“Baby is okay with me. You two go ahead. Besides… It’s nothing wrong with giving her more milk. At this age, all they know how to do is sleep, get cuddles, and eat.”
“I—”
“Goodbye, Ms. Glow.” Nelsa dismissed me, and Dasani turned toward the front door with a smirk.
Taking another look at Nelsa, I sighed and followed Dasani. She stepped aside once we reached the door to let me open it, and when I did, I came face-to-face with another person I wasn’t expecting to see.
“Heyyyyy, Pearla girl!” Dasani greeted from beside me.
Pearla had her phone in her hand, with boho braids pulled into a half-up, half-down style, wearing Gray Alo shorts and a matching sweatshirt. Her thick legs were on display. She’d lost a little weight, but she was still a round, pretty girl.
Pearla’s eyes swept over both Dasani and me. “Y’all look so pretty!” She beamed, her smile almost perfect, even with the braces.
“Thank you, boo. You look cute too,” Dasani said as she beamed back at Pearla.
I gave thanks for her compliment also before saying, “Glee isn’t back from Blake just yet.”
“Yeah, I just tried to call and text her. I would have ridden with her, but I overslept.” Pearla held her phone up. “You mind if I stay over here until she gets back?”
“I don’t mind at all. Come on in.” I opened the door wider for Pearla to enter, and she hugged us both before she stepped inside. “Bella and Mahzeyah may pull up too.”
“That’s fine. If y’all get hungry, have Glee order food on my Uber Eats account.”
Dasani hit the alarm on her G-Wagon, and I turned to follow her. I had to carefully climb up into the passenger seat since my shoes were new and slick. It had been a while since I’d seen her drive this truck, and I wondered what motivated her to choose this car to cruise in today. She had so many cars that she could switch them out for two weeks straight and still have a few left over. Dasani was so spoiled that if she even complimented a car, Demise had it delivered to their home before the day was over.
“Glee had a pretty-ass baby.” Dasani shifted her focus from the road to me.
She ran over a speed bump, and the truck wobbled since she was going ten miles over the speed limit. I’d always liked G-Wagons because they sat up high, but when I found out it wasn’t a smooth ride, I scratched them off my dream car list.
“Yeah, she did.” I didn’t mean for my response to come out as a whisper, but I was consumed with uncertainty.
“I don’t do house calls, Glow.”
I sighed, the elephant in the car being called out. “I know… I didn’t mean to ignore y’all, but it’s been a lot going on.”
“You disappointed?”
“Very. As beautiful as Leader is, I didn’t want this for my sister.”
“Okay. What do you want for her, Glow?”
“I…” I paused and exhaled so I wouldn’t sound so small. “I want her to finish school, Dasani. We sent her to school a virgin, and I expected her to come back home one. At the very least, I didn’t expect her to get pregnant. Then, the baby daddy is a no-show. She says he moved away or something. That tells me he’s probably someone that she had no business messing with in the first place. The good girls always love the bad boys, so I know he’s trouble, wherever he is. Had she gotten with someone who was on her level, she probably wouldn’t have come home a single mother.
“I just want her to be a college student. A teenager. I want life to be easy for her because mine is already hard enough.”
Dasani merged onto the freeway beside a truck bigger than the G-Wagon. I wasn’t surprised when she passed it; she was driving this Mercedes truck like it was a Toyota Corolla.
“Daylani was always the quieter one of us. The sensitive one… The good girl. While I was the hot-headed, career-driven sister, she was love-driven. Daylani wanted to love and to beloved. I was so caught up in my own mess, chasing hours at the hospital and stacking up as many hustles as I could, that I missed it.
“See… I was protective of my sister, but in my mind, I knew she was a smart girl. I knew she would make the right decisions. She wasn’t attracted to the kind of men I was. So when she said she was dating a law student, I let her do her. Lawyers make good money, and I figure the worse he’d do is cheat on my sister.”
Daylani and Rut were so madly in love that I couldn’t imagine her being in a relationship with a man besides him, but she had—they both had. Their daughter was proof of it because, while Daylani loved Rich as her own, biologically, she wasn’t her mother.
“That nigga, that I thought was harmless because he wasn’t the textbook bad boy, was actually putting his foot in my sister’s ass. I had to lie down and serve six years for trying to protect her. He’d beat the fucking baby out of my sister, Glow. You hear me? Thatsafe lawyer… the good guy, was putting his hands on my sister and doing her so wrong.”
I often forgot about Dasani doing six years in jail for attempted murder. The way she carried on in life, you would never know there was a time she was locked up behind bars.
“So when you say you want her with the lame, just know them niggas be the worst type. Got chips on their shoulders and shit because the world ain’t been kind to ’em. You want your sister to be with that kinda man, but I’m the bitch that’s gone tell her to run away. Lace up your Nikes, Glee baby. Run from them goody-two-shoe niggas!”
