Up to No Good (8 page)

Anyhow, when I was ten, my mother confided in me that James Black was my biological father, and she took me to see him on the sly. To this day, I wonder why she opened up that can of worms by introducing me to Daddy. Maybe she was feeling guilty about keeping the truth from me. I guess she figured that at ten, I was old enough to understand and smart enough to keep her secret. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she and Daddy had started screwing
again behind Chester’s back. Now, I can’t prove that, but they sure went in his room for a lot of so-called talks when I visited.

That withstanding, she couldn’t have predicted in a million years the bond that would form between me and Daddy. He was so nice to me, and I thought he was so handsome. We hit it off from the start. Even though I had just met him, it was obvious that we were cut from the same cloth. We shared the same sense of humor and loved the same foods. We even liked the same cartoons. Where Chester was strict and distant with us kids, Daddy would get right down on the floor and play with my dolls with me. Not to mention the fact that I was wearing his face. I
loved
my real daddy. I loved Chester, too, but there was no denying that Daddy was a much warmer man, and the connection between us was deep.

My mother saw how happy it made me to visit my father, so she brought me to see him as often as she could sneak away from Chester. Little did she know that this would eventually spell disaster for her.

One day, when I was about twelve, I was playing with my brothers when Chester came into the room and snatched the toy right out of my hand. My brothers and I had left the kitchen a mess after we fixed ourselves a snack, but apparently he thought I was the only one who should be responsible for cleaning up. Chester ordered me to wash the dishes but said nothing to the boys. He always treated me like I was Cinder-fuckin’-ella or something, and I was fed up.

“I don’t have to do what you tell me to do,” I said, standing in the middle of the living room as my brothers watched in confused silence. “You ain’t my real daddy. James Black’s my daddy,” I informed him.

From the look of shock on his face, I may as well
have hit him with a baseball bat. His expression gradually transformed from shock to pain. When I think back on it, I realize that was the moment when he wrapped his head around the facts and knew that I was telling the truth. But someone like Chester was not about to show weakness in front of his boys, so he turned his pain into rage and took it out on me by trying to beat the black off of me.

Afterward, all hell broke loose between him and my moms. I thought for sure that because I ’d let this twelve-year-old secret out of the bag, they would get a divorce. As I lay in bed still aching from the beating I ’d received, that idea didn’t sound too bad to me anyway. However, my mom smoothed his feathers, probably in the bedroom, and the whole incident was put to rest with my mother’s words: “It’s nothing I can do about it. We have four kids. It happened.”

They stayed together, but there was still plenty of tension in the air. My brothers were mad at me for starting the whole thing, and my mother reminded me just about every day that I had broken my promise to keep her little secret. And Chester, he couldn’t even stand to see my face. In his eyes, I had become a living symbol of his wife’s infidelity.

It didn’t help matters that we went to the same church as Daddy, so Chester had to see Daddy every Sunday. He started complaining to my mother that every time he looked at me, he saw James Black’s face, and it was driving him crazy. Not to mention the fact that my mom had the audacity to name me Jamie, after James. It was one thing to know his wife cheated; it was clearly another to live with the proof of that affair.

My mother did what she thought she had to do to save her marriage. The next thing I knew, my ass was hauled off to stay with my daddy. As far as I was concerned,
she had sacrificed me for the sake of her husband and her sons. I suffered the ultimate punishment for an affair that she’d had.

She tried for a while to visit me at Daddy’s house, but it wasn’t long before the frequency of the visits dropped to almost never. No doubt Chester was giving her hell every time he knew she was coming around James’s place, and I wasn’t making her time with me very pleasant either. As a preteen girl who felt abandoned by her, I didn’t have much love to show my mother.

She’d try to tell me funny stories about my brothers, but I didn’t want to hear it. Ever since the day I ’d told the secret, they made my life as uncomfortable as possible. They stopped calling me by my name and referred to me as “Mama’s little mistake.” Not long after I moved in with him, Daddy introduced me to Darnel, and although he didn’t live with us, Darnel and I were tight—tighter than I ’d ever been with my other brothers. So anything my mother had to say about the boys fell on deaf ears. By the time my mother told me that she and Chester and the boys were moving out of state, I think it was probably a relief for everyone involved. I hardly ever spoke to my mother after she moved.

