Page 19 of To Hades & Back
We sat in my parents’ driveway. I was nervous and ready to get this over with. I hadn’t spoken to my mom since she called to curse me out.
“Are you ready?” Hades asked from the driver’s seat. His hand was on my thigh.God, he’s so handsome.
I turned in my seat to look at my son. “Are you sure you want to do this? My parents are pretentious assholes. They only care about themselves and their image.”
“I’m not worried. I’m ready,” Dorian said with confidence. “Let’s do this.”
I took a deep breath as Hades walked around to open my door. When I got out, he pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. “You got this.”
That was all I needed to walk beside my son to their front door. They should have finished dinner not so long ago. I rung the doorbell and waited.
It took a minute or so for my mother to answer the door. Her eyes widened, but she recovered quickly. “What are you doing here? Who is this?” she asked with her finger pointed at Dorian.
“Are you going to leave guests on your doorstep, Mother? I thought you had more manners than that, Mrs. Copeland,” I taunted. My mother harped on always having good manners. That was funny to me because her popping up at my house was far from good manners.
She turned her nose up, stepped to the side, then let us in. We stood there so she could lead the way to wherever she wanted us to go. The house looked the same as when I left years ago. There was a new painting or two, but everything else was still the same. I found that interesting. As stuck up as they were, you would think that they changed their décor every couple of years.
“Honey, we have company.” My father turned to the sound of my mother’s voice. He glared between Dorian, Hades, and me.Awe, he’s not happy to see us.
Hades smiled before he walked over to one of the many bookshelves that were in the den. “Wow, this is a lot of books. Are they just for show, or do you two actually read them?” Hades didn’t bother to face them when he asked his question.
My father stood up. “Young man, there are Black people that read. I’m not sure if you were aware of that.” He gawked at my mother for a second. “Evelyn, may I speak with you in the kitchen?” He didn’t wait for her response before he walked out of the den.
I shook my head. I walked over to one of the couches and sat down. Dorian sat next to me. “Hades, come sit down.”
He put the book that he took off the shelf back. He kissed my temple when he sat next to me. I could hear my parents arguing. I didn’t know what they were saying, but neither was happy. A few minutes later, they came into the den and sat on the couch across from us.
“What can we do for you, Jin’jer?” My mother sat poised in her seat. I expected nothing less. “If you’re here to ask for money, it’s a no.”
Hades chortled. “Why would she need y’all pocket change? Stop playing with me like y’all don’t know what it is. Oh, Mrs. Copeland, I told my mother that you loved our wine. She said, and I quote, ‘Thank you, with your fuck asses.’ She’s not a fan of yours at all.”
My mother’s mouth dropped. I held my head down and giggled. Dorian’s eyes were locked on my parents.
“No, Mother, I am not here for money. I actually came here so that you two can meet your grandson,” I said with an arched brow. “Funny story, I found out that he’s not dead.”
Both of their eyes shot to Dorian, who smiled. “What’s up, Grandpop and Grandma? It’s good to see you on the living plane.”
They sat there stuck. Hades shook his head. “Y’all ain’t got shit to say? Like, how the fuck could you tell your daughter that her child died, but what really happened was you sold her baby?”
“We did not sell a baby!” My father pointed his finger at Hades. “Jin’jer was a teenager. She knew nothing about having a baby and being a mother. What we did was give her son the best opportunity for a better life.”
Dorian laughed. “You said that like y’all already had a nice, suburban family that was going to adopt me. Y’all relinquished me to the state. Y’all didn’t give a damn about me having a better life. Y’all just wanted me gone.”
“Well from the looks of it, they did a piss poor job with your foster placement,” my mother quipped. “It doesn’t matter if we wanted you gone or wanted you to have a better life. The fact of the matter was that our teenage daughter was not bringing a bastard child into this house. We did what we had to do to protect what we worked so hard for.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “So, what you’re telling me was that giving the program that you sent me to in Colorado eight hundred thousand dollars and the administrator a little something for her pockets to tell me that my fuckin’ child was dead was what you had to do. Also, what the hell have you done, Evelyn? You haven’t worked for a Prada, Gucci, or Chanel bag you’ve owned.”
Dorian put his finger up. “Wait, let’s not forget about the five thousand dollars a month they gave my foster mother to keep her quiet when she confronted them. So that’s roughly, what?” He looked up for a moment. “That’s like over three hundred thousand dollars. Look at me, a millionaire baby.”
Although his tone was sarcastic, I heard the hurt in it. It was fucked up. My parents were truly fucked-up individuals.
My mother jumped up. “Look, you little bastard and bitch. If I could do it all over, I would have dropped your ass off at the local fire station to save us some fucking money. Oh, and Miss Jin’jer, let me tell you what I’ve done to get my family where we are. I made sure our image was clean. You certainly didn’t make that easy coming home pregnant as a teenager like a common whore. Your father and I are well respected, and you were not going to have everything that we’d worked so hard for thrown out of the window because you didn’t know how to keep your legs closed.
“So, yes, you are fucking right we paid that school we sent you to, money to say your baby was dead. That greedy administrator had no issues with it as long as we threw in an extra one hundred thousand for her. That janky whore school was on their way to closing, and it was our donation that kept it running.” My mother’s true colors flowered her shoulders beautifully. She pointed at Dorian. “Oh, and your so-called foster mother is simply a money hungry, hoodrat bitch. You should be thanking me, because your loving mother said if we didn’t give her money that she was going to send you back to the damn state.”
I wish I could say that I was shocked Dedra said something like that, but I was not. That fit her personality. My son was her golden orphan. “You gave it to her.”
My father stepped forward. “Yes, we gave her the money. Five thousand dollars a month to keep a bastard and harlot away is worth it. I hope you didn’t come here thinking that you were going to make us feel bad about our decisions. If you did, it was a waste of your time. You and your bastard can get the fuck out of my house.”
