Dear Drama (8 page)

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Authors: Braya Spice

BOOK: Dear Drama
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Chapter 8
I had told myself that things were over between Lavante and me. Shit, people and things changed. I felt that that was just what Lavante did, and I wanted to have no parts of him now.
After I ignored his calls for two weeks, he showed up at my doorstep with roses—twelve of them—some chocolate-covered strawberries, and a sad face. He held a poster-board sign with his home phone number on it and the message,
CALL ME ANYTIME
.
“I'm sorry for everything. I have a habit of being an ass. If you take me back, I'll work on that and even offer you a commitment,” he said.
Sierra was with Greg for the weekend. I paused, a part of me wanting to tell him to kiss my black ass, well, after I took the strawberries. But there was something about his words. Well, they felt sincere, and what else did I have to look forward to? I had chitchatted with a couple guys in that two weeks' time, but none of them quite did it for me. I still had strong feelings for Lavante. I knew what it was. My mom had told me that when a woman shared her body with a man, her body released a chemical that emotionally attached her to him. That was the reason I struggled with letting go of Lavante.
I stepped back and let him enter my home, and bless his heart, he tried to make love to me the best he could. But I still didn't feel shit.
Yes, I had a commitment.
Wow.
But there weren't no fireworks, just more horrible sex. Although he was offering me what I had wanted those past five and a half months, the shit just didn't feel right.
He begrudgingly invited me out to lunch. He took me to Denny's. Denny's was cool, but I wanted to go somewhere special. Like the Cheesecake Factory. Or P.F. Chang's. He complained the whole time we were there, like he was getting his teeth pulled, instead of enjoying the company of his “girlfriend.”
After lunch we came back home and had more bad, boring sex. I dozed off with his arms wrapped around my waist. When I felt the bed being jerked back and forth, first I thought it was Sierra, but I remembered she was with her daddy.
Then I thought maybe I was just dreaming. But when I opened my eyes, I was shocked to find a big-titty woman in my bedroom, staring down at me with this weird look in her eyes. And she was naked!
“Hi, Allure. What's happening, baby? My name Satin.” She flicked on the lights in my bedroom. She had stripped down right in my bedroom, and I had been so knocked out that I hadn't noticed. I knew this because her clothes and shoes were on the floor near her feet.
I scrambled to my feet and stood on top of the bed, screaming, “What the fuck you doing in my house?” at the top of my lungs.
She looked confused. “Your dude gave me the address, said he'd leave the door unlocked. It's a surprise for you. Your man said it was okay. He said you was down for this.”
“Down for what?”
“The get down.” Her hands slid down her naked body. I could see she had so many stretch marks, it looked like body art. “I met him at Shotz a few weeks back.”
I looked at that snoring bastard. “Lavante! Lavante!” I kicked his ass until his eyes fluttered open.
“What?”
“Why in the hell did you invite this bitch to my damn house? Where I stay with my child.”
He blinked a couple times, looked at Satin, and smiled.
“What's up, Daddy?”
My mouth dropped open, and I looked from her to him.
Lavante reached for one of my feet. “Baby.”
I took a step back and almost lost my balance.
“Did you invite her into my home?” I demanded.
“Allure.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, baby. It was a surprise to make our sex life more exciting.”
“Lavante, the only thing that could make out sex life exciting is if you grew a bigger dick. That ain't going to happen, and believe me when I say I'm tired of you and this shit right here. I have put up with so much bullshit from you, but this is it. You threatened the safety of me and my child by giving this stranger my address and access to my house. Just to let you both know, I'd rather fuck Flavor Flav while Shabba Ranks cums in my mouth than do a threesome with you and her. Take Cotton and get the fuck up out my house.”
I think he was still reeling from me calling his dick small. It had to be an ego blow for him. But, oh well
.
I had had enough of his shit.
“What?” he said.
“You heard me. Get the fuck out, or I'm calling the police.”
“I got a warrant, Lavante. I'm gone.” Satin bent her big stretch-marked ass over and slid a dress on and stuffed her feet in some flip-flops. Then she left the room and, hopefully, my house.
Lavante stood next. “Allure.”
“Leave. I have never felt so disrespected in my life. Come to think of it, all you have ever done is disrespect me, from giving me a fake home number, tricking me into having this friends-with-benefits bullshit, to being verbally an asshole to me. Like I ain't got no emotions. But this here takes the cake. I live here with my child, and you would ... Just get out.” I knew after this we had to be done for good. No backsliding or trying to reconcile this bullshit.