I ended up living with Daddy from the age of twelve until just a few months ago, when I moved in with Louis. In all those years, Daddy never complained. He gave me all the love a young woman could ever want, including teaching me about hygiene and, believe it or not, shopping for my first bra. Women came and went—some of them, including Darnel’s mother, even seemed to think they had a shot at becoming Mrs. James Black—but Daddy remained devoted first and foremost to me, and that was just the way I liked it. To say I’m a daddy’s
girl is an understatement. He was my best friend, and I would see to it that no one ever broke that bond.

“You know how I feel about my daddy. That’s not the issue,” I told Louis.

“Well, what is the issue? Your father’s an adult. You’re trying to hold him too tight.”

“He may be grown, but he’s got a family to worry about. He’s all Darnel and I really have.”

“So what is this here that me and you have?” Louis looked at me pointedly, waiting for my reply.

“You don’t understand because …” I fell silent before I said something that could hurt Louis.

Louis had told me about his childhood, so different from mine. He was raised in an orphanage in Iowa, and he had no family to speak of. He seemed to be like Adam—as if he just came into the world with no father or mother, and he didn’t need anyone except me. I loved him for his devotion to me, but it was also a point of contention between us, because he found it impossible to understand how I could love my father so much. We had already had several confrontations over Louis feeling that I was too into my family, which meant he took second place in my world. He would never understand, I decided, and it wasn’t worth the fight.

We sat there, staring at each other, trying to avoid an argument. Luckily for me, Louis’s cell rang before our tense silence escalated into angry words. But that didn’t stop me from catching an attitude when I glanced at the clock and realized how late it was.

“Who the hell is calling you at this time of night?”

Louis just gave me a blank look, like I was stupid to even be acting suspicious, but I didn’t care. I ’d learned many things from my father, including never assume that your mate isn’t cheating. As much as I loved my
father, I knew he was a womanizer, and he had made fools of half the women in Queens, a good number of them married to husbands who had no clue. My motto had become “Ask the right questions now so you don’t have to pack your bags later.”

Louis knew that I had this jealous streak in me, so he answered my question to avoid another fight. “I don’t know. Probably work.”

His answer made me even more skeptical. Louis worked as a manager at a used-car dealership on Hillside Avenue, so he constantly got calls about problems, but never at this time of night. Something told me this wasn’t a work call. I watched him walk over to his dresser and pick up his cell phone, and I wondered if he would have the nerve to take the call in front of me.

“Hello.”

I was satisfied that it couldn’t be anything to worry about, because he didn’t make a move to leave the room when he answered. I leaned back against the pillows and relaxed for a moment, but my relief was short-lived. He listened intently for a few seconds, then said, “I understand. Friday’s fine,” then disappeared into the bathroom, where he finished his call.

He wasn’t in there long, but by the time he came out, I was ready to pounce. “So, who was that?” I asked before he could even get back into bed.

“Oh, that was work. They want me to go outta town on Friday.”

I felt my stomach clench. I was sure he was lying. His job never sent him out of town.

“To where?” I asked coldly.

“Somewhere in Pennsylvania. I’m supposed to go to a dealer auction and look for this BMW my boss promised a customer.”

Why was he trying to play me? He was about to make me flip on him.

“So, that was your boss?” I made no effort to hide the skepticism in my voice. I got out of bed and started to walk toward his dresser, where he’d placed his phone. “And he wants you to go to Pennsylvania Friday?”

“Yeah, why? You don’t believe me?”

I picked up his phone and hit the necessary keys to find the last call received. “Hell no, I don’t believe you.” I fully expected him to jump out of bed and try to stop me, but I was close enough to the bathroom to make a quick dash. Before he had a chance to pull the covers back, I ’d have the door locked, talking to whatever hooker had just called him.

