Chapter 3
Chapter Three
As soon as my window was back up, my tears began to fall.
I hated lying, but I couldn’t tell the stranger I was parked on the side of the road because we didn’t have anywhere to go.
I’d tried every hotel and motel the night before and they were all booked.
I knew that might happen due to people traveling for the holiday season, but I couldn’t believe that every room in town was occupied.
I ended up just driving around last night while Ava slept so she didn’t notice we were still in the car and she didn’t ask me tons of questions that I didn’t have the answer to.
I found the road that I’d parked on with no through traffic and figured we’d be okay to sit here until I figured something out. I didn’t account on someone living around here because I hadn’t seen any cars come or go. Only a few utility trucks, and I figured they were working nearby.
“Mommy, iPad.” Ava leaned forward, handing me the tablet then resting her little chin on my shoulder while pointing. “No working.”
I glanced at her pretty face and smiled.
She was truly the most beautiful little being, inside and out.
Her slanted eyes still shined so brightly, and her smile was as big as it always was whenever she looked at me.
It was beyond me how Aldrick could look into her precious face and decide that he didn’t want to deal with her anymore.
I took a look at the iPad and saw that it was still connected to my Hotspot, so it should have been working just fine, but there was also a chance that she used up the battery since she’d been on it since she got up earlier.
Deciding she needed a break from it anyhow, I put it on the charger and said, “How about we let it charge for a while and go get something to eat, baby girl.”
“Yay!” She tossed her arms in the air. “Macaroni! Macaroni! Macaroni!”
I laughed lightly knowing that she was going to say she wanted macaroni.
Turning and pointing to her booster seat, I asked her to get in then I buckled her up before getting myself situated again and pulling off.
We weren’t too far from Lou’s Soulfood Kitchen, so that’s where we went.
Ava loved their macaroni there, and they loved her.
As soon as we entered, she ran to the counter, holding onto it, jumping up and down screaming macaroni. Lou was there restocking some things behind the counter when he heard us enter, so he turned around smiling.
“I know that’s not my favorite little customer.”
“Lou!” Ava pointed then looked back at me. “Mommy! Lou!”
“I see, sweetie.” I smiled at her then him. “Hi, Lou.”
“Hey, Leila, how are you?”
“We’re good.” I lied, doing my best to put on a genuine smile. “Ava was hungry and begging for macaroni, so here we are.”
Nodding, he went to the back to get her food together.
He yelled asking what I wanted, and I just asked for the daily soup which appeared to be chicken tortilla.
Ava was pointing to the cups, so I took one and allowed her to go over and fix herself something to drink while I waited to pay for our food.
They had a footstool under the condiments table that she knew to get.
I watched her the whole time in awe. To Aldrick, she was doing simple things that other children had mastered a long time ago, but to me and to Ava they were major milestones because there was a time when we were told she wouldn’t be able to do a lot of them.
With my baby having Down Syndrome and experiencing developmental delays, she started a lot later than other kids.
If she had learned to talk at two or three, he would have been proud, but because she didn’t say her first word until she was four, it was a problem.
He was like that with everything Ava learned to do, but I didn’t care.
I was going to celebrate everything that she did because she worked extremely hard to overcome things that people said would be impossible for her to do.
They’d chalked it to her being nonverbal when she refused to talk, but I knew my baby.
I knew she’d let me hear her beautiful voice when she was ready, and she did.
She shocked us all when she told me she loved me too one night before bed and now knew how to say a lot more than that.
We were still working on her forming complete sentences, but that was fine with me because we’d made so much progress.
She took her time getting her drink then her lid and straw before putting the stool back where she got if from and making her way back to me. By the time she sat it on the counter, Dorothy, Lou’s daughter was approaching.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite pretty girl.” She leaned over the counter. “How are you, Ms. Ava?”
“Hungry!” Ava exclaimed and we both laughed.
“Well, we better get you fed.” She beamed then pushed herself back up. “How are you, Leila.”
“Trying to stay warm in this crazy weather,” I answered. “How are you guys doing?”
