Thirsty (24 page)

“Yes?” I yelled from the bedroom area.
“Justice? It’s me, Tyson.”
I heard my father’s muffled voice on the other side of the door and

I hesitated a minute before answering. Although I was heated with him I still had to acknowledge the fact that he was my father and I was his daughter.

I slowly got up from the bed, walked over to the door, and peeped through the peephole. I saw Tyson standing there looking the exact same as he did the last time I had seen him with his cleanly shaven head and those thick eyelashes.

Once the door was opened I stepped aside and allowed him to enter. He still wore the fragrance I remembered from when I was a child, and for a brief moment I became that little girl back when everything was fine; when Tyson and my mother were still together. Before his cheating and all of their fighting. Back when life was so simple.

Tyson took a good look at me and produced a weak smile. “Hey Lil’ Chyna. An old man can’t get a hug?”
He called me the name he used to call me when I was younger, Lil’

Chyna, and he held his arms wide for an embrace. He used to do the same thing everyday he came home from work, and I used to run into his big, strong arms and knew I would be safe from the world. But now, times were different.

“You don’t deserve a hug, Tyson. Where were those hugs when I graduated high school? When I got my first job? When your wife died?”

“Where were the hugs when your son got killed?” I walked over to where he stood and looked him eye to eye.
“You still think you deserve that hug?” My eyes were soaked with tears as we stared each other down, trying to see who’d be the first to break eye contact. Tyson lost the battle and looked away.
“I guess I deserved that tongue lashing,” he said as he slowly walked over to the sofa and took a seat.
I looked at my father and noticed how much Monk resembled him and it brought back painful memories.
“Tyson, why did you call? Why did you even come here? What’s the real reason?” I asked as I took a seat opposite from him, staring into his eyes to see if he felt any kind of remorse for abandoning me.
“I…I really need to talk to you. I need you to know the reason why your mother and I had our differences,” he stated while nervously fidgeting his hands.
I yelled at him, “
Differences
? Every couple has differences! That’s no excuse for running out on your family!”
“I didn’t run out, Justice. Kim put me out.”
He spoke about my mother.
“What!? I don’t believe that. That’s low! Lying on a dead woman!” I stated defiantly as I crossed my arms across my chest. My tongue ring began clacking.
“It’s true. She found out that I’d had an affair once,” Tyson weakly explained.
“So you have an affair and she puts you out? If I recall correctly, you had more than one affair,” I remarked sarcastically.
“This affair was different because it produced a child.” With this revelation Tyson got up and walked over to the window where I’d been standing minutes earlier.
“Fuck you mean it produced a child?”
That was the first time my father ever heard me curse. He snapped his head away from the window and looked at me with a defeated look in his eyes. He began pacing back and forth near the window with his head down and arms behind his back as if he was deep in thought. I followed his movements with my eyes and wondered what the hell he was talking about.
A child? Hell to the nah! That meant I had a brother or sister out there that I had never met before!
“I had an affair when your mother and I had first gotten married. Right around the time she was pregnant with you, I had another woman pregnant also.” I saw tears welling up in Tyson’s eyes as he stopped pacing the floor and looked at me, searching my features for a reaction.
“You had another woman pregnant the same time mommy was pregnant with me? Damn, that’s trifling. I see why she put you out,” I said while shaking my head at the thought of how my mother probably had felt when all of this was going on.
“That’s not when she put me out, Justice.”
“Well, what happened?”
“I used to travel from state to state on business a lot and in one state, it just…it was something that just happened.” Tears cascaded down his ebony cheeks.
All of this news had me in a state of disbelief as I sat there and tried to digest what my father was telling me. If what he was saying was true then I wanted to contact my long-lost sibling. But since Tyson never kept in touch with me and Monk I wondered if he kept in touch with his other child.
I asked, “Do you keep in touch with your other child?”
