Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
IMANIO “GATEZ”
“ H ello,” Dessign answered the phone, voice thick with sleep.
“Dess, I know damn well you ain’t sleep when you supposed to be watching Naji!”
I heard movement in the background and what sounded like Dessign smacking her lips.
“Okay, maybe I dozed off for like… a second,” she admitted. “But Imanio, you’re acting like the girl’s a toddler and not a grown woman with two legs and a will to use them.”
“Exactly my point—two working legs and a will is exactly how people manage to escape hostage situations! Now, where is she?”
“I feel like you were trying to be funny, emphasizing the word ‘working’, but I’ma let it slide.”
“Come on, sis… never that.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, she’s in her room if you must know.”
“You sure ? You answered the phone like somebody laced your coffee with melatonin.”
“Ugh!” she grumbled. “You better be paying me triple for all this back and forth—you know I can’t walk! This wheelchair got Bluetooth, not boosters! Hold on! Perfection takes time!”
A few minutes passed, then I heard a door creak and wheels shift.
“She’s here… snoring like life’s been nothing but spa days and soft music.”
“I know… remember I have cameras. I just wanted yo’ ass to get on yo’ job.”
“I know you’re fuckin’ lying! Imanio, do you not know the struggle it took me to get here from that couch?
! Nigga, I almost broke my wrist trying to do a three-point turn in this hallway!
All for you to be sitting comfy somewhere, watching her on camera like Big Brother, and still got me doing manual labor?
!” she fumed. “You’re going to hell! And I’m putting you on Do Not Disturb after I leave here!
Oh, and I’m whoopin’ yo’ ass the next time I see you too! Mark my wheels !”
I was cracking up on my end. “My bad, sis.”
“Apology not accepted... unless you put me in your will. I don’t care what I get—just put me on the list!”
“You already on there, sis.”
“Well, let me hush before it gets removed. But all jokes aside, Imanio, if Naji really wanted to leave, she could’ve left…
me being here or not. Hell, I’m in a wheelchair.
Yeah, it’s high-tech, but it ain’t built for a hostage pursuit.
Not to mention, you got Ms. Shirley—a sixty-something-year-old woman—here secretly watching her, doing a job she doesn’t even know she’s hired for.
What could she possibly do? Make Naji sit down with a plate and guilt her into staying.
The lady thinks she’s just serving plates, but she’s really serving surveillance.
She’s basically an unpaid CIA with arthritis.
At least give her hazard pay or a raise in the seasoning budget. ”
That was true. Ms. Shirley didn’t even know she was part of the plan.
Yeah, I had my own surveillance—my phone—but between meetings, calls, and running an empire, I couldn’t keep eyes on Naji every second.
With Ms. Shirley there, though, I could breathe a little.
Because I knew if Naji so much as brushed that front doorknob, Ms. Shirley would snitch without realizing she was actually snitching—thinking she was just being a concerned staff member when really, she was my unwitting security system with a skillet and an apron.
”So fair warning,” Dessign kept ranting, “if she’s not here when you make it, the most I can do is just pray about it and post her picture on Facebook with a ‘Have you seen this woman?’ caption like she stole my wig.”
I laughed again. “Knowing yo’ ass, you’d include, ‘Last seen in my man’s hoodie with my good lip gloss in her purse.’”
“ Exactly! And I would’ve made it go viral too! Even if it wasn’t true!”
“Well, if she does leave there, that’s yo’ ass and you’ll have to deal with me.”
“All the reason why I gave you a heads up. And Imanio, let me clear one thing up… I’m not scared of you. All of these niggas around here might be, but I’m not!” she said, trying to sound serious but failing.
“Aight, Debbie from Friday. ”
“You picked up on that, huh?” She laughed. “Seriously, bro, that’s the most help I can give. I didn’t sign up for an audition to be a star in The Fast and the Four-Wheeled . I’m in a wheelchair, not a damn Batmobile.”
I chuckled.
“I don’t think you have to worry about her trying to escape, though… Especially not after the beautiful bonding moment we had.”
“Is that so?” I asked, already smirking. I knew damn well she was adding sauce.
“Yes! Can you believe it?! The one and only Naji Ali and me became besties today! Like, I’m lowkey thinking about getting us matching bracelets! You need to hurry up and make this marriage public so I can start tagging her in my posts!”
“So basically you wanna use her for clout?”
“Clout?! I’ll have you know I already have 800K followers … thanks to your popularity and the fact that people love a wheelchair baddie with fashion sense and a soft smile.”
