“Stop talking about my family like that!” Vanessa yelled, causing the older woman to stare in shock.
“Here’s the truth; I’m not going to college! When I turn eighteen I’m taking that money and I’m going to New York to become famous. When I’m eighteen I can do what I want and you won’t have a thing to say about it!”
Bertha Mae White recovered her shock very quickly at her grand child’s words. She narrowed dark eyes at her and Vanessa suddenly saw her mother standing before her; a fierce woman that had protected and shielded her—even from her very own fierceness.
“Over my dead body,” she said coolly. “My baby didn’t sacrifice her life just so that you could run around the country being foolish. What? You think I didn’t know how she came about that money? It came from a lot of wrongdoing—I don’t want to know the details, but I’ll be damned if my baby’s dreams won’t be fulfilled in one way or another!”
Her grandmother had pulled the ace out of her pocket; she had played the guilt card. Vanessa said no more. She just turned and went to her room where she threw herself on her bed and cried. She owed her mother a part of her life and to pay that debt she would need to go to college to study something that didn’t interest her. She owed her grandmother her goodness because she had raised a daughter that had done everything that she wanted to keep Vanessa from doing.
Vanessa wanted to run back into the living room. She wanted to shout, “It wasn’t me that was the whore who ended up getting herself raped in murdered in a fucking park! I have better sense than that! So don’t blame me for how your kid turned out! I’m not her! I’m not my mother!
The shame of those thoughts caused her to cry even harder and she silently begged her mother for her forgiveness. When there was a light touch on the back of her head she started but grandma sat on the side of the bed and stroked her hair.
“Vanessa, hush now. Don’t cry baby. I know that I’m wrong to make you pay for the anger that’s in my heart. But I don’t trust that woman, her mother or her daughter. I would rather you not have anything to do with them…but in the end that is not my decision to make. ” Vanessa listened quietly, not understanding why her grandmother had to be so crazy about the subject.
The older woman sighed and then continued. “But I can see that it’s not the fault of the children what the adults did. You shouldn’t have to pay for what happened to your mother or to me, and neither should that little girl. If you want to spend the summer with your kin then I’ll allow it.”
Vanessa sat up quickly and tightly hugged her grandma. “Thank you grandma!” She wiped the tears from her eyes as her grandmother held her in her arms. “I’m sorry grand ma.”
“Me too, baby.”
She would be eighteen in four months but right then Vanessa knew no greater joy than being rocked in her grandmother’s arms.
A while later Vanessa got up to call her cousin and Bertha Mae sat there on the edge of her granddaughter’s bed listening to her excited voice. She felt a sense of sadness and loss as she remembered her own little girl sounding the same way when she was that age and talking to that Callista girl that she considered to be her sister. She thought sadly about betrayal and loss and hoped that her grandbaby would never have to know the depths of that kind of pain.
Chapter 20
Vanessa watched the cabdriver drag her large tote bag from the trunk of the cab. He lingered there on the sidewalk as if Vanessa was going to give him a tip. She was seventeen and didn’t have a job. The only tip she could give him was to not take the long route to Winton Terrace when the passenger knew exactly how to get there. She had told him to take King’s Run Drive and he said that it would be backed up. She had given him a piercing stare and told him to indulge her. He grumbled but did and they shaved a good five minutes off the trip.
Jalissa wobbled down the walkway wearing a gigantic smile on her face. Vanessa’s eyes grew wide in surprise and the cab driver who had determined that he was now dismissed, grumbled and got back into his vehicle and sped away. The cousins hugged and Jalissa’s big belly poking her was strange. Vanessa placed loving hands on her cousin’s belly over which a t-shirt was pulled tightly leaving the bottom portion exposed.
“Oh my God I can’t believe you’re really pregnant.”
Jalissa shook her head and rested her folded arms across the top of the protrusion. At six months pregnant, she had picked up more weight but it accentuated instead of detracted, from her prettiness.
“Oh Vanessa, it’s the worst! You gotta pee all the time and sometimes it feels like you’re smothering when you lie down!”
Vanessa looked at her in awe as she continued to touch her belly. Jalissa pulled her into another hug.
“I missed you cuz.” She twirled a strand of Vanessa’s hair. “You look exactly the same, only you’re different.” Jalissa blushed and her eyes seemed to glisten. “Don’t pay attention to me. These baby hormones make me crazy sometimes.”
But Vanessa knew exactly what she meant. She could still see her little cousin in the body of this young woman who smiled showing dimples even though she now had a small nose piercing and golden brown micro braids that extended her short hair down her back. Her boobs were exactly what Jalissa had always wanted; big and bodacious, although whether that was baby or just her was something Vanessa was unsure about. They were all grown up, but one thing hadn’t changed even with the passage of time; their friendship.
Vanessa picked up her bag and they talked about the baby’s father as they headed up the walkway to the apartment.
“So you have a boyfriend.”
Jalissa huffed. “That sorry bastard ain’t my boyfriend. We just had an accident.”
“Who is he?”
“Some guy named Dante.” Jalissa lightly gnawed her lip. “He doesn’t even know my real name.”
