21. Yeremy
Yeremy
M y ceiling fan spun in slow circles above me as I laid on my side curled up. My pillow was damp from crying, face dry and stained. I had a slight headache and could feel the swelling in my eyes. The weight of everything had me running all kinds of different scenarios in my head on what to do next.
I felt hollow, like something inside me had been scooped out and tossed into the gutter.
A soft knock came at my room door, seconds later it cracked open before I could answer.
I turned a little and saw my mom walking in.
Her hair was tied in a messy silk wrap. All her makeup was off, along with her long eye lashes.
I see why Casper couldn’t leave her alone, my mother was authentically beautiful. She had a comb in one hand, and a jar of Blue Magic grease in the other.
“Yes?” I croaked, barely recognizing my own voice.
She didn’t answer right away, just walked to the edge of the bed and sat down with a look of concern that I hadn’t seen from her in years.
My mom loved me, she never mistreated me.
In fact, she always tried to be there, but Casper took over, not giving her much room to have any say so in anything while I was growing up.
“You look like you been carrying the whole damn world on your head,” she said quietly.
“I’m just here to fix your crown and have a talk with you, baby.” She reached out and touched my sweated out, thick, tangled hair.
I sighed and sat up slowly, I was hesitant and confused.
I could count on one hand the number of times she ever touched my hair.
Casper had the best hair stylist hooking me up since the age of five years old.
I watched her unscrew the jar, she dipped her fingers into the thick grease.
She leaned in and started working it through my roots with care.
I closed my eyes as her sharp nails grazed my scalp. We sat in silence for a while as I rested my thoughts, just appreciating the moment.
“You surprised I came in here?” she asked after a while.
“Yes.” I nodded.
She parted my hair gently with the tail of the comb.
“I saw how your daddy talked to you earlier…the look you gave him…I seen it before,” she whispered sadly.
“I’m leaving.” My throat tightened as I swallowed down hard.
Her hands paused for a second then kept moving before she asked me where I was going.
“I don’t know yet, but I can’t stay here. Not in this house, under his roof.” I closed my eyes.
She didn’t argue with what I said, and I was grateful for that. I didn’t need anyone trying to convince me otherwise.
“Is it about what he let happen, or the truth of it all in him just simply loving you and trying to protect you by all means necessary?”
I turned to glance at her, but she stayed focused on parting my hair into thick sections.
“It’s all of it.” I spoke.
“I’m just tired, I got to live my life without him in the background trying to control it. I love Casper to death, but?—”
“I get it. You don’t even have to explain it, Yeremy.”
“Why do you let him treat you the way he does?” I asked.
She paused for a long time. She sat the comb down in her lap then wiped her hands on top of her cotton gown.
“Casper loves me but refuses to trust me again. I broke his heart, and I’ve spent an endless amount of time trying to gain it back again.” Her voice came out low and rough.
“All the women he passed through just to hurt me has numbed me. I can never turn my back on that man because, even when I thought that he wasn’t your biological dad, he still stepped up and was willing to take the role without knowing forsure.
To this day I never shared the positive DNA results, and he has remained a good father. ” Her eyes filled with shame.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
“You’re his daughter, Yeremy… I made sure of it.
I’m just saying till this day he never asked to see the results.
That’s how I know he still loves me. He’s never tried to deny you or treat you differently.
He makes me pay for my reckless decisions while giving you a life that I always dreamed of having.
Casper probably will never forgive me, but he has always been there for me in my time of need without throwing in my face what all he’s done…
I just feel like shit for the one time that he really needed me, I wasn’t there for him. ” She casted her eyes down sadly.
“What happened, Ma?” I searched her eyes for answers.
All I saw was sadness, her gaze dropped down to her nails. She picked at them and looked everywhere but at me.
“It’s clear that he loves you, but he treats you like he hates you. What I saw when I walked up is something that I never saw between y’all,” I said.
“He loves me, but his hate over rides the love. Casper is hot and cold when it comes to me. When no one is around, he’s himself.
Casper likes to be babied; he gets to be the real him with me behind closed doors.
All them hoes he keep around is a facade and they are meant to hurt me.
When we around people, he treats me like what you see when you are around us.
What you walked up on today, was how we always are behind closed doors,” she sadly admitted.
“But why?” I asked again.
She took a deep breath and glance back at me. Her eyes welled up with tears as her shoulders dropped.
“It was Memorial weekend…I was happy Casper was leaving because he barely let me breathe. He loved to be literally in my skin if he wasn’t out dominating the streets.” She chuckled sadly.
“Casper went to visit his mom and dad but also had a big drop off to do with your uncles down south. I ended up getting drunk with my girlfriends. I took pills and snorted dope that night. We ended up at a party that I had no business being at. Casper was blowing me up all night, so I turned my phone off. Long story short… When he got to Mississippi, his parents were robbed and killed. It ended up being an ambush connected to the men that was supposed to be new potential buyers, which would have plugged Casper in down south. Casper got shot, he was in critical condition. It wasn’t him blowing up my phone, it was your uncle calling back-to-back to get me to fly out to Mississippi to see about your dad.
While all of that was happening, I was at a party with so-called friends on the wrong side of town…
getting a train ran on me. I was out of it for days; they recorded and sold the tape for dirt cheap…
” Her voice cracked as air left my lungs.
“Mama.” I gasped.
Her eyes filled with shame and sorrow. Her tears threatened to spill over as she rocked back and forth slowly.
“I couldn’t even remember all their names…
I just remember waking up naked in my own throw up and cum stains.
I contracted a couple of STDs… By the time your father made it back to Cali, the sex tape had already fell into his hands.
It didn’t make it no better that I was two months pregnant when them niggas violated me.
Your father wasn’t no saint, he was loyal and loved me but I knew he cheated from time to time.
I did my dirt too just to make myself feel better.
It’s just that this time…I wasn’t there for him when he really needed me.
It was embarrassing as well to be Casper’s woman getting passed around like a fucking blunt.
Niggas felt like they had one-up on him because I made myself assessable.
Before you, I was his trophy; when he said this ‘my woman’, his chest would be all pumped out. ” She chuckled wearily.
“He allowed me to stay in his house and made me agree to let him be the one to raise you. He agreed that I could nurse you and be in the house up until you was potty trained. Casper wasn’t that evil by taking you fully away from me when he could have if he wanted to.
He let me get you every weekend. But after everything…
I stopped trying to be loved by him…I tried to survive without him, but it was hard.
I started getting high off dope to survive my own heart ache…
became a shitty ass mother, although I loved you so much, Yeremy.
I also started to battle being sexually hyper active, it was to the point where I couldn’t control the shit.
I haven’t felt like a woman in a long time, Yeremy.
Only time that I feel close to being the woman I used to be is when I’m here in the same household as you and Casper.
Even that hurts because I wonder what it would have been like if I never went to that fucking party.
If I just listened to him and stayed the fuck home. ”
My heart instantly shattered for her. It felt like for the first time I was really getting to see and know my mom. She was a woman with her own broken story. Betrayal through friendships, stuck in her own war with discovering her worth as a woman.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She nodded, sniffed once, and cleared her throat.
“If you leave… do it right. Don’t just leave ’cause you hurt. Leave because you know your life can be more than this. Casper has a hard time with doing things the right way. His way is sometimes wrong, but he means well. He just doesn’t want you to end up like me.