Chapter 6 #3
Ray-Ray came bursting through the door to see what the hell was going on. Jahrein had lost his damn mind. He was throwing all of the baby’s stuff across the room and flipping over dressers. It took both Red and Ray-Ray to hold him down.
“Oh, my God. Y’all gon send me to my grave early with all this bullshit!” Red vented as she held her chest.
Ray-Ray pulled Jahrein out of our room, but I could still hear his crazy ass rants.
“Man, I’ma hurt your daughter, main. She playing with my heart, dog.
She just wanna be with somebody else. That’s why she doing this to me.
Let me go! I’ma kill myself.” he screamed.
Then I heard loud sobs. He was actually crying.
“Jahrein, stop. Calm down.” I heard Ray-Ray tell him. “Raven, come here!” he called out to me. I slowly walked to the living room.
“What’s going on with you and him?” he asked, as Jahrein stood there wiping away his tears.
“Everybody is telling me that he was at Melissa’s house and they’re saying that her baby is for him.”
He sucked his teeth, like I sounded stupid.
“Girl, how many times have we told you about listening to other people? Now, I aint with Jah all the time, but I was with him these past two days. He was making money. Melissa live over there but he wasn’t with her.
And her son is supposed to be for Khalil, so I don’t know where you heard that shit from.
That’s both of y’all’s problem. Y’all wanna sit and listen to what people tell y’all.
Baby girl, I realized a while ago that these niggas don’t look at you as a little girl.
And plenty of them want a piece of you. I hate that shit but it’s something that I can’t change.
Now, Jah aint perfect and I was pissed about how he got you pregnant, but I know that he loves you.
I know that, if I don’t know nothing else.
You might be feeling trapped by all this shit you have to deal with, but the nigga aint as bad as you think.
I don’t intervene because I can’t protect you from heart break.
But you got me fucked up if you think that I would sit back and watch him fuck over you.
A man will be a man, baby girl, but before the other day did he ever not come home?
Don’t he buy everything for y’all son? Don’t he go out and bring you food every night?
Aint he at every doctor’s appointment? Don’t he rub your back at night?
Look, I aint trying to uphold nobody but I’m just trying to get you to see that he is there for you.
There are a lot of young boys that wouldn’t do the same.
You need to keep people out your business, and don’t let others infiltrate on what y’all got. ”
My daddy was saying a lot of shit, but I was still stuck on him saying that Melissa’s baby is for Khalil.
Had I been duped? It sure seemed that way.
I was feeling like a complete fool, but at the same time, I still felt that there was some truth in Khalil’s words. I just knew that Jahrein was cheating.
“Jahrein is not going to be faithful.” I told Ray-Ray.
“I’m not cheating on you.” Jahrein interrupted. “You just listen to what people tell you, and you the one walking around with hickeys on your neck.”
“Who put a hickey on your neck?” Ray-Ray asked me with a raised brow.
Why did I have to explain to either of them? “This is not a hickey. You know I get red wherever mosquitoes bite. I was sitting at the park all day yesterday.”
“That aint no damn mosquito’s bite!” Jahrein roared.
Red smirked, as she folded her arms. “Jahrein's ass would know.”
“Hold up!” Ray-Ray halted him.
“Man, Ray-Ray she lying!” Jahrein insisted.
Ray-Ray turned to me. “You need to sit down and talk to him. I don’t know where your little ass went, but I know damn well that you wasn’t with some nigga!”
My daddy was yelling at me, like he was seconds away from kicking my ass.
From the looks of it I wasn’t going to be able to shake Jah’s ass.
My daddy was riding for him and I really didn’t have a leg to stand on.
At that point I was confused. You see, I loved Jahrein and it was painful to think that he was with other girls.
So, I often tried to convince myself that I didn’t want him anymore.
Truthfully, I couldn’t even imagine a world without him.
He was like my brother, father, and man all rolled into one.
For the remainder of that afternoon Ray-Ray and Red played mediator as Jahrein and me tried to iron out our issues. It was clear that they were trying to keep us together, even though I didn’t understand why. At the end, I gave in and agreed to give his ass another chance.
That night we got it in, and he kept reassuring me that he loved me with all of his heart. For some strange reason I believed him, for once. He also asked me if I cheated on him. I told him no, but it didn’t seem as though he believed me.