“Jalissa…” Vanessa chided because it sounded as if her little cousin was telling her that she had gotten pregnant by a one-night stand.
“I party downtown sometimes. All the guys up here ain’t about nothing.” She rolled her eyes. “But I go over there and they don’t know me...so I just be somebody else.” Jalissa stopped walking and gave her an apologetic grin. “I tell them that my name is Vanessa and I go to the School Of Performing Arts-”
Vanessa looked at her in shock. “You pretend to be me when you’re picking up dudes?”
“I’m sorry! Don’t be mad. And I don’t do it to pick up dudes. I just do it to be somebody different…”
Vanessa continued walking. “I’m not mad but it’s just…kind of creepy.”
Jalissa gave her an embarrassed look. “Not really. I always wanted to be you.”
Vanessa smiled and placed an arm around her cousin. “And I always wanted to be you.”
“I don’t believe that!” They paused right on the stoop of the apartment complex.
“Believe it. You were cool. You knew how to fight and how to cuss. You knew everybody and everybody liked you.” Jalissa smiled at that. “How’s auntie doing?”
“She still gets on my nerves. But every time I say I’m moving out she tells me that I should stay so that I won’t have to worry about a babysitter while I’m in school.” Jalissa sighed. “So I’m going to stay there until I graduate. Then I’m getting the hell away from her.”
Vanessa shook her head grimly. “Sounds like she ain’t changed.”
“She did.” Jalissa met her eyes. “After your mama died she stopped fussing so much. We got along better when she wasn’t constantly talking shit about everything and everybody.”
“Your mother really never told you about what my mother was doing out on the streets?”
Jalissa’s expression changed, her face becoming slightly amused “Well…she never said anything because I think my Mama was out there trying to do the same thing!”
“What?!”
“I just think she was shit at it,” Jalissa chuckled. “So that’s why she never brought it up.” Both girls grew quiet, Vanessa th
ought of her grandmother and wondered if Jalissa had grown up having to listen to her mother talking the same crap about her and her mother.
Vanessa finally looked around, taking in her surroundings. “Wow, this place is smaller than I remember.”
“And probably dirtier.”
There had indeed been a change for the worse since the last time she’d been to Winton Terrace. Back then she remembered that people had taken pride in their surroundings. Those that lived in townhomes planted flowers and put up trellises in their front yards and the people in apartments tossed their trash in the large barrels outside of each complex door. But now there was broken glass, food wrappers and used diapers littering the courtyard, and the garbage barrel was gone.
She looked over to where Scotty’s family used to live.
“You hear anything about…?”
Jalissa looked in the direction that Vanessa was staring. “Girl, forget about him. Scotty ain’t about nothing. He’s just like all the other guys around here and he’s just as bad as Tino ever was—maybe even worse.”
Vanessa nodded feeling a lump of emotion build up in her. She was aware of what Scotty was up to. A year after she had moved away Jalissa told her that he’d gotten busted selling drugs at Walnut Hills. And because it was a school zone he had gotten sent to juvie until the age of eighteen. After his release he had evidently gone back to it and for the last two years had been making a lucrative business from being a drug dealer. Jalissa had said that Scotty and his partners kept a tight reign on the drug trade in Winton Terrace. They had it all wrapped up and did whatever it took to keep it that way.
It had crushed Vanessa to learn that Scotty had followed in his brother’s—their brother’s footsteps. It had ended a fantasy in which she dreamed of marrying the solemn, blond haired boy and living in a beautiful little cottage with their beautiful little babies. He would be a teacher or something and in some of her fantasies she would be a stay at home mother that spoiled him and their children. Other times she was a successful singer and he was her manager. But no matter what the fantasy, Scotty was always there in some way.
When those fantasies finally died she would sometimes wake up from nightmares in which she was still living in Winton Terrace. What made them nightmares was not that she was afraid. It was that she would wake up with the realization that her time in the projects had been a beautiful, exciting time in her life and that she missed it terribly.
“Where is he living?”
“Who knows? All I know is that he still gets his hustle-on over here.”
Vanessa wanted to not care. After all, it had been a long time since she’d had fantasies about him. But she did care because once upon a time he had been there whenever she had needed him. “What about his brothers and sisters? Anyone know where they are?”
“Well Phonso is still around,” Jalissa’s eyes lit up. “He’s doing the same thing Scotty is doing. But Vanessa he is soooo fine now! Oh my God if I could get with him I would be in heaven!” Vanessa suppressed her urge to smack some sense into her cousin. She was already pregnant by some guy that she barely knew and now her aspirations were to get with a drug dealer.
“You don’t want a dope man. That’s how you get shot!”
Jalissa shrugged. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, he dropped out of school and lives with some chick up on the Hilltop over where Anthony Miller used to live.”
Vanessa smiled at the mention of that name. “How’s Anthony? I haven’t thought about him in a long time.”
“I hear Anthony is doing good. He’s in college and he’s always up there visiting his mother. He turned out to be cute, too, I guess. But I still prefer my caramel colored brothers.”
Vanessa chuckled and they finally entered the apartment building. “What about Scotty’s other brothers and sisters?”
