever lose him. I just felt I needed to put all my cards on the table and let him know how I felt.
“Well, I wasn’t trying to get you pregnant now, babe.” He laughed nervously as he looked into my eyes.
“I know that,” I stated.
“So, what’s the problem? I mean, we don’t have to rush into marriage and we don’t have to rush into having kids either. We can take it one day at a time. But know this, I am totally and completely in love with you, Takiyah Martin. More than anything in this world, I want to marry you and live happily.”
He took me in his arms and before I knew what was happening, we were butt ass naked, making love on the living room sofa. As he got down between my legs, and nibbled on my precious goodies, I moaned in satisfaction. Iman was the only man I had ever been with and I was so happy that he knew how to please me in bed. He not only took my virginity from me, but he taught me how to make love and please him too. He was a very attentive and patient lover.
