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“What’s going on? Mahogany, what the hell is wrong with you?” I asked because she was crying.
Her make-up was smeared and everything. She looked pretty as hell in her white dress, making me question where the hell she was coming from. Jabari was in a white, two-piece linen suit, and I assumed they must have taken maternity pictures or something, although she really wasn’t that big yet. I didn’t even know that her ass was taking maternity pictures today. Like, when the hell was she going to tell me this?
“Ask your daddy what the fuck is going on, Shae. You know my mama, Jahir?” Mahogany asked, removing her eyes from me and directing them back on my daddy.
At this point, I was so fuckin’ confused. What the hell did Mahogany’s mom and my dad have to do with anything? Hell, I was still trying to find out why the hell she was carrying on like this.
Jabari just stood to the back with his hands in his pockets, making it known that he didn’t want shit to do with this.
“Yeah, I know your mama. Why you questioning me about Marissa?” my daddy asked, calling Mahogany’s mother by her real name.
That was a shocker to me because I didn’t even know that he knew Marissa.
“How you know Marissa, Daddy?” I quizzed.
“Yeah, how do you know Marissa?” Mahogany quizzed, and when my daddy didn’t answer fast enough, she started crying. “Listen, out of respect for Shae being my best friend, I’m really trying to be as respectful to you as possible, but at the same time, I’m high off emotions and ready to say fuck this friendship, so I can get through to you. For the past thirty years of my fuckin’ life, I’ve been lied to, hushed, and ignored when it came to me wanting to know who the hell my father was. I’ve heard everything from he was in the army to my mama telling me that she slept with so many men that she just couldn’t remember. After almost ten years, I faced my mom today, and she looked me in my eyes and told me to ask you. So, Jahir, I’m asking you again, how the hell do you know my mama?” Mahogany said.
It was so quiet in the room that I swear you could hear a damn pin drop. My head all of a sudden felt like it was spinning. Out of all the shit that Mahogany could have stormed over here with, why the hell did it have to be this? I watched my dad’s body movements, and he came across as a typical nigga who had just gotten caught up. From the way his eyes were on everything in the living room except Mahogany, down to the sweat beads that were forming on his forehead.
After what felt like a damn eternity, everyone heard him release a sigh, and he started talking.
“We messed around a few times,” he announced, and I took a huge breath in as if I was shocked.
“What? Wasn’t Marissa cool with my mama, though?” I questioned.
The story had been told to me for years about the friendship that my mom had with Mahogany’s mom. Hell, there were even pictures of the two of them at my grandmother’s house. Their relationship reminded me of how Mahogany and my relationship was.
“And when you say you were messing around with her a few times, would that have happened to be in ninety-seven and ninety-eight? Something along those lines?” she asked him, and without his eyes on her, he nodded his head up and down.
“Wowwwww! That’s the same year that I was born. Daddy, can you talk? Please, make this shit make sense! What is Marissa trying to say? Are you Mahogany’s daddy or what?” I asked the question that I had been dreading to ask for the past two minutes.
“Listen, man. Everybody in Dade-County knows that I was with your mama from the time I was twelve years old. We had our little breaks here and there, and when we were on a break; I did my little thing in between. Maybe two or three years before you were born, Marissa and your mom had moved in together. I came over one night to kick it, but your mama wasn’t there. Only Marissa was. It ain’t no excuse, but I was young, dumb, and obviously didn’t give a fuck about the girl that I had. I slipped up the first time, but any other time after that, it was all my own doing.
“Your mama was the love of my life. I swear to God she was. I had been with her since I was a kid, so you know I loved her. At the same time, Marissa started filling voids that your mama couldn’t fill because that’s around the time that she had started going back to school, so I barely had her time or any of her attention. We kept an ongoing affair for two years. Like clockwork, your mama told me she was pregnant with you one week, and Marissa told me about a month later that she was pregnant.
“Straigh
t up, I told Marissa that she had to get an abortion because I wasn’t doing that shit to your mama. She let it be known right then and there that she wasn’t about to kill a child. I was willing to do anything to get her to get the abortion because I couldn’t let your mama find out, but she wouldn’t change her mind. What she did say was that I didn’t have to be involved and that she would raise the child on her own—”
“And rest in peace to Jashae’s mom, Jackie, but why couldn’t you step up after she died? I don’t want to sound like I’m being insensitive to anyone’s feeling right now, but after everything that I’m hearing right now from you, all I hear is that you didn’t want to be a part of me and my mom’s life because it would hurt Jackie. Jackie died, and you still didn’t take care of the responsibilities that were yours,” Mahogany said.
I was at a loss for words, so I couldn’t even say shit. All I could say was that all this shit made no sense to me. For so long, my daddy could do no wrong in my eyes. I thought of him as perfect. When my mom died, it put him in a position to be a single parent, and although my grandma was very hands on when it came to me, I still couldn’t take the credit away from him and say that he didn’t step up.
I couldn’t believe this shit. All these years, he bragged on my mom and told me stories about how she was so perfect, and I always thought that he was the perfect man. Meanwhile, this nigga wasn’t shit but an older version of my baby daddy. It hurt worse because Mahogany was damn near my family. For thirty years, this man knew for a fact that Mahogany belonged to him, yet he didn’t say shit. I had been best friends with this girl since I was five! Meaning that for twenty-five years, she’d been around him, and the nigga didn’t say shit!
“I couldn’t help but feel like both him and Marissa were sick in this entire thing. They played like they didn’t even know each other. I’m just thinking back to times when we were younger and he would either drop me off to Marissa’s house, so that I could be with Mahogany or Marissa would drop Mahogany off to be with me at my grandmother’s house. That’s crazy.
“Even in death, I felt like I couldn’t hurt Jackie like that. You don’t think this shit bothered me, though? You don’t think that I felt bad, knowing that I had another daughter out here who I wasn’t even helping to raise? That shit would eat at my fuckin’ soul damn near every day. When you and Shae were younger, it was plenty of times that I should have stepped up, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. All I can say to you, Mahogany, is that I’m sorry—”
“Damn right you’re sorry! I would have rather my mama stuck to the story of not knowing who the fuck my daddy was. You’re worse than these new generation of ain’t shit ass niggas. Talking about you didn’t want to hurt Jackie! Nigga, you hurt her the first fuckin’ time that you stuck your dick in my mama. She just wasn’t aware of that hurt! How you let your own child be in your presence for twenty-five years, and you didn’t say shit? You didn’t even throw a bitch a hint that you were my daddy. Ain’t even send my mama a fuckin’ dollar. That was the least that you could have fuckin’ done. I’m not buying this fuckin’ story. Shae might, but I’m not. This sounds like a story of a sorry ass nigga who was still living at home with his mama and didn’t want to deal with the responsibilities of having to financially take care of two children and—”
“Mahogany, I get it! You’re mad, but this is still my daddy. Please watch your mouth,” I warned her.
Hell, I was mad at him too, but I wasn’t going to disrespect him.
She spun around and looked at me like I was crazy.
“I don’t give a fuck if he was your fuckin’ granddaddy! He’s wrong, Shae, and he needs to know that! Then again, you had him in your life, so I wouldn’t even expect you to feel me right now. Stay out of it, Shae,” she voiced.
