Chapter 7 #3
The Leader before me wasn’t the man I was used to.
Gone were the designer threads, the bulging pockets stuffed with what made the world go round, and the look of destruction I used to see in his eyes.
Leader had always been his own worst enemy.
He had allowed this, which was proving to be his biggest downfall.
As pissed off as I was at Amaya for being so careless and spiteful with her actions, jail for Leader was inevitable.
It was inevitable because he believed it to be the rightful place for him.
He believed it was the only way out for a man of his caliber.
Jail or Hell, he would say.
I’d told him time and time again that the tongue was powerful, but it had gone in one ear and out the other.
He’d broken my heart, no doubt, but I was grateful that jail had come up on the docket instead of a pine box.
Still, his eyes held a glint of something different that I couldn’t quite read.
Instead of leaning into it, because I knew my emotions were all out of whack, I blinked slowly before meeting his gaze.
He towered over me, legs chained, with crisp white sneakers on his feet, contrasting the green jumpsuit that looked as if he’d had it pressed at the cleaners.
I’d caught a glimpse of a few inmates while being escorted back here, and none of their uniforms or shoes were as sharp and clean as Leader’s.
His glare was beginning to make me uncomfortable.
My thoughts jumped all over, the first being if he could tell I’d had a baby.
My heart hadn’t slowed down since I made the turn to come to Iron Kinser Federal Prison, and I had no clue what I was doing here.
When I made my decision to come instead of going to BU, I hadn’t thought about what a visit with Leader would be like.
In my mind, we’d be in a visitation room, filled with people and guards posted around, watching.
I had a four-by-six picture of the baby—one of her hospital photos—that arrived in the mail some days ago, but I’d left the photo in my bag.
I would’ve been more open and prepared to tell him he had a daughter if I’d known we would have this alone time together.
Baby Leader was the cutest baby, and I was so happy with how the pictures had turned out.
She wore a crochet, fairy outfit in mint green—a gift from Pearla—with a matching hat and booties.
Her silky, straight hair framed her forehead, and she smiled for the camera, even in her sleep.
The photographer said the photo was award-worthy, and after getting the prints, I agreed.
I paid a pretty penny for them, but they were worth it for my baby girl.
I knew Leader would’ve appreciated the photo of his newborn, but I couldn’t form the words to say the picture existed. I couldn’t form the words to say he had another child now. And since I didn’t have the photo, I coward and let the silence linger.
“I half expected you to walk in here with a big-ass belly.”
Leader’s words brought me back to the present. Stepping back out of his embrace, his facial expression neutralized, while I felt like I was about to pass out. My palms grew clammy, and my stomach churned. I didn’t need a mirror to know that my skin was flushed bright red.
“Hunh? Wh…Why you say that?” I stuttered.
My breasts had grown two to three cup sizes, and the only bras that fit were the nursing ones.
They were the most comfortable, too, being that the breast milk came and went.
My face was still obnoxiously round, and my lips remained slightly puffy.
In the months I’d spent with Leader, I’d learned how observant he was.
However, his being able to sense childbirth would be another level of awareness.
I met his eyes, waiting for his response, and when he shrugged as a smile stretched across his handsome face, my chest deflated with relief.
“You’ve been dodging my people, baby. I thought maybe it was because you were hiding something, but I knew I’d just seen you in court a few months ago, so I don’t know why that was even a thought now that you’re here.
” He rubbed his chin as if he were piecing something together.
He didn’t know how right he was, and I wasn’t in my right mind to tell him.
“Leader… Everything was just a lot. I had to pack up the apartment to move back home, and then I got really sick—”
“Sick?”
Shit, Glee.
Concern was etched in his tone as he closed the small gap between us and gently grabbed my chin to lift my face. I shuddered, not bothering to hold it back. His touch was electrifying—magnetic. Just like that night on my balcony where we shared a platter of overpriced seafood, he had me.
I paused, searching for a plausible illness. “Y-yeah. A, uhh… summer cold.”
He tilted my head ever so slightly so that he was able to inspect every crease of my face. His thumb swiped across my chin, and my breathing heightened.
“You good now?”
Blinking, I nodded.