He was inspecting my body for other marks or any indications that someone else had been here.
He swore that I had been tampered with and that he was going to hurt the nigga that did it.
I didn’t know if the accusations were stemming from his own guilt, or was it that he could he actually tell.
He just kept questioning me about who I was with.
I wasn’t telling him a damn thing. Loose lips sink ships.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jahrein was getting on my last nerve. I couldn’t breathe without him there.
He dropped me off and picked me up from school.
If I wanted to go to the mall he had to take me.
If I walked to the park he had to be there.
If I walked down to Shell or Tiffany’s house he would make his way down there too, with Junior.
If any of the niggas in the hood gave me a second glance he’d stop dead in his tracks and ask, “What’s good homie?
You see something you like? You want her? You know this nigga, Raven?”
He wanted to know who’d touched me other than him. So, I was a nervous wreck. Khalil tried sending messages through a few of his boys, but I wasn’t trying to hear it. He was even bold enough to call the crib a few times. By the grace of God Jahrein didn’t answer. I was so done playing with fire.
“Raven, just give me a hour.” Khalil pleaded one day when I answered the phone.
“Khalil, you know that Jahrein aint about to let me go nowhere right now.”
“Come on, pretty girl, don’t be like that. You know a nigga cut for you.”
“Hel-looo. Khalil, I’m pregnant with this boy’s baby, so what the hell do you expect? He aint just gon disappear, because you want to fuck with me.”
“Girl, if you could just see what I see. I don’t care about you being pregnant. You too good for that nigga. I can take care of you like a real man is supposed to. He got y’all living at his mama’s house. You need to step up in life and get with a real nigga.”
“Look, please don’t call here again. I just can’t handle the drama that comes along with this.” I said as I hung up the phone.
After that conversation I was on edge thinking that Jahrein would figure things out.
Then Red blew my mind when she announced that she got a hook up on a low income apartment for us.
The apartment would be in her mama’s name that lived on a fixed income.
That would basically leave us paying about a hundred dollars a month in rent.
Jah was excited, because he was ready for us to move out.
I, on the other hand, felt indifferent. I would be on my own in a sense, but he was going to be there trying to run every damn thing and there would be no parent there to level the playing field.
A week after Red told us about the apartment we were moving in it. The
Cunney Homes were hood, right in the heart of 3rd Ward.
We had a two story two bedroom apartment.
It was okay on the inside, but after I was finished with it, it was actually nice.
I pulled out my stash to make that happen.
I bought a living room and dining room suit.
The furniture was all black and leather.
We took our bedroom furniture from Red’s house.
Jahrein was surprised that I paid for that all by myself.
I told him to keep his money and save it for the baby.
Just a few days later I found a wad of cash on the kitchen’s counter top. He came home and told me to keep it, and that it was reimbursement for the furniture.
“All that shit is my job.” he laid down the law, as he headed back out the door.
We had a completely furnished apartment and things didn’t seem so bad.
Jahrein even began letting me use his car; here and there.
I think that he was giving me so much freedom, because I was getting further along in my pregnancy and probably figured that I would less likely do anything with a big round belly.
Shortly after moving into our own place Red threw me a baby shower.
It turned out very nice. All my friends came along with my family from both sides as well as Jahrein’s.
It was so big that we had to have it at a rented hall.
That was where I met Jahrein’s older brother Jaylen for the first time.
He was handsome just like the rest of his brothers.
So, the baby shower kind of turned into a welcome home party as well.
That meant that there were plenty of niggas in attendance.
I wasn’t even tripping because my unborn child ended up with more gifts than one child could use.
After staying in the Cunney Homes for three months, I gave birth to Jhyrah Ty Braxton.
She was seven and a half pounds, and looked just like her older brother.
She was so beautiful to me. That experience was quite different from my first, because I’d expected her arrival.
I was overjoyed to meet her and at that moment I realized that I didn’t regret making her.
Jahrein was beaming with pride and even gave me the biggest surprise.
He asked me to be his wife in front of our entire family.
I was a little caught off guard, because I thought that marriage was so far away.
Hell, I still had two years and some change before I’d even be legal.
Still, I took his engagement ring; happily.