Chapter 12 #3
I think they both needed that hug. Even though my dad couldn’t hug her back because of the way he was shackled, he still needed to feel her arms wrapped around him.
The two of them looked good together. They literally fit one another.
My mom was short, and thick as hell, and my dad was tall, muscular, built like a damn quarter back, so there different sizes made them look really good.
They were high school sweethearts, and you could very much tell that the love was still there. I knew that my mom didn’t want to remove her arms from around him, but she eventually pulled away, and my heart melted when I saw my dad lean his head down, so that he could kiss her on her forehead.
My mom and I went back to the table, taking our seats, and my dad came over as well, and he sat next to Sevyn.
“What they in here feeding you, man? Ima get to the case in a second, but damn,” Sevyn couldn’t even keep it professional if he tried once he saw my dad, and how ripped he was in the orange jumpsuit that he was wearing.
My dad laughed, and I just sat here, smiling at him, taking in how handsome he was.
“Shit, all I do is work out. I don’t be eating all that processed food that them niggas be eating with their commissary money, either.
That’s why them niggas getting fat, while I’m in this motha fucka getting swole.
You see that stallion sitting across from me?
I gotta be able to lift that up when I get home,” he said about my mom, and I could have screamed when he said that.
Sevyn laughed while my mom sat there and rolled her eyes.
“Nigga please! You won’t touch me!” she spat.
“Bet I touch all over you. Let’s go Sevyn. Come on. I’m ready,” he turned his attention to Sevyn, ready to start.
This was the back and forth bickering that my parents would do all the time. There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to come home, and they were going to get back together. The love was too strong.
“Ima jump right in because these thirty minutes are going to fly by. Stand up right quick Dionte,” Sevyn started, getting right to the point.
As if my dad trusted him and didn’t have to question anything that Sevyn was telling him, he quickly stood up from the chair, hands in front of him that were still shackled, with his feet on the ground.
“Alright. Walk over there to the wall, and face Antoinette, and Dionne. I’m going to stand behind them,” Sevyn ordered, getting up from his chair, with the folder in his hand, and he walked over.
Just like he said he would, he stood behind me, and my mom. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I was intrigued.
My dad took his spot, going over to the wall, and he stood in front of it.
“Alright. Pretend we’re the members of the parole board. We’re going to make this a mock hearing. Convince us that you’ve changed. Show us that you’re ready to go home,” Sevyn said to my dad.
I could see the uneasiness in my dad’s eyes.
You could tell that he was caught off guard with this.
I’m sure that he thought that today would only consist of going through his files and listening to what Sevyn had to say that would bring him home.
I’m sure nothing prepared him for a mock parole hearing today.
My dad picked up his chained hands, and he scratched his head. He looked from me to my mom, to Sevyn, and then at the floor. He did that for at least one minute, and then he cleared his throat.
“Shit, I been locked up for over thirty years. I’m ready to come home to my family. I feel like I learned my lesson,” was all he said, and I rolled my eyes hard because I didn’t hear the fight in his voice.
My daddy was hood. There was no way around it, and I knew that public speaking wasn’t his thing, but if he wanted to come home, he was going to have to make it his thing and let all that hood shit fly out the window.
“And that’s it? That’s what you going to say? Nigga, they going to send your ass right back to your fuckin cell,” Sevyn was hard, but with what was at stake, I understood that he had to be.
“Nah. When that day comes, I’ll have a speech written and everything.
I didn’t think that I was going to come in here with a homework assignment.
You should have told me that over the phone the other day, so that I could have at least prepared myself for it.
I ain’t the kind of person that you can just throw shit on me like this.
I gotta practice what I want to say,” my dad was nervous, and he was scared, and that surprised me because I never really saw him show either one of those feelings.
Behind me, I could hear Sevyn exhaling through his nose. Right after that, he removed himself from standing behind my mom and I, so that he could walk over to my dad.
“Look at me,” Sevyn said to my dad in a demanding tone. My dad picked his head up, and he looked Sevyn in his eyes.
“Your life on the line. Whether you get to walk out of this bitch or die in this motha fucka is on the line. I put you in a position to prove to me, your baby mama, and your daughter that you’re ready to come home, and you failed.
You had over thirty years to come up with something persuasive to say about you being tired of this place, and how ready you are to come home.
Look at your daughter, man. She a grown woman now.
I mean this in the most respectful way, but you got a beautiful daughter sitting behind me.
Just before you walked in this room, her face was leaking tears, asking me if I had faith that you were coming home.
I hear fear in her voice. Dionte, she’s scared because once again, your freedom is in the hands of someone else.
Someone else has to make that call on whether they see fit if you’re ready to go home,” Sevyn got on him, and my dad took it, looking him in his eyes, hanging onto his every word.
“I also know when I’m looking in the eyes of a woman that loves a man.
Despite your shortcomings, I see it in Antoinette’s eyes that she still loves you, and she’s ready for you to come home too.
She wouldn’t have come down here this morning if she wasn’t ready.
I say all that to say, if you really want to go home, and experience the kind of love that’s waiting for you outside these doors, you gotta take this shit serious.
If you can’t convince us, how you going to convince the real parole committee?
Show us that 37 years didn’t just pass the fuck by.
Show us that you learned something from this shit.
Get right, nigga. Try that shit again,” Sevyn tapped my dad a couple of times on his chest before he walked away.
I liked Sevyn. I had no idea if this was the way that all attorney’s talked to their clients, but I liked that Law was just a regular person, and he was treating my dad like a regular person.
