You're the One I Want (29 page)

A year had passed and things couldn't have been better. The second store was doing better than Edrick had hoped. So much so that Edrick and I started to look for a new house, a three-bedroom for us and the boys. Kashawn and Deanthony were one year old and growing fast. It was the day of our one-year anniversary when Edrick and I met. I had slaved in the kitchen all day, making Edrick's favorite dishes: roast beef with carrots and red potatoes, field peas, yellow seasoned rice, and crackling corn bread, with Dutch apple cinnamon cheesecake for dessert. The house smelled so good, I had to chase the neighborhood dogs off with a broom when they came sniffing around the house for something to eat. I had been grinning ear to ear all that day, thinking of that first time Edrick had shown up on Ms. Gertie's doorstep in that navy suit, sweat glistening like Vaseline on his face. I was so captured by how handsome he was, I had forgotten about his wallet.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, shucking some field peas and watching my soaps on the small TV that sat in a corner on the kitchen counter, laughing as I thought about what Mama had always told me about never trusting men whose teeth are too white. As I had run my fingers through the bowl of peas and about to rinse them, the doorbell had rung. I had checked the corn bread in the oven that still was not done yet. I had figured it was Nadine's little girl, Lynette, going door to door, selling Girl Scout cookies. She knew I was good for two boxes of Thin Mints. I had wiped my hands dry on the yellow apron I had tied around my waist as I'd walked toward the door. Two white police officers were standing on my porch in front of me.

“Good afternoon, ma'am. Are you Mrs. Edrick Parker?”

“Yes, I am,” I'd said, looking at the officers questionably.

“Ma'am, can we come in?”

“What's wrong?”

They'd had a look to them like they wanted to be anywhere but standing in front of me that day. They'd told me that Edrick had been in a car accident, a head-on collision with a semi. They'd gone on about how apparently Edrick was driving on the wrong side of the road, that they'd found an open bottle of Vodka in the front seat of his Cadillac. The news of my husband's death had numbed me.

“We're deeply sorry,” they'd said in unison.

I didn't scream, but kept it together until they'd left. I'd gone to the bedroom and shut the door. I had grabbed the first thing that I could get my hands on, which was a lamp that was sitting on the nightstand next to Edrick's side of the bed. I had taken it and thrown it at the mirror above the dresser. Glass had shattered to the floor. I could hear Kashawn and Deanthony crying in the next room. When I was done, the room was a mess, broken glass everywhere. My feet were bleeding from stepping in it, blood staining the carpet. I had looked down at my feet and felt that it was a pain I deserved for turning a blind eye to Edrick's drinking, for not seeing the signs: him passed out in front of the TV with a bottle of gin at the foot of the sofa. I could smell booze on his breath in the middle of the afternoon, but I didn't want to be one of those nagging wives who was always on her husband about this and that and the other.

They'd told me at Strong & Jones Funeral Home that Edrick's face was so badly disfigured, they recommended a closed-casket funeral. Ms. Gertie had come to the house and stayed a few weeks to help me with the boys. She was my rock at the funeral. Without her, I don't think I would have been able to keep it together. People who were friends of Edrick and loyal customers of the store had
come up to me to offer their condolences. Some of them I had met at different gatherings like cookouts, dinners, and church functions.

The first time I had ever laid eyes on Ray-Ray, he was kneeling at the head of Edrick's casket, crying harder than I had ever seen a man cry.

“Look at Ray up there, makin' a fool outta himself,” I had heard Edrick's busybody Aunt Millie say, who likes to talk mess about everybody.

It had taken everything in me to keep from hauling back and slapping the old bitch in the mouth. What kind of Christian are you to talk about your own nephew at his brother's funeral? One of the ushers had escorted Ray through the rear of the church like they were embarrassed by his grieving.

“Ms. Gertie, watch the boys for me.”

As I had gotten up to go see how Ray-Ray was doing, I'd heard Millie say, “Where does she think she's going?” That heifer was glad that I was in the Lord's house.

