Secretly
Khyell ran up the steps knocking at the door with excitement.
Jakia had been letting Wallah get his quality time with Carmell but keeping Khyell away.
She didn’t want him to slip up to Tina or Hussein.
At least not until court with Rashida. It needed to be a blindside for her to put this custody battle to rest. If Rashida had time to prepare there was no way she’d beat her with the kind of lawyer she could afford in Grand Onyx.
Wallah insisted that Khy knew how to keep a secret.
Jakia cursed him out twice. He took a lashing for himself and for Keyona.
Kids keeping secrets didn’t sit right with her.
She couldn’t believe Keyona brung Khyell into her situationship.
Especially after the shit they went through with their father.
Nonetheless she brung Khyell along for Wallah’s small birthday get together for Carmell.
“Wallah!”
“Magic.” Wallah picked him up, cheesing. “I’m sorry about ya mama. How you doing?”
“I’m ard.”
Jakia watched Wallah hugging her nephew and it matched the same hug he’d given his own son after not seeing him for weeks.
“Nah.” He put him to his feet and pointed at his chest. “How you feeling in there?”
“It feel like ripping a piece of paper from my notebook, but it’s my heart.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to feel. You ain’t did nothing wrong. I’m a grown man, youngin’ and my heart do the same thing at just the thought of losing what you lost. You wanna cry, then do that.” Wallah nodded. “’Cause what we don’t want to happen is what?”
“My life to change in a split second because I let my feelings run me instead of running my feelings,” Khyell spoke the sentence as if it were a pledge to himself.
Jakia stood there awkwardly watching Khyell have a man-to-man conversation at just seven years old. She’d been speaking to him like he was a kid and while he was, he understood adult concepts. So much so, that he was getting over on her.
“That’s my man.” Wallah rubbed his head. “You gon be ard because Wallah gon’ make sure you ard, ard?”
“Yes.” Khyell nodded.
“What’s up with you?” Wallah hugged Jakia and kissed her cheek before taking the weight of Carmell from her shoulder.
“Sorry that we’re early,” Jakia said.
“Not early at all. My sister just got here about ten minutes ago. Come on.” He nodded for them to follow him to the kitchen.
“Is the rest of your family not coming?” she asked curiously.
“Nah. They don’t know about Carmell, yet. I was waiting for Keyona to make the moves she needed to make first. Now I’m respecting what you got going on.” They walked into the kitchen.
“Which you don’t even have to do because he’s your son to begin with,” Delice said, drying her hands on a kitchen towel.
“Jakia, you remember my sister, Delice. Khyell this is my big sister. Big sis, this is Khyell, my other son.”
While she remembered her face, she hadn’t remembered her mouth. The girl that showed up at her door was in a rush to leave. Almost as if she was a scared ass bitch. The Delice she was in front of this day was so comfortable in her skin that Jakia thought she might have to beat her out of it.
“We have court in a few weeks. Once we get through that he can tell whomever he wants. If I win, he doesn’t have to prove paternity, if Boom’s mama wins in court, he will. I’m doing what’s best for everybody,” Jakia reminded her.
“Making the best of a bullshit, situation,” Delice mumbled.
“Delice!” Wallah yelled with warning. “What’s bullshit is you bout to ruin my son’s first birthday party as if we ain’t got enough bad shit going on. I don’t give a fuck how you feel about shit. Tuck that shit under your sleeve.”
She sighed, pulling a large white mixing bowl from the fridge.
“This is potato salad. There’s hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill. Chicken fresh off the grill in the oven. Let’s have a birthday party,” she switched gears with ease.
Jakia wasn’t feeling Delice but for the sake of Carmell’s first birthday party, she let the violation roll off her shoulders.
This wasn’t the time or the place. She’d deal with her another day.
Little things could be put on the back burner, but they couldn’t be ignored.
Carmell’s new TT couldn’t give another smidge of attitude without it being addressed and corrected.
After cake, ice cream and an off-key version of the birthday song, Jakia headed home. For safe measures, she reminded Khyell that visits with Wallah were to remain a secret like they were when his mother was alive.
“I know, TT.” He sighed. “Mommy said it was for a lot of reasons. But the biggest reason was to protect Carmell.”
“Did she say why?”
Khyell nodded. “Because Carmell got a different daddy. Wallah his daddy. I wish he was mine. I would still have one.”
Jakia’s eyes watered like someone was cutting an onion. When it came to those two little boys, the being strong shit went out the window. They made her feel. Feel everything.
“I don’t have a daddy no more either. So, I know how you feel. I think Wallah really, really loves you as much as he loves Carmell, though.”
