Love Me

by Diamond Johnson

  Around five this evening, I came out of the bedroom to go downstairs for a bottle of water, and I saw where he’d left a note on the fridge, telling me that he and a few of his co-workers were going out tonight to celebrate one of the employee’s birthday at the office. From that letter alone, I knew that we were done. There used to be a time where he would invite me to everything concerning his job, but the fact that he would go without me proved to me that this was pretty much a wrap. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were out tonight telling people that he was in the process of getting a divorce if someone happened to ask about me.

  Maybe I was talking crazy, but that was just the way I felt. I let the water fill up the tub after adding some bubble bath and quickly running down the stairs to grab a glass and a bottle of wine. Yes, it was indeed one of those nights. I pulled my long hair up into a sloppy bun, and pretty soon, I was ridding myself of all the clothes that I was wearing and getting inside the tub, making sure that I was careful to not get my cast wet. I would be happy as hell when this shit came off my arm.

  It took me thirty-three damn years to break my arm and get a cast. I still can’t believe that my reckless and angry driving had caused me to get into my first car accident ever. Then, out of all the people in the world, look who I ran into. I still couldn’t get his sexy name out of my head… Za’Kai. It was something about that name that was so attractive to me.

  When he and I first had an exchange, of course, I noticed his attractiveness, but his disrespectful mouth had me turned completely off with him. It wasn’t until the night of the accident saw a softer side of him that I ended up feeling like I was committing adultery in my own marriage. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he lifted my body up in his strong arms out of my car and sat me on the hood of his. Or, what about when I was in the doctor’s office crying, and he came over and wiped my tears? The whole time the doctor was applying my cast, he stood behind me, gently massaging my back. Then, the encouraging words that he’d said to me back in the car that night.

  He did all the things for me that night that my husband was supposed to have done. When I made it back home the next morning with my kids and the cast on my arm, Jerrod wasn’t the least bit concerned about what happened to me. Of course, he asked what happened, but he was so nonchalant. Even after telling him that the front of my car was completely totaled, his fucked up response to me was, “you got to be more careful.” That’s what I got from my own fuckin husband. He never came over and hugged and kissed me or thanked God that the accident wasn’t much worse than it could have been.

  The more I thought about the fucked up things that I’d been putting up with in this marriage, the more I drank from the wine. If I kept it up, I was going to finish the entire bottle that I’d just opened tonight. My body was finally fresh and clean, and I let the water out before I got out and wrapped a towel around me.

  I went over to the sink and did all of my nightly skin routines followed by brushing my teeth. As I was rinsing my mouth out, I heard the front door open followed by the alarm being disarmed. I rolled my eyes because I knew it only meant that Jerrod was home. My hair was a mess, and I needed to tame it a little bit, even though all I was about to do was get back in the bed.

  I used one of the hair brushes along with some hair gel and put my hair into a much neater ponytail. Once I was finished in the bathroom, I walked out with the towel wrapped around my damp body and holding the dirty clothes that I’d just taken off. I could see Jerrod through my peripheral as he sat at the foot of the bed, and I felt his penetrating gaze on me. I ignored his gaze along with his presence as I went in my closet to drop the clothes into the dirty hamper.

  “Where my kids at, Takari?” he finally asked me as soon as I was getting ready to walk out of the bedroom.

  I could hear the distaste and the anger all wrapped up into one in his voice. I had no idea what he found himself having an attitude with me for, but they were his kids, so he deserved to know where they were.

  “Our kids are over their aunt’s house,” I let him know as I stood by the door frame with my arms crossed over my chest.

  I examined his attire for the night, and I had to admit that he looked good. Jerrod always dressed well, but over the years, I’ve become so accustomed to seeing him in only suits, so it was nice to finally see him in something a little bit more laid back. He wore a plaid Burberry shirt with a pair of khaki bottoms, and the matching Burberry sneakers were on his feet. His hair was freshly cut, and even with the little distance between us, I could smell his cologne.

