Chapter 23
V Saint
“My father taught me how to survive pressure, not what to do once something real touched me.”
Iwent back to Crown Heights after I left my condo because home wasn’t doing nothing but letting my thoughts go extreme.
The site was empty when I pulled up. Security was outside, workers gone, machines parked, lights still on in certain units.
I sat in my truck for a minute before getting out, looking at the buildings.
I finally walked inside with my blunt behind my ear, music low from my phone in my hand. I didn’t even really want to smoke. I just needed something with me.
Crown Heights looked good.
That was the issue in my head.
Everywhere I walked, I could see Sade.
Her decisions.
Her corrections.
Her attitude.
The woman had touched damn near every part of this project already, and we were only a month in. I hated how much sense she made. Hated how good her work was. Hated how she could challenge me and be right at the same time.
I stopped in one of the units and looked at the entryway she had changed without asking me.
It looked better.
I shook my head and laughed under my breath.
“Bossy ass lady,” I uttered.
My phone was in my hand, but I wasn’t looking at it. I already knew what I would see if I opened it. Messages. Calls. Women I didn’t want to answer. Business I didn’t want to deal with at the moment.
My thoughts went to Sade kissing her new nigga.
That bothered me more than it should have.
It wasn’t even the kiss for real. Women kissed niggas every day. It was how she looked with him. Softer. Relaxed. Not bracing herself for the next argument. Not cutting her eyes at him. Not standing ten toes down like she was waiting for war.
She looked peaceful around that nigga.
That shit punched me in the chest.
I moved through another unit, checking work that didn’t need checking, thinking.
Sade only seemed relaxed once she left me.
I didn’t like that.
I didn’t want to care either.
That made it worse.
I left the building ten minutes later and told security to lock everything back up. I didn’t go home.
I drove to my parents’ house.
My mother’s car was in the driveway when I pulled up. Lights on in the kitchen. Same house I grew up in.
I let myself in.
My mother was in the kitchen putting food in containers. She looked up when I walked in, smiled softly, then went back to what she was doing.
“Son, you ate?” she asked.
That was hello in her house.
“Nah.”
“Fix you a plate.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re not good if you ain’t ate.”
I kissed her cheek and opened the fridge for her. “I’ll take something with me.”
She gave me a look but didn’t argue. “Your father is in the living room.”
“I know.”
I grabbed a water and walked in there.
My father was in his chair with a blanket over his legs, oxygen close by, medicine on the table, and an old movie playing. He didn’t turn his head right away, but he knew I was there.
“You locking those buildings up at night?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Security staying on rotation?”
“Always.”
He nodded once.
I sat on the couch across from him.
That was how he was. No soft greeting. No long talk. Straight to what mattered in his mind.
My father raised me well, even when I was hard to raise.
I was troubled as a kid. Fighting. Talking back. Toting guns. Going to juvie. Running with older niggas before I had enough sense to understand what that meant. But I came from a good home. That was the part people never understood. Everybody thought troubled kids came from nothing.
Nah.
Sometimes trouble came from having everything and still feeling too much inside.
My father didn’t play with me. He put fear and discipline in the same sentence and called it love. At the time, I hated it. As a grown man, I understood most of it.
“How is the project moving?” he asked.
“It’s moving.”
“It’s moving ain’t a report.”
I smirked a little. “Units moving on schedule. Design team moving faster than expected. Some delays with materials, but nothing serious.”
“Delays become serious when you let people explain too much why it ain’t on time.”
“I hear you.”
“Then don’t let them.”
My mother walked in with his tea and set it on the table beside him. He looked at her hand first, then her face.
“You put lemon in it?”
“I always put lemon in it, darling,” she said, already tired of him.
He grunted. “You be forgetting.”
“I don’t forget nothing when it comes to you.”
She adjusted his blanket without asking. He acted bothered, but he didn’t move her hand. I watched that and didn’t say nothing.
That was them.
Fussing.
Routine.
Love without all the extras.
My father only ever loved one woman, and she was still here taking care of him while his body betrayed him. That part did something to me every time I came over. My mother could have hired help and stepped back. She didn’t. My father could have been softer about needing her. He wasn’t.
But when she left the room, his eyes followed her. he loved the fuck out of my mother, and I knew he wanted that for me.
He picked up his tea and took a sip. “You still wasting money on women?”
I laughed once. “Why you ask me that?”
“Because I know you.”
“I’m grown.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I’m not wasting money on women.”
He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “You lying. I see you paying for that Milan girl’s rent on our business account.”
“I pay for peace sometimes.”
“Peace don’t charge.”
I sat back, quiet after that.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Women either bring peace or distraction,” he said. “Ain’t too many in-between.”
“This was the last month,” I told him honestly.
I thought about the women in my life.
Milan was destruction.
Nia was easy.
Alana wanted more than I felt like giving.
Sade came to mind before I could stop it, and that irritated me because she didn’t belong in the same thought as the rest of them.
I took a drink of my water.
My father kept talking because that was what he did when he felt like he had a point.
“Business and women cause most downfalls for men who think they are too smart to fall.”
“I’m not falling.”
“Keep making sure of that.”
That was how he raised me.
Don’t fall.
Don’t fold.
Don’t let people see too much.
Handle your business first, and whatever hurts can wait until after.
My father had his own problems when I was younger. I knew that now. I didn’t know the names for it back then. Depression. Addiction. Pressure. Whatever people called it. In our house, it was just him having a bad week.
He didn’t go to rehab.
Didn’t do therapy.
Didn’t sit around talking about feelings.
He worked.
He ran shit.
He disappeared into himself and came back when he was ready.
When I got older and started doing the same thing, nobody had to teach me how.
I had already seen it.
“You stop moving, people start counting your pockets,” he said, setting his tea down. “The bigger you get, the less mistakes you can afford.”
“I know.”
“Knowing ain’t enough.”
My mother called from the kitchen. “Vaughn Jr., take these containers with you before you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My father smiled a little at that, almost hidden. “She still bossing everybody.”
“She been doing that.”
“Only woman allowed.”
That was probably the realist thing he ever admitted without making it emotional.
I sat there for a while longer, watching the movie with him. He was breathing more heavily than usual but still sitting up, alert.
That stubborn shit ran through my blood.
After a while, I stood up.
“You gonna be good when I leave?” I asked.
He gave me a look. “I’ll be alive when you come back.”
I went into the kitchen, grabbed the food my mother packed, and kissed her cheek again.
“Don’t work all night,” she said.
“I’m going home.”
She gave me the same look she gave my father earlier.
I left before either one of them could say anything else.
Outside, the night air hit my face while I walked back to my truck. I sat there with the food on the passenger seat and my hands on the wheel, not starting the engine yet.
Women either bring peace or distraction.
That line sat with me.
I didn’t know what Sade brought.
She wasn’t peace.
She damn sure wasn’t easy.
But she wasn’t a distraction either.
Not the kind I was used to.
I started the truck and looked at the house one more time before pulling off.
My father survived everything by refusing to break.
Problem was… I learned the same shit.