Daddy Dearest (19 page)

“Nah, baby. I’m about to cook.” She cut her eyes at Andre. “Just get her something to drink. Not a lot, though.”

“Okay.”

Once Rafeal and Cataya went into the kitchen, LeLe looked at Andre. “I’m okay now. Please don’t go out there.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright now. If I hear anything else about that nigga, I’mma go out there and drag his ass in here so you can see where I’m at with my gangster.”

“Okay.”

“Go start dinner.”

The rest of the night went as normal as could be expected. LeLe tried her best to be a good hostess, but the task was impossible. She couldn’t get over the fact that a cold blooded murderer sat only ten yards from her house, lurking.

Just the thought of that put a strain on the whole evening. Her cooking produced watery spaghetti. Their love making, resulted in a dry vagina, and a limp penis. And her parenting, which concluded with her spanking Cataya, and sending Rafeal to bed early.

So when sleep finally muscled its way through LeLe’s iterant thoughts, she welcomed it like a life preserver at sea. Anything had to be better than her current reality. Or so she thought.

Her dream placed her back in Bunn Correctional Facility’s visitation room. Hammer leaning in close, trying to intimidate her.

“I promise you, LeLe. If you leave town with my baby, you and your boyfriend are going to get found in the worst way.”

The first thing that came to her mind was Ron, but she was tired of being scared of him. She was also tired of being unhappy, so she smacked him.

“Enough is enough, already! I’m tired of your threats that shit is getting old! I’m not going to let you control me another day!”

LeLe was further encouraged when Hammer didn’t react. “And I tell you something else. I know all about your flirting with Fannie, she told me. I’m glad that your trifling ass is locked up. Now I can get a real man to raise Taya.”

Hammer turned his attention to a table that sat ten feet from them, an gestured at LeLe with his thumb. She almost wet her pans when she seen Ron get up and speed walk towards her. He began choking her, while Hammer conversated with Cataya.

“Don’t cry for mommy, she has been bad.”

“Okay.”

LeLe forced herself to awake from the dream, only to discover that she was being chocked in real life. The darkness hid her assailant’s face, but she didn’t need any light to know who was killing her.

She could tell by his aggressiveness that he was fueled by hatred. Hatred that was passed down by Hammer.

LeLe recognized the compromising situation that she was in and began to think about all the thing that she hadn’t done with her daughter. She wondered if Cataya would remember her if she died, and who would raise her.

It the dawned on her that she didn’t have to wonder about these things if she survived. Andre was beside her, and surely he felt the disturbance going on.

Why haven’t he woke up yet? He’s not a heavy sleeper
, she thought.

These questions were answered when her fingertips ran across a gaping slit on Andre’s Neck. It was then that she accepted her fate, and began to pondering her first set of questions.

* * *

Being that LeLe had sent him to bed early, Rafeal woke up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. He tossed and turned until his urge to urinate forced him to get up. That was one of the few pet peeves that he had developed at his young age.

He was an easy going kid overall, that didn’t need much of anything to be content. This was the reason why his sister’s house suited him fine. Her and her boyfriend’s moods were unpredictable as great white shark, but it was paradise compared to how his mother’s house had been.

His mother had died two years earlier of brain cancer. Her bizarre behavior, according to LeLe, stinted from the realization that there would be no reconciliation with God, so she practiced for the number two position in Hell.

He hadn’t been affected in the least bit of her death. She had never shown him any affection, and in return, she didn’t receive any. This was the only common ground that they had ever shared.

Now as Rafeal exited the bedroom that he shared with Cataya, he paused in mid-stride when he heard some scuffling behind LeLe’s bedroom door. Good sense told him to go on about his business, but something wasn’t right.

Andre’s voice usually became high pitched like a woman’s whenever they argued. There wasn’t any arguing now, and that alarmed Rafeal.

The light from the hallway illuminated the bedroom when he opened the door. His whole world stopped when he saw Andre lying in a pool of blood, and a man dismounting LeLe’s corpse.

The intruder was equally surprised as Rafeal, but much more calm. He stood there, seemingly contemplating Rafeal’s fate, when Rafeal fainted and hit his head violently on the floor.

* * *

Dehila bursted out laughing when Rafeal finished his story. “If you believe that, then you need to be on the same medicine that he’s on.”

“Stay out of this, little girl,” Rafeal warned.

You just spilled your guts out and this bitch has the audacity to laugh? Hit her in the mouth! Some people don’t believe in no shit but violence.

“Why would my mama lie about it? She wanted the person who done it to be caught just as bad as everybody else.”

Rafeal grabbed his head like he was experiencing a migraine.

“Maybe she was too focused on Hammer.”

“Whatever.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “Taya, Fannie was always jealous of your mom’s relationship with Hammer. She set her eyes on him first, but he didn’t like her for whatever reason. She…”

That’s because LeLe was thicker and had bigger tits. You can’t blame him for that, my nigga. I don’t.

“…despised him for choosing LeLe over her, and did everything in her power to see their demise.”

Demise? What’s that, some kind of cake?

“You’re lying!” Dehila screamed. “Wait until I tell my mama this shit! She’s going to kick your ass out!”

So what, bitch! Tell her! Bust her ass up, Raf. She thinks it’s a game.

“Tell her what you want. She knows the truth.”

Cataya digested everything that had been said, and started from the top.

