White Lines (51 page)

When Jada told Jamari that she was pregnant, he was thrilled. What he didn’t say was that he’d been watching Jada closely. Watching her comings and goings in order to determine if she was playing him. He followed her to see if she was cheating on him. He watched her patterns, and knew when her period was due, and documented her menstrual cycle so that he could tell if she was pregnant. So when Jada told him that she was indeed pregnant, Jamari was elated, but he already knew. He was relieved that she told him rather than sneaking off behind his back to have an abortion. He took that as a sign of her affection for him. And that encouraged him a great deal. He was going to be a father, and the woman who was giving him a child was the woman Born loved. Nothing was better than that.

Jamari did whatever it took to make Jada smile. All because his overall goal was to keep her with him. The baby seemed like the perfect solution.
But he was disappointed to hear that Jada wasn’t sure she wanted to keep it.

Jada asked him one day if he would be mad if she got an abortion. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to be a mother,” she said. She saw the dejected expression on Jamari’s face, and tried to soften her approach somewhat. “I’m just having second thoughts about this. I mean, especially because I like to get high. How can I have a child? The very meaning of motherhood is being unselfish. It’s about loving someone more than you love your own self, and your own happiness. I don’t know if I can be that unselfish. I’ve never in my life been that unselfish.” Jada sighed, and felt her eyes well up with tears. She hadn’t been high in days, and now all the pain she’d suppressed was bubbling at the surface. “Every day when I wake up, I think about my life. What’s my plan for the day? That’s what I ask myself. And then I’ll think about yesterday. How I got high all day, or how dirty the house looked because I was too high to clean it. I think about the day before that. How I still haven’t heard from Ava. How my own mother wants nothing to do with me. And I even think about Born.” Jada saw Jamari’s jaw tighten at the mention of her former love, and she quickly explained. “I think about how I hurt him, when all he tried to do was love me. Sometimes I hate who I am and what I’ve become.” Jada shook her head, hating the very thought of all the pain she’d caused, all the pain she’d seen in her lifetime. Jada would think about Mr. Charlie, and all the men she’d traded sexual favors with in order to get high. She’d think about her family, particularly Ava, and how she’d caught her snorting coke, and threatened to tell Born.

Born. It was thoughts of him that usually sent Jada searching for her usual escape. “Jamari, I get high just to make it through another day. Where would a child fit into all of that?” Jada waited for his response, angry with herself for the fact that Jamari had ever even hit it raw. She knew she’d gotten pregnant when she was high, because that was pretty much the only time she had sex with him without a condom. She’d been too high to care. She wanted to kick herself now for being so careless.

Jamari looked at Jada sympathetically. He heard her reasons for doubting whether she was ready to be a mother. But in his heart he truly
believed that having this baby would be good for Jada. Maybe this would help her leave the drugs alone for good. He thought motherhood might be good for Jada, that it might teach her how to be unselfish for once. But he also knew that this was a surefire way to hold on to her. Having his baby would ensure that she would always be a part of his life in some capacity. Jamari was prepared to beg her to have the baby.

“Don’t kill my baby, sweetheart,” he said. The words tugged at Jada’s heart, as he said them. “Don’t you think it’s time to do something with your life? This baby will be your reason to take a step back from the drugs and give your body a rest. It might even be enough for you to stop altogether.” Jamari knelt in front of her, and took her hand in his. “Jada, please. I’m begging you. I swear it’ll be alright. We’ll make it work. I promise I’ll be with you every step.”

Jada listened to him plead his case, but made no decision that night. Jamari’s begging went on for seven days. And then she yielded. She awoke beside him one morning, and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll have the baby,” she said. “I think it’s time I turned my life around.”

Jamari was ecstatic. He kissed her over and over again, and his smile spread all across his face. Things were better than ever between them, and he was at Jada’s beck and call.

As the months went by, and her slim and sexy waistline made way for a bulging tummy, Jamari beamed with pride. Jada had mixed emotions. She had never been in love with Jamari. But she felt like it would be cruel for her to have an abortion after all he’d done for her. And little by little, she began to warm up to the idea of being a mother. She would soon have someone to call her own. Someone that she could love, and who wouldn’t desert her like everyone else in her life had.

