Big Girls Do Cry (38 page)

“I’ll meet you downstairs, Mom.”

“Okay, Dad.”

Rashad walked out of the room, and I hurried to get dressed. Before I went downstairs, I went to the nursery and checked it one more time. Everything was in place. I had Little Rashad’s diaper bag all packed, and I’d picked out a blue knit outfit for him to come home in. I had two receiving blankets and a fluffy soft yellow bunting blanket.

My parents and Rashad were waiting for me in the foyer. Rashad was holding my favorite travel mug in one hand and the car seat in the other.

“Guess everyone is ready to go, huh?”

“Early bird gets the worm,” my father said.

“I don’t know how early we’re going to be. It’s already eight-thirty,” Rashad said.

“I’m sorry,” I said sarcastically. “I wanted to get up earlier, but I didn’t get much sleep. Someone kept waking me up in the middle of the night.” I took my coffee from Rashad.

“I think I had that same problem,” my mother said, rolling her eyes at my father as we headed toward the door. “Besides, we’re still on schedule. You said you wanted to have the baby home by eleven. We’ve got plenty of time.”

The plan was to take two cars. We were doing this because not only did we have to pick up the baby, but Isis was being discharged as well. So, while Rashad and I retrieved the baby, my mother and father were going to get Isis and check into a hotel for two days. If it were up to me, I’d have her behind on a plane to L.A. tonight, but they wanted to give her a few days to rest after the delivery. Just to make sure she had no excuses to come back to my house, I’d already packed all her stuff, and UPS was coming to pick up the boxes tomorrow.

When we arrived at the hospital, Rashad and I went straight to the nurses’ station on the nursery floor.

“Good morning. My name is Egypt Robinson, and this is my
husband, Rashad. We’re here to pick up our baby.” I smiled and lifted the car seat to show her.

“Well, congratulations. I can check that car seat off my list.” She looked down at her computer screen. “Baby’s name?”

“Rashad Robinson Junior.”

She typed the name into the computer and clicked her mouse a few times. “Has Daddy signed the birth certificate?”

“No, not yet,” Rashad replied.

“Okay, maybe that’s why I don’t see anything under Robinson. What’s the mother’s last name?”

“Connors. The birth mother’s name is Isis Connors.” Rashad handed me the folder with all of our paperwork, which I passed to the nurse. “Here’s the consent form relinquishing the mother’s rights to the child and our custody agreement.”

The nurse took the paperwork without even looking up from her computer screen. “Isis Connors. Here she is.” I watched her expression change as she read something on the screen. “Can you wait here a minute? I’ll be right with you.”

She got up, looking alarmed, and rushed through the door behind her, returning shortly with two nurses and a woman in a lab coat who was probably a doctor. None of them said a word, but they all huddled around the computer screen while the doctor looked over the file.

Finally, the nurse who we originally spoke to pointed at the screen and said, “Look. It’s right here.” The doctor looked at the screen, then grimaced like she suddenly had a very bad headache.

I said in a panic, “What’s the matter? Is our baby all right? Why didn’t someone call us if something’s wrong with him?”

“Mrs. Robinson, the baby is fine.” The doctor paused. She looked very uncomfortable, like she wished she didn’t have to deliver the news. “He’s just not here.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not here.”

“We heard what the fuck you said!” Rashad shouted. “What I wanna know is where the fuck is my son?”

“Sir, there is no need to use that kind of language.”

“Rashad, calm down for a second, honey. He’s probably on
another floor or in a different part of the hospital.” Even as I said the words, I felt myself trembling because deep down, I knew it could be true that he was gone.

“No, he was discharged to his mother and father about an hour ago.”

“What the fuck you mean, he was discharged to his father? I’m his goddamn father! And this is his mother! Look at the damn paperwork.”

“I’m sorry, but none of this paperwork was attached to his chart.”