You saw the passion in what he was doing too.
There wasn’t any judgement from him, either.
He was just a man that wanted to get his client out of prison, so that he could reunite with his family.
Thirty minutes passed, and the guard eventually came to take my dad to the back.
We got a lot done in the little time that we had.
The talk that Sevyn had with him really did help in boosting his confidence, along with getting him to see how serious this was.
I’m not sure if my dad thought that he was out of the hot seat after Sevyn had gotten on him, but Sevyn came at him again, setting the scene of a mock parole hearing, wanting to hear my dad pour out his heart, speak on the way he had changed, and why he felt he deserved to go home.
I guess that part was a test just to see if my dad was even serious about it, and for Sevyn to know if he was wasting his time or not.
The second time, my dad did much better, but we all concluded that it would work in his favor if he wrote his letter, allowed it to come from the heart, so that he could present it when that day came.
Once we got through that, that’s when we all sat at the table, and Sevyn put it all out on the line about my dad’s original case that had him in prison in the first place.
We know that the crime my dad was in prison for was murder.
I don’t know if my dad really killed someone or not.
He claimed that he didn’t, but at the same time, he wouldn’t say who pulled the trigger. According to him, he didn’t know.
That was one of the things that my mom was so mad about with him for years because there’s this piece of her that felt like he knew who pulled the trigger, but he was living with that mindset of not wanting to snitch on one of his friends that was with him that night.
Today was the first time I actually heard my dad swear and put it on me that he wasn’t responsible for it.
We got through that part, and then we moved on to the petty crimes that he did while he was locked up. Sevyn only brought it up because he knew that that was something that would get used against him at is hearing, but my dad was ready to take full responsibility for that.
I really felt like a good game plan was in motion, and I couldn’t prove it right now, but something told me that my daddy was coming home.
I hugged him tightly just as I did any other time when our visits were over, but this time I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry because I knew these circumstances wouldn’t be for much longer. My mom hugged him as well, and he was eventually taken away from us.
Sevyn walked with my mom and I out of the room, and eventually out of the building. He parked in the same lot as us, so we took the bus back to the parking lot, where he talked about the case with us the entire ride.
Once we were off, and getting off at our stop, both my mom and I thanked Sevyn for taking on my dad’s case, but of course, he let us know that a thank you wasn’t needed.
From there, we were back in the car, and the only thing that was left to do was gas up my car, stop and grab something to eat, and head back home.
6:18 P.M.
I was pushing the shopping cart, leaving out of Whole Foods.
The cart was filled with groceries that I was getting ready to take back to Tank’s house.
By the time that I got to his house, it would leave me with enough time to get started on dinner, so that it could be ready for him once he walked through the door, or at least almost finished.
He’s been at his shop all day, working, and handling business.
I thought that he would let me get out of cooking tonight, since I had been on the road all day, going to see my dad, and then coming back, but that man called me, just to make sure that I’d safely made it back home, and once it was revealed to him that I was, he was quick with letting me know what he wanted for dinner.
It was Tuesday, and this man was asking for fried chicken, white rice, cabbage, and cornbread.
Any other man from my past that I was dealing with, I would have probably told them to kiss my ass, and that I wasn’t cooking all of that, but here I was, leaving the grocery store with everything that I was going to need to make his dinner tonight.
I made it to my car, and I used my key to pop the trunk.
As I was adding things into the trunk, a nice Mercedes C class pulled up next to me.
The windows were tinted dark, so it wasn’t like you could glance inside and see who it was.
Not that I needed to see who it was, but naturally, whenever someone pulled up next to me, I would always look.
The music that was coming from the car was loud.
You could hear the base coming from outside the car.
I finished loading the groceries into the back of the car, and I was one of those shoppers that liked to put the cart back where it belonged, so that’s what I did.
I pushed the cart back along with the rest of the carts, and as I was walking back, that’s when the Mercedes driver’s side door opened.
It was a male figure. He looked at me, and for a second, I tilted my head, trying to see where I might know him from because his face looked a bit familiar.
I hated that I was coming up empty, and I didn’t know who he was because I felt like I was supposed to know.
When he reached his hand up, so that he could adjust the fitted cap that was on his head, that’s when the sleeve of the Nike sweater that he was wearing rose a little bit, and I saw the tattoo that was on his wrist. It would be damn near impossible to forget that fire flame tattoo because I remember seeing it on the video that was shown to me.
Those hands had touched and killed my dog.
Now that I had a better view of his face, I knew that it was him, so I took off towards him, coming from the other aisle in the parking lot.
It's almost as if he knew that it was me because he moved quickly getting back into the car, and the second he got inside, I tried to pull onto the handle, but I was too slow because he’d already locked the doors.
“Open the door. Open the fuckin door,” I screamed like a mad woman, pulling on the handle, thinking that that would help.
I could hear the loud roar from him starting the car, and not caring that I was standing right here, he started backing the car up. If I didn’t move out of the way, he would have ran my ass over. Pissed, I was beating on the back of his car, as he pulled out, screaming for him to open the door.
As he was driving away, I made a mental note of his tag number, and I rushed to get to my car, so that I could save it to my notes.
The second I was in the car, I screamed, kicked, and had a whole melt down because for the first time since my dog was taken, and killed, I finally had a face on the person that had done it.
I was so close, but I allowed him to get away.
I had no idea who that man was. I’ve never seen him before in my life.
I just wanted to find out who made him do it. If he didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, then why the fuck would he kill my dog? Those were the questions that I needed answers to.