Love Trumps Game (2 page)

“I said, c'mon now. I don't have all day, Brandon. You get yourself up those steps now! You, too, Raynita.”

Neema Jean wiped beads of sweat from her honey-brown forehead as she stomped up the dusty, concrete steps to her mother's house with her two kids in tow. It had to be over ninety-nine degrees in the shade; add a summer breeze and it felt like she was inside somebody's new convection oven. She used the ball of her fist to bang hard on the metal security screen door.

“Who is it?”

“Who you think it is?” Neema was surprised to find the door locked. In no time her mother was at the door unlocking it, then ambling back to her seat. Neema marched inside after her children. The heavy door banged shut behind her.

“Lock my door,” Hattie ordered.

Neema made a face. “Why? You ain't been locking it.”

“Neema, I said, lock my door behind you.”

“Whatever.” Neema stood and blew out a weary breath. “Mama, can you watch my kids for a few hours?”

The Compton house was almost as suffocating as the August heat outside, only adding to her irritation. She fanned her face and looked around, like she was expecting her sister Myra to be lingering in the house someplace. Myra was always around, brown-nosing.

“Mama! I said, I need someone to watch my kids. I can't find a job if I don't have no babysitter.” Remembering to pout, Neema rolled her big brown eyes and folded her arms over her ample chest.

Hattie rocked a few times in her new La-Z-Boy chair. A recent gift for her forty-ninth birthday, it was the nicest piece of furniture gracing her living room. She was still a little upset about that fool, Topps, popping up at her house, but didn't dare bring it up. Topps could make a believer out of Satan. If she mentioned his threatening visit, there was zero doubt that he would take it out on Neema. Even worse, possibly even take it out on the kids.

“Hi, Nanny.” Raynita waved her little hand.

“Hey, baby. How y'all doing?” Hattie barely blinked in Neema's direction as she reached over to click on her tabletop fan. Cool air, mixed with heat, ruffled the hem of her thin housedress. “Come give Nanny a hug.”

The heat was enough to fight the devil, but Hattie remained unfazed. Surely she hadn't been foolish enough to think a Saturday would slip by without Neema contacting her in need of something.

“Mama!” Neema stomped her foot. “I know you hear me talkin' to you.”

“Not really,” Hattie said calmly, picking up a magazine to fan her face. “Child, I feel too blessed to be stressed today.”

Thank God, she had a high tolerance for drama; especially when it came to her youngest child, Neema Jean. “Drama” should have been Neema's middle name. Hattie kept her eyes trained on her television set where
Soul Train
was on. The volume was lowered to a comfortable level. The sight of smiling faces and young bodies gyrating to music made her wish for younger days when no one used to barge into her home with demands.

“Humph,” she said aloud. Neema Jean knew better than to disturb her during one of her favorite programs.

“Mama, I need you to watch my kids!”

“Neema, I heard you the first time. You need to calm down and stop all that shouting up in my house. “Bout to give me a headache.”

Neema Jean frowned. “Well?” she prompted with clear anguish in her voice. She assumed her ready-to-do-battle pose: eyes hard and locked, a hand to one hip. “Why you acting like you don't hear me then? You watching 'em or not?”

“Not with that attitude, I'm not.”

Hattie barely looked up, almost as if a herd of wild horses stampeding through her living room couldn't deter her attention. A smile tugged at her thin lips as she recalled a time when she could move her body like
Soul Train
dancers.
Heck,
she thought,
I still got a few good moves at forty-nine.
The thought made her grin.

“I told you, I have a job interview, Mama. You keep saying how I need to be independent and how I need my own job, but what I'm s'pose to do with these kids?” Neema made a gesture with her hand, before staring in the direction of her children. Six-year-old Raynita and seven-year-old Brandon stood quietly next to the faded-blue sofa. “Y'all put them backpacks down.”

“What for, Neema? They'll be leaving right back out with you.” Hattie shot her full attention to her daughter. Neema Jean was her youngest of two; the spoiled one; the one that often behaved like the world and everyone in it owed her something. Frankly, after twenty-three years of that girl's selfish and demanding behavior, Hattie was sick of it. “Nee, you should have thought about all that when you was laying up making them babies.”

