“Say that again,” he said, h
I sat there in that passenger seat with a gun and heavy silence hanging between us, watching my son grip that steering wheel so tight his knuckles had almost gone pale, his jaw locked, his whole body vibrating like he was fighting to stay in control.
I knew that now, he believed me. I just needed to figure out how I would make him understand this whole situation and why I made the decision that I did.
“Kadeem ain’t want his own son?” he said again, quieter this time, like the question was eating him alive from the inside out. “But the others was good enough for y’all to keep?”
I closed my eyes for a second.
Twenty seven years I’d carried this. Twenty seven years I’d rehearsed a hundred different versions of this exact conversation in my head.
I thought about this moment at times that I was lying awake next to my husband at night, standing in front of my bathroom mirror, and even times when I was sitting alone in my car just trying to find the words.
And now, here it was, and the words didn’t wanna come out. Well, I am being held at gunpoint, in a moving car, with my son shaking out of rage.
At the same time I also had three other sons back at that warehouse I still didn’t know if they were safe or dead.
“Demontae,” I said, and my voice came out shaking despite everything I was trying to hold together, “Kadeem never rejected you. It wasn’t that he didn’t want you, that was never the case. He couldn’t reject something he never knew existed.”
His head snapped toward me for half a second before his eyes went back to the road.
“What the fuck that supposed to mean?” he said.
I took a breath. There wasn’t no soft way to say this. Wasn’t no way to wrap this up pretty and hand it to him gentle. I’d learned that lesson already once today, trying to ease into a truth would get me nowhere.
“Kadeem is not your father,” I said.
The car swerved slightly, just enough that I felt my body jerk against the seatbelt, before he corrected it hard.
“Say that again,” he said, his voice low and dangerous in a way that scared me more than the gun had.
“How is that not my father if I’m actually your son?
Before I got into business with you all, I did my research.
I know you’ve been married over 30 years, I know you had 3 sons that you all raised in a loving household all underneath the same roof.
I knew all of that before the beef started and before this story you trying to tell me now.
So how is he not my father if he’s theirs and I’m younger than your oldest son, and older than your middle son?
” Demontae asked and I knew that he’d done his research for real on my family.
Another trait that reminded me of his big brother Kaseem.
“Kadeem is not your biological father,” I said again, slower this time, making sure every word landed clean.
“He was gone for almost a year, right after Kaseem was born. He had to leave on business. His father had passed away, and left him an inheritance overseas. He had to go secure it or lose it to somebody else in the family. I was alone with a newborn, Demontae, and that was a lot on me. I was alone, exhausted, drowning in a way I ain’t never felt before that. ”
“I expressed to my husband that I needed help while he was gone, needed a break of some sort. He made some calls, and his right hand man, a man Kadeem trusted with his whole life, with his wife, with his infant son, he started coming around to help me. Started staying later and later. And one night, something happened between us that never should have happened.”
Demontae’s breathing had gone ragged, his chest rising and falling hard, but he didn’t say nothing, didn’t interrupt, just let me keep talking like he needed to hear the rest even though every word was probably cutting him open worse than the last.
“I got pregnant,” I said. “With you. And his mans, Ben, that was his name, he panicked. Told me it was a mistake, told me his wife didn’t deserve that, told me Kadeem damn sure didn’t deserve that after everything he’d done for him.
He wanted me to get rid of you. I couldn’t do that.
I don’t believe in that, never have. So we agreed, together, that I’d give you up the second you was born.
Nobody was ever supposed to know. I did what I thought I had to do at that time because I betrayed my husband in the worst way and didn’t want to hurt him.
But I’ve lived with regret of not keeping you for all of these years. ”
“So this whole time,” Demontae said, his voice cracking now, that hard edge finally splitting under the weight of everything I was laying on him, “this whole time I been out here thinking my own father and mother both looked at me and decided I wasn’t worth keeping, and that ain’t even true?
You gave your baby up because you wanted to keep a nigga?
You chose your husband over your child? Right? ”
“Please don’t say that! I was young. I panicked and did what I thought was right as a wife and a mother but I was wrong! And today I’m looking you in your eyes letting you know that was the worst decision of my life.”
“So what,” he said, his voice rising now, rage bleeding back through the cracks, “you were fine building an empire and a family with the three sons that you kept, while I was out here in the system, getting passed around from house to house, learning how to survive on my own before I even hit double digits? You was building your life while I was building mine out the mud by myself? How the fuck is that fair to a kid that you laid on yo muthafuckin back and made? I didn’t ask to be here!
You had the power to give me a better life, hell, a good ass life but instead I had to live through hell.
And now, you telling me you did the shit to cover up a fuckin affair!
” He barked. He was hurt and I was the cause.
This shit was breaking me to my fuckin core.
Should I have kept my baby and dealt with the consequences that came later? Yes, but I didn’t.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” I said, tears finally breaking loose down my face.
“Not one single day. Every year on your birthday I’d sit somewhere quiet and just think about you, wonder if you were safe, wonder if you were happy, wonder if you even knew you had a mother out here who never wanted to let you go in the first place.
