Majeston #2
The screech cut through the room so fast everybody turned.
Masina stood at the top of the steps looking like she was one sentence away from committing a felony.
I reached for Yuki and pulled her back toward my side.
I had heard enough about the showdown at Kade’s birthday party to know better than to underestimate either one of these women.
Didn’t nobody want to see two grown women, mothers at that, throwing hands in the middle of somebody’s mansion.
“Ma.” Kade sighed. “I invited them here.”
Masina’s eyes never left Yuki.
“This is Ysis’s pops, and I feel like in light of everything that’s been hidden, we deserve to get this shit out in the open.
We tired of skeletons falling out the closet every time something good happens for us.
This will be the end of it and afterward we gone deal with Marius. But first things first.”
He looked back toward us. “Come on.”
We followed him into the dining area.
“Ms. Aretha, would you mind bringing us some drinks please?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Myles.” Everybody settled into their seats while Kade excused himself to retrieve Ysis. The second he disappeared, Masina leaned back in her chair and stared between me and Yuki.
“I remember you.”
“Wonderful.” Yuki rolled her eyes.
“Vaguely, but I do. From that bar we used to go to back in the day. Hmmm...so this yo baby daddy Yuki. He fine as hell. The fuck you want with my Fred Flintstone-looking ass baby daddy when you had a man of your own looking like this?”
She sneered, taunting her. Yuki’s leg started bouncing under the table. I placed my hand on her thigh, trying to prevent homicide.
“Guess the grass ain’t always greener on the other side, is it bitch?
” Yuki exploded from her seat so fast the chair nearly toppled backward.
Masina stood too. Both of them reaching across the table at the same damn time.
I immediately grabbed Yuki around the waist and yanked her back down into her seat.
“Aye, what the fuck did I say Yuki.” I barked.
She pointed across the table. “Did you hear what she—”
“I don’t give a damn what she said.” Both women looked offended.
“Both of y’all acting like teenage girls fighting over some old dick and pussy shit that don’t even matter no more.” That got both their attention. “We ain’t come here for all this. We came here to set this shit straight. No more. No less.”
“And we gone do that, but watch how you talking to my mama, nigga.” Kade’s voice filled the doorway as he returned with Ysis beside him. I looked over and he looked serious and ready for all the bullshit.
“I ain’t disrespecting your mama, young blood. I’m just telling both of them what it is.”
“And this is my house.” Kade took his seat at the head of the table. “So if anybody doing the telling, it’ll be me. Now everyone please have a seat before I lose my patience with this shit altogether.”
Oh, this nigga had heart. I couldn’t even front. I’d heard the stories. Heard about what happened with those officers. Heard about the war with Marius. Heard enough from Cazmir and Yayo to know what kind of man my daughter married.
Most men would’ve folded under half the pressure he’d carried. Most men would’ve ran. Kade didn’t strike me as the running type.
Standing there watching him take control of the room without raising his voice, I could tell he didn’t fear much of anything.
There was a confidence about him that couldn’t be bought.
The kind built through surviving things most people never recover from.
I respected that. Didn’t mean I wasn’t gone get at him man-to-man once all this family shit was settled, but I respected him.
“We came here today because so many lies have been told and secrets kept that I want to tell the truth.” Yuki finally spoke, drawing everybody’s attention back to the table.
“I hate that Isaiah isn’t here, but Ysis, I’ve always wanted to tell you both. I just wanted to do it the right way.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I guess there isn’t one, huh?”
Masina scoffed so hard I thought the woman might roll herself right out her chair. “Get to the point, Yuki. You ain’t telling us nothing we ain’t already heard before.”
Yuki’s jaw tightened, but for once she let it slide.
Probably because she knew she deserved every bit of smoke coming her way.
My attention drifted to Ysis. I couldn’t stop looking at her.
Every time I did, I found another piece of myself staring back.
The shape of her eyes. The set of her jaw.
The way she sat forward when she was irritated.
Even the little vein pulsing in her neck was familiar. Because Yuki’s did the same thing.
