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“Stay the fuck out of North Carolina if that situation ain’t feeding your soul.”
What?
How did Rageeknow—
There was no need to ask. Our circle was small. Someone on my team could have casually mentioned my stay in North Carolina to someone on his, or directly to the man himself. Raj was referring to Lennox, which hurled me into a crazy state of fucking confusion. So, was this push for me to come to his crib for dinner not about his sensitive ass being possessive? Was it about my relationship with the elusive Lennox?
“I don’t even know what that means, my G?” I took the rejection route, some shit that wasn’t my style at all. I believed in being direct with my confrontations. Everyone in my crew knew this. But if Raj wanted to play big brother, he’d have to be more straight forward. This was an extremely fucking sensitive topic.
Were my friends talking about me behind my back?
“It means when you’re without her, you’re worried about her. When you leave her, your mood takes a dive, bruh. I’ll always respect your decisions, but you can’t knock me for making observations on a cat who helped me fix my shit. Are you your best with or without Lennox? ‘Cause, I’mma keep it a bean with you: she don’t wear well on you at all, Black man. When it comes to her, either you’re down or…you’re down.”
Damn…
When I was quiet for too long, Raj came back with, “Whatever you need. Anything—even if it’s to solidify your shit with her. You need to get away? I got the house inSaint Justin. You wanna fly out? The jet is yours. Anything you need to remain whole, I’m here for you, bro. That’s on everything.”
I hadn’t heard from Lennox since she’d left the rental in Chapel Hill six days ago. It wasn’t like her to not take my calls and ignore texts for this long. Before her homecoming last month, we’d spoken every day—other than after our second, first kiss when my jealous ass retreated knowing she was back home with her husband. We talked a few times throughout the day. Like my man Pleasure P said on a track, we didn’t fuss and argue. I made sure I provided a space of peace for Lennox, understanding what she lacked at home. At most, she’d get on me about resting more, and I’d set her straight on taking care of her glorious body God had blesseduswith. We laughed and shared…comforted each other.
Now…this.What in the fuck did I do?I’d been insecure like a motherfucker. Had I gone too hard on her about caring too much about her husband and his family who lived in her crib? The sex? Did I overdo it? Yeah. It had to have been. With my friendship, I could provide a woman with a sense of liberty. When I made love to Lennox, I exposed my possessive nature. It had to be the sex. It was too heavy.But I ain’t even pull out my bag of toys!Why hadn’t she been hitting me back? I’d been lowkey sick, worrying about her.
I may not have left the state on Monday if, on the way to the airport, I didn’t have Charlie, my cousin and assistant, detour to her job. We picked up a cheap bouquet of flowers from a local drug store before the stop. I had him go inside and ask the front desk to see her. I knew security at the hospital was on ten. On top of that, we were flying commercial, and cutting it close. It could have taken her thirty minutes or more if she was in a meeting or training. Or what if she sent someone else down? Lucky for me, as Charlie’s goofy ass was waiting for security to call up to her office, Lennox and her team were coming off the elevator, on their way into a meeting. She spotted him first and accepted the flowers. He’d laid eyes on her, and that was all I needed. We made it to the gate of the plane seconds before they shut the door.
“I hear you, man,” I finally responded to my guy. “I hear you and appreciate you.”
I needed to fall back from this shit with Lennox. If finally being this close to her cost me the worry and bitchiness I’d been feeling since last month, maybe she didn’t belong to me. Maybe I’d been viewing this shit wrong all along.
“To God be the glory. It’s only love,” Raj reassured.
“Always love. See you later, man.”
“Peace.”
I hung up with Raj then sent Charlie a text about today’s itinerary. Next, I shot a text to my barber, who may or may not have been working on the holiday. She’d come through in a clutch all the time for me. Hitting her up early may increase my chances of getting my shit done.
While waiting to hear back, I covered my face with my arm as I lay on my back, head against my pillows. Today, I was without my baby, Elia. Grams and Smite had their own plans, and already, the tightness in my chest from stressing over Lennox had begun. Ragee’s words of concern added more weight.
As a kid, I was a loner. I had love around me, but never anything stable. My mother was good to me. A single woman who worked two, and sometimes, three jobs at a time to pay the bills. My pops was a weirdo, nomad keys player, who enjoyed sniffing coke with a glass ofSpriteduring his gigs. When I was four or five, he taught me to play the keys. Before I could get really good at it, he left Irvington.