Jalissa shrugged. “The Mama got really bad and I hear the kids got taken into foster care. Nobody’s seen Tino in years.”
They call me Valentino for a reason...
Vanessa shivered at the unwanted memory. She had never told a soul about what Tino had said and done to her that night. It was all wrapped up into a horrible nightmare that she wanted to bury.
They entered the apartment and Vanessa noted that it was decorated vastly different than the last time that she’d been here. There was a new matching living room set and floor model television. She could also see that the dinette set in the kitchen was a lot nicer. Aunt Callista hurried into the room grinning broadly. “Vanessa!” She hugged her which surprised Vanessa. “Oh look at you. You’re still so pretty…looking like your mama.” Aunt Callista sniffed as if she would cry.
Vanessa was shocked by how much four years had changed her aunt. The older woman looked terrible. A bad wig covered her head and she had picked up enough weight that a girdle could not even help her turtle-like shape.
“Hi aunt Callista.” Vanessa responded politely. “Thank you for letting me stay this summer.”
“Well take your things upstairs. Jalissa has my room until we get a two-bedroom townhome. They got so many sorry ass people here that got so many damned kids that I’m on a waiting list!” She patted Vanessa’s hand. “Well go on upstairs and look at the baby stuff we got.”
Vanessa carried her things up the stairs following Jalissa and her huge hips. She smiled as she remembered the way Jalissa used to sway her hips and now she didn’t have to try because her butt was eye catching all on it’s own.
The bedroom was much nicer as well and was fixed up neatly with a small crib in the corner. The room was obviously too small to hold everything including a third guest. Baby items neatly took up the shelves in the closet and Vanessa didn’t bother to unpack. She just propped her tote in the corner of the closet to deal with later. They would be sharing aunt Callista’s big queen sized bed…just the way they used to share the pull out sofa.
“Everything looks really nice.” Vanessa said, even though her aunt had always kept a clean home.
Jalissa nodded. “We’ve had it for a few years. She changed the house after your mother…you know.”
Vanessa nodded, pushing back the sting of loss at the mention of her mother. She wondered if it would be like this for the rest of her life; everything going fine and then POW--a painful memory. She sat on the edge of the neatly made bed and heard the springs squeak. And just as suddenly she was no longer sad. She giggled at the memory of that sound every Saturday night.
“Whatever happened to Mr. Johnny?”
“Oh! That nasty mutha turned up with the HIV. Every since then my Mama gets tested twice a year and she keeps to herself. She thinks all men are dirty now.” Jalissa rolled her eyes and then her expression lightened as soon as she had dismissed thoughts of her mother. “Remember our gang?”
“Yeah.” Vanessa brightened as well and they sat there together on the bed gossiping about the girls while Jalissa promised that they would all get together as soon as she got hold of them.
Jalissa rubbed her stomach. “Lets do that later. I’m kind of hungry. Want to walk down to Stop-N-Shop?” Vanessa remembered going to the little market nearly everyday during the last summer of her stay in Winton Terrace. “Girl I can eat up some cheese popcorn every since I got pregnant; that and hot pickles and fish dinners.”
“Fish dinner from Alabama’s fish bar?” Vanessa laughed. “I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“That’s what you get for moving to the suburbs.”
They went outside and Jalissa threw her arms around Vanessa just like the old days. “Girl, I missed you! Tell me what you’ve been up to. You got a boyfriend?”
“No. There’s some cute boys at my school but…they’re all performers.” Jalissa gave her a confused look but Vanessa found it hard to explain. It was just something that her and her friends all said and understood without explanation. The boys at her school were talented and would probably be successful but their passion was in their art. No boy had ever made her feel as if she was anywhere near as important a
s their craft…no boy except for Scotty who always put her first.
She changed the subject and began talking about her teachers and the shows she’d been in. She talked about her plans now that she had graduated and then they reached the familiar little store.
Again, Vanessa was struck by how small everything was…and dingy. However old Mr. Henry, one of the store clerks, remembered her and called out hello to her and a lady that had known her mother gave her a brief hug. It felt good being around people who remembered her. Jalissa went off for her cheese popcorn and Vanessa picked up a tiny bag of sunflower seeds, smiling to herself as she remembered how much she used to love those things. She selected that and was scanning the pickled bologna when the door opened, causing a faint jingle as the bell above it was disturbed.
“Wassup Scotty!” Someone called out loudly.
Vanessa felt as if she was moving underwater, her head turned in the direction of the opened door and she saw a tall blond man filling the frame. His long straight hair brushed his shoulders and was the same vibrant array of gold, red and light brown. He wore a goatee and his cornflower eyes crinkled against the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from his lips. Vanessa’s heart sped up at the sight of those beautiful eyes. He was so different; no longer a tall wiry kid but a man that was now probably well over 6’3. His shoulders were broad and his frame had thickened. But even with the differences she could still see the boy that used to ride his bike up the hill toward her apartment complex.
He was dressed simply in jeans and a black t-shirt, which was a throwback to how he had always dressed back when they were young. But now the look accentuated his masculinity; the muscles that filled out his exposed arms and the cut of the jeans that made it obvious that he had an athletic build.
Scandalous Heroes Box Set Page 50
