Chapter 23

J. Amanda

 

 

“She’s going to be so happy to finally meet you,” J. Amanda told the lady on the phone. She’d just driven home from Washington, D.C., when Roxanne McDaniels called. Rather than return the call when she was settled inside the house, J. Amanda kept the car running in her driveway and answered.

Thanks to Kenya’s detective skills and social work resources, J. Amanda was able to locate Roxanne, Jasmine’s birth mother. Roxanne cried for twenty minutes when J. Amanda explained her reason for contacting her last week. Though Roxanne lived in Florida, after thirty minutes on the phone, she anxiously agreed to come back to Philadelphia in a few months to surprise Jasmine for her birthday.

When the call was over, J. Amanda dragged her weary body into the house. She couldn’t wait to get in the bed. Since her television debut, she’d been traveling to different churches to teach a class or preach. Instead of catching a train to D.C., she had decided to drive and leave at 5:00 A.M. to get ahead of the heavy traffic. She’d been moving nonstop since then.

“I’m home,” she announced, expecting her children to come charging at her. But no one did. J. Amanda locked the back door and dropped her briefcase by the nearby water cooler. The house was unusually quiet.

“David!” she called as she walked through the kitchen. Maybe David took the kids out and left a note, she thought. “Anybody here?” she said, unable to find a message from her husband or the kids. Maybe they ran to the store,” she whispered.

Part of her was relieved. With the kids out of the house, she could get a quick nap in before they returned home. J. Amanda strolled out of the kitchen and paused at the stairs to remove her shoes. As she started up the steps, she glanced into the family room and noticed David sitting in his chair in the dark.

“David?” she called. “Didn’t you hear me come in?” When he didn’t respond, J. Amanda nervously backed down the steps and went into the family room. “David, are you okay?” she asked as she approached him. David’s eyes were open, but they didn’t blink. Something was definitely wrong.

J. Amanda turned on the lamp on the end table and then faced her husband again. Sitting tall in the clothes he had worn to work, he clung to a newspaper clipping in his hand.

“Why are you in the dark, David?” she questioned.

David finally blinked but did not look his wife in the eyes. “I’ve been sitting here since four o’clock.”

“You’re scaring me, David. Where are the kids? Did something happen?” J. Amanda asked, trying not to panic.

“Tiffany and David are with my mother,” he stated.

“Okaaay . . . so why are you acting so weird? Did something happen to you?”

David lifted the clipping in his hand and gave it to his wife. From the wear and tear of the edges and its faded coloring, J. Amanda knew the clipping had been cut from a newspaper some time ago. She sat down under the lamp to get a better view and almost dropped it on the floor.

“Where did you get this?” she wanted to know.

“William Crawford stopped by today.”

J. Amanda didn’t know what to say. The clipping explained why Hunky was at the house, though she questioned how he got ahold of it.

The picture was taken the day of J. Amanda’s visit to Planned Parenthood for the abortion. When she had left the building, there was a protest going on. Lots of flashing cameras and angry people screaming harsh words had bombarded her when she walked out the door. J. Amanda hadn’t paid attention to the flashes going off as she walked through the disgruntled mob. But the cameras had caught J. Amanda holding up her arm to block the blinding lights. Though not all of her face was visible, you could tell it was her. Jasmine, who walked beside her, was easily recognizable. With attitude written on her face, Jasmine practically stared into the camera lens.

As J. Amanda read the article, which highlighted the rise in the number of abortions taking place in the city, David continued to speak. “He came here to tell me that Tiffany was his daughter. I thought he was mistaken, so he put that clipping in my hand. Still, I told him that my wife was a decent woman. She wouldn’t lead me to believe something that wasn’t true. But then I looked at the date on the article,” David said, and his voice cracked. “The article was written one week before we got married. So even if Tiffany is really mine, you were pregnant before our wedding day and the baby you were carrying wasn’t mine.”

J. Amanda could’ve come up with another excuse to dance around what the photograph conveyed, but her conscience wanted to come clean. “David . . . let me explain.”

“What is there to explain? That man says Tiffany is his daughter. Is that true?” David asked and waited for a response.

J. Amanda opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“You don’t have to answer, Jay. I can go get tested and find out myself,” David said in a raised voice. “How could you do this to our family?”

J. Amanda had never seen David this angry. “I tried to tell you, but—”

“There is no but,” he shouted and stood up. “You should’ve told me.”

