She had some of the biggest, brown eyes that I’d ever seen, making her look similar to the little Bratz dolls that my daughter Jada likes to play with. Although I didn’t give her much of a reason to smile these days, she did have a beautiful one, with two deep ass dimples indented in her cheeks, like the actress Lauren London.
Not only was my wife beautiful on the outside, but she was just as beautiful on the inside. Easily, one of the most caring persons that I’ve ever met in my life. Even now, I’m thinking about the way she is with our kids. I’ve never in my life heard her ask for an off-day from being a mother or even say anything that would make me feel as if she regretted having them because she handled it with ease. Adding on to her list of pros, she was just a woman who wanted her marriage to work since she never got to witness that from her own mother and father.
My shower finally ended, and I stepped out while placing the towel around my body. Like I did every night before I went to bed, I stood over the sink brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth out with mouthwash. Once I was in a pair of pajama bottoms, I left the room to go and check on my kids and my wife.
I went inside Journey’s room first and made sure I creeped in slowly because I wanted to see if I would catch her on that damn phone. Surprisingly, her phone was on the nightstand charging, and she was in bed under the covers, laid on her back, and lightly snoring. I kissed her on her forehead before I left her room.
Next, I went down the hall to go and check on Jada, my actress out of all of my children. Jada was the one who kept giving Shrimp and I a run for our money. On the physical side, she was every bit of me, but personality and attitude, along with everything else, she was just like her damn mama. So much person inside that little ass body. Looking at her now, I laughed to myself because she even slept like a little diva, with her head propped up on her hand, as if her life was so damn perfect and she didn’t have the slightest care in the world. I kissed her too, and then I made my way to Jaden’s room, which is where I found my wife.
A smile came to my face when I saw the two of them sleeping in his little bed that was made to look like a race car. My wife fit right in the bed perfectly as she lay on her back, and our son, who was indeed a mama’s boy and swore up and down that my wife was his wife too, lay with his head on her chest. I looked at them for a few minutes because honestly, it was the perfect sight to see.
Feeling like my wife should have been in bed with me, I gently moved Jaden over, kissed his forehead, and then I reached for my wife, carrying her in my arms bridal style. Halfway to our bedroom, her eyes fluttered open, and she tried to get out of the hold that I had her in, but I wouldn’t budge. If anything, I didn’t put her down until I pulled back the covers on my side of the bed and got in, putting her on top of me. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was wearing one of her silk pajama sets.
I held her by her waist as her entire body rested on top of mine, just taking this feeling all the way in because I couldn’t remember the last time that she and I had done this. The last time that we had been so close to each other. The whole time, she was squirming, trying to get away. The same thing I just mentioned about not being in love, I knew that she was the furthest thing from being in love with me too. I could tell from the way her body was tensed when I touched her.
“What’s wrong with you? Why you acting like I can’t hold you?” I asked, looking down at her.
“That’s the thing, Jerrod. I’m not acting. You haven’t held me in months, so don’t all of a sudden try to do it now. Look how out of sync my body is with yours. I’m uncomfortable as hell right now being this close to you. Just let me up,” she said.
Although it was dark in the room, I was still able to see her face. I looked for any signs of her just joking with me, but I didn’t see one. Feeling like she’d just shot me down, I sucked my teeth and shoved her off me. She shoved my ass right back, although she really didn’t move shit.
“I don’t know why you thought that I would jump at the feeling of you holding me! Keep the same energy that you’ve been giving me for months now. Let me know what it is that you want to do, and I’ll do it,” she said.
I turned and looked at her with nothing but seriousness in my face because although she didn’t say it, I knew what she was trying to say. She was trying to insinuate a divorce, but her balls weren’t that big to the point that she would actually say the shit. After the seriousness had left, I laughed right in her face.
“Just go ahead and say it. You’re talking about a divorce, right? Divorce me, and where the fuck you going, Kari? You leave your millionaire ass husband to go to what? Please enlighten me because I’m confused, baby girl. Remember that your name isn’t on shit! This house, your pre-school, I own all that shit, beautiful. You signed a prenup, remember? So, if you leave me, you don’t leave with shit, and that includes my kids because you will not be taking my kids to the slums. So, go ahead and be stupid and try to leave me if you want to,” I said to her.
I could tell from her facial expression alone that I’d hurt her with the things that I’d just said and that she was shocked that I even let the shit come out of my mouth. Just knowing that she was even entertaining the idea of getting a divorce enraged me. I was never this way with my wife. I was the type of man who couldn’t stand confrontation, especially with her, so I never engaged in arguments. Half the time, I was the one in this marriage who would take the blame for all of our problems and promise to do better, but I couldn’t have her throwing hints around about a possible divorce when it was me who had basically upgraded her entire life!
“You think I give a fuck about your fuckin’ money, Jerrod? Newsflash, I don’t come from money, so I honestly wouldn’t care. Is that what you think of me? You think that I’m with you because of your money? Think about all the expensive things that I own. Do I go out and buy them, or do you buy them for me? You know damn well that I barely spoil myself with shit because I’m always buying things for the kids! You bought me those cars! You filled that closet up with half the shit that’s in there! Half of the shit that’s in there, you know I don’t even wear because rocking thousand dollar purses or shoes has never even been my thing, and you know it.
