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“Nothing, I’m about to turn this phone off after I finish talking to y’all. You know I got to hear your voice before I go to sleep. You still coming to see me in the morning?” he asked, and I released a sigh.
“Really, Trip? I told you that I wasn’t going to see you until next week. I been making that drive to Orlando every week for the past six weeks. I told you I wanted a break tomorrow. We’re short staffed at the office, so every day this week, aside from tonight, I’ve really been leaving the office a little bit after 8:00,” I let him know.
It was rare that I didn’t go to see Trip. I had to be exhausted like I felt tonight after a long weekend for me not to go and see him. It wasn’t like he was right around the corner. This man was a whole four hours away from us. I told Trip last weekend when I saw him that I wasn’t going to come this weekend, and instead, I would come next weekend, but that was just like him to hear what he wanted to hear.
“Take me off speakerphone, Jashae,” he said, and I knew he was mad.
The fact that he was calling me by my first name let me know that he was mad at me.
“Trip—”
“Yo, I don’t want to hear shit unless it’s you taking the phone off speaker and putting it to your ear. I don’t need my son to hear me say what I got to say to you!” he barked at me.
I wasn’t scared of Trip or nothing like that. I definitely wasn’t scared with him in prison, but he was like the only person in this world who could check me. Well, him and my grandma. I took my phone out of the cupholder and took the call off the Bluetooth speaker then placed it to my ear.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Jashae, you know that I don’t ask you for a motha fuckin’ thing except for you and my son to come and see about a nigga one day out of the fuckin’ week. Y’all really all that a nigga got. My ole girl may come ’round this bitch once out of the month, so I depend on y’all to come and see me. I feel like I shouldn’t have to beg my own fuckin’ shorty to come and see about her nigga. I want to see you and my son,” he said.
“Trip, I said we’re going to come, just not this week. I’m tired. Why can’t you understand that?” I asked.
“What the fuck is so different from last week to this week? Shit, you were tired last week too, and you still managed to come and see about me! Fuck it! I won’t beg you to come and see me. I’ll have my other bitch come and check up on me then,” he said.
I guess this was supposed to be his way of fuckin’ with my head. Trip knew how jealous I could be, especially when it came to him. This was basically him lighting a fire to my ass so that I could get up, but I wasn’t going to fall for it.
“Giovonni, I don’t give a fuck who you call. You can call the same bitch who smuggled this phone inside that prison for you. Was that supposed to make me jealous or something? Don’t let me start hollering out about all the shit that I can do!” I yelled back at his ass.
I was sick of this shit. I felt like every time I got on the phone with his ass, it was a fuckin’ argument. The more time went by, the harder this shit got. I knew it was all this talk about basketball, the championship, and Giovonte picking colleges that had him wishing that he was home to witness this moment too, but because he wasn’t, he tended to take his anger out on me.
“Holler out the shit you can do, so when I see you, I can slap you in your fuckin’ mouth! Quit playing with me, Jashae, like I won’t break your motha fuckin’ neck, shorty. You feeling yourself tonight, so I’ll call you back tomorrow. Hopefully, my bitch answers the phone and not whoever this is I’m talking to right now!” With that, he hung up the phone on my ass.
I tried to call him back, but he had already turned the phone off. The threats that Trip made went in one ear and out of the other. He would never in his life lay a hand on me, and he knew it too. Sometimes, he could be so fuckin’ insensitive to my feelings. I rarely complained of me being tired, but these days, I’d been working my ass off, and it felt like I could hardly catch a fuckin’ break. I didn’t expect Trip to pacify me because he just wasn’t that type of person, but I at least expected him to be a little bit more understanding.
O
nce I got the hint that he wouldn’t be calling me back tonight, I just threw my phone back in the cup holder and paid attention to the road while my son drove. I hated having to get into arguments over the phone with Trip, especially in front of Giovonte, but hey, this was our reality.
Giovonte Young
“Baby, I want to go to the movies tonight. Ask your mom if you can use her car,” my little shorty, Taylor, said on the phone.
It was Saturday night, and I honestly didn’t have any plans to go out. I was sitting at the foot of my bed, in a pair of my basketball shorts with the controller in my hands as I played NBA 2K19. The phone was on Facetime, propped up on a pillow so that Taylor could see me, and I had a plate of Chinse food that my ole girl had ordered.
We’d had doubles all month for basketball. Monday through Friday, we had to be at the school at four in the morning, and we would practice until six. Right after practice, I would go into the locker room, take a shower, and throw on my school uniform to prepare for class. Right after school, we were practicing again. We had an early morning practice this morning, and the moment I got home, I showered and had just woke up a couple of hours ago.
I wasn’t trying to do shit tonight, but my shorty wasn’t understanding of that. Her ass could never just sit the fuck down in one place. She always had to be somewhere on the move. I get it, we were teenagers, so it was expected for her to want to go out. I wasn’t your average teenager, though. Basketball and school consumed me, but when I did finally get a minute to chill out, that’s all I would want to do.
I had been with my girl for about four months. She was a fine ass redbone with a body like those Miami bitches from the rap music videos. She had some pretty, light brown eyes on her, a fat ass, and she was fuckin’ my young ass crazy. My mama couldn’t stand Taylor. If my ole girl wouldn’t get arrested for fighting a minor, I honestly think that she would beat the fuck out of Taylor. I told my ole girl that she was just mean and didn’t like anybody, but she swore that Taylor was with me for the wrong reasons.
I was told that I had a hard head like my ole boy, so if Taylor wasn’t the one for me, then I would just have to figure that shit out on my own. So far, shorty hasn’t done anything to me that would have me looking at her sideways.
“Shorty, my ole girl is not going to let me drive her new car without her in it with me. I at least got to give it another month or two. Besides, she’s in one of her moods tonight. She got into it with my ole boy last night over the phone, so she’s in a bad mood. She’s going to tell me no off rip,” I explained to Taylor.
Everyone knew that when my mama got into it with Trip, she would get into one of her moods. I wasn’t even sure what he said to her last night that set her off because she took the phone off the Bluetooth, but whatever it was, it had her waking up at six in the morning, blasting all those hurt love songs that she liked to listen to and cleaning this entire house from top to bottom. The house didn’t even need cleaning because my ole girl was a neat freak, always having the house spotless. Shit, she still cleaned my room. Not that I couldn’t, but she swore that I couldn’t clean it the way she would.
My ole boy called this morning, but he called my cellphone, only wanting to speak to me. Truth be told, I felt like having a father behind them walls was far worse than from having a nonexistent father. To me, it felt like putting candy in front of a kid’s face and waving it around in front of them, teasing them, but they couldn’t have it.
It was a tease with the relationship that I had with my ole boy is how I saw it. Like, I had him, but I didn’t have him fully. I saw him once out of the week for a good forty-five minutes. Our relationship was honestly just an over the phone relationship. I had to tell my ole boy over the phone the type of grades I got, how I did in a basketball game, shit even that I loved him. When I turned thirteen, and my ole boy started talking to me about sex, he did it over the phone.