“No, because after your mother forgave me, I was hoping they’d just disappear. But the woman popped back up again around the time Monk was born and started pressing me for child support. Your mother thought I was still seeing the woman, but I swear to you, I wasn’t. Your mother wouldn’t hear anything I had to say and
that’s
when she put me out.”
Looking over at my father I saw the truth in his eyes. My mind traveled at light speed as confusion set in.
“But…but why didn’t you ever come to see us? You could’ve at least came around every once in a while,” I stated defensively.
Tyson looked distraught when he answered.
“I tried, but Kim wasn’t having it. She even lied to the cops and got a restraining order against me. Do you remember seeing me at your school on your lunch breaks?”
I thought back to those days and remembered when Tyson used to show up at my school drunk. I used to be so embarrassed at times that I would not even acknowledge him. If what Tyson said was the truth, then that meant my mother was really the one to blame for his not being in my life.
“My drinking was the only way I could deal with the pain of losing my family.” Wiping the liquid from his eyes with his fingers, he stated, “Lil’ Chyna, I swear I never stopped loving you. Your mother turned you and Monk against me. I even tried to contact you when you moved down south and she threatened to have me arrested if I came anywhere near you two. When I saw you and your brother at the funeral, and saw how grown you two had gotten, it broke my heart that I hadn’t been there to see you two grow up. You already know I tried to talk to you both but I got the cold shoulder. I kinda figured you all would come around when you felt like hearing me out. You’re here now, so I guess I was right. I hate it took a tragedy like this to bring us together, but God works in mysterious ways.”
The realization of what Tyson said hit me like a bolt of lightening.
The little girl in me silently screamed,
He still loves me! He didn’t abandon me after all!
Suddenly, I started to feel a little pity for him. For a long time, we were both silent until an idea hit me.
“Do you know how to get in touch with your other child? What is it a boy or girl?” I asked anxiously.
“You’ve got a brother.” He looked over at the urn and shook his head. “I mean, you’ve got
another
brother. All I know is that his mother is still in the Maryland and D.C. area.” Tyson looked distraught as he spoke.
I grabbed a pen and a scrap piece of paper.
“What’s his name? I can go on the Internet and track him down. I wanna meet him.”
I got a little excited knowing I still had a sibling out there I’d never even met before.
“He got our last name?” I inquired as I got ready to write down my long-lost brother’s name with wishful thoughts of an immediate meeting running through my mind.
But then again, I thought,
What if he wants nothing to do with me because of Tyson’s actions?
That thought played in my mind as I sat and waited for my father to give me the name.
Seeing the anxiety in me along with the obvious twinkle that was now gleaming in my eye, Tyson attempted to perk up a little himself, and then he answered my question about the name.
“No, he’s got his mother’s last name. She wanted to name him after me, but she used to tease me something terrible about having the name
Tyson.
Said she didn’t want her son to have two last names. She couldn’t stand my name,” he chuckled. Tyson smiled warmly and added, “So, she named him after my brother…your uncle Joaquin. His last name’s Turner.”
I started to jot it down when all of a sudden the name registered and began echoing in my head over and over.
Joaquin Turner...Joaquin Turner...
As the finality of it all dawned on me, my head throbbed uncontrollably.
Oh my God! NO!
Those thick eye lashes. That baldhead and dark complexion.
“I’m originally from D.C., but I been staying in Charlotte for a minute…my father is somewhere in the Midwest…”
I shook my head from side to side in utter disbelief as J.T.’s words haunted my thoughts. The only thing I could do was stare off into space.
“Justice, baby girl, you okay? What’s wrong?” my father asked as I closed my eyes. That acrid odor of Febreez and feces arose in my subconscious while my short-lived relationship with J.T. played in my head like a DVD. A blood-curling scream arose in my throat and slowly exited my mouth. The scream was so shrill Tyson had to cover his ears.
I felt myself spiraling downward as if I’d just been thrown off of a thirty-story building. The pen slipped from between my fingers. My bowels felt as if they were about to come loose. My entire world as I once knew it exploded into a thousand tiny pieces. After all those years, I suddenly realized that while relentlessly trying to quench that everlasting thirst, it had finally made me drown.