“No, he don’t,” Khyell argued, looking out the window. “I ain’t his blood.”
Jakia didn’t have to ask who told him that. She could hear the words coming out of Boom’s mouth. Blood was a regular topic of conversation on that side.
When they pulled up, the sun was setting. Jakia noticed a strange ass nigga in front of the building door.
“I need you to pay attention when we’re walking into the building.” She unhooked a sleeping Carmell from his car seat. “Put that iPad in your bookbag.” Locking the car up, she reached for Khyell’s hand.
“I’m not going to get lost, TT” Khyell pulled his hand away from her.
“Give me your damn hand,” she muttered through clenched teeth. As smart as Khyell was, he hadn’t yet learned to identify a possibly dangerous situation. “Eyes up,” she said as they turned the corner.
“Excuse me, you Jakia?” the man asked as soon as he saw her.
“Why?”
“I was sent to get your phone number.”
Jakia relaxed, knowing who sent him. “I’ll meet you upstairs, Khy. Go in,” she ordered, watching in silence until the building door shot behind him.
“You almost lost your life. You don’t look like a man that’s trying to deliver a kind message. You look like a nigga ready to take some shit that don’t belong to you. The next time Hussein sends you to find me, you tell him to find somebody else to do it.” She finally blinked.
“My bad, my bad.” He pulled his phone out.
Jakia read her number off, watched the nigga save it in his phone and headed upstairs to her apartment. She couldn’t wait for Hussein to call so she could ask him why he sent that scary ass nigga to her crib.
TINA’S HOUSE |8:51 P.M.
“Shh, shh, it’s ringing,” she whispered to a nosey Prissy and Nisha.
The pair immediately hushed with Prissy going the extra extent to pause the TV. They were watching Martin reruns. Nisha said she’d never seen more than two episodes and Tina told her that was a sin. They’d been binge watching episodes every night after dinner.
“Hello?” Jakia answered.
“Hi, Jakia this is Tina. I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“How can I help you?” Jakia responded in customer service mode.
“Carmell’s first birthday is coming up. I was hoping you’d allow us to throw him a birthday party here at my house.”
“Us?” Jakia asked.
“Yeah…Us…The Turners.”
“The Turners and Prissy,” Jakia clarified.
“You have a point but seeing as how she and Hussein will be married soon, it’s safe to say she is one of us. Now, that’s not going to be a problem, is it?”
“Not for me.” Jakia snickered. “I’ll bring the boys so you all can have the opportunity to celebrate Carmell, but I’m not leaving them. And tell your little guard dog to play nice or I’ll air your shit out.” Jakia ended the call.
“This bitch just threatened me then hung up on me.” Tina sat mouth wide open in disbelief.
“That bitch is such a fucking goofy,” Prissy mumbled.
“She basically said you need to be nice or she’ll shoot us.” Prissy and tina burst into laughter.
Nisha’s face was buried in her phone. Her eyes and fingers were moving a mile a minute.
“Everything, ard, over there?” Tina asked, forgetting that she was just having a good time.
She was enjoying Nisha more than she wanted to admit. A big empty house could get lonely. Nisha was saving her from that. Shopping for the baby gave her something to do, too. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together.
Still, she didn’t trust her ass. It was too often she caught Nisha in another world. Her excuse was that she was in lala land. Tina considered she may have been telling the truth, but she wouldn’t blindly trust anything anyone said to her that couldn’t be proven.
“Uh, yea.” She hit a few more buttons before locking her screen.
“I was just going back and forth with my mother’s assistant about why a family trip three months from now is inconvenient because I’ll have a newborn.
” She sighed, leaning over for her coffee mug of tea.
“Money doesn’t make you smart.” She rolled her eyes.
“But I did hear bits and pieces of the conversation. The girl Jakia wants to beat Prissy up, right?”
Tina burst into laughter.
“Girl, shut the fuck up.” Prissy stuffed a cheese curl into her mouth, pissed. “Worry about meeting your daughter’s brothers for the first time. You should actually be thanking me because Boom never introduced them. The birthday party was my idea, remember?”
“And it really was a good idea,” Tina chimed in, lips wet from the taste of Jameson she swallowed.
“I hardly know the girl. I’ll only ever get this close is when it’s something for the boys.
So, be nice like she said. I need to keep this connection open.
At least until I can get the boys from her permanently. ”
“You want them here with you?” Nisha asked, surprised.
“Well, duh. I certainly don’t want them being raised by a perk head. It’s not going to be a quick process. Sometimes the journey requires a slower pace to the finish line.”