Chapter 10 #3
I told him how my aunt told her sister, my mother that she and her husband would keep me until I gave birth.
We all came up with a lie for my father as to why It’ll be good for me to spend a school year there.
He was so busy and consumed with work at the time, he was barely home anyway.
He would just always make up his absence with gifts and money.
But at the same time, he was so overprotective of me, that it was even hard to get him to let me leave for the summer.
Surprisingly, my father agreed to let me stay for a year after my mother and aunt sold him on how beneficial it would be for me.
My aunt made it clear that I would hand the baby straight over for her to raise.
I fought that decision hard as I could. Yes I was young, but I wanted my baby.
Rather my child had a father or not, I wanted to do what was right by my child.
I told them both my mom and my aunt that I didn’t want to give my baby away, that if my father wouldn’t accept me and a child, then I’d have to fend for myself.
I told them I’d go to trade school myself, get a job, and raise her on my own without a single one of them.
My mother wasn’t hearing that. She said that she’d give me time and space to think about it, but if I kept that baby, I’d never have a home with them to come back to nor would I have a mother or father.
Once my mother left, my aunt sat me down and showed me that same bag of bloody clothes she’d made me strip out of a month earlier.
She told me straight to my face that if I didn’t agree to hand that baby over to her, she’d tell the police I was responsible for that murder myself.
She told me that nobody would believe me over her.
She told me that she’s spoken to a neighbor who saw me leaving the crime scene that day and that they would cooperate her story.
Hearing her threaten me had broken my heart.
She just told me she was giving me a better life than I could give myself, and that I needed to take it and be grateful.
She said a baby would only slow me down.
Deep inside, I knew this was all so that she could take my baby since she couldn’t have any of her own.
The fear of going to jail, being disowned by my entire family, tarnishing my father’s name if any secret got out, especially being accused of murder and being a teenage mother.
I felt I had no other choice. I didn’t want to go to jail, especially when my aunt held evidence that looked as if I was guilty. She kept that tucked in her room safe.
As the years passed, that woman held that secret over my head like a noose.
And once I started making real money, that’s when the blackmail turned into something else entirely, something I’d been paying to keep buried for years.
I told him how I was never allowed to raise my own daughter, how Nariyah grew up calling me cousin instead of momma, how messed up it all sounded said out loud but that had just been my whole life since I was seventeen years old.
By the time I finished talking, Kaseem sat there at a total loss for words.
Then he grabbed me, pulled me into him so tight I could barely breathe, and he held me like he was trying to hold every broken piece of me together with just his arms.
“You should have been told me, I swear I would have understood with no judgment. You were a kid,” he said, his voice rough against the top of my head.
“And your whole family failed you. Every single adult in your life failed you. You didn’t do nothing to deserve that, Tatti.
Your aunt is really fucked up in the head and yo moms ain’t no better.
Every kid gone make mistakes and you not the first or last teenager that slipped up and got pregnant.
Most teenagers get wild as hell when they get their first taste of freedom.
But damn, yo family handled you bad as fuck.
” He pulled back just enough to look me in my face.
“But what you also not gonna do no more is let this bitch keep ruining your life. I’ma handle that.
Now we gotta figure out what you want to do.
What is your next move that you want made?
That’s your child. And she needs to know exactly who her mother really is and raising her here will never be a problem.
That’s a huge responsibility, I need you to know that whenever you ready, I’m ready.
I got y’all forever. Say the word, and we’ll move accordingly. ”
Hearing my husband tell me all the right things that I needed to hear, it made me feel more at ease.
I love and adore my child, with my whole heart.
I want to be her mother, I want to build a life together.
Having my mother disown me, even after doing what they told me to do as a kid, that left me with a fear of rejection.
What if Nariyiah doesn’t want the life I’m trying to give her?
What if she won’t accept me being her mother because she loves my aunt and uncle too much?
So much was going through my mind that I didn’t know what to do.
There was still one thing that I hadn’t told Kaseem.
That was who my baby father is. I promised I would let Zuri handle things on her end with exposing that she had another son.
Demontae was that son and if I exposed that secret of mine right now, I’d also have to expose hers.
I wasn’t lying to my husband. I just didn’t technically tell him the answer to a question that he never asked.