I made a choice out of fear, my son. Fear of losing everything I’d built, fear of what it would do to Kadeem, fear of what it would do to my marriage.
That don’t make it right. I know it don’t make it right.
But it wasn’t because you wasn’t wanted.
It was because I was a coward. That’s the truth of it.
I was just scared, and you the one who paid for it your whole life.
If I could take it back and do right by you, I swear on my life I would.
He didn’t say nothing for a long while, the only sound in that car was the engine and both our ragged breathing, the city rushing by outside them windows like the whole world was moving except for us.
“So, where is this Ben nigga at now?” He lowly asked
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “He packed his family up and left years and years ago. Moved out the state, cut all ties with us completely. He had a huge falling out with my husband over money one day, and the next he was gone. Kadeem thought it was strange at the time, figured maybe he just wanted something different for his life and used the fallout as an excuse to move around. Kadeem never knew the real reason but deep down I knew it was his guilt. The loss of that friendship hurt my husband to his core. And til this day, he wonders if he should look for him and make amends, not knowing what was done behind his back.”
“So you and that nigga Ben both are cowards? Guess that runs in my blood then, huh? Both my parents good at running from shit they’ve created but they don’t wanna face.
Nah. I could never be like y’all! I stand on business when it comes to me and mine.
And one thing I’d never play about is my kids. You muthafuckas are weird as hell.”
That one hit different. That one landed somewhere deep in my chest and stayed there.
“I’m not running now,” I said. “Call me whatever you want. I’m sitting right here, in this car, telling you everything, at the risk of my own life, cause I couldn’t let another single day pass with you thinking you weren’t loved and wanted.
That’s not running, Demontae. That’s the exact opposite of everything I been doing for all of these years. ”
He went quiet again, his jaw working, his eyes flicking between the road and me and back again, like he was trying to find some flaw in what I’d just told him, some hole he could poke through to prove this was all still some elaborate setup designed to save my other sons.
“You expect me to just believe all this,” he said, “and what, forgive you? Call off everything I got moving right now? Just cause you finally decided to tell the truth after damn near three decades of lying?”
“I don’t expect nothing from you,” I said.
“I don’t have the right to expect a single thing from you, my son.
I gave up that right the day I let them take you out my arms in that hospital room and didn’t fight hard enough to keep you.
All I’m asking is that you think about what all this really is.
This war you started, it ain’t really with Kaseem, ain’t really with Zaire or Namier.
Deep down, this war been with me this whole time.
And them boys back there, they didn’t do nothing to you.
They didn’t even know you existed until we got into business with you and yo people, same as you ain’t know the full truth about your own father or your half brothers until right now, sitting in this car. ”
“They killed people that were mine,” he said, his voice hardening back up. “That’s real. That happened and we can’t take that back. Ain’t no secret gonna erase that.” he said.
“You forget that you had Darius killed and left on my compound first? Then you sent a hit on your own brother while he was locked up in prison,” I said, my voice gaining strength now even through my tears.
“Almost got him killed over the same thing. Both sides done spilled blood, Demontae. Both sides. If we keep going down this road, somebody else is gonna die. Maybe all three of my other sons. Might be you. And I already lost twenty seven years with you. I am not prepared to lose you again, not after finally getting the chance to look you in your face and tell you the truth. If I know my other boys, I can tell you now, they gonna make it out that warehouse alive, and they gone wreak havoc. So just call this bullshit off now and we can all find a way to coexist. I want you in my life and I’m willing to risk it all to fix this. ”
He didn’t answer that.
He just drove, silent, his knuckles still white on that wheel, his mind clearly somewhere far away, wrestling with twenty seven years of rage that had just gotten a whole new, more complicated shape to it in the span of one car ride.
And I sat there beside him, watching the city blur past outside them tinted windows, praying that somewhere underneath all that anger, a small piece of the boy I never got to raise was still listening. Then he finally broke the silence.
“Yo kids ain’t shit to me. I won’t call off nothing, and I won’t stand down if they make it out like you said they will.
I don’t know them niggas, and the way I see it, them niggas gotta go.
They’ve had this shit too easy. Now, we gone see who got real survival skills around this bitch.
I can’t kill you. I just can’t do it. Right now, I don’t know what I want from you.
If you find it in your heart to forgive me after you bury them boys, then we can revisit this conversation later.
But now, get the fuck out my car!” He pulled over on the side of the road, hard as hell making me jerk forward.
“I don’t have my phone, and I don’t know where I am! We are in the middle of nowhere! I’m not getting out until you take me to somewhere safe. Like a gas station at least.” I said, completely taken aback. He then cocked his gun, and held it up towards my face.
“Get the fuck out my car Zuri. I’m trying to be nice.
I’m not them other niggas you gave birth to.
I don’t love you and I don’t even fuckin know you,” he said through clinched teeth.
His tone and the look in his eyes made me get out the car in the middle of no fuckin where.
Without my gun, and without a phone. All I had was my six inch heels and a prayer that I’d find my way home.