“Girl, busy.” She groaned, ringing up our food. “This is the first time we’ve had a second to breathe in here today.”
“Lou and his daughters shouldn’t be such good cooks.” I grinned, pulling my debit card from my wallet then handing it to her. My smile faded when she tried running it again. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, girl, this old thing acts crazy sometimes,” she chuckled awkwardly. “Sometimes we have to try to run it a few times.”
My brows furrowed. Their equipment was pretty dated, but they’d never had to run my card more than once. When she looked up at me with sympathy swimming in her eyes, my heartrate accelerated.
“What?”
“It’s declining.”
“De-declining?” I repeated. “No. That can’t be right. Try it again.” I suggested while pulling my phone out to check my banking app.
No internet connection?
“What the hell?” I mumbled.
“Mommy! Macaroni!”
“O-okay, Ava, give me a second.” I gently touched her arm then tried to just log in through the internet, but I got the same error message. I went to the phone app and tried making a call, but a message letting me know that my phone was no longer in service began to play. “That bastard!” I cried.
“Leila, is everything okay?”
“U-um, yes,” I sniffled, quickly wiping my tears. “I’m sorry. I have some cash in the car. Let me just—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she cut me off. “It’s on me.”
“Ms. Dorothy, no. I—”
“Leila, I said don’t worry about it,” she reached over the counter for my hand. “It’s on me. Take this baby over there and feed her,” she insisted, nodding down to Leila.
Nodding, I thanked her then took the tray and followed Ava to the table she chose every time we dined in at Lou’s.
I didn’t have an appetite, so I got Ava set up and connected her tablet to the Wi-Fi so she was distracted while I did the same with my phone so I could check my account.
It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me when I saw that my account had not only been cleaned out but also closed.
My credit cards had also been cancelled and I was furious.
Getting up from the table, I asked Dorothy to keep an eye on Leila while I stepped outside to call Aldrick. My service was off, but I could audio call while I was connected to Wi-Fi.
“What, Leila?” he answered, sounding annoyed as if I’d done something to his ass.
“You bastard! You closed my accounts and cancelled my cards?!”
“When I said done, I meant completely.”
“I have our child, Aldrick! How the fuck do you expect me to feed her and care for her, negro?!”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care, Leila. I don’t know how many different ways to tell you so that you get it.”
“I’m never going to get it nigga,” I spat. “It’s bad enough you threw us out in the cold not giving a damn that we don’t have anywhere to go, but you took my money too!”
“My money,” he corrected. “You didn’t work.”
I scoffed. “Just because I didn’t clock into a damn job every day doesn’t mean I didn’t work, dumb ass. Your life ran smoothly without a hitch because you had me in the background making sure that it did! I can’t believe that you’d do this to me. To our child!”
“Are you done?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Oh, I haven’t even gotten started yet,” I gritted. “I was actually going to walk away from this peacefully, but you have me fucked up. You throw us out like trash and take away all of my means to survive?!”
“When you were here, it was my responsibility to make sure you survived. You’re out of my hair now, so that’s no longer my job.”
“Fuck you, Aldrick,” I growled. “Seriously, fuck you! I will make you pay for this tremendously. I promise you that.”
“Okay, Leila.” He chuckled. “Now are you done?”
“Fuck you!” I hissed, disconnecting the call.
Burying my face in my hands, I began to sob. Not for me, but for my daughter. She didn’t ask for any of this, not our current situation, not her condition, and not her shitty ass father. It wasn’t fair to her.
After getting myself together, I went back inside. My appetite was gone so I got my soup to go and boxed up the rest of Ava’s food. Ms. Dorothy gave her a warm muffin to go that I also put away. Ava wasn’t a big fan of trying new things, so I doubted that she would eat it anyway.
It was later in the evening, and the temperature had definitely started to drop. I turned the heat all the way up when we were back in the car and made my way to the gas station to fill up with the cash that I had on me. It was going to be another long night, so we were going to need it.
I decided to drive around for a few more hours before returning to the road we were on earlier. I needed somewhere to stop and think where I didn’t have to worry about people that were passing by seeing us, or worse, the police.