“Does that mean you watching my kids or not?”

“You figure it out.”

Hattie sniffed. Darn if that girl wasn't the spitting image of her father, Bomann. So much, in fact, that sometimes it pained Hattie to glance at her. It made it difficult to forget that six years ago, Bo had walked out on their marriage, claiming that he needed time to find himself. Just up and walked away from twenty-nine years of marriage and two kids like it had meant nothing. Well, not small kids, but grown girls that still needed parental guidance; especially their youngest, Neema. The last Hattie had heard, Bo was living somewhere in Louisiana with a thirty-year-old female, drinking heavily, doing drugs, and still trying to “find himself.”

“Tried to tell you that you weren't ready for kids at sixteen, but you wouldn't listen. Heck, you still need some rearing yourself.”

“Well, it's too late to be saying stuff like that, Mama. They here now, so we have to deal with it. You gonna watch 'em?”

“We?” Hattie huffed.

“I said, are you watching 'em, Mama?”

“Lord, why me?” Hattie gazed upward and sighed. To have the luxury of sitting in her own house with total peace and quiet, alone; that's all she really desired. “Nee, how many times I have to tell you that I'm not your readymade, instant babysitter? Don't get me wrong here. I love them babies as much as you do, but heck, they spend more time here with me than they do with you. Yeah, I took an early retirement from my job, but that don't mean I need you to give me a second career. I'm tired.”

“Mama, I'm tired, too.” Neema rolled her eyes and admired her recently done nails. “Tired of being broke. I don't have nobody else. Daycare costs money that I don't have 'cause I don't have no job. You they grandmother. Why can't you watch 'em while I go see about a job? You ain't doing nothing.”

Hattie counted down from ten before responding.
Three, two,
one.
“That's beside the point. And you watch yo' mouth; talking to me like that. You need to get on outta here with that craziness.”

“What? You want me to beg?”

Neema went around and stood in front of the television. Her red satin dress and black Jimmy Choo stilettos were one big blur to Hattie's eyes and reeked of everything but a job interview. She could be such a pretty girl, but her ugly ways blocked it. Neema looked more like Beyonce with a bad weave and a bad attitude.

“I said no.” Her blood pressure was rising. Hattie could always tell when the twitching of a headache began at her temples. She shook her head. “Lord, this child is going to be the death of me.”

You would think that after raising two girls, dealing with a job she had hated for twenty-five years, not to mention a marriage that had turned loveless, she had paid her dues. But
no
. People still expected things; someone to sponge off, someone to clean up behind them, someone to cook for them, and someone, always, someone to watch their kids at the drop of a hat.
Hell, no. She wasn't having it
.

Her girlfriend had been right about being too available for her grown offspring. If Jackie had gotten her way, they both would have been cruising the high seas, sipping on apple martinis, and making goo-goo eyes at younger men. Placing her glass down, Hattie leaned to the side, attempting to look around her daughter's shapely frame. “Whoever heard of job hunting on Saturday? Move out the way, Neema! You must think I fell off the turnip truck.”

“Dang, Mama.” Neema Jean sauntered over and flung herself down on the sofa. “You always do this to me.”

“And what would that be?”

“Give me a hard time,” Neema whined, then pouted like an eight-year-old. “You never do it to Myra when it comes to watching her kids. Never.”

“Neema Jean, please.” Hattie sighed, feeling exhausted. She knew it was only a matter of time before Neema started her whining. Whining, plotting, begging, lying, stealing, and scheming: These were her daughter's best qualities. Sometimes it was hard to believe that she had raised both girls in the church.

“Don't go blaming your sister because she takes care of business.” Myra was five years older, married to a doctor, and ran her own pet-grooming business. Neema was more like her father; spoiled, lazy and always looking for the easy way to get ahead. “And speaking of Myra, you need to ask her to watch the kids for you. Don't you know how to do it? You babysit for her; she babysit for you. I'm sorry, but I'm not up to it this weekend. I need some rest.”

“Mama,
pleeeaassse,”
Neema whined, short of crying.