J. Amanda’s hands trembled at the thought of what else Hunky might have shared with her husband. Seeing him this way, she wasn’t going to add fuel to the fire by asking.

“And to think . . . you had me racking my brain for months, trying to figure out why you were so upset with me, and you’ve been keeping this from me. Were you ever planning to tell me?”

Still unable to speak, J. Amanda closed her eyes and cried silently.

“I want you to leave,” David told her.

J. Amanda looked at her husband in disbelief. “I can’t leave,” she sobbed. “I’m not gonna leave my kids.”

“Then I’ll leave, and we’ll work out visitation.”

“You’re angry right now,” J. Amanda cried and went to her husband. She tried to touch his arm, but he pushed her away. “I’m not gonna let you leave, either. I messed up, but we can get through this.”

“I thought I married a godly woman,” David said with disappointment and turned to leave.

“David, wait a minute,” J. Amanda moaned as she reached for him again. This time David yanked his arm away from her with a little more force, and she dropped to the floor. As she listened to him climb the stairs, she knew his heart had broken, and there was little she could do to change that now.

With her marriage at risk, J. Amanda remained on the floor until the sun had been replaced by the moon. She didn’t know how to make this better, but J. Amanda knew she had to speak to Hunky and resolve whatever was on his mind.

J. Amanda got off the floor and walked into the kitchen. She had a bad headache but needed answers. As she reached for her cell phone and removed it from the briefcase by the cooler, she couldn’t believe how her life had changed in a matter of months.

The first ring hadn’t completed a full cycle when Hunky answered the phone. “I’ve been expecting your call,” he said.

“Just tell me why, Hunky. Why would you do something like this?”

“Why would you lie to me?” Hunky returned. “How could you deny me the chance to be a father? How do you know I wouldn’t have been good enough?”

“My decision wasn’t about your ability to be a father. You seem to forget that I was engaged at the time,” she reminded him.

“You can’t have everything your way, Jay,” retorted Hunky. “You can’t manipulate every bad decision to your advantage. Tiffany is my daughter. I wasn’t sure when I saw the article years ago, but when I looked into her eyes at the station, I knew. And your response confirms that I’m right.”

J. Amanda sat down and sighed. “You could’ve come to me, Hunky.”

“Really?” he answered. “I tried to, but you were too busy for me after we made love. Once again, J. Amanda got what she needed and then went on to the next chapter in her life.”

“You know that I’m busy, Hunky. But . . . my distance was because of the guilt. Nothing more.”

“I know that you left me to go to college. You stayed away from me because of your sorority, and now you have the church and a family to keep us apart.”

“What’s happened to you, Hunky? I’ve never seen you be this cruel.”

“Don’t you get it? This is who I became when you left me.”

“So . . . where are we now? What is it that you want from me?” J. Amanda asked. It was clear that the friend she once knew was long gone.

“I won’t say anything to your husband about our night together,” Hunky replied. “But I want Tiffany to know I’m her father.”

J. Amanda had a tough decision to make. Should she push David’s buttons more or potentially scar a young girl for life? “You’re being irrational,” she snapped.

“And you’re being selfish,” he retorted. “Imagine how I felt sitting at Thirtieth Street, waiting for my train to Atlanta. Seeing you in that paper brought tears to my eyes as I thought about the baby I thought you had aborted. I shed real tears for you at that station.” Hunky sounded as if he was about to shed more tears as he remembered that day. “I was shocked to learn that you were pregnant so soon after you got married,” he continued somberly. “That’s when I started keeping tabs on you. You posted so many pictures of Tiffany on your personal Web page. Every time I saw a new picture of her, my heart ached. You robbed me, Jay, so no . . . I don’t think I’m being irrational at all. Because of you, I missed out on the early years of my only child’s life.”

It didn’t matter that Hunky was right. She had robbed him of his fatherhood, but there was no way she was going to let him be a father to Tiffany now. “I’m not going to let you disrupt her life right now. She’s only eight,” J. Amanda replied firmly. “Maybe . . . we can come up with another solution that will work for everyone involved.”

“I guess I can—”

“Hold on one second. I’ve got an incoming call,” J. Amanda interrupted and switched to her other line.

“I need you to come to the hospital,” Tionna told her. “Jasmine was badly beaten.”

Forgetting that Hunky was on the other line, J. Amanda tossed her phone inside her purse, put on her shoes, and rushed to the hospital.