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After standing in the parking lot talking for another ten minutes or so, we finally broke apart. Well, Mahogany did, so she could go to her car while Giovonte and I walked over to mine.
“Ma, let me push the Lexus. I played for you tonight, so can you reward a brotha for his skills?”
My son was referring to my brand new 2019 Lexus RX, the silver one. I’d just gotten this car two weeks ago, and I loved it so much that I didn’t mind sleeping in it. I taught Giovonte how to drive about three years ago, but I still hesitated when it came to him driving my car, especially my new baby. He was right, he did play well tonight, so I ended up taking the keys out of my black, Chanel purse, and I handed them to him.
Like the gentlemen that I raised him to be, he came over, opened the passenger side door for me and allowed me to get in before he closed the door behind me. He placed his gym bag in the backseat, and he got into the driver’s side. Like I’d taught him, he didn’t start the car until his seatbelt was on.
“When I go pro, Ma, Ima buy you like ten of these. Anything you want, Mama, swear Ima get it for you. If it was possible, I’d buy the world for you. You don’t spare any expense when it comes to me, so how dare I do that when it comes to you? Every year, all my basketball packages were taken care of, and I have you to thank for that. I tell you all the time that you’re one of a kind, Ma. They don’t make ’em like you no more,” my son said, making me smile.
No matter the time of the day, Giovonte didn’t miss a chance to acknowledge his appreciativeness toward me. He was hard all day, just like Trip, but when it came to the people he loved, especially the women, he could be as soft as a teddy bear. My son had to love you, I mean really love you, for you to see his soft side.
“The best gift you can ever give me, son, is to continue what you’re already doing. Of course, I would want you to go pro and all of that, but I want you to get an education too. Have you decided what school you’re going to yet?” I asked him now that we were on the road.
“I like Duke, UCLA, even LSU. The hardest thing on me is going to be leaving you. I feel like I’m all you really got, and I’m not trying to take myself away from you like that, you know what I mean? Trip left. I’m not trying to do the same stuff to you,” my son told me as we approached a red light.
His left hand was on the steering wheel, so I picked up his right hand and kissed the back of it.
“You’re not leaving me, Giovonte. You’re doing something that’s going to help determine your future. You gotta think about yourself in this situation, not me! Trip isn’t here for a far different reason than why you won’t be here. I’m tough, baby, trust me. I’ll be fine,” I lied.
I won’t say how I cried like a baby for weeks when my baby became a senior. I knew with his basketball skills that he would leave me when he went to college, and boy, I wasn’t ready for that. It felt like just the other day I was getting my ass beat by my grandma after finding out that I was pregnant, and now my baby was a senior and on the road to graduate soon. I needed time to slow down a little bit.
“Yeah, ight. If you say so,” he nonchalantly said. He made a face, where his eyebrows furrowed, and God if he didn’t look like Trip! Whenever I said something that Trip didn’t like o
r necessarily agree with, I swear he would make that same face.
“Your asthma was good tonight. I didn’t see you go for your inhaler as much,” I said, changing the subject.
“Yeah, it was straight tonight. I didn’t feel like I was sucking in a bunch of cold air. I just don’t want my asthma to be my downfall, you know?” he asked.
My son had asthma, which wasn’t something that neither one of us were proud of, but we worked around it. Over the years, he’d had about two asthma attacks which both scared the shit out of me when they happened, but that was years ago. He hadn’t had one of those episodes in a very long time. We took the proper precautions, like making sure his inhaler was on him at all times, his oxygen therapy, medications, and he even saw a specialist.
Giovonte’s biggest fear was that asthma would be his downfall, but that wasn’t a fear of mine because I knew that he was going to be fine. Just as I was about to respond to him, my phone started ringing from the car’s Bluetooth. The name, Trip, with two hearts flashed across the screen, letting me know that the cellphone he had somehow managed to get into the prison was what he was calling me from.
Trip would never tell me how he got that phone in there, but something told me that he had fucked on one of those dumb, bird brain ass correctional officers who worked there, and they were dumb enough to do it for him. Trip ran that prison; I swear he did. I didn’t know for a fact that Trip was fuckin’ the female correctional officers because he wasn’t dumb enough to tell me no shit like that, but at the same time, I knew that Trip could talk the meanest woman out of her draws. He’d probably conned his way into having someone bring a phone in for him.
I didn’t even get a chance to answer the phone call myself because Giovonte quickly answered it.
“What’s up, Dad?” Giovonte answered the phone.
His face lit up every time he answered the phone for his father. He loved that man despite the reality that we had. Giovonte was seven when his father went in, so he was at an age where he knew what prison was. Giovonte and I didn’t lie to our son and tell him that Trip was off to college or in another state working because we didn’t want to leave our son with the false hope that his father was coming back when he really wasn’t.
It was Trip who told Giovonte over the phone that he was in prison and not coming back. My baby was sick over that news for a very long time because he and his father had a bond that was so tight that it almost made you want to cry. Although Giovonte knew that Trip was in prison, we never told him for what until he was about thirteen. There were hardly any secrets that we kept from our son.
“What’s up, baller? How your game go tonight? How many points you scored?” Trip asked, and I could hear the happiness in his voice.
“I scored thirty points, and I had twelve rebounds. We got five more games before we make it to the championship,” he told his dad.
“That’s what’s up. I be bragging on you in here to these niggas. I tell them that my lil man is the new Lebron James. We bet on each other’s commissary money. I took all these niggas shit the other night when you played. I got honey buns, Rice Krispie treats, Now and Laters, all that,” Trip said, and I laughed quietly while I shook my head. No matter what it was, this man would always find a way to take somebody’s money. “On some real shit, keep doing what you doing, son. I’m proud of you, man. I can’t change this shit, but just know that I wish I were there to actually watch you play, aside from hearing about it over the phone. I love you, don’t ever forget that shit,” Trip let Giovonte know.
“I love you too, Dad,” my son replied.
“Cool. Where your mama at?” Trip asked.
“I’m right here,” I called out.
“Why you ain’t say nothing then?”
“Because I wanted you to use that time and talk to your son. What’s going on?” I asked.
