Sunday

10. Cedar

Cedar

Three Weeks Later

“ C ome on, Chaz. Quit playing.”

“You mighty anxious ’bout what this baby gonna be, boy.”

He had placed the burnout powder packets in the exhaust pipes over half an hour ago. Now he was just showing off his car for our guests, and I wasn’t on that shit.

“I got ya boy. Now get in that car and show me what my baby gon’ be.”

He chuckled and started milly rocking while he smirked at me.

“Boy, you wild,” Shawn declared and shook his head.

We were at Shawn’s brother Benjamin’s house for the gender reveal.

Because we were doing a burnout, he offered us the use of his house as a private location since burnouts were illegal.

It worked out well because the gender reveal had turned into a pool party, and the day had been fun for everyone.

His house was over three-thousand-square-feet with four acres of property and a long ass driveway.

We cooked out, played some games, swam, and chatted it up. It was time for the reveal, which would signal the end of the party.

Everyone had moved from the swimming pool area and relocated to the side of the driveway that held the basketball court.

“I promise you, the next time ya ass won’t be involved in my gender reveal.”

Chaz stopped dancing, his eyebrows lifted, and that was when I realized my mistake. “Let me holla at you for a sec, my nig.”

He fast-walked away from me with an urgency down to the bottom of the driveway. When I reached him, Chaz tilted his head and mugged me. “Nigga, is you crazy? What’s this next time? You planning a family with that girl or what?”

“You worried about the wrong thing right now.”

“I’m just saying. This shit with Sunday is moving awfully fast.”

“Ain’t you the same one who said she was a good look on me?”

“Yeah. But that was when I thought y’all was just kicking it. Talking about families is another thing. I don’t think you ready for all that.”

I sighed and glanced at where Sunday stood on the passenger side of the car. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know.”

“Listen. I ain’t got no problem with you looking out for me. My problem is that you tryna ruin a good day for her,” I explained and jerked my head in her direction.

There was a crowd around the car, but Sunday’s hands rested on the top of the car as she looked at Chaz and me with mild curiosity.

“Not trying to ruin your day, Cedar. I’m tryna keep my homie from getting hurt again and shit. My bad.” He threw his hands up in mock apology as if to say he was stepping back and wouldn’t get involved in my shit.

“You had one job, nigga,” I replied and snatched his keys from his hands.

I ran up the driveway to Chaz’s car, with him slowly coming after me. I could outrun that nigga easily because his ass was a lineman on our high school football team, and I was a wide receiver. I easily blew him out of the water in a race.

“Jump in the car!” I shouted to Sunday.

Her eyes ballooned, but she did exactly what I asked.

I hopped in his car, pressed the ignition button, and everyone cheered.

Sunday giggled. “What are you doing?”

“That nigga wanted to keep playing. Ain’t nobody got time for that. You ready to see what our little stink ’bout to be?” I asked and rubbed her belly gently.

“You know I am.”

I placed the car in drive.

“Look out the back window, baby,” I instructed.

I hit the gas and the brakes at the same time, just as Chaz started running up the driveway again. He jumped out of the way as the car shot forward.

The sight of plumes of blue smoke billowing out the exhaust pipes made me laugh, and Sunday squealed in the seat beside me.

“It’s a boy, baby. You’ve got your boy!”

“I know, baby.”

I turned in the seat beside her as all our guests clapped, cheered, and jumped up and down. I pulled her off her knees where she was staring out the back window and onto my lap. I covered her lips with mine.

We had grown closer in the last few weeks since we visited her parents. I realized that she didn’t really have anyone except for me. I was her person, the one she relied on, the one who protected her.

With every kiss that we shared, it was a gentle reminder of those truths. I cleaved to her the same way that she cleaved to me. I wanted Sunday to know that she didn’t have anything to worry about.

Some days, I felt that I had almost done a one-eighty compared to where I initially stood on relationships and love.

But being with her made me see that every woman wasn’t like Taylor.

Some women were genuinely women of their words and could be taken at their words.

Sunday showed me that daily. Whenever she said she would do something, she did that shit.

She opened up to me and expressed her feelings, and if ever I was in doubt about something, I could go to her, and she would keep it real with me.