Rashad turned to look at me, and I could see it on his face. If the baby was gone, he was going to blame it all on me. And I have to admit I did feel guilty. I can’t believe that after controlling everything so carefully for nine months, I’d let my guard down. I was so ecstatic about spending time in the nursery with the baby that I practically forgot about my sister. Plus, she’d been fairly quiet; no complaints or anything after my mother gave her the check for the final installment of her thirty grand. For some reason, I’d let myself believe that now that she had delivered the baby and he was in my arms, we were home free.

The doctor continued covering her ass. “And even if it was in the chart, these papers were only rescinding the mother’s parental rights. The biological father still had the right to take his child.”

“I’m the damn biological father!”

“Not according to the mother.”

“What?” That’s when Rashad went totally off on the doctor and the hospital staff. He was cursing and screaming so loud that patients and their families were coming out of their rooms to see what all the commotion was about.

“Sir, if you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to call security,” the doctor said.

“I don’t give a shit if you call President Obama! I’m gonna sue every one of your incompetent asses if you don’t find my son.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down crying. Rashad put his arms around me, but I was inconsolable.

My mother and father came rushing toward us.

“Isis is gone,” my mother yelled.

“So is Little Rashad.” I could barely get the words out of my mouth.

My mother closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known something was wrong with her when she called me a bitch.”

“She called you a bitch?” My mother was no joke. She was bigger than both Isis and me, and didn’t put up with anyone being disrespectful. Even Isis’s rude ass knew better than to call her anything but Momma.

“She sure did, and I slapped the taste outta her mouth. She’s probably got postpartum depression.”

My father cut his eyes at my mother. They were definitely going to have words later about her slapping Isis. They had a very weird bond, those two.

“So what exactly happened? Did she just walk on outta here with the baby?” my father asked.

“No, they discharged her, along with my son!” Rashad shouted.

“This is crazy,” my mother muttered, turning to the nurses and doctor. “Which one of you brain scientists discharged my daughter?”

It took a few seconds, but one of the nurses finally raised her hand. “I did, but I didn’t do anything wrong. All her paperwork was in order. So was the man’s who signed the birth certificate. It was her baby, and like the doctor said, there wasn’t anything in her charts that said she wasn’t to leave with the baby.” The nurse sounded scared.

“I think she’s with Tony,” I told my mother.

“It figures. Whenever she gets herself into any kind of trouble, he’s usually lurking in the shadows somewhere. I just don’t understand what she sees in him.”

“Yes, Anthony Owen is down here as the father,” one of the nurses added.

“I hate that son of a bitch,” Rashad snapped.

“Get in line,” my mother added.

When I regained my composure, I said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s call the police. Maybe they can put out an Amber alert or something.”

“No police!” My father’s deep voice echoed down the hall. “We’re going to handle this as a family. The nurse by her room said she’d only been gone about an hour. Has anyone tried to call her cell phone?”

Rashad and I both said no in unison.

“Well, let’s see if she picks up.” My father pulled out his cell phone and walked about ten feet from us. All I heard him say was, “Princess, where are you?” Then he walked farther down the corridor so I couldn’t hear him.

The doctor asked us to move away from the nurses’ station, so my mother and I sat in the waiting room while Daddy spoke to Isis. Rashad stood in the doorway the whole time, watching my father as he paced back and forth on the phone.

Twenty minutes later, my father walked past Rashad, who was on his phone talking to our lawyer. Daddy sat down in the waiting room. Momma and I were sitting on the edges of our seats, waiting for him to speak. Rashad was listening but was still on the phone.

“Okay.” He sighed. “Well, she and the baby are safe, and they are definitely with Tony.”

“Did she tell you where they are?” I asked.

“No, but she mentioned going to Vegas to get married.”

“Oh, Jesus.” My mother threw her hands in the air, then sat back in her chair with a disgusted look on her face. “Isn’t he already married? Why do I feel like we’ve been down this road?”

“Momma, please.” I put my hand up for her to calm down so I could listen to my father. “What about my son? Are they going to bring Little Rashad back, Daddy?”

My father turned to me and shook his head. “No, sweetie. They don’t have any plans on doing that until after they’re legally married and have seen a lawyer.”

I started to cry again. “Then I’m calling the police.”