C
oincidentally, on the same day Justice was meeting with her father, Carlos’s case had been dismissed and he walked out of the CharlotteMecklenburg County Jail as a free man. Through jailhouse gossip he’d found out about J.T. and Red and his mind was set on evening the score once and for all. He’d just beaten the system
again
and was feeling like the “Teflon Don” because no one could link him and his crew to any wrong doings, especially not inflicting bodily harm.

Meanwhile, on this very same day at Carolina’s Medical Center in room 426, Sapphire’s mother was standing at her daughter’s bedside. She’d just given the staff permission to pull the plug and put an end to her daughter’s suffering. Her heart burned with pain and her soul was drowning in tears of despair with the thought of living a life without her only child. But she knew Sapphire would not want to continue to live this way. As soon as the life-support monitor was about to be disconnected, Sapphire’s weak eyes slowly opened!

The detectives who had been patiently waiting for months for Sapphire to come around were immediately contacted. They wishfully hoped she would be able to remember what had happened that night and maybe she could identify at least one of her attackers. They were more than ready to apprehend the monsters that had been responsible for committing such a heinous act.

On Michigan Avenue, just down the street from the Palmer Hotel where Justice was staying, Red was checking into the Wingate. Instead of going to the police, he’d tracked Justice to Chicago. He knew she had been responsible for his cousin’s death and she also had his money, which J.T. had been keeping for him in the safe. He wanted Justice to suffer the same painful death J.T. had suffered. He was laying and waiting for the right opportunity to strike, without having knowledge of the fact that
he
had been tracked down as well.
A READING GROUP GUIDE

ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are intended to enhance your group’s reading of this book.

1) Do you think Sapphire deserved to be beaten by Carlos’s henchmen just because she was dating Cross?
2) Do you think Monk’s death was justified? If so, why?
3) Did Carlos become Tan’s puppet after it was learned that she had been violated by Monk?
4) Do you believe if their father had been in their lives Justice and Monk would have turned out differently?
5) If Sabrina had never told Carlos that Monk and D.C. were the ones hanging out with Cross, do you think the situation would have still gotten out of hand because of Tan being robbed by them?
6) Do you think Sapphire was more strong-willed than Justice?
7) If Cross had told Monk and D.C. about his involvement in robbing Carlos’s people, based on their characteristics within the story what do you think Monk and D.C. would have done?
8) Do you think J.T. genuinely cared for Justice? Or was it all just a ruse to keep him from being exposed?
9) Should Justice have listened to J.T. and tried to reason with him or did she do the right thing by squeezing the trigger?
10)When Justice found out about J.T. being her brother do you believe her karma was well deserved?

J
ustice, we got a problem in the dressing room,” Toni’s high-pitched voice broke her train of thought for a brief moment. Standing in the doorway to Justice’s office with the heavy oak frame door half-open, Toni was allowing the loud music from the club to pour in. Inside the office was expensive looking cherry wood furniture with photos of Justice’s family and her best friend Sapphire adorning the walls.

Justice was seated at her desk tapping away at her keypad on her laptop. On the wall directly behind her hung a large family portrait of her, her deceased mother, and her deceased younger brother, Monk. Absent from the portrait was her father, Tyson, the only living member of her immediate family. Tyson had been estranged from her life since her early teenage years, but they had subsequently made amends two years ago when she’d first returned to Chicago from Charlotte, North Carolina. Tyson’s photo sat alone on her desk next to the floral arrangement he’d sent two days ago for her birthday.

“What is it now?” Justice asked without looking up from her computer. She wasn’t the slightest bit surprised at Toni’s statement. There was always some sort of problem or another in the dressing room. Twenty-five girls running around in a confined area clad in nothing but bras and g-strings, sometimes even less,
would
cause an occasional problem or two.

Toni shifted her voluptuous five foot-two frame through the door, her honey-blonde dreadlocks and apple-bottom ass swinging in unison with every step. She closed the heavy door behind her, muffling the roar of Lil’ Wayne’s latest stripper anthem, which was blaring from the sound system. Leaning across Justice’s desk, Toni huffed, “The girls you flew in from Memphis are complaining about Virgin and Precious.”