Bad Blood (15 page)

Chapter 28

Seth

T
HE LAST THING
I
WANTED TO DO BEFORE
I
EVEN FINISHED HIGH
school was get married, but I had offered to marry Caroline before and again after she gave birth to Darnell. When I told Mother I was willing to marry Caroline, she almost had a heart attack. She had had one several years ago, when I got hit by a car. That was how sensitive she was.

“You want to marry that low-life, ignorant jezebel? Bah! You will do no such thing until we get that DNA test done,” she informed me. There was a grimace on her face as she massaged her heaving chest and stomped back and forth in our living room. “I'd rather see you go to jail. My poor heart can't take this! Are you trying to finish killing me?”

“I'm trying to do the right thing, Mother,” was all I said. And I meant it.

The year was 1985. DNA testing had not been around long, so my test proved only that there was an 85 percent chance that I was the father of Caroline's baby boy. That and the fact that he looked just like me were good enough for me. That was why I'd offered to marry her again. But by that time, she had no interest in being my wife. However, she still wanted to get as much money from me as she could. Since my parents had made it clear that they were not going to support my son, I got a job working behind the counter at a deli after school and on weekends. That chump change they paid me didn't go too far.

I loved my son and wanted to be in his life, but Caroline was determined to make that as difficult as possible. Almost every time I went to her place to see him and take her some money, she was either not home or on her way out the door to “go run some errands,” so my visits were brief. I was concerned about what she was spending the money on, because my son usually had on the same cheap outfits every time I visited. The only new things I noticed were things she had purchased for herself, such as new outfits, the latest CDs, and elaborate hair weaves. Raising a son by a ghetto princess was not going to be easy if I didn't have much say in his upbringing. Caroline was even reluctant to let me take the boy around my family.

“I don't want my child to grow up thinking he's better than anybody else, the way your mama and daddy and them brothers of yours do! The only way I'll let you take him around them is if I go, too,” Caroline told me.

Well, taking Caroline around my family was like pouring gasoline onto a bonfire. Sparks flew every time I did.

“I love my grandson to death, but I don't think I can stand to spend another hour around that mama of his,” Mother had said the last time I brought Caroline and Darnell to the house. “She's raising him to be a thug already, like she is!”

Mother had almost fainted when she'd seen the cornrows on my two-year-old son's head and his pierced ears that day. Father had shaken his head as he'd stood in front of the portable bar near the fireplace, with an exasperated look on his face. Caroline had had a smirk on her face, which had almost made me sick to my stomach. What she'd revealed later that afternoon had made me sick to my stomach.

“I think y'all should know that I've met somebody and we're moving to L.A.,” she'd announced fifteen minutes after she had entered my parents' house.

“That's hundreds of miles away,” Mother had said, almost choking on her words.

“So what? Y'all got three cars and deep pockets. And don't y'all fanny around in L.A. a few times a year, anyway, shopping and eating at them same fancy Beverly Hills restaurants that the stars go to? Well, now y'all will have something else to do when you come to L.A.” Caroline had not mentioned relocating to me before. “Seth, you just better make sure them support checks ain't late, or I'll teach you a lesson you'll never forget,” she'd hissed.

Caroline and Darnell left Berkeley two weeks later. As soon as she got settled in L.A., she started calling me, demanding more money. She was relentless. Some days she would call me in the morning and whine about an unexpected emergency that she needed money for, and I'd wire her the money immediately. Then she'd call me a few hours later on the same day to tell me she needed more money for another “unexpected emergency.” To keep up with Caroline's demands, I had to drop out of school in the eleventh grade and take a full-time job doing backbreaking work on the loading dock of a cannery. Even though my parents had money and could have helped me support my son, they still refused to do so. This was their way of forcing me to “man up” and take care of my responsibilities. However, they usually purchased new clothes and other items for Darnell from the same high-end stores where they'd bought clothes for me and my brothers. When one of Caroline's loose-lipped relatives told me that she was selling those expensive items that my parents sent, they stopped being so generous.

My money was so tight, I couldn't even afford my own place or a car on my own. My brother Josh gave me a two-year-old Mustang to get around in. He also slipped me a few dollars for spending money every now and then. But I was still miserable. I was too gun-shy to get involved with another girl, so when I needed some female attention, I started picking up hookers. When I lost control of that, I had to start borrowing money to pay what I thought of as my “pussy cat” bill. With that and my other expenses, I had to rob Peter to pay Paul almost every month. I felt like I was trapped on a sinking ship.

