Kashawn and Deanthony reminded me so much of me and Edrick. We were always fighting about something. Toys, cars, girls. If it was there to fight over, we fought over it. I couldn’t help but look at them and think of my daughter, Joelle. She would be a few years younger than them if she had lived. Twenty-six years old to be exact. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t think about her and Danita. I can only hope they’re looking down from heaven, proud of the man their daddy and husband has become.
“Get some help, Ray, or I’m taking Joelle and going back to Atlanta,” was the last thing Danita had said to me a week before I lost her and my baby.
I had spoken to her the night of the accident, telling her that I had decided to seek help for my drinking. I’d told her, “I don’t want to lose you and Joelle. You two are my whole world and I’m willing to do anything within my power to get clean, and be the man, the husband and the father to our baby, that you want me to be.”
The truth was, she, along with the rest of my family, had heard it all before, my tossing around promises as if they were poker chips. Edrick and Danita were the only two in my life who hadn’t turned their backs on me while everyone else got sick and tired of cleaning up my messes, which I didn’t blame them for, considering I had doused gasoline on the bridges I’d built with them and set them aflame.
Knowing what booze did to Daddy, I swore to myself that I would never end up a drunk like him, but a drunk is exactly what I became when I got laid off my job at Tallahassee Transit three years after Joelle’s third birthday. Frustrated that I could no longer provide for her and Danita, I couldn’t deal with Danita being the only provider for our family. It got so that I was drinking rubbing alcohol, anything that would numb the inadequacy of not feeling like a man who could provide for his wife and daughter. After two interventions and two rehabs to follow, I would come out, only to end up falling on my ass from stumbling off the proverbial wagon no matter what I did, and how much Danita and Edrick sought to get help for me.
On the day I told Danita that I was going to get straight, I prepared a special dinner for us. Fed up with my drinking, she took Joelle and moved in with her sister, Lavondra. Danita had reservations about having dinner, but after thirty minutes of pleading with her to break bread with me, she finally gave in. I had cleaned and scrubbed the house from top to bottom to a high shine, something I had never done. I prepared Danita’s favorite: barbecue chicken with dirty rice and red mashed potatoes with the skin on. She used to love how I made barbecue chicken. The trick was broiling it in my famous homemade, special sauce. I wasn’t so good at baking, so I bought a pound cake from Publix and placed it on a cake platter to make it look like I’d spent all day in the kitchen. I wanted to make a good impression, show Danita that I was putting my best foot forward in getting her and Joelle back.
I made sure that everything was perfect. When I noticed myself in the living room mirror, wearing Danita’s cherry-printed apron, I chuckled. The entire house smelled like barbecue chicken. My stomach was doing cartwheels, somersaults, and hand stands, I was so hungry. All I had to eat that day was half a bagel for breakfast. The time of our dinner was seven o’clock. I was anxious to see Danita, to throw my arms around her, and kiss my baby daughter. I had missed them terribly and had a whole lot of making up to do.
Seven had come and gone. I was starting to worry, so I called Lavondra to find out what was going on. I had this feeling that she had convinced Danita not to join me for dinner. She never liked me and often attempted to wedge her big ass in between our marriage. Lavondra had an opinion about everything and was always in Danita’s ear telling her I was a no-good drunk and that she should leave me. She was always talking to someone about leaving somebody, which was understandable being that she could only keep a man around for all of five minutes before they hit the road running. As much as Lavondra tried, Danita never left me, but stuck it out, cleaning up my messes, putting up with my drunken tantrums, and mopping throw-up off the bathroom floor.
I dialed Lavondra’s number and it rang three times before she answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Lavondra, hey, long time, no hear from.”
“Hey, Raymond,” she said in a less than enthusiastic tone.
“I was wondering if Danita is there.”
She sighed heavy on the phone like I was the last black man she wanted to talk to, but I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t call to talk to her anyway.
“Danita left here about an hour ago. I thought she would be at the house by now,” Lavondra said.
Hearing that an hour had elapsed since she had left Lavondra’s made my heart drop. “No, she’s not here. Did she take Joelle with her, or is Joelle there with you?”
“She took the baby with her. Joelle is so cute and she’s getting so big. She’s a spitting image of her mama.”
That was Lavondra’s way of throwing a dig. Everyone thinks that Joelle looks like me.
“Yeah, she’s growing like a weed,” I said with a tone of frustration. “Okay, listen, if you hear from her, please call me and let me know.”
“Okay, I sure will. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. She probably just stopped off to the store to get some stuff for the baby.”
I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was getting one of my bad feelings. “You’re right. I’m sure everything is fine,” I said as I studied the cookie jar clock that hung above the kitchen sink.
“If I hear from Danita, I will let you know.” It was nice hearing Lavondra be cordial to me for once instead of being a high-riding bitch.
I hung up. “Come on, ’Nita, baby, where are you?” I said to myself. It was killing me not knowing of her whereabouts.