His eyes hooded as he kept looking at me as if I were the Mona Lisa. There were two chairs in the room, but we ignored them and just stood close to each other. He was studying me, and I was doing everything I could to hide what he was searching for.
Just say it, Glee. He deserves to know. Tell him you had a baby! Tell him he has a daughter who looks just like him and you, I was screaming to myself.
“You know out there… Outside of these walls, a nigga barely slept. I didn’t dream. I saw no point in the shit. I was a doer ’cause nigga like me couldn’t afford to dream.”
He licked his lips as his eyes dropped to mine. Involuntarily, I licked mine too.
“But now, all I do in this bitch is sleep, Cali Glee,” he admitted.
“Are you depressed, Leader? I mean… How’s your appetite? Do you have difficulty concentrating, any… wild thoughts, like of harming yourself?”
I needed to know. It was crazy how I was diagnosing him as if I didn’t have my own issues to resolve.
“Yeah and no. None of those symptoms, though. I just enjoy sleeping now. And not ’cause I’m locked up either. Jail was inevitable. In my position, it was either jail or death. I’d been lucky to go as long as I had without being jammed up.” He preached the same song and dance while I sighed.
“I’m fucked up because of you, baby. I go to sleep because it’s the one place I see you constantly.
I’d never dreamed until the first night here.
Shit scared the fuck out of me too.” He chuckled, his minty breath tickling my face.
“It felt so real, so right. I woke up the next day, on a hard-ass cot, mad at the fuckin’ world ’cause I had no way to get to you, Pretty Mama.
“You ain’t gotta talk to a nigga. As a matter of fact, you’re too fuckin’ good to be caught up with a nigga that’s doing all this fuckin’ time.
But, shit… Let me be a man, baby. That’s the one thing the law can never take from me.
Let me pay for your schooling, and if scholarships doing that, let me pay for you a high rise or some shit.
That way, you can study with the city underneath you.
Show all them muthafuckas you one of one.
Buy you a new whip so you can ride to campus in luxury and shit.
Let me keep your pockets full, Glee. And so that my mama can quit stressing me the fuck out, unblock her number, please, Pretty Mama.
” He chuckled again, but my lip were trembling too much for me to join him.
My body struggled not to shed more tears as Leader’s words seeped into my heart.
I had a full scholarship that covered housing, but there was a condition: it had to be on campus.
I didn’t know of any housing that accepted single mothers, and if there was, I was sure my scholarship wouldn’t cover it.
A condo sounded nice, and so did a new car, even though mine barely had any miles on it since I couldn’t take it to BU last year as a freshman.
However, the idea of living alone with my daughter terrified me.
The thought of driving an expensive car with valuable cargo in the back seat scared me even more.
It was all overwhelming. I was still trying to get used to being a mom, and I’d only had a little over three weeks to cope with my new reality.
“You know what’s crazy? I haven’t talked to my son once since being here. I’ve been going through drastic-ass measures to locate you, but haven’t attempted to find ole girl.”
“Amaya?” I asked, although I knew who he was referring to.
He nodded before licking his lips as he went back to looking me over.
Tucking my feelings into my back pocket, I thought about my daughter’s brother.
Brother.
My baby girl had something Glow and I never had. I’d always wanted an older brother growing up, but just the two of us had been good enough, especially with the dynamic happening in our childhood home.
“How is Leland? I mean… Has your mama or sister seen or spoken with him?”
The thought of Amaya left a terrible taste in my mouth. I knew Leader was content with his circumstances, but the bitter part of me resented her. Had she not gotten into his car with drugs, being spiteful, he’d be free.
And Baby Leader would have her father.
The thought of Amaya finding out I had a daughter made me tense. She’d been so nasty to me. I could only imagine how she would act toward my child.
Leader kissed his teeth, snapping me from my thoughts. “Nah, but it’s straight. I know it won’t be long before Amaya pops back up. She can only mother for so long. My lil’ homie gone be straight. He a soldier like his daddy.”
I said a quick prayer for Leland. Amaya had no right to be cruel in a situation she created. Keeping his child from him and his family wasn’t the right move. It was childish, and at her big age of twenty-eight, she knew better.
I have no room to talk about maturity.
“Cali Glee?”
“Hunh?” I stammered, Leader calling out to me and pulling me from my thoughts again.