I had created a no-win situation.

“Seth, you look so sad,” Sister Mays said, bringing me back into the conversation.

I shook my head to get that dark period in my life and the image of Caroline and her mother out of my mind and resumed eating my dinner. I didn't want the pastor and the first lady to know how upset I was. “Um, things are really looking up for me, Sister Mays,” I mumbled.

“He's attending some business classes after work,” Mother threw in, with a tentative look on her face.

“Which he wouldn't have to do if he had stayed in school in the first place,” Damon reminded. “Nobody in this family has ever dropped out of high school!”

“I had to quit school and go to work so I could take care of Caroline and my son,” I yelled.

“And a fine job you're doing, baby brother. You did the right thing by that girl, even though she was one of the biggest tramps in town,” Josh said, giving me a wink. “We all make bad choices when we're young.”

“Too bad
you
were the one who got her pregnant, Seth,” Damon's wife, Helene, said with a sniff. “You could have done a lot better, but I'm sure she couldn't. The fact that she's had
four
more babies by four different men since she trapped you proves that.”

“If that girl is so loose, how does she even know who gets her pregnant?” Sister Mays asked, looking puzzled.

“That's a good question, dear. I'm glad you brought it up,” Reverend Mays said, looking at his wife like she had just solved the mysteries of the world. “This girl could be a trickster, for all we know.”

“I don't know about the rest of Caroline's babies, but Seth is the father of the first one. We had a DNA test done,” Father said with a hint of disgust in his voice.

“Hmmm. Well, tell me this, Seth. Does Rachel know you're already a daddy?” Reverend Mays asked with a frown.

“It was one of the first things I told her.” I was proud of myself for not keeping that information from Rachel. I knew that if we stayed together, she'd eventually hear about Darnell. I'd wanted her to hear it from me, so I'd told her on our second date. “She doesn't have a problem with it.”

Yes, I had told Rachel about Caroline and my son. I wanted this relationship to work, and the way things had been going, I had a feeling it would.

Rachel was going to change my life in ways I never imagined.

Chapter 29

Rachel

I
HAD BEEN SO BUSY LATELY,
I
HAD NOT HAD A CHANCE TO TALK TO
Uncle Albert. We had been playing phone tag since the day I met Seth.

“Baby girl, call me back so you can tell me about Seth,” one of Uncle Albert's messages said. “You know I worry about you, so I just want to make sure everything is going all right.”

I felt bad about not being around when Uncle Albert called. He was one of the last people I wanted to worry. He was the only relative I had in California. He was just four years older than me, and we had always been very close. The rest of our family had pretty much written him off because he was gay, and as far as they were concerned, that condition was totally unacceptable.

When I was growing up, I had always suspected that Uncle Albert was gay. Even though he didn't look it or act it, a lot of other people suspected the same thing, because he had no interest in dating females or in other things associated with boys, like sports, fishing, and fooling around with cars and other masculine things. Uncle Albert liked to do hair, shop, and cook. He was six feet tall by the time he was sixteen, and with his wavy black hair, smooth caramel-colored skin, and baby face, the girls were attracted to him like flies to honey. But when he partied, it was always with me and other boys. People whispered about him and prayed that he would “grow out of it” before it was too late.

When Uncle Albert escorted a male classmate to their senior prom, all hell broke loose. People were outraged. Other kids teased and picked on him, and Mama reminded him that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” but it did no good.

Albert began to parade his male lovers all over town and even brought a few to the house. Mama was furious.

“What you do out there in the streets is your business. But you ain't going to spread all that unnatural mess in my house!” she told him.

Shortly after that confrontation, Uncle Albert moved in with his new boyfriend, a plain-looking white man in his late thirties named Raymond Starks. Uncle Albert called his lover Sugar Dick. That made Mama cringe, and me, too, for that matter. I refused to call a grown man by such a ridiculous nickname. Even though Raymond was approaching middle age and was homely, his trust fund and a bad heart made up for that. Uncle Albert was an opportunist, so he took advantage of his sugar dick. Raymond treated my uncle like a prince and showered him with gifts. Uncle Albert was eighteen at the time and was working as a part-time nanny for a wealthy family that Raymond had introduced him to.

“A nanny! That's a job only a woman should be doing,” Mama said.

