16. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
My baby wanted to be a princess. So today, God as my witness, she was gon’ be a princess.
Mehar found a real castle out in Forest Glen that was made of stone and had towers. It was straight out of a fairy tale out of a storybook.
She spent the last month and a frightening amount of my money turning that place into whatever a six-year-old sees when she shuts her eyes and dreams the biggest dream she could.
Now I needed to get out there and put eyes on it before folks started pulling up.
Walk it. Check it. Make sure every last thing was perfect.
That was the job I gave myself at every family function, the one nobody asked me to take.
I didn’t hang streamers and I damn sure didn’t bake.
I made sure nothing went wrong. And on the rare day something did, I made sure it got handled quiet, in the dark, before a single person I loved ever felt the wind off it.
I had my keys in my hand and one foot out the door when I passed the sitting room, and what I saw in there stopped me flat.
Skye had my baby up on a stool in front of the big mirror, doing her hair.
She had a rat-tail comb clamped in her teeth, a jar of grease cracked open on the table, and Dream’s tresses pinned up in a pretty elaborate updo.
She was working slowly and carefully, ensuring not a single strand was out of place.
It felt good to know that my baby had a woman to do the things for her that I couldn’t.
My Dream, who couldn’t sit still for the good Lord Himself, sat frozen solid on that stool, watching herself turn into somebody’s princess in the mirror with her face lit up like Christmas morning.
“Hold still, princess. I almost got it.” Skye said it soft, and my baby wiggled all the joy out her body and then held still like she was told.
I stood in that doorway and couldn’t make a move.
Skye had a sweetness to her. The kind Dream never really got to experience.
She was only three years old when Monica died.
Her memory of her mother was starting to fade as she got older.
And that shit hurt. She’d never know how much her mother loved her.
I could tell Skye truly cared about what she was doing. She wasn’t performing or doing this just for a check. There was a sincerity behind it that no amount of money could pay for. Dream needed this. A woman taking her time with her, doing the little things I couldn’t.
I could buy Dream anything she asked for. I couldn’t give her this.
Dream caught me in the mirror. “Daddy, look! I’m getting a crown in my hair!”
“I see that, baby girl.” She caught my eye in the mirror and held it. Long enough for me to know I wasn’t imagining this thing between us. “You’ll be the prettiest thing at that party.”
“Thank you! I can’t wait!” Her excitement was infectious. I couldn’t lie, I did not want to go to a princess party. I hated large gatherings but seeing how happy she was made me want to be there.
“Doesn’t your sister look so pretty?” Skye called out to Storie.
Storie was in the kitchen on her phone scrolling. As if Skye had interrupted her from the most important, dire task ever, she looked up and rolled her eyes. However, Skye was too focused on Dream to notice.
“She look cute or whatever,” Storie replied flatly.
“Storie…” My voice was low and stern.
“What, Daddy?”
I gave her that look that said keep fuckin’ with me and there’ll be hell to pay.
She quickly got up and headed towards her sister and Skye. “You really look like a princess…. Fiona!” Storie cracked up laughing and then playfully tickled her sister.
“No, I don’t!” Dream protested.
“No, you don’t. You look better than Cinderella, Belle and Tiana all wrapped up in one,” Storie replied.
The tension in my chest relaxed because I thought we were about to have a problem.
“Thank you! You look pretty too,” Dream replied.
“So daddy… When I turn sixteen,” she said, redirecting her attention to me, “can I have a real party? A big one. Since y’all ain’t do nothing for my fifteenth and you’re doing all of this for her sixth?”
“As long as you check that attitude of yours and keep your grades up. I’ll throw you a party that rivals that show My Super Sweet 16.”
“What’s that?” She asked and I had to remind myself she was too young to even know what that show was.
“Just know that you have to earn a big party. Dream has been a good girl. I cancelled your fifteenth because you were running around actin’ like you ain’t have no home training.”
She sucked her teeth and looked down at her shoes.
“You know why. It wasn’t to be cruel, Storie.
I don’t do nothing to be cruel, that ain’t in me.
But you been acting terrible for months.
Your actions have consequences. And I’d be failing you as your father, if I let you grow up thinking it worked any other way.
” I looked dead at her. “That’s not me withholding love from you.
That’s me letting you know, you have to earn shit. ”
Her face cracked open. For a second I swore I saw her in there, the little girl, the one who used to fall asleep on my chest.
“You’re right, Daddy.” Soft. Smooth. Easy as anything. “I understand.”
And I should’ve felt some kind of way about that.
A man wants to hear his child say you’re right, I hear you.
But it went down wrong. Like a line she’d rehearsed in a mirror instead of a thing she actually felt down in her chest. And that cold little thought crept across me before I could slam the door on it, the same one that kept creeping lately.
Since when does Storie fold that easy?
But I ain’t have time to sit in it. Because right then my front door swung open with no knock, no warning, no nothing, and Kira walked her ass up in my house.
Storie’s face did a thing when she clocked her. Small. There and gone, a little drop at the corners of her mouth before that flat mask slid right back down over it.
“Hey, baby!” Kira came at Storie arms wide open, all sugar. “Look at you. Happy birthday to your sister, you excited or what?”
She wrapped my oldest up in a hug. And Storie stood there in it stiff as a two-by-four, arms pinned to her sides, and did not give that woman one solitary inch.
Kira let go after a beat that stretched out too long and covered it with one of them bright little laughs people do when they been left hanging.
Then she turned to me. And the hug she brought over to me was an entire different mood.
She came in close. Both arms up and around my neck, her body pressed into mine one full second past friendly, her mouth grazing right up on my ear. “Hey, you.”
I took her by both arms and set her back off me. Gentle. But direct enough that she felt it.
“What you doing here, Kira?”
“Well, good afternoon to you too, sir.” That laugh again, lighter than whatever was sitting in her eyes. “I came to help. It’s a big day. Figured Dream could use all the hands she can get.”
“Skye got Dream.” I kept it level, but I let the edge ride up under it, and I made sure she caught it. “I told you I’d see you at the party. At the Castle. I ain’t tell you to come to my house.”
Her face slipped, then smoothed right back over. See, she ain’t come here to help my baby with nothing.
“Okay, well.” Bright again, reaching. “Can I at least ride out there with you? No sense in us pulling up in two cars.”
I looked down at my watch. I did not have it in me to stand up in my own foyer this morning negotiating with a woman I’d already told, in plain grown English, no.
“Nah. I don’t know how long I’ll be at the spot after the party is over. It’s best if you drive your own car.” I turned toward the stairs and raised my voice up. “Storie. You rolling with me, or you rolling with Skye and your sister?”
A quiet from the top of them stairs. Then:
“Skye.” My daughter’s voice came down. I’ll ride with Skye.”
And out of everything strange that already happened in my house before ten in the morning, that right there might’ve taken the cake.
My oldest child, who could barely stand to be in a room with that woman, picking Skye’s car over her own daddy’s.
But I dropped it in the pile with everything else I ain’t have time to make sense of yet, and I grabbed my keys off the table.
“Come on,” I told Kira.
She fell in right beside me, looking at me like she wanted to plead for a ride in my car. I didn’t want to deal with her riding there and then riding back. I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to stake a claim in front of Skye, but it was unnecessary. I was not hers to claim.
As I let her step out ahead of me, I caught Skye standing in that sitting room doorway. Dream’s finished up-do and crown shining under the light. She was watching Kira strut out the front door with a look sitting on her face that she snatched back down quick.
She covered it. She was good at covering. Best I ever seen, matter of fact.
But I caught it. I catch everything.
She was jealous. I liked that more than I should’ve.