She stopped smoking crack while she was pregnant. It was hard, because she wanted it so bad on a few occasions. But she stayed clean. She did smoke a little weed during the first trimester. She wasn’t proud of that fact. So then she went cold turkey, and really gave it her all. But it wasn’t long before she noticed Jamari becoming more controlling. Now that Jada was no longer getting high, she started to notice that he wasn’t as likable as she had thought he was. She couldn’t tolerate him as much
as she used to when she was always high. And, he wouldn’t leave her alone, so she was forced to endure him. Jada started feeling trapped.

When she complained, Jamari lightened up. He would pretend to be understanding and supportive. But, it wouldn’t be long before he started tightening the reins around Jada’s neck. One day, the subject of Jada’s relationship with Born came up. Jada shared with him the fact that she had a lot of regrets when it came to their relationship, particularly how it had ended. Jamari went ballistic.

“You’re playing yourself,” he seethed. “You’re pregnant with my baby, and you got the nerve to sit here and express regret over the next man.” His face was twisted into a look of disgust.

Jada tried explaining that she had a lot of history with Born. “You said I could talk to you about anything. Well, that’s how I feel. I can’t control the way I feel, and I’m entitled to my own emotions, whether you like it or not.”

Jamari laughed at her. “Regardless of what you’re feeling, Born would never take you back now.”

Jada sat in silence, thinking about the truth in his words. No matter how much love she still had in her heart for Born, she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. All the regret in the world wouldn’t change that. She looked at Jamari, who smiled at her sinisterly, and saw for the first time just how cruel he could be.

She was still little then, even though it was almost her fifth month of pregnancy. Jada was hiding her belly behind cute outfits. The pregnancy was progressing normally. The only problem was Jamari’s personality. At first she dismissed it as her irritability due to pregnancy hormones. She figured he was getting on her nerves more because she was more on edge than usual. But when she mentioned Born, Jamari got too personal with what he was saying about him.

“That nigga ain’t shit!” he yelled. “I used to be friends with the muthafucka back in high school. Both him and his crackheaded daddy wasn’t shit.” Jamari was really saying some disrespectful shit! It seemed like he had real hatred in his heart for Born, and Jada couldn’t understand why. So she asked him about it.

“What’s the deal with you and Born? How come you hate him so much? It’s almost like you’re trying to turn me against him or something.”

Jamari frowned, and shook his head. “I ain’t trying to turn you against nobody. I know that y’all got history together, or whatever. But I happen to know the nigga longer than you have, and I know he ain’t the hero you try to make him out to be.”

“What happened to make y’all stop being friends? You said you two used to be close.” Jada took the direct approach. She got results, too.

“The nigga thought I stole from him. He took a loss on five grand, and acted like it was fifty grand.”

“Did you steal it?” Jada looked directly in his eyes, the way that Born had always taught her. She was searching for the truth.

Jamari shook his head, and diverted his gaze. “I ain’t steal nothing from Born. Fair exchange ain’t robbery. I did a lot of work for that nigga. I took a lot of chances, and made a lot of moves for him. And I never got compensated for those things. I ain’t never complain. The one time he took a loss on my end, he acted like it was the worst thing in the world. The nigga cut me off like we were never close at all. He did it to you, too! So you should know exactly how I feel.”

“He did, but I deserved that. I never knew him to do nothing to anyone that didn’t deserve it. He’s not that type of guy. And I’m starting to wonder if you really did steal from him. Born’s a smart man—”

“If he’s so fuckin’ smart, then he must be right about you. You must be just a fuckin’ crackhead who ain’t never gonna change.”

Jada looked crushed.

“I don’t think that’s what you are,” Jamari clarified. “But that’s what
he
said you are. And if he’s so smart, then that must be true.”

Jada stared at Jamari, her eyes probing. “There’s more to the story that you’re not telling me. I know there is.”

