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The abortion was what I wanted to do in the first place. I couldn’t stand kids. My little brother and sister were the two most annoying people in this world, so I could only imagine having to deal with a child of my own. Now, the part about going to private school, I could only hope that she was just talking when she said that. I didn’t want to go to no damn private school!
“I’m sorry again, Ma,” I told her, right when she pulled out.
“Journey, please!” she said, and I quickly let it go.
I’m not going to lie, I was relieved a little bit. I just knew that my grandma would end up pulling both my mama and my auntie off me. They were both looking at me like they wanted to attack me, so I was scared shitless. These days, all I ever did was make my parents disappointed in me. There was a time when I would bring home all A’s and B’s, I was respectful to both my parents, I followed the rules, and whatever else came with being a good daughter.
I’ll honestly say that I changed the day that I met Raheem. I wanted to be so much like the older girls that I knew he was into, so I slowly started changing my ways. I wanted to go back to the old Journey. Seeing my mom cry today because of my behavior was something that I didn’t want to witness again.
I started thinking a whole bunch of what ifs. Like, what if she started ignoring me and treating me the way that her and my dad were treating each other? Like the two of them just existed to each other and there was no love shown. Yes, my mom could be a hard ass, and I felt like she rode me so damn hard, but I would choose that type of treatment any day over her completely washing her hands of me.
9
Takari Evans
A whole week had gone by since Journey announced to me in the car that she was pregnant. In this week, I promise to you that my life has been stagnant. That news broke my heart because this was my baby that we were talking about; my thirteen year old daughter. I kept wanting all of this to be a bad dream, but yesterday afternoon proved to me that this was indeed true.
The abortion had taken place yesterday, and that procedure had only proven to me and the few people who knew about the pregnancy that this was indeed true. I just hated that Journey felt like she couldn’t come to me and talk to me about certain things.
I remember a few months ago, when I’d questioned her on if she was sexually active due to the hickey that was on her neck, and my own daughter looked me right in my eyes and told me no. I don’t know if I was a fool or if I had so much trust in her, but I actually believed her when she said it. After that, I didn’t feel the need to take her down to the doctors to see if she was telling the truth or not, nor did I ever question her again on it because her word was good enough for me. I felt like it was partially my fault for not being on top of that with her.
When we came home that night after finding out that she was pregnant, I, of course, told Jerrod because he was her father, and he deserved to know. All he did was look at me, shake his head, and walk out of the kitchen. I knew my husband; therefore, I knew that he was blaming the whole thing on me. In one instance, he would go on and on about how good of a mother I was, but he would be so quick to turn around and say that I was never on top of things when it came to the kids.
The fact that he wasn’t even coming into the guest bedroom to check up on me like he usually would, or he wasn’t even attempting to say anything to me, proved to me that he blamed Journey’s pregnancy on me. He was giving Journey the same silent treatment as well. The last time that Jerrod might have said anything to our daughter was the morning before she made the announcement of her pregnancy.
As pissed off as I was with Journey, I couldn’t just completely shut her out, because, at the end of the day, that was still my child.
It was the weekend, a little bit after ten at night, and all of my kids were over their auntie Sky’s house. Not to say that I was giving up or anything, but I just felt like I needed a break from it all. The pregnancy along with the abortion had taken a toll on me, and I was second hand affected by it. Imagine my hurt as a mother, as I sat out in the lobby room of a cold clinic while my daughter was in the back preparing for the doctors to come and suck a baby out of her.
My daughter wasn’t supposed to be experiencing no shit like that. At her age, the only appointments she should be having is dentist appointments, her annual physical for school, and so on. My baby hadn’t even gotten her first pap smear, yet there she was getting an abortion. This whole thing just had me in a state of depression, and for the first time today, I was finally getting out of the bed, so
I could wash my ass and brush my teeth.
I stayed in the guest bedroom all day with the blinds closed to block all the sun out. I was left in this room for hours with just my thoughts, and I can’t even tell you the number of times that I questioned my role as a mother. For my thirteen year old daughter to be pregnant, I just felt like I had to have been doing something wrong. Maybe Jerrod and I were doing something wrong. Not only was I questioning my role as a mother, but I was also questioning my role as a wife and thinking that I no longer wanted any parts of this marriage.