“Boo, you don’t have to do this. I was gonna ask you if you wanted to go,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

Oh, so he thinks this is funny, huh?
I could feel my blood pressure rise at least five points. Damn, I really thought he was different than other men.

“Stop lying, Louis, and tell me who was on the phone,” I said as I hit the TALK button to redial the last number.

He sat up in bed and folded his arms. “Guess we’re going to find out.” He was trying to act cool and in control, but I knew he had to be scared.

“I guess we are,” I said with a smirk. I put the phone to my ear, fully expecting to hear a woman answer the phone. That’s why I nearly dropped the cell when I heard a familiar voice—a male voice.

“Hello?” Louis’s boss repeated for the third time.

I disconnected the call. Knowing that Louis’s boss had probably seen the number on his caller ID, I could
only hope that he wouldn’t call back now. If Louis was mad enough, he might just embarrass me by telling his boss why I ’d called. But neither of those things hap-pened—his boss never called back, and Louis wasn’t mad.

He got out of bed and wrapped his arms around me. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “I’m not like your father. If anything, I’m more like your brother. And I love your ass enough to forgive you, but you gotta stop being so suspicious, ’cause I ain’t got nothing to hide from you.” He kissed my forehead, then released me from his hug.

Before I could begin to apologize or try to explain myself, he stepped into the bathroom again and closed the door. When I heard the shower running, I eased my clothes off and pushed open the bathroom door. I had some serious making up to do.

“Oh my God!”

Thump!

I couldn’t tell if Keisha was screaming from pleasure or from pain. What I did know was that every time I slammed my dick inside her, her head banged up against the wall with a loud
thump
! I know it sounds horrible, but in some warped way, I found pleasure in this and picked up the pace between strokes. I have to admit, part of me wanted to see her head go right through the wall.

“Oh my God!”
Thump! Thump! Clunk!
“Oh my God!”
Thump! Clunk! Thump!

When I drove over to see Keisha, I had been worried about the state I would find her in, but I gave some thought to what my father had said. Maybe she really was bluffing when she said she wanted to kill herself. I mean, this was a woman who would stoop low enough to sleep with my best friend, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to tell a lie for sympathy now. By the time I got to her place, I was so full of mixed emotions—love, hate, anger, and desire—I didn’t even really know how I would react to seeing Keisha. What I wanted to
do was cuss her out, call her every name in the book except her own. But when she opened the door, her eyes were full of tears, and in that split second, my heart just melted and love suppressed all those other emotions. And I hated myself for it.

“I’m so sorry, Darnel,” she cried over and over as we sat on the couch together. She was pulling out all the stops—shaking her head, wringing her hands, and rocking back and forth. Yes, my father had warned me, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but the next thing I knew, she was in my arms and I was comforting her. Can you believe it? She was the one who had made a complete ass out of me, and here I was reassuring her. What the hell was the world coming to? What the hell was wrong with me? The familiar scent of her perfume and the warmth of her body made me not even care about the answers to those questions.

Before I knew it, I was kissing Keisha deeply, and in a matter of seconds, we were all over each other, undressing like our clothes were on fire, right there on the living room floor. I ’d never felt so drawn to anyone. The whole thing was like some scene out of a movie, except that beneath all the passion lurked my pain and anger, and it only took a few words from her to bring it all back to the surface.

“I have to go in the bedroom and get a condom,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry about a condom,” she said breathlessly. “Just put it in.”

Just put it in.

Without warning, my mind filled with the image of Omar on top of my future wife, and she was whispering those urgent words to him, not me. Keisha and I had always used condoms, because she didn’t want to get pregnant before we were married. But hearing her
say I didn’t need a condom now forced a memory to the forefront of my mind—Omar had not been wearing a condom when I caught them in the act. Had she told him to “just put it in”? Why the hell had she been so reckless with him when she had always preached safety to me, even when I begged her to let me go raw? The thought wounded and infuriated me, and I did just as she told me; I put it in—or more accurately, I slammed it in, over and over.