“Yeah, Kinga?” I answered, maneuvering out of the parking lot.
“Y’all be talking shit to me ’bout that lil boy, but just when I picked Aja up from school why was he waiting out there to open the door for her? Why the fuck is he opening my car door for her to get into the car?”
“You just said it, fool. He was opening the door for her to get in.” Harlem’s voice in the background had me shaking my head.
“Nah, he was being disrespectful.”
“Yo, you’re wild as fuck, man. That little boy isn’t stutting you.”
“Yeah, because he’s trying to get some of my niece right up under my nose.” He grunted.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ma call you back. I’m in the middle of something, have her call me when she leaves ballet.” I knew Mondays and Wednesdays this season Harlem had her into different programs.
“Okay. Both you and Harlem are gonna stop acting like I’m overreact—” I hung up before this fool could finish, because he was indeed overreacting. I dropped my phone into my lap and glanced over at Jade. “My bad, baby girl, that was my brother. He has beef with this little boy who goes to Aja’s school.”
“Beef with a teen.”
I laughed. “Same shit I said. But apparently, he called Kinga Old School and was trying to mack Aja in front of him.”
Jade laughed so damn hard you would have thought I told a joke. “And how do you feel about this?”
I shrugged. “Like kids will be kids and I know my daughter. Ain’t shit there, but my brother is new to this parenting shit, so err’thing has him overreacting. He is ready to mush toddlers in the park over the twins.”
She laughed more. “So, he’s just overprotective.”
I nodded and kept my eyes on the road. “Extremely, but to an extent it’s necessary I guess.”
In my peripheral vision I could see her nod.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked as I felt her eyes before her hand found its way into mine.
“Sure, what’s up, love?” I glanced at her briefly before looking back at the road.
“Why doesn’t Aja live with you?”
I swallowed hard, not mentally ready to talk about what had haunted me for the last few years of my life. I guess I had to though. I had to come to grips with it and move on.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.” Her voice crept into my thoughts, letting me know I had gone silent after she asked why Aja lived with Kinga. I could have given her the short version, but I didn’t. Something in me wanted to deliver her a truth as close to the one I had been hiding from.
I held her hand in mine firmly, focusing my attention on the road ahead. “She has been living with my brother since everything happened with her mother. Her absence and my guilt for being the reason made it hard for me to look at my child. I had to leave and find myself outside of what had become a place of nothing but pain for me. I never wanted Aja to have half of anything, let alone an absentee ass parent. So I gave her the next best thing. Kinga didn’t know shit about being a parent, but he stepped up and handled it in my absence. Him and Harlem hold that shit down.”
“Where did you go?”
I cut my eyes from the road to see her face. “What do you mean?”
“You said you had to leave to find yourself. Where did you go to find yourself?”
“Felt like I went to the end of the earth, but in all honesty, I spent a while in the mountains, some time with a small community in the dry lands, then from there to the middle of nowhere. I did a lot of thinking and pondering. Feeling and carrying a lot of shit I didn’t know I would until one thing was very clear. I missed my baby, no matter how bad I felt about what she didn’t have.”
She squeezed my hand. When she didn’t ask any more questions, relief washed over me. I wondered if I’d tell her the full truth if she asked for it. Would I tell her that I caught my wifecheating on me and killed her along with the nigga she had in my bed?
She perked up and changed the subject. “So, what are we cooking again?”
I laughed, grateful for that. “You wanted a deep-fried fish sandwich. Right?”
“Yes, but I also said with the works, chef.”
“And I got you. Even though you didn’t tell me what the fuck the works was, Jade.” I maneuvered through the city, eyes on the road going to this lil in the cut grocery store I frequented when I was here. I didn’t much care for big stores, because everything had chemicals and was, nine times out of ten, processed. Po’boys was this mom and pops minimarket that was a goldmine to me. It had everything, though it didn’t look like too much of anything from the outside. All of the produce was grown fresh and pesticide free, while their meat was from their own ranch on the outskirts of the city. They were the true definition of farm to table.
