Chapter 1 #2
“You saying she looks just like me is saying she looks just like you and that nigg—him in the back. How I know one of y’all ain’t hit Pynk off and she’s tryna pin it on me? As a matter of fact, she did drop her off at your spot.”
G busted up laughing in the back. “Yo, you are stupid.”
“I’ll be whatever you wanna call me, especially if you’re willing to admit you came through the city a few years back and got down with a pink haired stripper in a rundown club off Williamson and Lake.” I spoke all while stealing glances at the toddler
Rennix parked the car seconds later and we were getting out when a little deep voice sounded through the car.
“It’s dead.” She held up the tablet for G to see.
“Damn, it talks too?” I asked, feeling my brother shooting fire at me with his eyes.
G was already a father, so as soon as we were out of the car, he picked lil mama and her dead ass tablet up and carried her into the hospital.
I walked behind them just staring. Because if she was mine, what the fuck was I gonna do?
That was crazy to even think of because if she was mine there was no fucking question of what I’d do.
I was gonna step up and handle my business.
Regardless of anything, she didn’t ask to be here.
No child did, so the idea of hoes forcing them into this world to abandon them irritated my soul.
While G spoke with ol’ girl at the desk while holding Romance, Rennix and I sat a few feet away. I couldn’t help but look at her while I felt his eyes on me.
“What are you thinking?” His question had me turning my face up.
“Bitch don’t ask what I’m thinking. I’m pissed off.” I glanced around when I realized how loud I was. “Tryna make some sense and I’m hoping you got that address handy.” I looked from lil mama to my twin.
“Something tells me you won’t need it.” He sat back and crossed his arms like this was no big deal.
“Regardless of the results I’ma need it. I need some answers.”
“For what, Rem? If she’s yours, you step up and handle your shit as a father.
You don’t need Pynk for that. You got a whole fucking village.
When she left her, she was crying, the type of crying that had Caya reaching for her and she didn’t even know the child’s name.
It should never be that easy for a mother to walk away from her child in distress like that. ”
“You right. If she is mine, I don’t need Pynk, but she still gotta see me behind this bullshit.
” No amount of sense he could’ve talked would stop me from getting at Pynk behind this shit.
Yeah, I’d stopped messing with her and blocked her ass a few years back, but truth was, if she wanted me to know about this child back then, she knew how to get in touch with me.
Just like she knew to show up at my brother’s house three years later, right?
The fuck outta here. Pynk’s skeeze ass knew what she was doing.
My brother didn’t get the chance to respond because less than a second later the nurse was calling my name at the door. Here we go.
Exactly ninety-seven minutes later I found out I was a father.
Exactly how did one find out they were a father when the child looked exactly like them from the moment they laid eyes on her?
Denial lived in me when I laid eyes on her, now I looked at her and felt like complete shit.
She was mine and I didn’t know the first thing about being a father…
Being her father. I had gotten the uncle thing down to a science, just laughing at the random shit they did, answering the phone, and being prepared to spend money on shit their parents said no to.
Fatherhood wasn’t a hood I had ever foreseen myself in, but here I was, now seated in the back with it.
“Here, it’s dead.” She handed me the shattered iPad and pointed to my phone. “Games?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t have any. What happened to your iPad, shorty?” The screen was fully shattered, probably held together by the thick ass case it was in.
She shrugged dramatically. “I dunno.”
I didn’t know why I laughed, but I did.
“Can you put games on your phone?” she asked.
“Nah, but we’re gonna get you something else to play them on.” My eyes once again looked over the iPad in my lap. Shit couldn’t be safe. What if a shard of glass had gotten out of the case and into her fucking finger? Pynk was so careless, man.
“Okay. Whea Mommy?” she then asked.
“Probably somewhere hoeing,” I mumbled.
“Reminisce.” I heard G say my name from the front.
“What, man? This my kid, right? I’m not about to be out here lying to her.” I had my face turned up because I meant that.
“You’re stupid, man, like for real,” Reminisce said.
“Maybe so. But I said what I said.”
For the rest of the ride my mind ran a mile a minute, never really slowing down to put any thoughts in order.
The facts were that I had a daughter, a child who looked like me and I didn’t know anything about her, not even her favorite food.
I had a child and I didn’t want children, but it was too late for my wants and needs. She was mine.
When we got back to the house, there were even more cars in the driveway. I recognized Indiri’s but not the olive Bronco. Then again, I remembered my sister telling me about Oden buying her a new car. Had all my siblings decided to bring their nosy asses here for this?
“Damn, did a discreet text message go through the group chat or something?”
“You can’t be in everybody else’s business then wanna keep yours to yourself. It doesn’t work like that.” G laughed, getting out of the passenger seat, then turning to open the door and help Romance out of her booster seat.
“Yo, she in pampers?” I asked, watching G fixing the lil ugly long ass skirt she was dressed in.
“Nah. She let Beyah know she had to go when we were in the house.”
I nodded.
“You’ll get the hang of things like that. I swear.”
“Easy for you to say, don’t you have sons?”
“True, but you got it, bro. I have faith in you.”
His words echoed in my head. It wasn’t a matter of me having it, but the fact that I now had a whole life depending on me to get it together and be something I never saw myself being. I had to be something I’d never had in my own childhood.
We were almost at the door when lil mama turned around looking from my brothers to me. She came to me and pointed to the tablet in my hand. “Can you charge?” she asked with the most expressive eyes.
I wanted to tell her I was throwing this motherfucker away, but I didn’t. I nodded. “Okay.” To my complete shock, she reached for my hand and we walked up the one stair into the house.
“See, piece of cake,” Rennix said from behind me.
Almost as soon as we went into the house, she heard the voice of the other kids and ran in that direction.
I was cool with that because it gave me some time to at least attempt to ballpark this, even though I had a whole ass life in Crescent Falls.
Of course I could up and leave as much as I pleased, but a child—my child—didn’t need that.
She needed stability and not to be jumping around from house to house, moving too much.
She needed a home and for her father to grow the fuck up.
“You look like you’re in here carrying the weight of the world.” Jade’s voice made me look away from the empty space I had been staring into since I’d walked in the door. It was the doorway she had run through to get to the other kids.
When my eyes landed on my sister, I smiled. My nephew was stretching her ass out and she complained about it every chance she got. “’Cause I am. What’s up, thickums?”
She mugged me before taking a seat on the bench in the foyer. “Apparently you. Do you wanna talk about it?”
“What is there to talk about, Jade? One minute I’m busting a mean ass nut back in the Falls and the next I’m a father. Matter of fact, lemme go deeper. A three-year-old, a child I gotta get to know, because instead of doing the right thing, her raggedy ass mama didn’t even tell me.”
“First, breathe. Nobody can tell you how to feel about this, because this is indeed a messed-up situation and I’m not gonna tell you it’s easy, but there is no better man for the job. That’s your child, Rem, and even though right now you might feel overwhelmed, things will come to you.”
I took a seat next to her. “How do you know I can even do this, Jade?”
“Because you’ve been trying to be my father since you met me. All of us. You keep it together when we’re all over the place. You have been doing that since you first got here and I didn’t know where you appeared from when you used to just walk up.” She smiled.
“I hear you.” Lowkey Jade gave the best fucking pep talks. She made things digestible and broke them down in a way that let you know all was possible.
“Now, I think it’s time you introduce me to my niece.”
I laughed. “She doesn’t even know I’m her father, Jade.”
She shook her head. “Well, I think it’s time we rectify that.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, because I was, but it had to happen at some point, right? I had never been afraid of anything in my life until now.