I was tired of this. Tired of trying to stick it out for the sake of my kids and settling with my happiness. As much as I was ready to walk away, I kept thinking back to what Jerrod said to me a few months ago about how he would pretty much leave me with nothing if I ever decided that I wanted to leave him. Then, I thought about the savings account that I had for the past year or so that he didn’t even know about.
If I left him and he decided that he wanted to be messy and freeze all my accounts, there was still this savings account that had over sixty thousand dollars in it that he didn’t know about. I had to do that. Jerrod would say some spiteful things to me over the years about him being the breadwinner of the house, and so forth, so I had to look out for myself. These thoughts that I was having in my head, I didn’t know what they would lead to, so I just cleared my mind of that, and I damn near had to drag myself out of bed.
Since it was so late at night and I would probably be getting right back in the bed after I bathed, I didn’t even bother making the bed up. I felt the need to take a good, relaxing bath, and because the best tub in the house was the jacuzzi sized tub that was in Jerrod and my bedroom, I knew that that’s where I had to go. Jerrod wasn’t home, though. We had stooped so low in our marriage, that he was now communicating with me through little notes on the refrigerator, which was literally the pettiest thing that I could think of.
Around five this evening, I came out of the bedroom to go downstairs for a bottle of water, and I saw where he’d left a note on the fridge, telling me that he and a few of his co-workers were going out tonight to celebrate one of the employee’s birthday at the office. From that letter alone, I knew that we were done. There used to be a time where he would invite me to everything concerning his job, but the fact that he would go without me proved to me that this was pretty much a wrap. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were out tonight telling people that he was in the process of getting a divorce if someone happened to ask about me.
Maybe I was talking crazy, but that was just the way I felt. I let the water fill up the tub after adding some bubble bath and quickly running down the stairs to grab a glass and a bottle of wine. Yes, it was indeed one of those nights. I pulled my long hair up into a sloppy bun, and pretty soon, I was ridding myself of all the clothes that I was wearing and getting inside the tub, making sure that I was careful to not get my cast wet. I would be happy as hell when this shit came off my arm.
It took me thirty-three damn years to break my arm and get a cast. I still can’t believe that my reckless and angry driving had caused me to get into my first car accident ever. Then, out of all the people in the world, look who I ran into. I still couldn’t get his sexy name out of my head… Za’Kai. It was something about that name that was so attractive to me.
When he and I first had an exchange, of course, I noticed his attractiveness, but his disrespectful mouth had me turned completely off with him. It wasn’t until the night of the accident saw a softer side of him that I ended up feeling like I was committing adultery in my own marriage. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he lifted my body up in his strong arms out of my car and sat me on the hood of his. Or, what about when I was in the doctor’s office crying, and he came over and wiped my tears? The whole time the doctor was applying my cast, he stood behind me, gently massaging my back. Then, the encouraging words that he’d said to me back in the car that night.
He did all the things for me that night that my husband was supposed to have done. When I made it back home the next morning with my kids and the cast on my arm, Jerrod wasn’t the least bit concerned about what happened to me. Of course, he asked what happened, but he was so nonchalant. Even after telling him that the front of my car was completely totaled, his fucked up response to me was, “you got to be more careful.” That’s what I got from my own fuckin husband. He never came over and hugged and kissed me or thanked God that the accident wasn’t much worse than it could have been.
The more I thought about the fucked up things that I’d been putting up with in this marriage, the more I drank from the wine. If I kept it up, I was going to finish the entire bottle that I’d just opened tonight. My body was finally fresh and clean, and I let the water out before I got out and wrapped a towel around me.
I went over to the sink and did all of my nightly skin routines followed by brushing my teeth. As I was rinsing my mouth out, I heard the front door open followed by the alarm being disarmed. I rolled my eyes because I knew it only meant that Jerrod was home. My hair was a mess, and I needed to tame it a little bit, even though all I was about to do was get back in the bed.
I used one of the hair brushes along with some hair gel and put my hair into a much neater ponytail. Once I was finished in the bathroom, I walked out with the towel wrapped around my damp body and holding the dirty clothes that I’d just taken off. I could see Jerrod through my peripheral as he sat at the foot of the bed, and I felt his penetrating gaze on me. I ignored his gaze along with his presence as I went in my closet to drop the clothes into the dirty hamper.
“Where my kids at, Takari?” he finally asked me as soon as I was getting ready to walk out of the bedroom.