“But tagging her could get you that mil, huh?” I asked.
She smacked her lips.
“Whatever! I’m looking at the bigger picture! Me and Naji could be unstoppable! We could do ‘Get Ready With Us’ videos—I style her and she teaches me how to smize without looking constipated.”
I started laughing. “You need serious help.”
“I’m so serious, Imanio! I could see us now…
front row at Fashion Week in six months!
If we’re not there, I’ma blame you, then sue you for delaying my influencer rise!
So to answer your question, no, I don’t want to use her for clout; I wanna show them dusty bitches who ghosted me after my accident that God not only removes, but he upgrades!
But where you at? I’m hungry! I’m sure Naji is too. ”
“I’m actually headed to Grandma’s.”
“Oh, dang! You could’ve told me! I’ve been meaning 7to go by there and see her.
But it’s not like I could’ve come anyway—I’m babysitting.
Still, tell her I said hey… and Auntie Renee too if you see her.
Oh, and if she cooked, grab me a plate! I’m starving !
Seriously. If not, call me when you leave so I can tell you what I want to eat. ”
“Dess, you got a whole nigga… a fiancé . That man can’t feed you?”
“I’m sorry, what ?! Okay! Watch me not babysit for you ever again!”
I laughed. “I’m just fuckin’ with you, sis. I’ma bring both of y’all something… although Naji may not eat much. Then again, it’s Friday… her cheat day. I’ll call you when I leave.”
“Okay then! Don’t forget the cornbread if she made some!”
Two minutes hadn’t even passed before my phone lit up again.
Dessign.
I sighed, already laughing as I answered. “Yeah, Dess?”
“I forgot to tell you—if she made banana pudding, I want some! And don’t be bringing me no corner scoop either! I want middle pudding, with at least two full Nilla wafers!”
I shook my head. “Really, sis?”
“I’m serious! Last time you brought me that dry-ass edge piece with like half a wafer and a spoonful of attitude.”
I grinned. “You act like you placing an Uber Eats order with God.”
“I am ! Grandma's food is spiritual! Respect it!”
“You done now?”
“I think so… unless she made pound cake. If she did, I want a slice wrapped in foil and warmed for seven seconds in the microwave. Not eight. Seven. ”
I stared at the phone. “You can warm it up when I bring it to you. I’m hanging up.”
“Okay, bye—but don’t forget the pudding!”
Click.
I chuckled.
We talked and hung up the phone on each other like that all the time.
About five minutes later, I pulled up to my grandma’s house—the hood, where she refused to leave.
The neighborhood wasn’t the worst, but it damn sure wasn’t the best. It wasn’t deep in the trenches—no boarded-up houses on every corner, no regular gunfire to soundtrack the night—but it was still the hood.
Not gentrified. Not polished. Just familiar .
The kind of place where ice cream trucks still circled year-round, even in February, and somebody’s cousin stayed selling seafood plates out the trunk of their car.
I had tried—more than once—to put her in a better neighborhood.
A condo uptown. A two-story home in a gated community. A lake house with a porch swing and a whole separate guest wing; something far from the sirens, the corner stores, the noise.
Not because I was embarrassed, but I cared about her safety—although she could hold her own. But Mama Rose shut that idea down every single time with a hand wave and a look like I’d just told her she had to join the army.
Thinking about it took me back to the last time I asked her, which was over a year ago.
“Imanio, for the I don’t know how many times, I’m not leaving my people,” she stated with finality, with a hand on her hip and stirring a pot with the other like she was delivering scripture and supper at the same time.
“I know who lives next door,” she continued.
“I know who cuts across my lawn, who pretends they don’t see me when I wave, and who needs to stop letting they’re kids climb my damn fence.
Juanita’s boys even volunteer to shovel my walkway in the winter. ”
She pointed a spoon at me.
“If I move into this big ol’ dreamhouse of yours, who gon’ do that for me?
Huh? Mr. HOA with his fancy clipboard? Surely not you.
Grandson, I appreciate what you’ve been wanting to do for me for years, but I got babies to feed, grown men who cry on my porch after breakups, and folks who knock on my door when their lights are off.
They need sugar, prayer, or Wi-Fi. And you want me to move somewhere with a homeowners association that will fine me for frying fish on a Friday or to a neighborhood where the neighbors clutch their purses when I sneeze too loud? ”
She scoffed, then hit me with the final blow.