  I was going to turn on my heels and head back to my room, but when he released a sarcastic laugh, followed by him pulling on his chin hair, I felt the strong need to stick around a little longer. He was looking at me, so I raised my eyebrows in confusion because I wanted to laugh too. I didn’t just tell him a joke, so I wouldn’t mind finding out what the hell was so comical.

  “It’s just a little inside joke, man. I’m just trying to think of a time when my mom ever just dropped me and my brothers off to our grandmother’s and our auntie’s and uncle’s house, and I’m having a hard time remembering that. If my parents had to go on little business trips throughout the year, then, of course, they would drop us off with an aunt or something, but even then, my mom hated doing shit like that. You’re so different, though. You think this parenting shit has an on and off button. You get a little headache, and there you go, dropping my fuckin’ kids off to the projects somewhere! On top of that, you never even ask me if it’s okay for my kids to stay in a certain place. You just make certain moves without consulting with me first. How the fuck you think I feel after coming home from a long night, only to find out from you that my kids are not even here. And you wonder why the fuck our thirteen-year-old daughter got pregnant.”

  His dumb ass tried to mumble the last part, but I heard him loud and clear. This was the shit that I was talking about. He was so fuckin’ quick to try to bring me down as a mother, but I had something for his ass.

  “Let me ask you something, Jerrod. What color was Jaden on this week in school for his behavior?” I asked him, and he waved me off. “What about Jada? What was her color? The twins went on a field trip this Friday, do you know where they went? What’s the twins’ favorite television show? Why does Journey insist on sleeping with both of the lamps on in her room every night? Those are all questions that you don’t know the answer to, yet you have the fuckin’ balls to try to discredit me as a fuckin’ mother?

  “Yes, Journey got pregnant, and you want to point the finger at me, but we are both to blame for that! Best believe I’ll never let another thing slip over my head when it comes to my kids! You cannot tell me shit about my kids that I don’t know, and the sad thing is, I can’t say the same thing for you! Talking about I drop my kids off to my family every chance I get when you know damn well that that’s a fuckin’ lie. The twins are damn near glued to my fuckin hip, so they can’t stand to be away from me, even if it’s for a few minutes. I deal with the kids on my own every fuckin’ day! Seven days a week, while you walk around like the only priority you have is that fuckin’ job. You know what? What the fuck are we even doing, Jerrod? I can’t do this shit no more with you, man! I can’t do it,” I said, and my voice cracked because I knew that this was it.

  “I’m not happy. I swear I want a divorce. Call the lawyer in the morning so we can make this happen,” I said, and there he was again, laughing like something was funny.

  “Say that shit again, and I’ll make you feel what you’re going to feel for the rest of your life if you decide to walk away from me. You said you want a want?” he asked, standing up from the bed and walking over to me.

  Now that he was standing in front of me, breathing down on me, and looking at me, I could smell the liquor on his breath, which only proved that his stupid ass was drunk. I wasn’t scared of Jerrod at all, so I didn’t even bother to step back even a little bit when he was all in my face. My tears were falling because I felt like I hated
this man. I felt like I was punishing myself by staying with him.

  “I said I want a divorce, Jerrod! I’m serious, and—”

  The towel that I was wearing around my body, he quickly snatched it off of me. In seconds, it hit the floor. I looked at him like he was crazy, and in a few short seconds, he had my body lifted up in the air. He held me in his arms as he walked out of the room with me. I screamed, telling him to put me down, and with sweat dripping from his forehead, he kept telling me that he would.

  When we got down the stairs, he walked over to the front door and struggled to hold my body up with one arm and use his free hand to unlock the door. Reality set in on what he was getting ready to do, so I kicked and I screamed even louder. The door was finally opened, and as if I was a piece of trash that he no longer needed, he tossed my ass outside, and I fell right on the hard pavement floor of our circular driveway.

  The crash from the fall wasn’t even the reason why I was crying. The fact that he would do this to me is what hurt. I quickly tried to stand up to run back inside the house, but he quickly went back in and closed the door behind him, making sure to lock it.