It was a little after eight when I went to go look for her. I didn’t have a clue as to where to start, but it was a hell of a lot better than sitting around, staring at that damn clock like a madman.
Before I left, I blew out the candles and put the barbecue chicken in the oven to keep warm. I grabbed my coat and my keys to the truck. As soon as I opened the door, two police officers pulled up alongside my pickup. Both of them were white. One was fat with a potbelly and dark hair, and the other was much younger with blond hair like he was fresh out of the police academy. I knew with the sullen, sad expression on their mugs, that something was wrong, that something had happened.
“Sir, are you Mr. Raymond Parker?”
“What’s wrong? Is it my wife?”
“Mr. Parker, sir, I’m sorry to tell you this, but your wife was in a car accident.”
Their words were like a crowbar to my head. I felt a part of me dying with her, the part of me that loved Danita to my soul.
“My baby…what about my baby, Joelle? Was she in the car?”
The two cops looked at one another like it was news they didn’t want to give me.
“I’m sorry.”
It felt like my life source had been taken away from me. “Danita, noooooooo!” I hollered. I broke down in a heap of tears. The cops had later informed me that they had been struck by a hit-and-run driver.
“We apprehended him and he’s being held without bond at the Leon County Jail.”
All I could think about was that I had lost the two most important people in my life who were my everything. As far as I was concerned, a big part of me had died with them that night.
Edrick had gone with me downtown to the morgue to identify Danita and Joelle. When it came time to see my baby girl, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want my last image of her to be of her lying on some cold metal slab.
The day of the funeral, it felt like I was in a daze. Edrick kept me together as much as a little brother could, being that I had picked up the bottle again in a need to numb the pain I was feeling. I drank until I blacked out, wishing that with enough liquor, I could numb the memory of losing my wife and daughter. When booze wasn’t enough, I started using crack. No matter how much drinking I did, or how much crack I smoked, none of it was enough. I eventually became addicted and pawned everything I had, including Danita’s jewelry, to get money so I could get high. I blew through money as if it was candy, eventually losing my house and truck to the bank.
Edrick took me in when he saw how bad off I was. He made me promise to get some help, and that if he saw me doing drugs in his house or if I stole from him, he would kick me out.
“I swear. I’m going to get clean this time, Ed,” I told him.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
I got clean for a good week before I started to do crack again. I often laid a guilt trip on Edrick if I couldn’t get what I wanted. I was careful about doing drugs in front of him, heeding his threats of kicking me out.
Edrick would always tell me how I had hit rock bottom. He was just like Mama, while I took after Daddy, who spent much of our childhood running the streets. The streets were surely what killed him when he was shot by a pimp named Butter. Everybody called him Butter because of his yellow teeth. Daddy got into it with him after some mess with one of his hos. Butter took out his gun and shot Daddy clean through the heart. He knew that no one would say a word, being that the rule on the street was snitches get stitches.
Edrick and I were sleeping when these two cops came to the house and gave Mama the news that Daddy was dead. I remember her screaming so loud, she woke the whole neighborhood up. Her hollering echoed through the house. Edrick cried while the rage I felt because of Daddy’s murder burned in me like hot lava. Revenge was what I wanted. I took Daddy’s pistol from a shoebox he kept in the attic. He didn’t know I knew that’s where he kept it. I tucked Daddy’s gun in my waist, put on an old ski mask so nobody could make me out, and stole Mr. Perkin’s bike to ride up to the bar on Basin Street where I knew Butter hung out. He didn’t even see me coming when I rode up alongside his Thunderbird that was blacker than the devil’s asshole. I pulled out the gun and shot Butter point blank in the head. Blood and brains splattered everywhere.
I never told anyone what I had done. I didn’t tell Edrick until much later in life when we were in our twenties. I told him what I did and we never discussed it again after that.
• • •
Edrick finally got fed up when I started pawning his things in the house to get money for drugs.
“I’m done with you. Get the fuck out, Ray. I told you what I would do if you stole from me. I love you, but you have to go. You can’t stay here. I will do what I can for you, but I can’t do this shit anymore.”
“You just going to throw me out like that? I’m your family. We’re brothers. What was all that shit you were saying about family over everything?”
Edrick wasn’t going to be a passenger on another one of my guilt trips. He really was done. “You have until the end of the week to find somewhere else to stay.”
I left with nothing but the clothes on my back and a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my back jeans pocket.
“If you’re not out, I’m calling the cops.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. I’m your goddamn blood.”
Edrick didn’t have anything else to say.
The day that I left, Edrick was at work, working part time fixing cars at Carter’s Garage on South Adams Street.
It took me six years to get my shit together and when I finally did, it was too late to make amends to my baby brother. I found out from Yvonne that Edrick had died. Edrick, Danita, and my baby, Joelle, were gone. But instead of picking up the bottle this time, I vowed to spend the rest of my life making it up to Ed by being there for Liz and the boys.