23. Zaire Godfrey
TWENTY-THREE
zaire godfrey
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED . . .
I perused the aisles impatiently, feeling slightly skittish like I always was around my father.
Shit was hard to explain because I wasn’t exactly scared of the nigga and would fight his ass if needed, but the pain and torture he’d inflicted on my brothers and me coming up still taunted a nigga and gave my dad a haunting ass nature.
There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach as I tried to busy myself inside of the Vitamin Shoppe as he scoured the shelves looking for Ayan’s preferred protein powder.
“Fuck,” I mumbled, hating that I’d agreed to kick it with Ayan for the day, which led to me being at the Godfrey Boxing Gym with no whip.
Once my father expressed that Ayan needed to practice until nightfall and Ayan agreed like the kiss ass that he was, I had no choice but to hitch a ride with Pops since he was dipping out to fetch the powder for his favorite son.
I tried to remain quiet and calm, scratching at my inner forearm to stabilize myself as I stood beside my behemoth of a father, frowning deeply and ready to curse at the store clerk because he hadn’t found what the fuck he was looking for.
I had to remind myself that once we grabbed this shit, he’d take me home, and I’d be free of his ass. A part of me wanted to call Rakim and have him scoop me since I knew Josias was busy on delivery for the baking company, but I didn’t want to cause any type of riffs between my brother and father.
Once Nate got wind of what I did, he would take issue, and then Rakim would have an issue with that. It wasn’t worth it. Rakim had taken enough of the beatings and mistreatment to be spread among us all to last a lifetime.
“Nate?” A gravelly voice called out, prompting me and my father to peer over our shoulders in effort to see who it was.
An older man, maybe around my father’s age, approached, hunched over. Though he and my dad were both sixty, or in their sixties in this nigga’s case, you could tell my father was in much better shape.
My dad’s forehead creased before recognition set in, and it relaxed.
“Gordon? How you doing, nigga? I ain’t recognize you looking like you could be my fucking dad,” my father replied, laughing heartily as Gordon joined him.
“Not everybody grew up to spend their life working out and in sports.” Gordon coughed and then looked up and over at me.
Peering to his left and down at me, my dad said, “My son Zaire. My youngest by three minutes,” he added, a joke he used to always throw out that I used to feel like was his way of showing love.
“Zaire. Wow. Of course you’re a big guy.” The man reached to shake my hand, and I obliged.
“Nice to meet you.” I bobbed my head, wanting to tell Gordon to get the fuck on so my father could take me home.
“Yeah, I went to high school with your father . . .” He paused, eyes widening as if a light bulb had gone off in his head.
“Oh, and your mother too. Your mother is Helen, right?” He grinned, and I nodded.
“Yes, they were high school sweethearts!” He turned to look back at my dad who appeared uncomfortable at the subject of my mother, which was understandable.
My mama was a sensitive subject for all of us.
“How is Helen?” Gordon grinned, unknowingly bringing up a difficult topic.
“Oh, she um, passed almost ten years ago—”
“Oh!” Gordon shielded his mouth in shock, intercepting my dad’s sentence. “I had no idea, of course. How, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Yeah, uh, . . . stroke. Only fifty-one years old, so you know it was hard.” My father shrugged, releasing a dejected breath.
I zoned out at that point, wondering why my father would tell Gordon our mother died from a stroke when it was a heart attack.
I was a zombie at that point, only snapping out of my whirlwind of thoughts when I watched the white man hand my father his receipt, grinning wildly like most heavy boxing fans did whenever in his vicinity.
As soon as we were both in the car, my dad having reversed out of the parking space, I asked, “Why you tell that old nigga mama died from a stroke? She died from a heart attack.”
He waved me off, pulling into traffic after yielding for a moment.
“I misspoke, Zaire. Not a big fucking deal.”
“You misspoke? How can you mistakenly say the wrong thing when someone asks what yo’ wife died from?” I continued to probe, not going for the misspoke excuse.
I didn’t know what I was expecting to find or learn, if anything at all, but I knew something wasn’t right.
Having damn near grown up in the media from being one of the most coveted heavyweight champions, my father had perfected saying the right thing at the right time.
Shit, how else you think the nigga was able to hide the violent abuse he’d perpetrated on his wife and kids for decades?
Slamming on his brakes at the red light, he gripped the wheel in his large hands and turned to me, venom lacing his eyes.
“Look, Helen was my got damn wife, and I loved her well before you and yo’ bitch ass brothers even came into this world. So don’t come at me like you love her more than I did, lil nigga. I made a fucking mistake, and that’s all the fuck it was. I was nervous.”
“Nervous for what? You a big ass, healthy nigga, and he was an old ass man who couldn’t even stand up straight or shake my hand without trembling.
” I kept on, ignoring the foreboding feeling swirling around in my stomach like water did a drain.
No matter what my mind and body told me to do, I couldn’t stop my fucking mouth from interrogating this nigga.