  “Say what you want again, bitch! A divorce? Do you see what comes with divorcing a rich ass nigga like me? You leave me, bitch, you leave with nothing! You don’t even get to leave with the clothes on your fuckin’ back because I own all that shit! You don’t even get to leave with the kids because I’ll fight for my fuckin’ kids in court and hire the best fuckin’ Jewish lawyer that I can find, and I’ll make sure that you never see all three of them again. Fuck you mean you want a divorce? Woman, I fuckin’ own you!” he barked on the other side of the door, but I could hear him loud and clear.

  I was standing right in front of the door, banging on it like a damn mad woman, telling him to open it. I was butt ass naked, and at any second, someone could drive by and see me. My ass was burning from me falling on it when he threw me, along with my elbow, and my ankles.

  “Yeah, that’s right! Beg me, bitch! Hell no, I’m not letting your ass back inside this fuckin’ house! I done let you get away with murder around this fuckin’ house! You call yourself fuckin’ ignoring me! Bitch, you ought to be bowing down and kissing my fuckin’ feet every time I walk through the damn door because I’m a damn king around this bitch! I took your project ass from out of a rat infested two-bedroom apartment, and this is how you do me? Nah, you going to learn some damn manners tonight, bitch! I’m talking to you like this because this is what you want. Had you never got with me, this is how them niggas would have been talking to your ass. I bet you wouldn’t have wanted to divorce them,” he said, babbling off a whole bunch of disrespectful shit to me.

  I don’t know if it was the liquor that had him saying this shit to me or what, but either way, he was saying things to me that proved exactly what he thought of me. I didn’t care if my kids and I had to go back to the fuckin’ projects, I bet my last dollar that this was it. I’d be a damn fool to stick it out after he said all this shit to me.

  Eventually, I just gave the hell up. I took a seat at the bottom of the porch steps and mentally stored everything that he had said to me. I was called everything from a bitch to a project hoe, he even went as far as to say that I pinned all three kids on him and that he didn’t even know if Journey actually belonged to him. He made fun of me for not knowing who my daddy was, and he even talked about my friends and my sister, calling them ghetto trash. I was called trash right along with them.

  At one point, the front door opened. I thought that he was going to let me back in just so I could throw on some clothes and leave, but that didn’t happen. Actually, something far worse happened. The trash bag that was inside the kitchen was poured over my head, and everything from the milk that I’d put in there this morning to the old coffee beans and whatever other disgusting items were poured over my body.

  My pride had already been ruined the moment he picked me up and threw me in the driveway, letting me know that I owned nothing, so I didn’t even bother to put up a fight. I just simply used the back of my hand to clean the soiled milk that had fallen into my mouth, and I kept quiet. After that, the door was closed.

  I sat out there on my ass for hours. Around three the next morning, I heard the front door turning. I gave it about five minutes before I got up. When I did, it was only so that I could run inside the house, grab my keys from the key holder, remove my wedding ring so I could leave it on the kitchen counter, and I was out. I hightailed it to my car, smelling like garbage and with not an item of clothing on my body. The moment I was inside my car, I made sure to lock all the doors, and I finally pulled out. Tears flooded my vision as I drove, making it hard for me to see as I hightailed it out of the community.

  “Meaning, you have other people in the world that you’re living for. You can’t be driving all crazy like that because you’re upset. Anything could have happened tonight. You lucky to have just walked away with a little cut on your forehead and a broken arm. Your kids only get one mama. Remember that shit.”

  Za’Kai’s words echoed in my head when I jumped on the highway, and I found myself driving like a mad woman again. Suddenly, all three of my kids and their faces popped up in my head, and that was the only thing that got me to slow down. I couldn’t let me kids see me like this. They would ask too many questions. They didn’t have to think of their father the way that I thought of him after tonight, so I wasn’t going to even go over to my sister’s house tonight. I would just go and pick them up first thing in the morning.

