A Rich Man's Baby (22 page)

M
y sadness had reached an all-time low. My comfort song had become “In My Mind” by Heather Headley. It was about a woman who didn't get over her old boyfriend and she kept repeating in the song that in her mind she was still his lady. I was still Kevin's lady too! I had so much work in front of me and didn't care. I wanted to quit. Kevin was still ignoring me and I wasn't answering Terrance when he called me. My train of thought was interrupted by someone saying, “Are you listening, Ms. Matthews?”

“Huh? I am sorry, I was listening,” I said as I came back to reality. I had April Hubert's mother in my office. I was defending April in an adult case; she had just turned eighteen but still was in high school and was about to go to trial for defending herself with a box cutter after she was beat up two times by the same group of girls. She cut one of the girl's arms up so bad she needed ninety stitches.

“I was asking you, do you think she is going to get off, or are they really going to send her to a women's prison? It's her first offense and she was defending herself.”

“Miss Hubert, I will try my best. I don't know what is going to happen. If she was a few months younger, we wouldn't even be here; but they are not looking at her age, the courts are looking at her crime,” I said honestly.

“But what do you think?” her mother asked

“I'm not sure. I'll do my best,” I said as I ended the meeting and escorted her out of my office.

Judge DeLuca—some days were nice, other times a bitch. She had low tolerance for bullshit. She didn't play with gun cases, murder, and rape. It was my first time going before her. I should have been excited, but I was so out of it. We selected a jury in a few hours. I was able to select seven women and five men. Two Latinos, five African-Americans, two Asians, and three whites. They were in their mid-twenties to sixties. I hoped they all would feel sorry for her.

I gave my opening statement. Looking directly at the jury, I said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you been scared to go to school? Scared to go to class because you might be teased or beat up? You haven't? Well, April Hubert has and was abused by a pack of vicious girls for years. During this trial, I will prove to you that April Hubert is a victim, not a criminal. Yes, she did cut Jada Graham in her arm, but it was done out of pure fear and self-defense.” When I was done, I looked over at April's mother to see her wiping away tears. I wanted the jury to see her too. And I caught a few of their eyes following mine to hers. I sat down and waited for the prosecution.

Later, I began my direct examination of April Hubert. April was nervous and stuttering. I had to pull questions out of her and repeat myself. I knew the prosecution was going to pound her with his cross-examination, but he didn't. He was so boring I didn't even take notes. I began doodling that bitch Tanisha another letter. I wrote,
Six million ways to die, choose one
. I heard that in a reggae song before; it was funny. I drew these cute stick figures of women dying. One had a woman hanging from a tree, another had a woman burning in a fire yelling help, and the cutest one was a woman with a gun up to her own head. Under that I wrote,
Go kill yourself, bitch.
I couldn't wait to send it to her.

 

James wanted to help me go over my closing argument, but I wrote it last night and I was not changing it. I had something far more important to do. I had to go to the post office and mail my letter to Tanisha.

“Are you nervous?” he asked as we walked back toward the courtroom after lunch

“No, I'm fine. If she gets found guilty, she gets found guilty.”

“What?” James said as he looked at me like I was crazy. I had to clean up what I just said. It didn't sound so good, even though it was what I was thinking.

“James, you know what I meant. I know I did the best job I could and I hope that they find her innocent.”

“Whew, you scared me for a minute,” he said as I sat back next to April. The jury filed back into the courtroom and the lead juror stood up and said, “We the jury find the defendant not guilty on all counts.” April's entire family began roaring with praise and excitement. James leaned over to me to give me a high five.

“You won your first jury trial case.”

“Thanks,” I said somberly.

“We have to go celebrate,” James said excitedly.

“No, I'm really tired. This experience has been really draining. I'm going home to get into bed.”

“At least across the street at the Marriott.”

“Maybe tomorrow, I want to get home.” I just felt so sad nothing could make me happy right now.

 

The moment I was comfortable in my bed, I heard a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole and saw Camille.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“You don't answer your phone so I had to come over here and check on you. We are getting you out of this apartment. You are scaring me. I'm telling you right now, if you don't snap out of it, I am going to call Mommy and Daddy.”

“No, don't do that,” I said, trying to not look crazy.

“Listen, call your man, get him back, forget about Kevin, and let's go get some coffee and talk.” If only it was just that simple. I got dressed and went with Camille.