“Aye.” He laughed cheerlessly. “You’d better shut the fuck up talking to me. I’m telling you right now, this ain’t what the fuck you want.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I surrendered, having no more questions anyway. I wasn’t getting any-fucking-where, so it was pointless. However, I wasn’t gon’ let this shit go. Next time I saw Rakim and Josias, I was mentioning the shit, so long as his pet Ayan wasn’t in the room.
I loved the fuck out of my brother, but his obsession with being accepted by my father trumped his love and loyalty for us.
Additionally, part of Ayan’s strive for perfection in Nate Godfrey’s eyes was out of fear, something that started when we were fucking kids.
The more perfect he was, the less likely he’d be beaten or tortured or locked away.
The remainder of the ride to my spot was silent, and I wasn’t gon’ complain. He hadn’t even pulled up to the curb of my home fully before I was hopping out of the car, slamming his fucking door. I waited to hear him peel off, but instead, the engine shut down.
His heavy footsteps trailed me as he yelled, “Zaire! Zaire!”
I entered my home, and the nigga was right on my heels before I experienced what I imagined being hit in the back of the head with a hammer felt like.
I knew it was his fist, though, and the reminder that he’d hit my mother hundreds of times with the same fists he’d sent grown men to the hospital with, enraged a nigga.
I pushed the pain from his punch to the back of my mind, whipping around to cock back and hit the nigga in his mouth.
Nate was no feeble old man, but he was still an old man at the end of the day, so my untrained punch sent him stumbling a bit.
He eyed me in shock before we began to tussle all over my living room.
I was sweating profusely in an attempt to defeat this big ass nigga as we went blow for blow.
He was dazing me, I couldn’t lie, but my adrenaline was too high for me to bow out.
Tiring him out, I charged him, causing us both to fly onto the glass coffee table, him on bottom.
Securing my arm around his neck to stop his breathing, I spoke through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know what the fuck you did to my mama, but I’m gon’ find out, you bitch ass nigga.
” I adjusted my grip as he fought and struggled to remove my arm, eyes widening out of need for oxygen.
“It was neither a stroke nor a heart attack, and that’s why you misspoke.
I can’t prove shit yet, but I will.” Leaning down some to whisper in his ear, I said, “And when I do find the truth, me and my brothers gon’ murk you. ”
I kept a hold on him for a bit longer then released his ass.
As much as I wanted to kill him right here, I knew that would be foolish.
It wouldn’t take but twenty-four hours for the cops to find out and toss my ass in jail.
Rakim taught me that I had to think before doing shit, especially something as serious as murder.
I stood carefully, not wanting to get cut by the glass all over the floor, and waited as he did the same, breathing heavily and like he was about to die. I also saw the way his face was drenched with worry and anxiety from my words, letting me know I was on to something and not tripping.
I waited, expecting him to go in on a nigga or want another round since he’d assumed only Rakim could defeat him. Instead, he slowly but surely made his way out of my fucking house.
* * *
Days later . . .
I stirred awake, and it took me a moment to realize I was cuffed to the headboard of my bed. Shit was hazy since I’d gotten high before I passed out to go to sleep, unable to fall on my own with the thoughts of the past few days journeying through my mind on constant replay.
“I tried to help you, Son.” My father’s voice seemed to echo around the room as I shut my eyes to hopefully alleviate the thundering headache I was experiencing.
“Nigga, why the fuck I’m cuffed!” I snapped. “Hel—” I tried to scream, but he sent his fist into my face. That punch accompanied by the drug induced sleepiness and headache took me out slightly.
My California king bed dipped as he sat his big ass on it, wrapping his muscular arms around my calves.
I opened my eyes as much as I could, still groaning from all the painful sensations I was dealing with, to see Nate snatch the cap off a needle with his mouth since his hands weren’t free.
“This is gon’ feel good. Some shit you used to.
This time, though, you won’t be coming back, Zaire,” he explained, and I did my best to try to wiggle free and scream, but it seemed like an arduous task at the moment.
“We got enough fucking problems in our family, and I don’t need you poisoning your brothers’ minds with your psycho theories. ”
I felt the needle prick the skin between my big toe and the second toe, making me whimper. Slowly, I started to feel as if I couldn’t breathe, making my eyes expand as I stared at my father who only smirked as he pushed every bit of the contents of the needle into my foot.
Panic set in as I began to struggle even more to catch my breath, causing my body to flail about since I didn’t have enough oxygen in my body to scream or ask for help, though I knew my father wouldn’t oblige me anyway.
Not to mention, I didn’t have one neighbor close enough in this luxe ass neighborhood that would hear me yelling.
Tears escaped my eyes as I watched him stand next to my bed, me becoming more and more disoriented as time went on. Fighting became too hard after a while as my father busied himself on his phone and talking shit to me while I strained to breathe.
So, . . . eventually, I stopped, using my last moments on earth to beg God for His forgiveness and to protect my brothers from this monster that had not only killed the mother of his children but now his youngest by three minutes.