Ray-Ray was leaning against an oak tree, his arm propped against the trunk.

“Hey, Ray, you doin' all right?”

He had turned his six-two, 320-something-pound frame to face me, his round, fat face streaked with tears. I had never felt so sorry for anyone that day as I felt for Ray-Ray. I had pulled my handkerchief from the sleeve of my black dress and handed it to him.

“We didn't talk for five years,” he'd said. “I fell into a bad crowd, started drinking too much. Ed was there when nobody else gave a damn.”

“So what happened between y'all?”

“He washed his hands of me after I stole from him.”

Edrick had spoken once or twice about Ray-Ray. Never much in detail, only that Ray-Ray didn't come around much.

“Ed put up with a lot of my shit and I never got a chance to pay him back, to say that I'm sorry.”

“He knows. He's looking down on you, and he knows.” He was this giant of a man who towered over me as I'd consoled him.

Ray-Ray started coming around the house more. He was so good with the boys, and I was more than happy to have him around, seeing as how they'd lost the only daddy they knew. We were the only family he'd had. Ray-Ray stayed in a one-bedroom place over on Saxton Street by himself. I'd told him he could move in with us if he didn't drink.

“I haven't had so much as a sip of anything for a year,” he'd told me.

The boys were smiling ear to ear when I'd told them that their uncle Ray-Ray would be staying with us. There was nothing he didn't do for me and the boys.

M
y heart was racing and my palms were drenched with sweat as Ma, Yvonne, and I rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the Leon County Courthouse. I was dressed in a charcoal-black Bill Blass suit, Ma in a white silk blouse and black skirt, while Yvonne sported black dress pants and a red, sleeveless blouse. We looked like we were on our way to church and I wished that was the case. Once we reached the fourth floor, I spotted Deanthony sitting on one of the benches, wearing a white dress shirt and navy blue slacks. It was uncanny how identical we were—at least on the outside anyway.

“Hey, Ma,” he said, wrapping his arms around our mother.

“How you doin', baby?”

“What's up, D,” Yvonne said.

“What's up, cousin? Don't think I've ever seen you look this good.”

“I'll take that as a compliment,” she said.

“You just got here?” I asked.

“Yeah, about ten minutes ago.”

“Well, I appreciate you coming.”

“Thanks for calling to let me know what's up.”

“Ma, why don't y'all go on in,” I said. “I need to talk to Deanthony.” Ma looked at me, unsure as to what I was going to say or do. “It's all right, Ma. Everything's fine.”

Ma looked at me and then Deanthony before she went hesitantly
with Yvonne to the courtroom where Bree was to be arraigned.

“How's your lip?”

“Shit. It's not like I didn't deserve it.”

“Well, you give about as much as you get,” I said, pointing to the shiner over my right eye.

“Look, bro, I've given a lot of thought to that day at the homecoming party, and just all this crazy shit that has gone down since I've been back.”

“You don't need to apologize. I had no business coming at you like that.”

“Bro, you had every right. Hell, I would have done the same thing if I was in your shoes. Look, you asked me why I came back to Tally and why I left like I did.” Deanthony sat down on the bench, looking as if he was ready to unload something that had been riding his back way too long. “I felt all my life that I've lived in your shadow. We're identical twins, yeah, but Ma, I felt, always treated you like royalty. You're the one who got straight A's in school, who got the new car for getting into Florida A&M, while I always got the hand-me-downs, the crumbs, if anything at all. I got the belt across my ass while you got treated to ice cream.”

“You know Ma loves us both equally.”

“You could do no wrong in her eyes, but all Mama saw in me was wrong. And straight up, I started hating you for that. That's why I left. I didn't want that hate to eat away at me. Kashawn, I needed to find my own way, figure out what kind of man I wanted to be instead of this thug Ma always saw me as. I split to Los Angeles to see if I could make the acting thing work. The truth is, after a few bit parts here and there, I fell on hard times. I didn't want to come back here just so you and Ma could say that y'all told me so. I really wanted to make things work in Cali.”

