My mother tried her best to get through to me, but it was no use. I was no longer hers; in fact, I belonged to Benny, mentally. I lived, breathed, and worshiped the ground she walked on. Although I never wanted to be with her sexually, I loved her for her and would have done just about anything to take a walk in her shoes.
"I’m tellin' you, Hayden, I don't know what's gotten into you," my mother ranted as I got dressed for the club.
"Mom, you can miss me with all that fussin' you doin'," I said before glossing my lips.
"You are just runnin' wild, child. You don't know whether you’re comin’ or goin’ sometimes. I bet yo’ daddy is turning over in his grave right about now."
Just her mentioning my daddy sent chills through me. It had been such a long time since she mentioned my father. I vaguely remembered him. He was shot and killed when I was three, but still the thought of what he would think of me affected me in some strange way.
"Don't go throwin' Daddy up in this," I said as I grabbed my purse, pulling the strap up on my shoulder.
"He would be so disappointed in the way you've been acting."
My mother knew how I felt when she said things like that, so in order to make her feel the exact same pain I felt, I said something I knew would hurt her. "He would be here to let me know how he felt if you wouldn't have been cheatin' on him," I spat. The look on my mother's face let me know that I had succeeded.
My mother slapped the side of my face hard before running off to her room. Even though I felt my mother was the reason my father was shot and killed, it didn't give me the right to throw it up in her face. She had to deal with the pain every day of her life.
I never knew the whole story behind my father's murder, but I had heard bits and pieces through the rumor mill. It was said that my mother was cheating on my father with our next door neighbor, Mr. Bowman. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it, except for my father, so they thought. One day my father had left for work, like he did any other morning, but with a plan in mind. Mr. Bowman came in through the back door like clockwork, and he and my mother wasted no time hitting the bedroom. Supposedly, my father had sat around the corner from the house and waited for what he thought was the right time to bust my mother and Mr. Bowman in the act.
They say my father snuck in the house and got his gun he had planted earlier in the hallway closet. My mother and Mr. Bowman were so engrossed in their sexual act, they didn't even notice my father standing in the doorway with his gun pointed at them. Mr. Bowman was the first to notice my father. He knocked my mother from off top of him and jumped up. My father was so enraged, that instead of shooting Mr. Bowman, he threw the gun down and attacked him.
As they wrestled around on the floor, somehow Mr. Bowman got a hold of the gun and shot my father in the chest. Four days later, he passed away in the hospital. My father's entire family blamed my mother for his death, so they never spoke another word to her or me. Mr. Bowman ended up being sentenced to seven years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. I, too, blamed my mother for my father's death, but I never had the heart to tell her that until today. I felt bad for what I had just said to her, but it was too late to take it back.
As I stood in the doorway of the bathroom holding my stinging face, I realized that my life was heading for disaster. In order for me to get back on the right track, I had to talk to the one and only person that I knew could help me get over anything. I called Tashonna. It had been a while since I had last spoken to her. With her being in Ohio and me in Kansas, our friendship was heading in different directions, but I always knew if I needed her, she would be there for me, and I the same.
"Hey, girl," she answered the phone out of breath.
"What you do, run to the phone?" I asked, taking a seat on the edge of the tub.
"Yeah, I thought you were Jarvis or Javon callin', chile," she said.
Hearing those names brought back terrible memories. I still hated them two fools for what they had done to me. "Oh, where they at?" I asked, hoping she would say doing life in prison.
"Girl, they both locked up. They doing some serious time!”
A smile spread across my face. "What they in jail for?" I asked, hoping she couldn't sense the happiness in my voice.
"You remember Shari from the North End?"
"Don-Don's sister?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's her. Well, that ho lied and said Jarvis and Javon raped her," she said as if they weren't capable of doing an animalistic thing like that. "Can you believe that?"
You dang on right I can believe that, I badly wanted to say, but kept it to myself. It took everything in my being to keep from bursting Tashonna's bubble about her cousins. The more Tashonna rambled on about how big of a liar Shari was, the madder I got. I knew first hand what Shari accused Jarvis and Javon of doing was nothing more than the truth.
"Well, I gotta go," I said, not being able to hear her take up for her cousins while bad mouthing Shari any longer.
"Hey, wait. What chu call for? Is everything okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, everything's fine. I was just callin' to see how you were doin', since I hadn't heard from you in a while," I lied.
"All right then. Tell ya momz I said hello. Is she doin’ okay?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't she be?"
"It's just that the last time I saw her, she didn't look too good. Is she stressed out about something?"
My mom didn't mention anything to me about seeing Tashonna when she went home to visit Miss Lydia and the rest of her old friends from the hospital. "Where did you see my mom at?" I inquired.
"I saw her at the prison when I was out there visiting Jarvis and Javon," Tashonna replied.
My mind went blank, my body went numb and my heart stopped beating after Tashonna revealed seeing my mother out at the prison. The only person she knew that was incarcerated was…John!
I sat quietly as Tashonna continued. "I didn't get a chance to talk to her, because she was pullin’ out the parkin’ lot when I was comin’ in," she said while I just remained quiet and stunned on the other end. "Hello…hello?" Tashonna called out.
"Yeah, I'm here, I'm here," I stammered in disbelief.
"Hayden, you okay?" Tashonna asked.
"I'm fine. Look, I'll talk to you later," I said, hanging up the phone. I would have never thought in a million years that my mother would be visiting the man who molested and raped her only child. You gotta be kidding. Where is the loyalty? I couldn't make it down the hallway to my mother's room quick enough. I swung her door open and stared at her with pure hatred in my soul.
"What do you want in my room?" she asked with straight attitude, looking up from the suitcase she was packing.
"Where you goin'?" I asked.
"I’m leavin’ for Ohio in the morning. I've already called Lydia to pick me up from the airport."
"What you plan on doin’ when you get to Ohio?" I picked.
"The same as usual. Why do you care? Only thing that matters to you is Benny and the rest of them dykes next door," my mother spat, harshly. I was surprised because had I had said something like that, my mom would have been all over me.
"Answer me this question will you?" My mother looked at me waiting for me to go ahead with what I had to ask. "What's more messed up? Me kickin' it with the dykes next door or you visiting the man that raped and molested me?" I shot, angrily.
The expression on my mother's face was priceless.
"Oh, you didn't think I would find out about you visiting John?" I toyed. My mother was speechless as I went on. "I don't know who's more messed up, you for stickin’ by John, or John for messin’ with kids." I was so disgusted by the sight of my mother I wanted to throw up.
"Hayden, I'm sorry," she cried as she took a step toward me.
I took a step back and studied my mother's face to try and get any inclination of what would possess her to go against her own child.
"You know what, Mom, you are sorry," I said.
Tears streamed down my mother's face as she stared at me. I couldn’t even feel sorry for the pain I knew she was in from me finding out the truth. The only thing I could do to keep from literally beating some sense into her was leave. That night I went to the club and tried to drink away all the pain that everybody had ever caused me. Needless to say, my life would never be the same.