With Sunday, I did not need to worry or despair.

She was an open book, just what I needed.

It made being intimate with her and taking my walls down easier.

And it definitely made the sex hotter, though I’d heard that sex with pregnant women was good as fuck anyway.

Sunday couldn’t ever get enough of sex. She was horny all the time, and I didn’t mind giving it to her.

Sunday pulled back from the kiss.

“We still haven’t figured out our son’s name.”

I pecked her lips, and in a low voice and in between pecks, I replied, “We’ll find the perfect one.”

A loud tap on the window made me pull away from her briefly. When I saw Chaz there, I rolled my eyes.

“Guess the fun is over, baby.”

Sunday giggled. “Well, I guess you better give the man his car back. God forbid that he press charges for carjacking.”

“I wish that nigga would,” I replied with a chuckle as I pushed the door open and stared into my friend’s scowling face. “Here, nigga.”

I tossed the keys at Chaz, and he quickly snatched them out of the air. His lips were turned down, eyes narrowed, and his chest heaved.

“That shit wasn’t even cool, Cedar.”

“Nah, nigga. Ya ass plays too much. You wanna prolong your grandstanding and shit. You had one job. Do a damn burnout in your Camaro and let the smoke loose. These folks have been ready to go home.”

“You want smoke, Cedar?” Chaz challenged in an irritated voice.

I chuckled and shook my head. “You get to be mad as hell. Ya ass even get to not speak to me, Chaz. But you ain’t gon’ fuck up her day. I done told y’all, I ain’t playing ’bout that one.”

I bobbed my head in Sunday’s direction, where she stood with Celine, Janae, Sarah, Bjorn, Nils, and some of our other friends from work and the neighborhood.

“Besides, you just mad because I ended all that damn grandstanding you was doing.”

“You know Sunday is cool with me, Cedar. I ain’t hating on her or your relationship, but you’re my boy. I just don’t wanna see you go through no shit anymore with anyone, Sunday included.”

“And I’m not, Chaz. I’m fully aware of what I’m doing.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah. Now get your head out of your ass, and settle down, my boy.”

Chaz snickered and shook his head. “Still too much pussy for me to play in to start talking about being chained to one.”

I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest. “Boy, you wild.”

“It’s the man I was made to be.”

“Yeah, them days been over for me.”

Chaz turned around to face me head-on. “If this what you wanna do, I support you, man. You know I always got ya back. We good?”

He reached his hand out, and I slapped it and pulled him close. We did a one-armed, side hug, and I nodded. “We good, bruh.”

“I was thinking about Alexander.”

“Aspen Alexander? That doesn’t go well, CJ.” She had started calling me CJ sometimes, using my first and last initials as a nickname.

My eyes were heavy. Between that sun and the swimming we’d done, I was tired. And it wasn’t helping that she was rubbing my head as I rested it in her lap.

“Why not?”

“Two A’s. It doesn’t flow.”

“We’ll call him double Ace or Acey deucey.”

“No,” she whined. “You’re trying to take my baby straight to the streets.”

“Aht, aht. Careful, or you’ll sound like your daddy.”

“Sorry. Definitely not trying to be a snob like him, but I want to give our baby a chance before he gets here.”

“I know what you mean. Being a young black man is hard enough on its own without adding restrictions and pressure to it.”

“Can I tell you something?” she asked in a low voice as she stopped rubbing my head.

“Anything, baby.”

The hesitation and trembling in her voice had me sitting up and looking at her.

“I’m happy that we’re having a little boy, baby, but I’m also scared.”

“Why?”

She shook her head and wiped her eyes. That was the first time that I noticed the sparkle in her eyes. Her face scrunched up and turned red as the tears began to fall.

“Baby, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I’m scared. I don’t want my baby to be profiled, mistreated, cast aside, ignored, abused, or killed because people of other races don’t understand him, or the police have a target on his back because he’s a black man.” She sobbed.

I sighed and wrapped her in my arms.

“Baby, that’s the reality that I live every day. Not knowing when I step out of this house what I’ll have to go through, who I’ll have to face, who’s got my back and who doesn’t, and worse yet, if I’ll even make it back home. But you know what I do?”