“If you encountered the killer like you say, why didn’t he kill you, too? You saw his face.”

Rafeal shrugged. “That’s something I’ve been wondering for the past twelve years. Maybe he thought I was dead from hitting my head on the floor.”

Maybe he did something freaky with you while you were out, and didn’t have the energy to kill you afterwards.

She couldn’t find any holes in that so she moved on. “Another thing that I’m trying to figure out is why you ain’t tell the police. I’m sure they asked you.”

Watch your tone! You can get it, too, Shermhead Holmes. All of this investigating and shit.

“I don’t think anybody understands what witnessing my favorite sister get killed done to me. When I finally came aware of my surrounding, I was in a psych ward with all kinds of medicine running through my veins…”

Those were the days! You couldn’t tell me nothing!

“…I wasn’t the same. I started hearing the voice in my head…”

That’ll be me, the kid.

“…I was always paranoid…”

Niggas are shiesty, you got to stay on point. You saw what happened to Big and Pac.

“…And by the time that the detectives questioned me, Fannie made it her business to let them know the extent of my condition. They dismissed anything I had to say.”

Cataya naturally didn’t want to believe her uncle because that would mean accepting the fact that her beloved aunt had intentionally turned her against her father. And if that was the case, she had to question everything that Fannie had ever told her about him.

“If Ron didn’t kill my mom, then who did?”

“That’s something that I don’t k now. I never seen him before.”

Deez did it, bitch! Deez nuts!

This frustrated her even more. “So my dad is in prison because he killed a man for trying to rape my mom?”

Yep. Pushed his whole shit back. That shit was crazy, too. It was pervert juice everywhere.

“Yeah. He pushed…killed him because the man broke in y’all’s house while you and your mom was sleep, and sexually assaulted LeLe. Hammer did what any man would’ve done.

Not the kid. I could give a fuck about a bitch A bitch is like a match. Once she heats up my stick, I toss her ass aside. Fuck her.

“I never understood why they gave him all that time,” Rafeal continued. “A man should have the right to protect his family.”

Especially if that bitch is selling ass for him.

A wave of dizziness overcame Cataya when she thought about all of the spiteful things she has said and done to her father. She had caught herself punishing him for everything that she had been taught that he had done. It was now clear that she had only been a pawn in a high stake chess game, and now her hatred began to shift in a different direction.

 –—Chapter Twenty-One–—

While most of the inmate population prepared to watch the NBA Finals, Hammer was preparing to do something that was going to extend his prison sentence. This was of no concern to him though. All that he cared about was what he had discovered, what it meant, and what he had to do about it.

Had it came from another source, it would have been clear cut situation. But being that it hadn’t, Hammer found his self in a blind dilemma that was made profound by his biasness and emotions.

He was further reminded that Cataya put a block on the phone when he saw an inmate talking on one. And calling Ron’s house was out of the question. His wife had cursed him out because she blamed him for Ron’s death.

There was no other choice in the matter; the move had to be made tonight. If he was wrong, then his intentions were good, and the penalty was something that he could live with. But if he was right, he hoped that the courts would have mercy on him.

When the moment finally came for him to put his plan in motion, there were no butterflies, second thoughts, or hesitation. He walked to the exit as if it was his every right.

* * *

Oh, hell nah! Somebody gots to die!

Rafeal survived his room calmly, trying to find a logical explanation to why majority of his possessions were missing.

I know you’re not going to let this ride. Go get your gun from Fannie’s room, and end this shit today. Because if you keep letting it go on, it’s going to keep happening. The next thing they’re going to steal s your life, and it ain’t no coming back from that, my nigga. LET’S RIDE!

“But I don’t know who done it. I just can’t kill anybody.”

Oh, stop the fucking jokes! We both know who the fuck did it. It was the same bitch that tried to get you committed for life. Go get your man! I mean, bitch. Man bitch.

Rafeal marched to Fannie’s room knowing that he had to end the disrespect, once and for all.

* * *

Dehila trembled in rage as Rafeal told Cataya of her mother’s obsession for Hammer. She badly wanted him to shut up, but her attempts had been futile. He had been persistent to get it off his chest, and had ignored her attempts to derail him.

What disturbed her most was that Rafeal had been telling the truth. She knew it to be a fact because Fannie had confessed her love for Hammer while intoxicated. The confession had bothered Dehila to the point that she nursed Fannie back to sobriety and confronted her.

It was almost like Fannie’s secret was eating at her because she was more than willing to get it off her chest. Dehila realized and understood what her mother was going through once Fannie explained all of the details.

As time progressed and Dehila grew older, she began to inherit some of her mother’s feelings. She wasn’t falling in love with Hammer, but she began to envy the love that he showered Cataya with.

Her own father was very alive and free, but he had never attempted to see if she was so much as breathing. Not only did she envy the affection that Hammer showed Cataya, she also envied how through Ron, Hammer made sure that Cataya got everything that she wanted. She herself had never received anything from her father, or from someone on his side of the family.

She viewed this as being very unfair. Her mother deserved to be with the man that she loved and claimed first, just as she deserved to have a father who thought the world of her.

There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that if LeLe wouldn’t have stole Hammer from her mother, he would be her father, and she wouldn’t be in the position that she was in today. Nor would there be any need for the cocaine that she snorted to numb the psychological pain that she felt daily.

She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew that Cataya was watching her as she watched Rafeal go in the house.