“I'm not going to beg your ass, 'cause you not all that.”
He was still going ? After all he had done to me? It was like insult to injury. I hated when you rejected a man and he tried to put you down. I wanted to say, “If I wasn't all that, why did you fuck with me in the first place?” He was a trifling-ass man that would never stop. I knew I didn't need someone like him in my life and I should have stopped fucking with him. I knew this, but I had kept being weak and taking him back, and each time the only difference in the outcome was that it was a worse hurt than the previous one. I should have taken more time to get to know him—so the real him could have come out—and not just fallen feet first into this shit. I felt so dumb at that moment.
“Get out!” I raged at the top of my lungs. “Get the fuck out!”
Chapter 9
Two months later ...
I was so happy to have my car back out of the shop. Sierra and I had been on the bus for three weeks, while I scrambled to come up with the money to pay for the repairs on my car. It was forever breaking down. But I couldn't afford another car. With all the bills I had to pay, and without ever getting child support, there was no way.
I was super excited because I was going to pick up Sierra from Greg's house. Him keeping Sierra for the weekend was really working out well. He had been pretty much leaving me alone.
When I got to his house, I parked and hopped out of my car. Greg walked toward me hand in hand with my baby, Sierra. Even though she had been gone for only two days, I had missed her like crazy.
“Mommy!” she exclaimed.
Before I could get close to her or even ask her how her weekend had been, Greg said, “Wanna see my baby's picture?”
I rolled my eyes at Greg and opened my arms so Sierra could run into them.
“No,” I said, giving my child a kiss.
He frowned at me. “Are you jealous?”
“Hell no. Anybody that can love you! God bless her soul.”
“Oh, you trying to be funny.” He stuck a picture of himself and a cockeyed chick in my face.
It wasn't so much the fact that he had a girl that bothered me. I didn't want Greg back. It didn't bother me that he had someone else. It was the fact that he had the nerve to shove a picture of her and himself in front of me, when I couldn't get him to take pictures of me when we were together. It was insulting.
“We getting married.”
“Congrats,” I managed to bite out. “But it would be nice if you would pay some child support.”
“Why should I, when you left me?”
I had had this conversation with him several times. He just didn't get it. He and I had nothing to do with what he was supposed to do for his daughter. The fact that we might never get back together did not relieve him of his responsibility to provide for his child. Why should I have to carry all the weight on my own? Greg was the most selfish man that I had ever met. I didn't bother calling up child support. They weren't on my damn side as far as I was concerned. And don't let it be a woman that I spoke to. They seemed to always back up the men in their bullshit. The system allowed these men to be just what they were: sorry.
The way that Greg could just quit his job so he did not have to pay child support killed me. I didn't want to argue with him, because it wouldn't make him do shit no way. It wouldn't change anything. I just thanked God that with the little I made, I was able to provide for my daughter. True, we didn't live in the best neighborhood, my transportation wasn't the most reliable, and I often did without, but it could be a whole lot worse. Sierra and I could be homeless again, staying in hotels, like we had when I first left Greg. And I knew that after college I would get a good job and things would gradually get better. So I counted my blessings, and I ignored his ignorant-ass comments.
I placed Sierra on my back, and she giggled as I carried her to the car.
“I missed you, Mommy,” she said.
“I missed you too.”
I was happy to be able to take her back home.
“Can you play Beyoncé?” she asked.
I chuckled. “No problem.” I put her CD in my player and turned it up full blast, laughing as Sierra sang in sync with her. She knew every single word to Beyoncé's songs.
When we made it home, I asked Sierra what she wanted me to make for dinner.
“Macaroni and cheese. Please,” she said sweetly.
I laughed. “Okay. But we need to have meat, too, and veggies,” I said.
“Okay.”
So while she sat at the table and played with her dolls, I cooked. I asked her, “So what did you guys do?”
“I watched TV. Daddy and his girlfriend went to the movies and left me with Grandma.”
What is the purpose of getting your kid if you aren't going to spend time with her?
I thought. But I had always said that I would never talk about her father in front of her. So I asked instead, “How is your grandma doing?”
“Her got into a fight with her husband. She threw flour and eggs on him, and they took her to jail. Daddy had to come get me.”