Jamari looked at her, and wanted to tell her all of it. But he knew that the truth would make her cringe. He wasn’t sure if she was worthy of knowing. But he reconsidered, realizing that she was about to be the mother of his child. She was entitled to know the truth, for whatever it
meant to her. She needed to know why, as his child’s mother, she had to forget about Born.

“Sit down,” Jamari said. Jada obliged, hoping to gain some insight into why he hated Born so much. She wasn’t disappointed.

“I grew up, like, ten minutes away from where Born grew up. We went to different schools until we got to junior high school. That was when we started hanging out, and he would invite me to his hood, and all that. We got to be good friends, but for some reason, my mother didn’t like the idea at all. At first she asked me what his last name was, and what his mother and father’s names were. She pretended not to know them, but she said that she had heard bad things about Born being a troublemaker, and all that. She kept telling me he was nothing but trouble. She told me she had heard all about Born, that he was a bad influence. I didn’t listen to her. I just kept doing what I was doing. My mother had a habit, so I wasn’t sure if she was one of Born’s customers on the low, or some shit like that, you understand?”

Jada nodded, since Jamari had told her long ago about his mother’s addiction. She understood why he would question what his mother had really had against Born.

Jamari took a deep breath, and looked at Jada to see what her reaction would be. “I never knew my father. Whenever the subject came up, my moms would tell me that it didn’t matter. The nigga never did shit for me, so what difference did it make what his name was—that’s what she’d tell me. So my mother waited until I was twelve years old to tell me that me and Born had the same father.”

Jada gasped. “Are you serious?”

Jamari nodded. “His pops and my mother were friends. I guess birds of a feather and all that. Anyway, they were friends with benefits. Leo was hitting it, even though she knew about his wife and his family. She was the other woman, and she got pregnant. And she said that when she told him, he told her he ain’t want no more kids. He denied me, and he raised another son the same age as me. Good old Leo Graham. She dropped this bomb on me after me and Born were already really good friends. She told me that Ingrid didn’t know about me. Leo never told
Born’s mother about me, because as far as he was concerned, my mother was just looking for someone to blame for her situation. She said that my father had denied that I was his child. And she was a loose woman, so she wasn’t surprised. But when I met Born, and I saw how he lived, and how his mother was different from my mother, that shit bothered me. He grew up with his father, and the same man denied me as his child. That shit hurt.”

“Does Born know about this?” Jada asked.

“Nah. My moms made me swear not to say nothing. Remember, Leo was still alive at the time. I guess she didn’t want to start no shit, and I respected her wishes. I kept my mouth shut. But it was strange being at Born’s house and getting to know his mother. All the while knowing that her husband was my real father. Then my moms died two years after Leo did, and by then, me and Born weren’t on speaking terms no more.”

“How do you know that your mother was right about him being your father? No disrespect, but you said yourself that she was kind of loose. Maybe she just
wanted you
to be Leo’s son—”

“I thought about that. I mean, all I know is what she told me. She said that he was my father, and that he ain’t want nothing to do with me. I didn’t ask for no DNA test, or no shit like that, so all I can go on is what she told me. Leo never acted like he knew who I was, or knew who my mother was. I don’t think he was really thinking about shit like that at that point in his life. He was just as strung out as my mother was at that time.” Jarnari smiled bitterly, as he thought back on how he felt seeing how Born was living. “But the nigga had them living like royalty at Born’s house. They had VCRs, video games, a floor model TV, nice furniture. I never had any of that shit growing up. I used to borrow clothes from Born all the time, spend the night, and all that. Just to have an up-close and personal look at how the other half lived. I used to lay awake in Born’s room while he slept, praying for what he had, and wishing that my moms could be how Ingrid was. There was always food in their refrigerator and in their cabinets. But not at my house.”

“So were you jealous because of all that?” Jada asked, already knowing the answer. She was amazed, because she knew that Born felt differently
about his childhood. Born was so caught up in not having his father there for him like he needed. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Jamari had obviously wanted what Born had.

“I never said I was jealous.”