I saw him sparingly, but definitely knew who the man was. He’d drop off money to my mother once in a while; nothing ever consistent. But his teaching sparked my interest for instrumentation, and I learned how to play even better over the years from music teachers, and an organ player at a church next door to the three-family home we lived in. We weren’t members of the church, but my mother made nice with the pastor, and a few of his parishioners in passing, over the years. I got into drumming, and composing eventually, too, through one of their drummers.
When I was a freshman in high school, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That damn demon came on fast and hard, and the shit changed me forever. My whole focus shifted to becoming her caretaker. I learned how to cook, expanded my cleaning skills, and to articulate my words for doctors and pharmacists, who all seemed to have their own languages. Staff from all shifts at the E.R. were familiar with me. Rounds of chemo and radiation zapped her vitality. Eventually, she couldn’t work. Moms didn’t have much family, and my paternal grandmother did what she could. I’d play for moms when she’d go despondent, had to wash her body, her hair, and even brushed her teeth.
As a kid, your faith game stays on ten. You’re taught that “happily ever after” is mandatory. No matter how many times I saw my mother vomit or shit on herself, or go bald, or become despondent, I always believed in her full recovery. That was until that one traumatic experience comes and knocks you on your ass. Mine came twice, and about a year apart.
My mother died in the middle of my junior year. I came in from deejay’ing a party, something I did for a few dollars to help ends meet, and found my mother dead. She wasn’t in a deep sleep or unconscious. My girl was dead. There was a different scent when I entered our apartment. I knew before calling 911 that my mother was gone.
Within a week, I moved in with my father’s mother. She and I had always been cool, so living with her was an easy transition. What made it breezy was having my father return home after all those years. For the first time, we lived under the same roof. He took me on local gig runs with him. I’d play during his breaks, and even played a few times when he wouldn’t show up. He’d keep the money, but I didn’t care. There was something right about having a pops, finally.
My uncle, Smite, was in prison at this time. He had a reputation on the streets, one that extended to his big brother, who had returned home a junkie. I didn’t get it then, but over years of reflecting, I realized my father coming back to Essex County had nothing to do with me or being home. It was because his coke habit had grown hungry to the point of him violating the people around him. Essentially, pops ran home for refuge.
He died the day after my high school graduation. Two days before, he came home in the middle of the night with a nasty stab wound just beneath his chest. It was about three in the morning, and he woke me up, somehow managing to not disturb his mother’s sleep. Dude needed help. I’d done first aid shit for my mother, helping her with her port and cleaning a small wound from an unexpected fall, but nothing like this. Wanting to aid in his need, I found shit around the house I thought could help. He kept saying over and over he didn’t want to go to the hospital. I honored that. I managed to bandage him up as he dozed off. Then, there was the crazy ass cleaning of all the blood he’d lost. I never went back to sleep. After erasing all signs of his arrival home by morning, I showered and left for school.
Over the next day or so, I got to act my age, and be a kid, engaging in all the senior activities, in and out of school. We drank, partied, I deejayed, and tried to get girls. All the fun shit I should have been doing since freshman year. I had so much fun in those two days, my grieving for my mother had numbed a bit, until waking up the day after my graduation with a hangover to EMS flooding my grandmother’s house. She’d finally tried to wake him. My father had been dead in his room for over a day. He never left his bed after my novice bandaging. I had to talk to detectives at the precinct. They kept me there for more than half a day until convinced I didn’t contribute to his death.
That was the second trauma. Losing my parents after having so little of them forced me to feel every emotion those two elements brought on. I craved love. I loved loving. I cared about people too fucking much in my early years. After my father died, I had to dial that shit back in. I gave love, but love didn’t boomerang to me in the same measure. Being raised by a senior-aged grandmother left a lot on the table. Grams was too old to chase me around to play sports if I were into them. She was past her prime and couldn’t support my music beyond buying me cheap keyboards and drum set pieces. The woman was worth her weight in gold, but couldn’t replace an actual attending parent.
Love or a lack thereof from our formative years shape our hearts. Mine seemed to be too big. Maybe it was due to me being a caretaker as a kid.Shit. Had I still been a caretaker? When I looked at how I approached making music, I had to tend to the weak parts of people and manipulate them. I had to inspire them to address and fix those weak parts as well. I was a fucking cheerleader for love in all forms.