“If I do decide that one day this marriage is becoming too toxic for me and I want to leave, you’re going to have to fuckin’ kill me if you think that I’ll willingly hand over my kids to you! Kids that you can’t even stay the full four hours at their damn birthday party!” she spat, followed by her getting out of the bed.
I knew she was pissed because when she walked out of the room, she slammed the bedroom door so hard that I know for a fact all three of my kids jumped in their sleep. I lay back in the bed on my back, pulling down on my beard as I thought about the fucked up shit that I just said to my wife. Even if I meant all that shit, I was never supposed to say anything like that to her. No, I didn’t think that Kari was with me because of the money, but it damn sure was a bonus. She needed to ask herself if she would put up with this type of behavior that I give her from a broke man. I knew she wouldn’t.
Before my father died, he told me to make sure that I had Kari sign a prenup. That way, if she and I ever decided to divorce in the future, she couldn’t leave with shit. Of course, when I brought it to her before we got married, she didn’t really care because we were so in love with each other at the time that we didn’t think divorce was an option. Plus, I told a little white lie and said that my father wouldn’t have given me the business if I didn’t make her sign the prenup. Even in his grave, he had a way of making me smile.
If she ever decided that she was stupid and wanted to leave me, I knew in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t have to worry about her spending my hard earned money on the bum that she was more than likely going to end up with. She’ll never in her fuckin’ life get another man who could even come close to Jerrod Evans!
Yes, I felt bad for the way that I had just talked to my wife, but look at the way she reacted to it. I lived with m
y parents full-time for the first eighteen years of my life, and I’ve never heard my mom even raise her voice a few octaves when it came to my father, let alone curse at him. I loved my wife dearly, but at times, I just felt as if she didn’t know her place. She had a man right in front of her who did more than enough to take care of her, so her talking to me like I’m just some bum off the street should never be something that’s occurred so often.
I could never see myself putting my hands on Takari, but I wanted to make it known to her that she will not continue to talk to me the way that she’s been doing for the past few months. This woman that I was now married to, I had no idea who she was. When I met Takari in high school, although we were friends for so long, she was the ideal girl that I knew my parents would want me to bring home. Yes, she came from poverty, and she and I were on two different spectrums when it came to our socio-economic status, but that still wasn’t enough to take away from her beauty and her brains. Back then, I don’t remember a time when Takari ever cursed. Now, it’s like every word that comes out of her mouth is profanity, and she makes it so obvious what part of the world raised her.
Then, she has the nerve to wonder why my mother is so distant from her. It’s because my mother has witnessed the “not so good” part of Takari as well, and she tells me just about every chance that she gets that I made a bad decision by making her, my wife. I didn’t know if I agreed with that one hundred percent, but I would agree to Takari having some flaws about her, like her fucked up attitude and her slick ass mouth that I wished didn’t exist.
3
Za’Kai “Bully” Kemp
“I’m leaving the grocery store now, Bully, and then I’m going to come by and get my grandbabies,” my grandma, who was damn near my ole girl, let me know.
This woman on the phone had raised me. She did everything for me besides carry me for nine months and push me out of her. It wasn’t because she was eager to do the shit either. More like, ‘you can either keep this bad ass little boy, or you can let the system get him.’ For whatever reason, she decided to take me in when I was only two years old. That’s because both my parents had gone down in a drug bust that had gotten the two of them well over fifty years in prison.
My parents were like the male and female version of Nino Brown in these streets of Miami. Even to this day, I can be in the hood, rolling dice with niggas that I grew up with, and if I ever run into any old heads, they’ll brag on the way my parents used to run shit back in the day. I’ve heard shit like that about my parents ever since I was about seven years old. The pictures that I would see of my parents together, that I had hanging up on the walls of the two bedroom, roach infested apartment that my grandma and I used to live in looked like they belonged in an old-school movie about a hood nigga and his down ass bitch.
One picture in particular that I’m thinking about right now was a picture of my father sitting on top of his red, old-school box Chevy and my ole girl was standing right beside him, toting a big rifle; carrying that shit in her hands like it was a fuckin purse.
Yes, my mother was gangsta, but I was a boy, so it was my ole boy who I aspired to be like. I knew since seven years old that I wanted to be a hustler. I saw the clothes, the jewelry, and the cars that my parents drove, and I wanted that lifestyle. I wasn’t thinking about the prison sentence that both of them had received because the money was blocking my train of thought.
My grandma did everything in her power to keep me off the streets, but the more she tried to shield me, the more eager I became for the love of the game. By the time I was ten years old, I was posted up on the block after school, selling little dime bags of weed for a nigga named Smooth who was running the streets at the time. By that time, it had been about eight years since my parents had been locked away, and Smooth didn’t give a fuck about my parents being legends because he made me show and prove just like everyone else.
