He was quiet for a second too long.
“Gutta.”
“It’s somebody I messed around with about four years ago, the shit wasn’t nothing to mention at that time.
“Okay and?”
He looked up at me. “She was married.”
I put my hand on top of my head and just stood there for a second.
“She was married?” I repeated. I knew damn well my nigga wasn’t getting down like that. I’ve done some shit in my days, butit was some lines that we knew not to cross. This nigga knew first hand that Karma didn’t miss niggas that moved like that.
“Yeah.”
“And now she has a baby that might be yours and not her husband?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down in the chair across from him because standing was starting to feel like too much for this conversation. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a second and then looked back at him.
“Does she know for sure it’s yours.”
“She won’t give me a straight answer. She shut me down hard when I reached out. She’s got a husband, a whole life and she don’t want me anywhere near it. I know that if he thinks that baby is his and it turns out to be mine, this can blow up her whole life.” He shook his head. “But I forced her to agree to meet me today. I told her if she didn’t I was pulling up to her crib.”
“Today?” I asked, because I was trying to figure some shit out for him.
“Today. So I need you to think with me because I don’t know how to handle this. That’s why I’m here. Yo ass always know what to do.”
I looked at him for a while. Gutta was the most unshakeable person I had ever known in my life. I had seen this man in situations that would have broken most people and he would never even flinch. And right now he was sitting on my couch looking like he hadn’t slept and his whole world was tilting sideways.
“Does Simone know?”
He closed his eyes for a second. “No. And I don’t know if she ever will.”
“Damn nigga.”
“I know. I know what you about to say, and I’m fucked up right now. That’s not even all that I got on my plate, but I know this is what I need to handle and address first. Mannn, I might have a seed out here.”
“You might have a seed and lose yo damn woman. This shit is crazy man,”
“I said I know.” He stood back up and started moving again because Gutta couldn’t sit still when something was eating him. “Simone noticed the resemblance and made a joke about it and I laughed it off. She don’t know the full picture yet.” He looked at me. “And I need to figure out if there’s even a full picture to tell before I blow my whole relationship up over something I can’t prove.”
That was the smartest thing he had said since I walked in.
“Walgreens,” I said. Thinking out loud, more than anything.
He looked at me. “What.”
“We need to go to Walgreens right now and get a DNA test. You take it with you to this meeting today and you don’t leave without getting a sample from that baby. I don’t care what the mama says or how uncomfortable it gets. If that little girl is yours you have a right to know and she has a right to know who her father really is. Nobody gets to take that from you because it’s inconvenient for their marriage. Her ass knew shewas married when she gave that ass up. Who the fuck is this girl, man?”
He stood there and I could see something move through him. Like he had been carrying the weight of not knowing what to do and somebody had just handed him the first real step forward. His eyes said that he wasn’t going to tell me who this person was. Now, I wondered if I knew her.
“What if she won’t let me test her? I mean what if she really gets to tripping? And if it’s not my child, then I have no right to just swab the baby on some creep shit. The last thing I need is a charge,”
“Then you tell her you’ll get a court order. Because you will. And she knows that will make shit worse. Louder and messier. She won’t be able to hide shit from her husband then. We will have her served at her front door.”
He nodded slow.