A nigga didn’t even need a DNA test, that was my daughter. Fifty percent me. Fifty percent her mama, and she still ended up even better than both of us. The more I looked at her, the harder it became to keep my emotions in check.
I felt cheated out of birthdays, school plays, first heartbreaks and every milestone a father was supposed to be there for.
I’d missed her first words. Her first day of school.
Her first boyfriend. Every scraped knee.
Every victory. Damn near every moment. The woman sitting beside me had known where she was the entire damn time.
I had to physically unclench my jaw. Because if I let myself stay in that headspace too long, I was liable to forget we were making progress.
How could she keep me from someone so precious?
How could she look at our daughter and decide I didn’t deserve to know her?
How could she spend years convincing herself she was protecting people when all she was really doing was hurting them?
The crazy part was, despite everything, I still loved her.
Still wanted her. Still woke up every morning reaching for her before I remembered she wasn’t there.
Maybe that made me a fool. Maybe it made me a better man than Marius. Either way, I knew one thing for certain. Before this night was over, every secret was coming out and nobody was leaving that table until my daughter knew the truth.
“Stop beating around the bush and lay it out already.” I nudged her.
Yuki closed her eyes before taking a deep breath.
Then she started talking. Lord, did she start talking.
The woman spilled everything like she had diarrhea of the mouth.
Years of secrets. Years of lies. Years of decisions she thought she could bury beneath power, money, distance, and time all came pouring out one ugly truth after another.
By the time she was finished, the room felt heavier than when we’d sat down.
Ysis looked like she’d gone into shock, staring at the table as if she was trying to process a lifetime’s worth of betrayal all at once.
Kade remained stone-faced beside her, but I could see the muscle in his jaw working overtime.
Masina simply sat there shaking her head, looking at Yuki with a level of disgust reserved for serial killers and people who don’t return shopping carts.
“Bitch, I will never forgive you as long as I live. Keep this homewrecker away from me. We don’t fuck with her kind over here.
” Nobody stopped her as she pushed away from the table and walked off.
Truthfully, I couldn’t blame her. Everybody in that room had spent years paying for choices they never made.
The only difference was Yuki had finally run out of places to hide from the consequences.
“I can deal with a lot. I have dealt with a lot.” Ysis finally spoke, and the moment she did, every eye in the room shifted toward her.
“My whole life I wanted a mother and a father. Siblings to share my life with. Instead, I got dragged into a war I was too young to understand and pawned off to be the next person’s problem. ”
“Mommy...” Her voice cracked before she gathered herself.
“You have scarred us for life. Even if you weren’t physically there, your actions left an imprint on us that can never be undone.
Then you wait until we’re grown to reopen the same wounds and douse them with salt and alcohol.
Do you understand how that feels?” The word mommy hit different coming from a grown woman.
I watched tears gather in her eyes and felt something inside me crack right along with her.
“This is so fucked up. At one point I was open to hearing you out. I was even willing to advocate for you because I saw how hard you were willing to work for it. But this?” She shook her head.
“This I don’t think we can ever come back from.
The damage is too great. It hurts to even look at you right now.
When I look at you, I think about what you did.
When I think about what you did, I think about my childhood.
Do you know what that makes me wanna do, huh mom? Huh dad?” Neither one of us answered.
“It makes me want to get so high I can’t feel my face.”
“Ysis, enough.” Kade cut in.
“No.” She looked at him before turning right back toward Yuki. “They need to hear this. She needs to understand the magnitude of what her choices created.”
There was no stopping her now. “That’s right, mom. I used to be addicted to ecstasy. Being force-fed pills while different men fucked me until it became normal. All under a roof run by a man you decided to have an affair with.”
“Ysis, I said that’s enough. You made your point.
” Kade’s voice boomed through the dining room, but I barely heard him.
I was stuck on the fact that my daughter had been addicted to drugs, and exposed to things no child should ever experience.
Stuck on the fact that while she was fighting for survival, I didn’t even know she existed.
My stomach turned. The urge to look at Yuki made my blood pressure rise.
“I just thought she should know, since we’re sharing.” Ysis said coldly. Then she leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.