“That’s your prerogative, sweetie, but I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

I stared at my father like he was on drugs. What had gotten into him? “Daddy, that’s our child she’s got running around who knows where. He needs to be with his parents.”

“Your sister seems to think the baby’s not Rashad’s, which would technically make them the parents.”

“Not possible, Daddy! I was on her like white on rice during the entire month she got pregnant. She couldn’t pee without me knowing what shade of yellow it was.”

“That’s what she said, but she also wanted me to remind you of a certain girls’ night out around that time. Something about you asking her to do you a favor and babysit your friend Hannah’s baby because her sitter had the flu.”

I remembered that night. Isis was at Hannah’s house the whole time, watching her kid. It wasn’t like she had time to sneak off with Tony. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“To make a long story short, it seems Tony came over for a visit. Isis says there was a very good possibility Little Rashad was conceived that night.”

“That’s bull! We were right up the block at my other friend’s house.” I said it with confidence, but now that I thought about it, Isis was pestering us about what time we were going to be home and telling us to stay out as long as we wanted to. Plus she was singing the whole ride home. I’d never admit it to Rashad, but it was possible they got together that night. That still didn’t mean Little Rashad was Tony’s baby.

“Your sister has never lied to me.” He glanced over at my mother, who sucked her teeth; then he looked back at me. “Now, maybe like your mother says, I don’t ask the right questions. Nevertheless, she’s never lied to me, and I believe what she says.”

“Daddy! You believe her over me?”

“No, but she made a very convincing point, one that I brought up to your mother last night and she dismissed.”

“What’s that?”

“That boy’s eyes look like they were plucked right out of Tony’s head.”

“That don’t mean a damn thing. Rashad’s grandmother had green eyes.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m just calling it as I see it. If you guys don’t believe her, she said she’d give you a blood test.”

Rashad had just hung up his cell phone. “I don’t want no goddamn DNA test. I want my son. Call that bitch back and tell her to bring me my son.”

My father stood up and got in Rashad’s face quick. “That’s my daughter you’re talking about, and I ain’t raised no bitch! Now, sit your ass down. I got a few things to say to you.”

Rashad did as he was told. I didn’t have a good feeling about this at all.

“For three years I held my tongue when it came to you.”

“Bobby, don’t—”

He cut his eyes at my mother. “Stay out of this, Karen. You know this conversation’s been a long time coming.”

He turned his attention back to Rashad. “First of all, don’t act like you’re all innocent in all this. You either, Egypt.”

I sat back in my chair. How the heck did I get in this? Rashad was the one who called her a bitch.

“You been screwing my daughters for fifteen years now. You was going with Isis, gave her a cheap-ass ring to keep her from finding a decent man for five years, then moved down to Atlanta without her.”

“Hold on,” Rashad protested. “I asked her to come with me.”

“Yeah, but she stayed put because you wouldn’t marry her. I wouldn’t have moved down there with you either. Why should she give up her life if you didn’t want to commit?”

Rashad kind of huffed and rolled his eyes. Where the hell was my father going with this? I thought all this was water under the bridge a long time ago.

“Then you come back to New York and have some epiphany that she’s the one thing missing in your life. And you’re probably right, only Tony’s standing in your way. So you two duke it out for her affection like a bunch of goddamn imbeciles. Messed up part for you is that you get your ass beat.”

Rashad was squirming around in his chair. I know he didn’t like what Daddy was saying. I didn’t like it either, but I wasn’t about to protest and put myself in the line of fire. At least not yet.

“Now, this is the part that I’m in the dark about: What the
hell made you think that sleeping with her sister was the right thing to do? You get dumped by one daughter, then decide to screw the other. You’re lucky my wife stopped me, because I was gonna beat your ass myself.”

Rashad glanced at me. I knew he wanted to say something, but I was so glad he was holding his tongue. One wrong word could make this whole thing even worse.

“Oh, and don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Egypt was in the right on this either.” He looked at me, and I knew it was my turn to get blasted. “Screwing your sister’s ex-fiancé is about as trifling as a woman can get.”

While I sat there stunned, he turned back to Rashad.