“It's
she,
” I corrected. I wasn't surprised about what she said about her other grandma. She was fucking crazy. I saw that the dysfunction had not changed. I had put up with a lot of it while Greg and I were together—from her moving herself and her ten kids into our one-bedroom apartment to her going straight bipolar and trying to fight me. I didn't have too much contact with her, and I wanted to keep it that way. I wondered if Greg had had his girlfriend around Sierra, so I slyly asked, “Do you do things with Daddy's new girlfriend?”
Sierra frowned and stopped talking.
“You okay?” I asked.
She smiled, nodded, and started playing with her dolls again.
Thirty minutes later dinner was done, and we sat down to eat.
I noticed Sierra had been quiet ever since I mentioned Greg's girl. I didn't want to press her. So when I got ready to give her her bath, I asked her, “Sierra, why don't you like your dad's girlfriend?”
She was silent.
“I'm your mom. You can tell me. It's okay.”
“No, not really, Mommy. I don't really like her.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Why?”
“She's mean.”
“What did she do, baby?”
“She told me to shut the fuck up, or she was gonna leave me at the mall.”
What!
I took a breath to keep my cool. Not that it mattered, but I asked, “Why did she tell you to shut up? Were you acting out?”
“No, Mommy. I asked for a hot dog.”
Oh, hell no.
Who did that bitch think she was, talking to a three-year-old that way? And secondly, if I had a boyfriend and he had a child, I would never take the liberty of talking to his child that way. It was not cool.
I dipped the washcloth in the warm water, wrung it out, and washed the soap off her back. Then I stood, grabbed Sierra's towel, and held it out for her to step out of the tub.
“Si Si, you a big girl. Go in your room and dry off.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
I stalked into the kitchen, snatched up the phone, and dialed Greg's number. But instead of hearing it ring, I discovered that my number was blocked.
What the hell?
 
 
The next week Greg came to pick Sierra up, I confronted him.
“Why is my number blocked?”
He chuckled. “'Cause my girl thinks it's disrespectful for another woman to be calling my house, and I don't have money for a cell.”
“I'm not just some other woman, Greg. I'm your child's mother. That gains me respect. And besides, I never did anything to her. She don't know me any more than I know her.”
“Well, I have to respect my woman's wishes.”
My eyes narrowed. “Respect? I didn't think you knew what that word meant. You never showed me any when I, the mother of your child, was with you, but you can easily give it to her. And you don't show me respect now.”
“Look, man, I don't wanna hear this. I been leaving you alone, so you should be happy with that. Don't get me started again.” His old fire was back in his eyes. It made me nervous, but still I was gonna say what I wanted to say.
“You know your daughter don't like her too much?”
He chuckled. “Whew! Allure, you really petty.”
“She said your girl told her to shut the fuck up!”
He shook his head at me. “Why you gonna lie on a child? Sierra ain't said shit like that, 'cause Angel beautiful on the inside and out.”
That comment hurt. He was putting another woman before his child. I could already see it. I could never do that.
How dare he?
I shook my head.
“If you need to get in contact with me, you can call my mother. You know she lives down the street from me.”
Oh, hell no!
He really thought he was going to have my child and I would not be able to get in contact with him? And secondly, did he really think I was going to leave my child around his bitch after how she spoke to her?
“Those days of you controlling shit are over. Until you talk to her and she apologizes to my child, and until my number is unblocked, my child will not be going to your house.”
“Who the fuck you think you talking to, Allure? You don't control what goes down in my fucking crib! You got me fucked up! Maybe you mad. The holidays are right around the corner, and I got somebody and you fucking alone.”
True, I was a little ... Naw. Scratch that. I was very depressed about the fact that I had no one to love or love me for the holidays. But I wasn't petty. This was about my daughter, and deep down he knew that shit. He was cold for trying to make it seem like it was something else.
So I didn't even bother arguing with him. For some reason my silence got him more turned up. When he continued to yell, I calmly pushed Sierra back into the house and closed the door directly in his face.
He knocked on the door and said, “You cold for that one. All you doing is hurting your child. She wants to go with her daddy, and you won't let her, because you jealous of my girl. You gonna regret that shit. We'll see who calls who first.”
I watched him walk away from my living room window.
Truth be told, beforehand, when I was getting her dressed, Sierra told me she didn't want to go over to his house, anyway, because of that bitch he had there. So I wasn't hurting her at all. Furthermore, I wasn't going to waste my time arguing with Greg. I could show him better that I could tell him. Either his girl talked to my daughter decently, or she wasn't going over there.

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