She shook her head and wiped her tears again. I pressed a kiss on the top of her honey-scented curls. “I step out on faith. I never leave this house without being prayed up. I pray for me, for my family and friends, for our unborn baby, and for you.”

“Me? You pray for me?” Sunday’s voice hitched as it rose a note.

“Don’t sound so surprised, baby. I’ve always prayed for you, even before we became involved.

I know that it’s God’s will that we pray for each other because we all need each other.

I never take that for granted. But yeah, I don’t step foot out of these doors without praying.

And then I leave it in His hands because I know He knows what’s best in the end.

All I can do is trust Him to do the rest. Other people’s actions and judgments are beyond my control.

I refuse to live my life in fear or asking ‘what-if.’”

“My daddy never talked about how hard that was.”

“That’s because your daddy is the typa nigga who believes if he ignores his blackness, it’ll go away. I’ll bet he hasn’t taught your brothers that either.”

She shook her head rapidly. “When I was a little girl, . . . about eleven I think . . .” She tapped her lip as if she were thinking and then nodded.

“Yeah, about eleven. I overheard him tell Bjorn the main reason he married a white woman was so that he could give his kids a chance. He said that he loved black women, and they were beautiful, but he knew that if he brought another black kid into the world, then it would be hard on them as they grew up, especially black boys. He said that at least with us being mixed race, we stood a chance.”

I sucked my teeth and shook my head. That was some old Uncle Tom sell-out shit if I’d ever heard it.

“Nah, what he did was fail to equip them boys properly for the world. You think them officers give a fuck that their mama is white when they see your brothers in the streets? Nah. They don’t.

They just see another nigga with a little lighter skin and curlier hair than the next, but they still just a nigga. ”

“White officers?”

I scoffed. “Both, baby. Sometimes, it be your own kind. Believe it or not, I’ve gone through more hell with black officers than some white officers. And some white officers have stood up for me in the face of their black counterparts.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It is, but it’s my reality. And that’s why your daddy didn’t want you fucking with me, why he had an attitude with me on sight, and why he flipped his wig when he learned you were pregnant by me.”

“I want our baby to be proud of his ethnicity, every part of it, CJ.”

“And he will be. He’ll be a strong black boy who knows his history and who he represents.”

I bent down while rubbing her growing belly. At five months pregnant and halfway through her pregnancy, she could no longer hide her belly.

“Hey, li’l nigga.”

“Cedar.” She poked me in the rib and giggled.

“What?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“I can if I want.”

“Just don’t, okay?”

I sucked my teeth and replied, “A’ight. I’ll call that li’l nigga, my li’l king.”

“What am I gonna do with you?”

“Love me,” I replied and kissed her lips.

Her eyes were wide when I pulled back and leaned down to her belly again. In the softest voice that I was sure she thought I didn’t hear, I heard her whisper, “I already do.”

“Daddy’s so proud of you, and I can’t wait to meet you. When you get here, I’ve got so much to teach you about being a man, especially a Jackson man. Our bloodline is strong and rich, and you’ll be proud of where you come from.”

“On both sides,” Sunday piped up.

I glanced up at her. I decided not to clown on that nigga she called daddy.

“You’ll be proud of the legacy your mama and me are giving you.

Proud of your mama because she’s a beautiful, strong, smart, and courageous lady.

I know she can’t wait to meet you too. But guess what .

. .? Well, damn, I guess you already know.

I was right. You are a boy. Probably in there playing with ya li’l dick now, swinging it around and shit.

But I already know because you are my son, ain’t shit little about it. ”

I chuckled as Sunday shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“Look at you bonding with our baby.”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking. We need a bigger house, Sunday.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“Our family is growing. We’ll need space for when the baby arrives.”

“Slow down. We’ve got enough room.”

“He needs a room.”

“We might as well give him my room as a nursery. I can move in with you.”

“Bet.”

“That was easy.”

“What’s that?”

“Making you happy.”

“I’ve been happy for a while, Sunday. You make me happy. I think I had to go through the bullshit with Taylor to get where I am. It was all a necessary part of His plan.”

“I’m glad it landed you here.”

“Me too,” I replied before brushing my lips against hers. “Me too.”