A few months after they moved in together, Raymond took Uncle Albert on a lavish two-week vacation to San Francisco. Not only did they fly first class, but they also stayed in a suite at the elegant Mark Hopkins Hotel.

When they returned to Alabama, Uncle Albert couldn't stop talking about how much he had enjoyed that trip and about how open and free-spirited the gay people were in California.

“Girl, I never saw so many sweet-looking boys in my life. You can do just about anything you want out there, and nobody will bother you. I even saw people making love on the ground, in plain view, during the Gay Pride Parade,” Uncle Albert told me. He was so giddy, it was contagious.

“That sounds like the kind of place I'd like to live in someday,” I said.

“Rachel, California
is
the kind of place I'm going to live in someday.”

Not long after that conversation, Uncle Albert packed up and boarded a plane to California. He fled while Raymond was visiting relatives in Birmingham. As much as I loved my uncle and wanted him to be happy, I thought it was a shitty thing for him to do to the man who had taken him in and had treated him so well. As if his leaving wasn't bad enough, he paid for some new clothes and his one-way, first-class plane ticket using his ex's credit card.

Raymond told anybody who would listen that he was thinking about suing my uncle to make him pay back some of the money he had spent on him. He even came to the house and demanded Uncle Albert's new address. He ranted and raved so much, Janet and Ernest scurried out of the living room like scared rabbits. I couldn't decide what upset Mama more: the disgruntled, bald-headed, fat white man in her house, cussing up a storm, or the way his outburst upset Ernest and Janet.

“I don't have Albert's new address to give to you, Raymond. And to tell you the truth, I don't want to get involved in y'all's mess,” Mama said. “Now, if you don't mind, I need to finish cooking dinner so I can feed my kids.” Mama left the room immediately.

Raymond turned to me. I stood in the doorway, trying to look concerned. I was, but not for Raymond. I was not about to tell him how to locate my uncle.

“Rachel, you and Albert were thick as thieves. I know you must know how to get in touch with him. You seem like a sensible girl. Don't you think he needs to pay for what he did to me?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, nodding. And as strange as it was, I did. I didn't think it was right for a person to use somebody, then go on their merry way and not look back. “I wouldn't let somebody treat me like that and get away with it, either. I would make their life a living hell.” I had no idea how prophetic my words were at the time. “But I can't give you my uncle's address or phone number, because he made me promise not to.”

“When you do talk to that gold-digging scalawag, you tell him he can go to hell! And make sure you tell him I said his dick was too small for me anyhow! I still might sue his ass!” Raymond hollered. When he left a few seconds later, he slammed our front door so hard, the large family portrait of me, Mama, Uncle Albert, Janet, and Ernest fell off the wall.

Mama galloped back into the living room with a rolling pin in her hand. I knew she would have used it on Raymond if he had not already left.

“Raymond sure is mad, Mama,” I said. I squatted down and picked up the picture, wiping dust off the edges. “I hope he doesn't sue Uncle Albert.”

“Well, if he do, Albert deserves just what he gets. He brought this mess on hisself. See, that's what happens when you piss somebody off. They can drag you into a legal situation. You remember that with that boyfriend of yours,” Mama warned.

Uncle Albert rarely wrote or called, and when he did, I was usually the only one he communicated with.

Two years after he had left Alabama, and after several dead-end jobs, Uncle Albert called home and told me that he'd been hired to work as a secretary for an engineering company with offices all over the world.

I was reluctant to share the news with everybody, but I did so a few days later, during dinner.

“Secretary? Him being a nanny wasn't bad enough, I guess,” Mama shrieked. “I declare, I should have known he'd go all the way to California and get another sissified job.”

“If you thought the boy was one of them thangs before, him living out there in fag heaven is going to doom him to hell for sure,” Aunt Hattie mumbled. My aunt was my mother's older sister. Her only child had died at birth forty years ago. When her husband died ten years ago, Aunt Hattie began to spend so much time at our house that people thought she actually lived with us.

“I might move to California myself one of these days,” I chirped. “I can stay with Uncle Albert.” I had just graduated from high school a few weeks ago. Mama and Aunt Hattie looked at me at the same time. I couldn't decide which one gasped the loudest.

“Stop talking crazy, girl,” Mama advised. “Ain't nothing out there in California for you. You got a nice boyfriend here. That should be enough for you.”