“Neema, I already said no. Now stop harassing me.”

Hattie wasn't falling for it this time. No sirree. The last time Neema had claimed that she was going to look for a job on a Monday, she didn't return for six days.
Six whole days!
Hattie hardly slept for worrying about the girl's whereabouts. Not only that, but Neema Jean's careless disregard had caused her to miss an important doctor's appointment. Hattie would never understand how a woman could abandon her children for days at a time without so much as a phone call to check up on them.
Interview, my foot.

“Bet you wouldn't treat Myra like this.”

“Myra got sense enough to hire a babysitter; instead of lying to me about where she's going.” If anything, this so-called job interview was nothing more than a ploy for Neema to go lay up somewhere with Topps. Topps Jackson was nothing but trouble with legs and, in Hattie's opinion, entirely wrong for Neema. Her daughter could have done so much better, but repeating that
wisdom to Neema had become futile. “Take 'em to their father. Let him watch 'em.”

“He can't. He's off on business.”

“I bet he is.”
The business of harassing good Christian folks.
She resisted bringing up Topps' earlier visit.

Neema sighed. “Mama, don't start that mess about Topps. He's a fantastic father and you know it.”

Hattie bit her tongue lightly. “Try asking your sister to watch the kids.”

“You know it's over an hour drive to Myra's house.”

“And it's a nice day for a long drive. Nee, stop making excuses.”

“Fine, Mama! I guess I can't go to the damn interview then!” Like a spoiled child, Neema huffed and hopped up. She blew out a hard breath before stomping off in the direction of the small bathroom and then slammed the door.

“Well, you wanted to be a mother, so be one,” Hattie mumbled, then shouted in the direction of the closed bathroom door. “And don't be slamming no doors in my house or using that kind of language with me! You not that damn grown!”

Smiling, Hattie went back to her program. Happy people with smiling faces were dancing to “Blow the Whistle” by Too Short. “I'm the one that shoulda never had kids,” she mumbled as she picked up her chilled lemonade and took a sip. She glanced over at her grandchildren, who hadn't said another peep the entire time. They were standing like stiff, brown trees next to her loveseat.

As much as she hated to admit it, Brandon carried that same handsome hardness of his father. A head full of curly, black hair; piercing dark eyes; the same strong jaw line. Raynita, on the other hand, was the spitting image of Neema Jean with her honey-hued complexion, thin lips, and large brown eyes. A smile could bring the deepest dimples to her plump cheeks.
Poor things.

“Nita, why you over there looking so sad?” It was cute, the way Neema kept the child's hair in neat cornrows with colorful beads dangling from the ends. Their shoes and outfits looked expensive, making them well-dressed kids for a mother that didn't have a job to speak of. “You two look hot and hungry. How 'bout some cold milk and some of Nanny's homemade cookies?”

Raynita's eyes lit up. “Nanny, you have chocolate chip? They're my favorite.”

“I don't want no damn chocolate chips,” Brandon said with a scrunched-up face. “Peanut butter cookies taste better.”

“Boy, you watch your mouth before you get a bar of soap in it. You start that cussing in my house and the next thing you'll be getting is a leather strap on your behind!”

“Hell, I didn't want no stupid cookies anyway.” Brandon stuck his small chest out. “I hate chocolate chips.”

“Hey! I said, watch your mouth.”
Good grief.
Hattie got up and headed to her refrigerator for some cold milk. Raynita and Brandon followed behind her like puppies. She fetched her cookie jar down from the shelf. “I don't have chocolate chip cookies, but I have oatmeal raisin with walnuts.”

Both kids took a seat at her table. The day before she'd baked two dozen cookies, knowing her grandkids would be back over soon enough. “You've tried the rest, now try Nanny's best.”

She ignored Brandon's tight lip at the mention of a leather strap. The child didn't know it, but her words were mostly idle threats. The only time she had felt justified to take a belt to one of them was the day she had found Brandon hiding in one of her closets playing with matches. The little fool had almost set her house on fire.

“What about you, Brandon? You sure you don't want some cookies?” Hattie took pride in her baking and often contributed her baked goods to various church functions.