“D, what do you mean you fell on hard times?”

“I met some people at this party a producer was throwing. There was booze and drugs everywhere, mountains of coke, weed, booze, you name it. I was so fucked up that I couldn't remember anything. I found out a week later that there was this sex tape.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, I said the same thing when I saw the tape.”

“And you don't remember any of that going down?”

“I swear on our daddy's grave that I don't. I had to pay a pretty penny to get all the copies of the tape and get the video pulled off of YouTube.”

“Damn, D.”

“So I came back home to get my life back on track.”

“So are you clean now?”

“Three months clean, knock on wood.”

“I wish you would have called me. I could have helped you.”

“What, clean up another one of my messes?”

“D, we're brothers. That's what brothers do instead of running away.”

Yvonne caught our attention when she whispered at us to come to the courtroom. “The judge is about to come in.”

“Well, I'm glad you're home.”

“Right now, let's keep this between me and you. I'm not ready for Ma to know what's really going on.”

“And she won't.”

Deanthony threw his arm around my neck as we walked like brothers toward the courtroom entrance.

I
was so tired and my back was screaming for some well-deserved relief after the beat down the lumpy mattress had given it, not to mention my upset stomach from the pig shit they were trying to pass off as food in the jail. I told that dyke cop that I had a sensitive stomach, that I couldn't eat just anything.

“What does this look like to you,” she'd said, “The Radisson? You eat what we give you, Princess, and if you don't like it, you have two choices: starve and…starve.”

I swear they stuck me with the biggest mega bitch ever. I only hoped I wouldn't shit my jumpsuit from the moldy-ass bread I had to force myself to eat. If I wasn't on the toilet shitting half the night, I was tossing and turning. I swore that if I got bedbugs in my coochie, I was going to sue the balls off the city, county, and state for every penny their asses was worth.

Don't even get me started on this bitch they put in the cell next to me who paces the floor saying, “She wouldn't stop crying…she wouldn't stop crying…she wouldn't stop crying.”

I asked Iron Titties what her problem was.

“She drowned her five-month-old in scalding hot water because the baby wouldn't stop crying. They say she's crazy, but I think it's an act. Between you and me, Princess, I hope they fry the baby-killing bitch.”

The females in the jail would yell at her to shut the fuck up, but
she would only get louder with all of her crazy talk. She paced until she got tired and finally fell off to sleep.

I hadn't been able to stop replaying the events of that night in my head. I had been having nightmares about Katiesha, finding her lying dead like that with her head split open, all that blood. “I should have stayed home that night,” I kept telling myself. “I never should have opened the door.” I didn't like Katiesha, couldn't stand her, but, damn, ole girl didn't deserve to go out like that.

It was a good thing Tangela didn't show up that night or both of us would have been locked up. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared shitless about the outcome of this whole thing. I told everybody and their grandmama what had happened that night, including Kent, who hadn't done much of nothing but jot shit down on his yellow pad. He'd told me the cops found my prints on the door and on the vodka bottle.

“I don't care what they found,” I'd told him. “I didn't kill Katiesha.” He had asked me what my relationship was with her. “She and I danced at Risqué together, that's it. It's no secret that we didn't like each other. You can ask anybody at the club.”

“I did, and they said there was no love lost between you two girls, especially a Ms. Nakia Wilder, who didn't mince words about Katiesha and Ms. Ursula Reynolds not liking you. If the prosecution gets ahold of her, and they will, she will be a witness for them. I understand that your brother-in-law was in the room when you attacked Katiesha Foster.”

“Yeah, so?”

“The prosecution will be calling him to the stand, as well as the officers that arrived on the scene.”

I hated how he sat there, looking at me over his glasses like I was something he needed to scrape off the bottom of his six-hundred-dollar wingtips. I set his uppity-ass straight quick.

“I know you think I'm shit, but you can blow it out of your ass. No, I didn't like Katiesha, and I tried to beat her ass down when I caught her in bed with Kashawn, but I didn't kill her. I don't know how many times and how many people I have to scream it to.”