Baby Momma 4

by Ni'chelle Genovese

  I’d found it in a crumpled cardboard box in the back of the garage behind some old tires. Aunt Shan had either forgot it was in there, or she wasn’t trying to touch it. It was covered with spiderwebs, dust, and rat shit, with the words Novie’s Stuff scratched out and Trash written underneath.

  The tightness in my throat made it hard to swallow . . . hard to breathe. The walls were closing in on me, and I wasn’t even allowed to leave them. It cut me to my core to know my pops had done so much wrong in his life when I wasn’t allowed to do anything. No socializing, hanging out—no dating. That’s exactly why nobody knew anything about the one person I needed right now. I sent Asa a message to come scoop me up ASAP. If I didn’t get out of this house, I’d lose my mind or snap.

  “Justus, are you good? What’s going on?” Aunt Shan bust up into my room looking panicked and freaked out. Sweat was pouring off her forehead.

  I hated that they could do that, just come in and out whenever they wanted, but she’d taken the lock code off my door back when I was six. I had a seizure, and no one could get in.

  I flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m straight. You know this bracelet trips sometimes.”

  “Better to be safe than sorry. Let’s at least go take your vitals, Justus.”

  She started to come toward me, and I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t stand her. The thought of being around her, having her near me, made my chest tight. My name didn’t even mean anything anymore. What did that nigga know about Justus? Nah, I wouldn’t be able to fake this, not when I knew what I knew.

  I jumped up, knocking her hand away before she could touch me. “I said I’m good. I’m goin’ out,” I gritted the words through my clenched teeth.

  “Where the hell are you going? And who the fuck you raisin’ up at?” she roared.

  I sneered. This bitch didn’t deserve my respect, and after what she did, she didn’t deserve an answer for my disrespect either. My hands felt like they didn’t belong to me as I grabbed things and started throwing them into my backpack.

  Aunt Shan stepped everywhere I stepped, stalking me, watching me.

  “So now you think you too grown to answer me, boy? You ain’t too sick to catch one.”

  Still no answer. I gripped the closet door handles, imagining her neck, my pop’s neck in between my fingers as I flung it open. The door derailed from its track, slamming into the wall and falling to the floor.

  Aunt Shan grabbed my shoulder, spinning me to face her. Her fist was raised. She’d never beat me the way I’d seen her beat Aris. She’d never even hit Bryan, and he was always doing crazy shit back in the day. Aris caught the worst of it, and now I directed every ounce of hatred, hurt, and anger that I had in me toward her. It was like the wind left her sails; her fist came down, and she took her hand off my shoulder. She deflated right in front of me.

  “Just tell me what’s wrong, baby. If you’re in trouble, I can fix it. Whatever it is, I won’t be mad.”

  “You helped killed my mom?”

  There . . . I’d said it.

  Her eyes dropped to the floor. It looked as if I’d punched her hard in her doughy gut.

  “Why did he give me to you?”

  She didn’t even have to answer my question. The way she’d reacted was answer enough. I went back to grabbing some of my things.

  “Baby, there’s a lot you don’t understand and don’t know. Your mom . . . I gave up everything for her. She took so much from me.”

  “So you took everything from me!”

  When I threw the hood to my hoodie over my head I didn’t look back, and she didn’t stop me.

  Fat cold raindrops smacked me in the face as I marched across the street toward the silver truck sitting at the corner. I tried to let my feelings roll off my back with the rain and tears rolling off my cheeks.

  “Hey, you,” Asa called out as I climbed into the truck cabin.

  I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t say the words that had been filling my stomach ever since I read them. Asa could sense that something wasn’t right with me.

  “What’s the matter, Jus?”

  Asa was trying to look through me, but I didn’t need that shit right now. I grabbed the back of his neck, pulled him toward me, and I kissed my man like the world was on fire. His lips tasted like Dr. Pepper and spearmint gum. He moaned before pulling away from me.

  “Aww, shit . . .” Asa whispered.

  His eyes were staring past me, over my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn around to know what the fuck was back there. Wind rushed against my back, rain pelted against the back of my neck. The door to the truck was yanked open. I was snatched out by the hood on my sweatshirt. The wet pavement skinned my palms as I fell backward.

  I caught a glimpse of Aunt Shan’s face as she rushed past me with her teeth bared and hands clenched. She barreled past me into the cabin of the truck. She looked possessed.

  “Keep your fucking hands off my fucking baby! Don’t bring that nigga around here. You promised! You fucking promised!” Aunt Shan howled at Asa.

  Her elbow was flying back; she landed blow after blow. Asa wasn’t even defending himself. He was probably in shock. My life-tracker bracelet started beeping and kicking off warnings. All of my levels were off the chart. It made Aunt Shan’s go off too, and she turned to look back out at me, still holding a fistful of Asa’s collar. And I launched, using that moment to yank her backward out of the cabin of the truck.

  I hopped in and slammed the door almost catching her fingers.

  “Go . . . go . . . go! Drive, nigga!” I smacked the dashboard trying to get Asa to move his ass and get us the fuck out of there.

  Aunt Shan stood on the sidewalk staring after us. I watched her in the side mirror until she disappeared. I’d always been afraid of coming out, afraid of telling the world that I didn’t feel anything for women. That I actually liked men. Now she saw the truth for herself.