  It took me about thirty minutes to make it to the projects, and I was going to get out until I remembered that I didn’t have any clothes on. I knew for a fact that people, men especially, were hanging out at this time of night. I cut the light on in the car, and I thanked God when I found Journey’s dance bag in the back seat. I scanned the bag, and luckily, I was able to find one of her tank tops along with a pair of shorts.

  I felt exposed, so when I got out of the car, I made sure to wrap the bag around me, in hopes that it could hide my nipples that were showing because I wasn’t wearing a bra and my ass cheeks that were hanging from the shorts.

  “Takari!” I heard a deep voice say from across the way.

  I knew who that voice belonged to. How the hell could I have forgotten it?

  10

  Za’Kai “Bully” Kemp

  “Nigga, I don’t know why your ass just don’t move back over here. You always around this bitch,” my nigga, Marco, said to me.

  It was damn near four in the morning, and I should have been in the damn bed somewhere, but I saw a dice game going on, so I figured that I could take these little nigga’s money before I headed home. My kids could use some more kicks for school. I’d only been out there with them for about ten minutes, and I had managed to already have a pocket filled with twenties and fifties.

  Every Saturday, my grandma had a little shindig at her apartment. She would sit up with her little friends from around the way, and they would do nothing more than play cards, talk shit, drink, and eat. I never really came for the party because those old bitches that my grandma hung out with were some damn freaks and would let me know the types of freaky things that they would do to me each and every time they saw me. I don’t care how hard life gets, I’ll jack my dick to some porn before I fuck one of my grandma’s friends.

  Whenever I came to the party, I would come just for the food. My grandma knew she could throw down, and as much as I didn’t want to be around those old freaks, I wasn’t about to pass up some good soul food. The party had just ended about an hour ago, but I’d stayed back after everyone left, kicking it with my grandma for a little bit and helping her clean up, and now I was out here.

  “Hell nah. I love this shit, but I don’t want this for my kids. At any minute, mothafuckas could drive by and start shooting just for the fuck of it. Where I’m living at now, it’s boring as fuck out that way, but at the end of the day, my kids are safe,” I let him know, and he nodded his head to that
.

  Marco was my nigga, someone who I’ve known since the sandbox days. Although we were two different people with two different plans in life, that was still my main man. He lived in one of these apartments with his baby mama and their three children. Every time I saw his ass, I tried to preach to the nigga about opening his eyes so he could realize that it was shit other than these yellow apartments, but it was like the nigga didn’t have any vision. Out here shooting dice and selling little dime bags of weed is what he did for a living. He had a criminal record that was just as dirty as mine, so I get that it was hard for him to find people willing to hire him, but the nigga was talented just like I was.

  While cutting hair was my talent, Marco could draw the fuck out of anything. He claimed that it was gay for a nigga like him to be drawing, even when I explained to him that he could take his ass down to Brickell and try to sell his work. He could be making the amount of money in a day that he stands out here from sun up to sun down to make in a year.

  I wasn’t the nigga’s daddy or no shit like that, so I only let my preaching go so far. Besides, all I could do was lead the horse to the water, I couldn’t make him drink it. If this was what he wanted to continue doing with his life, then so be it. Plus, I could tell that the nigga would get a little agitated at times when I was trying to preach positivity into his life. Knowing him, he probably thought that I was trying to tell him what to do, so for now, I was going to save my preaching for my kids.

  “I feel you on that, bruh,” he said, but I knew he didn’t.

  If he felt me, then he would have been taking his art more serious so he could get his kids out this bitch. Although my kids loved coming around this part of town because to them, it was the best playground. It had a candy lady who sold all of their favorites, their grandmother stayed there, and over the years, they’d made friends over here, so of course, they liked it. They were too damn young to know that this area wasn’t it. This wasn’t where they should aspire to lay their heads at night. Hell, I even wanted my grandma to move from this side of town, but her ass loved it. She let me know every day that she was going to die in that damn apartment.