 

Over my long talk with Camille I got everything out. I got so much out I was beginning to feel like a dumb-ass for even thinking about wanting to be with Kevin. She made a lot of sense. I tore up all the letters I planned to mail to Tanisha and realized it was over. I had too much at stake. If I was ever caught doing all this craziness, I wouldn't have a job or career. I still wanted to talk to Kevin, just for closure, but if he didn't want to talk to me there was nothing that I could do.

 

The next morning, instead of my morning stalking, I went for a jog. The air coming into my lungs felt so good. I felt alive and happy. I came back into the house and Camille had text-messaged me:

 

TODAY YOU LOVE LIKE YOU NEVER BEEN HURT
.

 

I read it and smiled. I was going to take her advice and call Terrance and tell him to come home and talk.

 

When I called Terrance he was so happy to hear from me. I was ignoring him like Kevin was ignoring me. I invited him over to talk. Terrance was sitting on our sofa wearing black jeans and a green polo shirt and navy cotton jacket. I could tell he was waiting for me to say something. It was my fault and I had to remedy this situation.

“Terrance, I am not cheating on you. I was just getting cold feet. And my job was just stressing me out. I still love you.”

Terrance was not buying it; he looked at me like I was lying. “I know being an attorney is hard, but not that hard. I love you so much, Dionne, and I want to work it out with you, but you have to be honest with me.”

“I want it to work too, and I am being honest,” I said as I looked him in his eyes and held his hand. He stared back like he was still suspicious. The silence of our stare was broken by my phone alerting me I had a text message.

“Who is that?” he asked as he jumped up and checked my cell phone. Without getting off the sofa, I said, “It is Camille. She keeps text-messaging me telling me she loves me and sending me inspirational quotes.” He read Camille's latest text, then threw the phone.

“I'm sorry for checking your phone. I just really thought you were cheating on me. We are going to make this work,” he said apologetically.

“It's okay, you can check my phone whenever you want. I don't have anything to hide.”

Terrance and I decided we were still going to get married. There was no reason not to. Everything was planned and paid for. This was just a little bump in the road, but we weren't going to allow anything to get in the way.

A
drienne called me all day long for advice. I couldn't get caught up in her mess. She wasn't handling her business properly. She was sloppy with it. DeCarious was young; he was very responsible and giving her the world, and she treated him like shit. Now she was getting a taste of her own medicine. I didn't have time to hear her crying. I had my own issues to deal with. The crazy anonymous letters had stopped, but I was still scared and never told Kevin.

“I have to get off this phone, Adrienne. No, I'm busy, the children are coming out here.”

“Wow, so he really accepts your children. That's great.”

“Yeah, Adrienne, listen, girl, shit is getting crazy. Why the fuck did someone write in red lipstick on my car window, ‘Watch your back, bitch'? And somebody sent me a bunch of crazy letters.”

“What?”

“Yeah, this shit is crazy.”

“Who do you think it is?” Adrienne asked.

“Well, Kevin told me sometimes female fans really go crazy. I don't know what to think. Should I tell him?”

“I wouldn't because he don't need that stress.”

“That's what I was thinking.”

“You think it might be Tyrone?”

“No, he still don't know about any of this and I can't make a police report.”

“Just go get you some mace and I guess watch your back. I got to feed this baby, she greedy. Call me back later.”

I went on with my day. I didn't think fans were this crazy, but I wasn't letting no stupid chick who wanted to be where I was scare me. I couldn't complain at all. Kevin was the best thing that ever happened to me. He had been helping with Alexis, Kierra, and Jamil. We had been out a few times as a family, and we all attended Alexis's graduation together. I hadn't had to ask for anything. I was exhausted balancing two houses, but I couldn't have everyone under one roof. After I had the baby in a couple of months I'd get everything together. I just wanted to enjoy Kevin before the season began again and he got on the road.

I
was at my six-week postpartum visit. My doctor looked at my chart and said, “You are losing weight too fast. Please slow it down and let your body heal naturally. I see a lot of mothers trying to lose weight too fast. Concentrate on your health and the weight will come off.”

“Oh, okay,” I said as she walked out of the room and she told me I could get dressed. But there was no way I was going to stop my dieting. I needed to look good for my man. DeCarious was treating me like I was his enemy. I still denied knowing what he was talking about. He brought us back to Seattle with him, though, and that was a good sign. Hopefully he still wanted me around. I felt like I had to walk around on eggshells with him. We took a blood test that confirmed he was the father. I never would have thought that this sweet man I met a year ago would be acting like this. If he wasn't so big, I would smack the shit out of him.