In the beginning, my need to hustle came from me wanting to be like my ole boy, but as I got older and saw the way my grandma was struggling with trying to keep up with her bills, I was doing it because I needed to. My grandma had taken me in when she could have thrown me into the system, so I felt like it was my obligation to help take care of her, and that’s what I did.
For years, I was a bully, which is how I gained the nickname, Bully. I bullied the streets with the time that I was putting in to hustle. I bullied motha fuckas’ homes by breaking in and taking whatever I could take that was valuable. My favorite of all time was bullying people’s cars. I had a thing for breaking into cars and taking them to the chop shop for a pretty penny. With my way of living, you can only guess the number of times that I’ve been in and out of jail.
I started being in and out of juvie by the time I was ten for running away from home, smoking weed, selling weed, and robbing. By the time I turned eighteen, the Florida Department of Corrections could have just been my permanent address because I stayed in that bitch. I was risking my life, all for that pretty dollar. It was like nobody on this Earth could say anything to change my way of living. Even when I would get released from jail, I would go and visit my ole boy, and he would preach to me about the fifty-year sentence that he and my ole girl had, and how I shouldn’t aspire to be like them, it still wasn’t enough. Seeing my grandma down on her knees, praying to God and asking that I change my ways still wasn’t enough.
You want to know what my wakeup call was? Eight years ago, I got a phone call from my girlfriend at the time, Breshay, telling me that I was going to be a father to a baby girl. Couldn’t shit else in this world change me but knowing that I had a little girl on the way, I swear I got my shit together quick. I didn’t even have it in me to continue hustling because I kept fuckin’ around and getting my ass locked up for it. Same thing for the robberies that I was doing. God was telling me a long time ago that this wasn’t the lifestyle for me, but I promise I was ignoring all of His signs.
Knowing how much baby formula cost, food, clothes, and all of that other shit that came with having a baby, I knew that I had to get a job. That was the hardest shit ever because most companies didn’t want to hire my felon ass. Luckily, I was able to get a job at the stadium as a janitor, and on the weekends, when I wasn’t working, I did what I loved to do, which was cutting hair in my grandma’s garage. I was cutting all the little kids’ hair on the block, the pastor, just about everybody.
At the end of the week, when I saw how much money I was accumulating with cutting hair, I figured that it was time to quit my janitorial job because cutting hair was the job that was helping me take care of my baby mama and my child.
That was five years ago. I was a different person. Still very much a hustler, but I was hustling the legal way, which was in a small little studio office building that I rented out for five hundred dollars a month to cut hair in. I wasn’t rich by a long shot, but my bills were paid. I now had two children with Breshay, and both my kids were well taken care of. My baby mama could talk all the shit in the world that she wanted to, but she could never fix her mouth and say that I didn’t take care of mine.
At thirty-five years old, I wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be in life, but I was almost there. The money that I had saved up was almost touching the top of the shoe box, and I’d soon be able to buy that building and turn it into the barbershop that I so desperately wanted. I thought about the quick licks that I could make and how it would be quicker for me to come up with the remainder of the money that I would need for the shop. Then I thought about my eight year old daughter, Zakiya, and my five year old son, Za’Kai junior, and I was brought back down to reality and reminded that the quickest way wasn’t always the better way.
I just felt like my kids deserved better than what I was giving them. I wanted to be able to give both of them the shit that I didn’t have growing up. Granted, if you saw my children, you would think that they were the two happiest kids in the world, but I knew that I could do a little better. I was no longer with my children’s mother, so all thought
of my kids having that two-parent household was long ago thrown out the window.
I don’t know what it was about Breshay and me, but me and that woman just didn’t see eye to eye. I felt like she didn’t believe in a nigga, and that she wasn’t supportive when it came to me wanting to open my own shop, so that played a lot in our breakup.
When it came to her and me, we did what we had to do for our children, and that was that. We strictly co-parented; nothing else or nothing more. The last time we fucked was probably a month after she gave birth to my son, which was years ago. I wasn’t the type of baby daddy where I dropped the kids off at night and had to sample her pussy on the way out the door. I didn’t let her drop down to her knees and give me head or no shit like that because I wasn’t trying to send her mixed signals. Our conversations consisted of pick up and drop off times for the kids, financial concerns, and any other thing involving my children. That’s it.
“Not tonight, Ma. You can get them tomorrow. I’m supposed to take them to the movies tonight to see The Incredibles,” I let her know.
It’s crazy because when the shit left my mouth, I ended up laughing because still to this day, I couldn’t believe that I had turned into this guy. Not to say that it was anything wrong with taking my kids to the movies or no shit like that, but eight years ago, I wasn’t this person. On a Saturday night like tonight, when I would be at the movies years ago, I would be planning a lick.
“Okay, kiss my grandbabies for me then. I’ll come over tomorrow to cook breakfast for the three of you. I love you,” she let me know.
No matter how old I got, this lady still felt like she had to come over on the weekends and cook for us. I wasn’t the best cook in the world, but I could scramble a little egg and put some sausages in the oven.
Love Me Page 3