Jeffrey Morgan and I had been going together since eleventh grade. My jet-black hair was thick and long, a feature that every boy I knew liked. I had a pretty good shape, and my face was attractive, even without my make-up. However, my brown eyes were not big enough for me, my nose was too sharp, and I didn't have the luscious, full lips like some of the black females I knew. But that didn't stop people from telling me I was pretty, so I ran with it. I had a lot of confidence, and I carried myself in a way that made me stand out. Despite my looks, I still had to work hard to get and keep a cute boyfriend. Jeffrey was the cream of the crop, and a lot of girls were just waiting to get their paws on him.

Everything was beautiful between Jeffrey and me. We had eyes only for each other, or so I thought. A month after we had received our diplomas, I started hearing rumors that he was sneaking around with a girl named Rita Wallace. She had just moved to Coffeeville from Barbados. All the girls I knew, even the white ones, were concerned about Rita. Not only was she too beautiful and exotic for words, and not only did she have a shape like a movie star's, but she also had no shame. Mama told me that the girl's mama had sent her to live with her daddy in Alabama because she had slept with her own sister's husband. I had no respect for girls who would stoop that low. So, like every other girl, I avoided Rita.

I needed to focus on more important things than Rita. One was money. Income was tight in our house, so I wanted to do something to help lighten Mama's load. Two days after my graduation, I began to look for a job.

I had to put college on hold, but Jeffrey, his daddy being the manager of a huge restaurant, was going to go off to Morehouse in the fall, and it would be months before I saw him again. With that in mind, I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.

One Saturday afternoon in the middle of July, I decided to go to Jeffrey's house to make sure he was okay. I hadn't heard from him in a week, and he had not returned any of my calls. I knew his parents and two younger siblings were on vacation at Disney World. Since he had the house to himself, I assumed he'd want to get jiggy. When I got to his house and knocked on the front door for at least two minutes, he didn't answer. I knew he was home, because his old jalopy was in the driveway and that boy never walked anywhere. For all I knew, he could have been injured and was unable to get help, so I knew what I had to do next.

I was as familiar with the Morgans' residence as I was with my own. I knew that the lock on the side door was broken. That was how I entered the house. It didn't take me long to figure out what Jeffrey was up to. I followed the moans and groans to his bedroom in the back of the house. I realized he had wanted to get jiggy, but not with me. I kicked open his bedroom door, and there he was, humping that island girl like it was going out of style.

“Rita, turn over, baby! I want to hit it from behind!” he panted.

“You son of a bitch,” I said through clenched teeth. He was so into what he was doing, he didn't even hear me! But Rita did. She whipped her head around, and when she saw me, she pushed Jeffrey so hard, he fell to the floor. He wobbled up to his feet, with a stunned look on his face.

“What the hell—” Jeffrey didn't even have time to finish his sentence. I shot across the floor, grabbed the lamp off his nightstand, and started swinging it at him. I pummeled Jeffrey until I got tired. I left him curled up on the floor in a fetal position, with his tears, snot, and blood all over his naked body.

I ignored Rita, who was cowering on the bed, looking like she'd seen a ghost. Apparently, she was too frightened to even get up and run or to scream. I casually left the room, but when I got outside, I took off running. I ran the six blocks to my house, with Jeffrey's blood on me from head to toe. When I got home, I snuck in through the kitchen door. Before I could make it to my room, Mama came out of nowhere and accosted me in the hallway leading from the kitchen.

She threw her hands up and screamed, “Rachel, what in the world happened to you? Did you kill somebody?”

“I don't know, Mama.”

“What do you mean by that? Whose blood is that all over your clothes?”

Before I could respond, Ernest entered the hallway. He swallowed hard and looked from me to Mama. He spoke for the first time in three weeks. “Two cops just walked in the door. They come for you, Rachel.”

Jeffrey had called the cops, and they had come to arrest me for breaking and entering and aggravated assault.

Mama begged and pleaded with the cops not to take me to jail, but they handcuffed me and took me in, anyway. I waited in a cell for seven hours, while Mama scrambled around to borrow enough money to bail me out.

The next day she visited Jeffrey in the hospital and begged and pleaded with him to drop the charges against me. To my surprise, he did. However, his meddlesome mama made him take out a restraining order against me, and he did just that as soon as the hospital released him.

I was not allowed to go within five hundred feet of him for the next three years. That was all right by me, because I never wanted to see his cheating face again, anyway.