A few weeks later, I made no progress with DeCarious. I was at his house, but he was not sleeping with me or taking me out. He would come in and play with Malaysia and then sleep and talk on the phone in the other room.

“Do you want me to go home?” I asked him, frustrated. I had had enough.

“Adrienne, I don't care what you do. Because whatever you won't do the next woman will. You don't know, I'm an endangered species. I'm a fine-ass young black man with financial security and I'm under thirty. So go home, I don't care,” he said as he tapped my chin playfully while he laughed. The fact that he thought this was a joke infuriated me. I was tired of being nice. I had to strike back.

“DeCarious, nobody wants your ass.”

He gave me a smirk and then pulled out his cell phone and started scrolling through all these numbers. “Don't nobody want me. Oh, really? That is a joke,” he said as he started calling people in front of me. He then started reading me his text messages. I tried my best to ignore him and his disrespect.

“I don't care,” I said, shaking my head.

“You care.”

“No, I don't fucking care. They don't want you. They want your money. You ain't nothing without your jersey on.”

“Fuck you, bitch. I've been getting bitches way before I started playing.”

“DeCarious, you are a child and I'm sorry I even met you. You are a waste,” I said as I walked into the bedroom and began packing.

“Don't take anything out of my house. Leave with what you came with, you broke bitch.”

“Broke bitch. I have my own money.”

“Adrienne, you don't have anything. Everything you own I bought you, and you ain't shit without me. So either stick around so that I might forgive you, or go the fuck home. Either way hurry up and make a decision.”

I chose to go home. I didn't know who he thought he was talking to. Fuck him. At the airport I called my mother and told her I had left DeCarious. She asked me why I didn't try to work it out with him. Was I supposed to? Should I have just been quiet just because he was still paying all the bills? Was he going to get better? How about if it didn't get better? How about if it stayed like that forever? I didn't have to deal with that, hell no. How could I let DeCarious go from treating me like royalty to this? I couldn't, it was unacceptable. I did the right thing by leaving. He was not going to deliberately disrespect me. I looked down at my daughter asleep in the stroller and thought about it again. I guess I made the right decision. Now my daughter didn't have her father, I thought. I was going home a party of two instead of one. That was okay, he would pay, because come Monday morning I was getting an attorney and taking his ass to the bank.

I
moved back home. Lucky enough I was smart enough to stash some money on his ass. My mother did not raise a dummy. I went and rented a town house until I got the situation together with my attorney. But this was only a temporary stop because I was about to take DeCarious's ass down. That was the goal anyway. I wanted him to buy me and his daughter a house, and I needed a new car to drive her around in. He had plenty of money, and he would be paying for his daughter every month for the next eighteen years. He tried to call me and offer me six thousand a month in support. And he said something about don't get any expensive lawyers involved. He was crazy. I knew I could get at least ten to fifteen thousand a month.

I went to visit Tanisha. Her situation was going so good. She was living in this beautiful house in the suburbs and about to have her baby soon. She looked cute pregnant; her stomach was round and perfect.

“Hey, girl, this house is so fucking beautiful. Look at these floors. You are really living. Got one,” I said as I laughed and took off my sunglasses.

“I see you still silly. Come in and have a seat. You lost a lot of weight fast.”

I sat down and took Asia out of her car seat. “How did I lose all my weight so fast? A man diet. I don't look like I just pushed out a baby. That's why I know DeCarious was stupid for cheating on me. Only thing is look at all these stretch marks,” I said, lifting my shirt.

“Ew,” she said as she got a good look at my scarred stomach.

“Right, I'm going to have to get some surgery. I can't take DeCarious; he is on some bullshit. His head is blown and I'm not for that shit. I got a lawyer that is going to stick it to his ass nice and hard.”

“You should just take that six thousand.”

“Please,” I said as I pushed my hair off my neck. “So, where Kevin at?”

“Out at the gym.”

“You are so lucky. Like he really dig you and y'all are on the same wavelength. When the season starts back up, I want you to put me down with one of his teammates.

“I'll see, but I think most of them are married or have girlfriends.”

“That never stopped us before, right? We was having fun. All that led to all this. So, anyway let's go hang out.”

“Go out where? I don't have time for that; plus, I'm showing.”

“Not like that, we can go out and get something to eat.”

“I can't, I'm a homebody now. Adrienne, I'm trying not to mess up my relationship with Kevin.”

“Oh, okay,” I said as I gathered Asia's stuff. I resented the way Tanisha was talking like she wasn't in the same position as me. We both started this journey together. Now she was trying to come at me like she didn't plot on Kevin too!