  It was quiet as fuck as we splashed through the streets heading toward the highway. Silence sat between me and Asa like a thick curtain. The quiet was good. I wasn’t in much of a talking mood. Asa always knew when to talk and when to stay quiet. Must be something that comes with getting old. Not that my boo was old, but he wasn’t in high school. I don’t even know if he graduated high school, but he was old enough to be my dad, and I didn’t give a fuck. We needed to figure out how to get my life tracker off or someone would always be able to find me.

  After a few minutes I broke the silence. “Asa . . . I found this, and I read it.” I held up the journal I’d been hiding for so many months. No one carried books anymore, not real ones anyway. Everyone streamed anything that was written or typed. Any books that still existed were worth a grip, and they were either in museums or art galleries. Bryan and Aris would’ve joked me for the rest of my life if they’d seen me with it.

  Asa’s eyes went wide as saucers. The truck swerved.

  “Where did you get that shit?” he asked in a strange whisper.

  “Found it. Tucked in a box full of Mom’s shit.” I sucked in air like I was drowning. “My dad killed her. She wrote it, and she said he’d kill her. I think Aunt Shan helped. She’s been lying to me for all these years.”

  Asa took a shaky breath. “I never told you this, but me, your dad, and your Aunt Shan go way back. I love you, and I loved your dad. More than life itself. But he has always had a way of looking at something and only seeing what he wants to see in it. Your Aunt Shan’s the same exact way.”

  “Like how she only sees me as a lawyer?” I asked in a dry voice.

  “Yeah. Something like that. Let’s take a drive and I’ll explain.”

  I pulled my soaked hoodie over my head and sat back.

  “It all started with Tima. Your dad’s first wife.” He cleared his throat. “Your dad’s name was Jarryd back then, and he worked with me on the FBI bomb squad. I found out Tima was cheating on him with some wack-ass lawyer from an office in Downtown Norfolk. I did what any homeboy would d
o. I looked out for my boy’s best interest. Yo, I told that lawyer leave well enough alone, but he didn’t want to listen. So I set that nigga up good. Called in a bunch of scares all over the place to keep the bomb boys busy. The only real one was in that garage. But somebody must’ve seen me comin’ or going. Because your dad somehow got sent out there seconds before it went off. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near that explosion. But I made that bomb, and I was one of the best bomb technicians, so it was perfect. Nobody would’ve been able to stop it except me. My heart was in the right place. I wanted to tell him for years, but he’d never seen it like that. So I never told him. And then he took that nigga’s identity. He became this Genesis Kane, and every time he loved someone it made my heart bleed. Your mom was smart. She figured him out. And she probably figured out the bloody hearts I was sending him too. But he never saw me. The nigga just looked right over me.”

  The wheels were spinning, but there were certain things that they kept kicking back at me, making my brain slam on the brakes.

  “If you knew my mom, why didn’t I see your name in her journals?” I asked, curious about the way Asa seemed to be hanging onto these stories about my dad.

  The truck sped up. Rain tapped against the roof and the windows. Traffic went by in a blur.

  “Li’l nigga, I care about you the same way I cared about his rusty ass back then. The only difference is that I actually love you. Fell in love with you. I followed around behind that nigga like a fuckin’ puppy, and I would’ve done anything he asked me to if it gave me a chance to get closer to him. He wanted to get rid of you; he said it over and over. When he saw you, he started acting weird. That nigga wouldn’t have given me the time of day, no matter what I did. My boy Chief suggested that we give you to Shandy, but it didn’t even make a difference.”

  My pulse thumped hard in my neck. I didn’t even see this nigga for who he was, and he’d been sitting right in my face the whole time.

  “You’re Foreign.” I didn’t ask. I accused him of that shit.

  My man, my boo, the dude my aunt Shandy called my uncle Asa, was Foreign with the electric-blue eyes, permanent dark stubble, and rough demeanor. He wasn’t even a real uncle. I’d felt so sick to my stomach with guilty and disgust, I couldn’t eat for a week after the first time we hooked up. Every time someone said something to me, I was paranoid that they could see my dirty secret, that I was gay, and that I snuck out three and sometimes four times a night to fuck my uncle Asa in his truck around the corner from my house. This secret perversion I was carrying around with me.

  “Yo, just take me back,” I commanded.

  Foreign or Asa or whoever he was ignored me. He sped up until the odometer was over a hundred miles an hour. His eyes were glued on the road.

  “Nah. We not goin’ back. You know how many years I waited? I dealt with his wife, his girlfriends, side bitches, and baby mommas. I waited and waited for that nigga, but he was too homophobic to just let shit happen. And now I have you. Justus is mine. I have his heart.”

  He finally looked at me. There was so much crazy in his eyes that I couldn’t figure out how the fuck I hadn’t seen any of it before. His hand was warm as he reached over to squeeze my knee.

  “You love me, so you’ll forgive me, and you’ll accept this. You’re mine.”

  Urban Books, LLC

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  Wyandanch, NY 11798

  Baby Momma 4 Copyright © 2016 Ni’chelle Genovese

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-6016-2644-8

  First Trade Paperback Printing April 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.

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