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“Baby, I’m so sorry,” I kept saying as I used the back of my hands to wipe away the tears that were falling from his eyes.
“Get back in your seat, ma. Ima drop you off at the house,” he said after allowing me to console him for about one minute.
“Where are you going? Let me go with you,” I said, not moving off his lap.
“To go see what the fuck is left of my uncle, ma. I’m taking you home, Normani. Ain’t no telling if them niggas who did him dirty are still out there, and I ain’t about to take you to a possible war zone. On top of that, you barely got any fuckin’ clothes on. I just lost a nigga who I looked up to as a second father. Bae, it ain’t the time to go toe to toe about this shit right now. Let me drop you off at the crib, so I can find out what the fuck is going on,” he said.
I knew when to test him, and I knew when to back off, so without saying anything else, I just climbed over and got back in my chair. I tossed my blanket onto the back seat and put my seat belt back on. This was the part of Billionaire that made it so hard to love him. I could hear it in his voice that mentally, he was getting ready to check out on me. He was going to shut me out, just like he’d done when he found out the truth about Khari and who she belonged to.
There was so much I wanted to say, but now wasn’t the time because I personally knew how much Billionaire cared for his uncle, and nothing I could say would be enough to make this situation a little bit better. With tears in my eyes, I looked over at my husband, scared because I didn’t have a clue what he was about to get himself into once he dropped me off at home.
“Now, Denim, baby. You know it’s too soon for you to join me here. Baby, go on back to them two beautiful girls. My daughter needs you too. You’re her only child. As much as I love you, it’s not time for you to be with me just yet. You have other people who need you more than I do,” my grandma Berline said.
She looked so beautiful. Just like I imagined her before she got strung out on drugs. My grandma died from an overdose when I was in the tenth grade. This woman standing would chaperone my elementary school field trips whenever my mother had to work and wasn’t able to make it. This was the woman I had been following around since I was able to walk.
My grandmother was the best grandparent in the world, but once she got strung out on drugs, she changed, but my love for her never wavered. I loved my grandmother to pieces. This was my mother’s mother, and she and I had always had such a great relationship. I remember when she died. I cried for about a month straight because I just couldn’t find the proper ways to cope after her passing. My mother had to pull me out of school for an entire semester. I had to complete my school assignments at home, and my mom would just turn my assignments in for me at the end of each week. That’s how bad I was after I lost her. It just felt like a piece of me had been lost, so it was hard for me to move on.
I was in high school when it happened, so my mother tried to keep a lot of things from me. I honestly didn’t even know that my grandmother was an addict until one day
, I happened to be eavesdropping on a phone conversation that my mom was having with one of her friends. She broke down on the phone about how she wanted her mother to get clean. That’s when it hit me. Back then, my grandmother knew how to hide her drug use, but later on down the line, she started getting sloppy with it. There were times when we would pop up at her house, and she would be so high out of her mind that my mother would get angry and leave her there.
My mom tried to get my grandmother to go to rehab, but she would decline her offers every time. Once my grandmother had reached her breaking point, I just remember her losing so much weight, to the point that she was unrecognizable. So, to actually see her now, looking like she looked before she allowed drugs to take over her life, it brought tears to my eyes.
I reached out to touch her because I just wanted to make sure this moment was real. My hands touched her soft ones, and she gave them a light squeeze. I released a sigh at the words she had just spoken as I prepared to let her in on how I felt.
“Grandma, you don’t get it. Everybody hates me. Billionaire hates me, his parents hate me too, although my mama didn’t tell me that she hates me, I know she does because I put her right in the center of all my drama. Once I tell Khari the truth, she’s going to hate me too. I was selfish for what I did. I don’t see how I ever thought this messed up plan that I came up with would ever be okay. I just want to walk away from it all. I’d rather be here with you. That way, I don’t have to face what I did. I know once I open my eyes and go back into the real world, it’s going to be a constant reminder of my actions. I can’t live like that for the rest of my life. I’m going to drive myself crazy. Besides, I feel like everybody will be better off without me. Don’t you think?” I asked as I looked up at my grandmother with tears in my eyes, feeling sorry for myself.
She was dressed in all-white, looking like an angel. Although I was trying to convince her that I would rather be with her, I could tell that I wasn’t getting through to her. I saw it in her eyes that I wasn’t persuading her enough.
“If you run away, then you’ll look like a coward. Your kids need you more than anything. My new great-grandbaby deserves a chance at life. If you don’t fight, your new baby will not stand a chance. Your kids will never hate you. I know you hear them when they come into your room and talk to you. Denim, you need to open your eyes. You’ve had enough rest. Go. Go and be with your family. I’ll be waiting here when it’s your chance to come home for good, but right now, my sweet grandbaby... right now, it’s too soon,” my grandmother spoke.
She let go of my hands and turned her back to walk away.
“Grandma,” I called.
She turned her head to look at me over her shoulder and gave me a warm smile.
“Open your eyes, Denim,” she said one last time, and then she faded away.
The smell of Blueberry bubble gum was the first thing I smelled once my eyes popped open. It was a warm, candy breath that I smelled right now. I knew that it had to be one of my kids all up in my face, preferably Khari, since that little girl was the candy queen. The second my eyes opened, I heard a bunch of screaming and saw a lot of moving going on around me. For at least the first twenty seconds, it was hard to focus on what was happening in front of me because the blurriness needed time to fade away.
The sound was coming back, and I could hear my mother screaming for a doctor to come into my room. I felt kisses on the right side of my face and the left. The more I settled into what was going on around me, I started to gain feeling in my body. Seconds ago, when my eyes popped open, I didn’t feel a thing. I had an uncomfortable tube plunged deep into my throat, and all I worried about was getting that out of me.
“Can you see me, Mommy?” my beautiful daughter, Khari, asked. Her mouth was blue, and her clothes were dirty with everything that she had probably eaten today on it. She had the blueberry breath that I smelled when I woke up.
Khari was standing next to the bed, and to let her know that I could see her, I nodded my head up and down. I tried to lift my hands, to point to her mouth and nonverbally fuss at her for eating a bunch of candy, but it felt like my hand weighed bricks, so I wasn’t able to do it. It even pained me a bit when I nodded.
“We missed you, Mama,” my oldest daughter, Rylo, said as she stood next to Khari with happy tears in her eyes.
I wanted to let my children know that I missed them too, but I couldn’t talk yet. Everything about hospitals scared me. I hated the cold rooms, I hated needles, and I hated the sight of blood. Before I even had time for my panic to kick in, a doctor rushed into my room, along with two other nurses.
I lay there confused, just trying to piece everything together. A headache was beginning to form because I was trying to figure it all out and possibly remember how I’d gotten there in the first place. Because it wasn’t coming to me quickly enough, I was bringing on pain to myself.
“Sleeping beauty has finally risen,” the handsome, white doctor joked once he came in and stood by my bedside. I rapidly blinked my eyes, hoping that he could read between the lines and take the damn tubes out of my throat because it was so uncomfortable and somewhat painful.
“I’ll get your tubes out in a second. I need to check you. I want to make sure that you have feeling,” he said and pulled out a pen from his lab coat.
It was crazy how he read me without me even saying anything. Then again, he was a doctor, so there was no telling how many patients like me he’d had to deal with. My eyes stayed on him the entire time because I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to stick me with anything. He went to the foot of the bed and removed the blanket that was wrapped around me. The second the blanket was removed, and I saw the baby bump in my stomach, tears flooded my eyes. I cried because everything was slowly coming back.
