Mr. Wrong After All (16 page)

Chapter 27

Nikki

I was tortured on the plane ride to Alabama by the memories of my childhood. Although I knew there was no way to avoid going home for my mother’s funeral, I had already begun to regret the visit. I closed my eyes and prayed for God to show me a bright spot in what would otherwise be a dark occasion.

It will be good to see Jessica again. I haven’t seen my youngest sister in so many years. I wonder what she is like. The Christmas card I received from her last year was postmarked Toronto, Canada. She traveled around so much, singing back up for different musical artists, it was hard to keep up. Did my father molest Jessica as well? If she was, what affect did it have on her personality? When we were growing up, Jessica never had a whole lot to say to anyone, including us. Shannon had turned out to be scandalous with an overactive sexual appetite and highly addictive personality whereas I have so many fears and hang-ups about sex and intimacy that it drives my husband crazy.

“It’s going to be fine, honey,” Ahmad said, sensing my anxiety and taking my hand in his.

I smiled, hoping he was right. I didn’t want any confrontation with my father this time and I especially didn’t want Aliyah and Corrie to witness any hostility. That is why I planned to leave for New York as soon as the funeral is over. The less time I spend in that house the better.

I wonder if anyone was able to find Shannon. Will she show up? Will she make a scene about Aliyah if she does show up? It’s horrible for me to feel this way but I really hope Shannon stays away. I don’t want Aliyah to be upset by a stranger whom she knows nothing about. There is no telling what Ahmad will do if he sees Shannon after all this time. Yeah, I think it would be best for all concerned if Shannon stays away.

“Baby, would you like something to drink?” Ahmad asked when he noticed the attendant coming our way. I usually was not an alcohol drinker but I needed something strong to calm my nerves and to quiet the voices that were filling my head with all of the things that could go wrong in the next three days.

“Yeah, get me a Jack and cola.”

“Huh?” Ahmad asked, confused. “Are you sure about that, Nikki? You are not a drinker so you may want to start with something light like a glass of white wine or something.”

“No, I want Jack Daniels and Coke.”

“Have you ever had that before?”

“No but that is what Sabrina always orders when we go out.”

“Sabrina? Baby, you can’t hang like Sabrina. She’s probably been drinking that since she was Aliyah’s age,” Ahmad continued, trying to change my mind.

“Jack and Coke, please,” I said when the attendant came to our row.

Ahmad shook his head. I assured him that I would be able to handle it although I seriously doubted if he believed me.

When we arrived at the airport, I realized that this was the first time that Ahmad and the girls had been to Alabama. I knew that growing up in Brooklyn, there would be nothing here that would impress them. Mobile, Alabama with its Battleship and beautiful azaleas is an historic city but sometimes it seemed as if time had stood still and not always in a good way.

“Mommy, Alabama looks boring to me,” Aliyah concluded. She was sitting in the backseat of our rental car with her little brown face pressed against the window.

“Sure does, baby,” Ahmad agreed.

“It’s a lot different from New York, I know. Aliyah, think of it as an adventure that you’ll be able to share with your class when we get back home,” I offered.

“Yeah, a country ass adventure,” Ahmad said in a low tone that was only audible to me.

Oh my, God! My parents’ house looks a lot smaller than I remember. It’s so run down now. It doesn’t look like there has been a fresh coat of paint on it in years. The outside of it looks as sad as my life was inside of it.

When we parked the car in the driveway, a heavy-sized woman peered at us out of the torn and dingy screen door before running out of it.

“Honey, who is that?” Ahmad asked.

“I don’t… oh my…that’s…”

“Nicolette!”

“Jessica!” I screamed, jumping from the passenger side to run and hug my sister.

You have put on a ton of weight but you still look good.

Jessica’s face was still the baby smooth high yellow that I had always remembered. I always used to think that she was the prettiest of the three of us. I still do.

“Big sister, it is so good to see you again,” Jessica said, continuing to hold me tight.

“Same here. Same here.”

Ahmad and the girls emerged from the car with unsure expressions on their faces.

“And who do we have here?” Jessica asked.

“This is my husband, Ahmad, and our two daughters, Corrie and Aliyah.”

Please don’t ask me to give you the rundown on the family dynamics right now. I’m too tired.

“Very nice to meet you, Ahmad. Corrie and Aliyah, I’m your auntie Jessica.”

The girls smiled and nodded.

“Well, let’s go inside,” Jess said.

“Is he home?” I asked. I needed to know what to be prepared for before I walked through those doors again.

“No. He’s down at the funeral home. At least that’s where he said he was going.”

“Have you gone over the arrangements?”

“Nope. When I arrived this morning, he said that everything had been taken care of,” Jess explained as she guided us inside.

Nothing has changed. The house still reeks with the stench of my stolen childhood and my father’s cigars.

I felt Ahmad’s hand on my shoulders as I stood still in the living room, surveying its contents. The same pictures hung on the pitiful faded wallpapered walls. The wood furniture was dusty and the mustard-colored couch was ripped.

Time has stood still.

“So when is the funeral, Jess?”

“Tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”

“Tomorrow? Why so soon? We ain’t Jewish,” I joked.

“I don’t know what is running through Daddy’s mind. Hell, if we hadn’t arrived when we did, we would have missed it.

We? Whom is she talking about when she says “we”? Is Shannon here? I’m afraid to ask.

“Nikki and Ahmad, this is Elaine,” Jess introduced as a woman walked out of the kitchen. “Elaine and I are partners.”

Whoa. Partners? Is Jessica telling me that she and this woman are lovers? My baby sister is a lesbian?

“Very nice to meet you, Elaine,” Ahmad said, shaking her hand.

“Umm, yes, Elaine. It is wonderful to meet you,” I offered, still very much in shock.

“And it is an honor to finally meet Jessica’s big sister,” Elaine said. “She has spoken of you often.”

To my surprise, Elaine spoke with a beautiful soft British accent. She was tall and slender with long dark tresses. She looked like a model fresh off a Parisian runway.

“You’re British?” Corrie asked.

Oh God, there Corrie goes with the questions. Please don’t let her ask what Jess meant by “partners.” I’m not ready for that conversation.

“Actually, I am,” she answered smiling.

“Elaine and I met while I was touring with Smokey Robinson in Europe last year.”

After a couple of hours playing catch up with Jessica and Elaine, Ahmad and I felt that it was time to get checked into the hotel and to get the girls some dinner. My father still had not come home nor had he called.

Typical. He’s probably with one of his women. It’s a crying shame that he can’t even take time out from whoring around to mourn the death of his wife.

“I don’t know what’s keeping Daddy,” Jess said, looking at her watch.

“Yes you do,” I said.

“Humph, yeah. You’re right. So, where are you guys staying?”

“At the
Radisson
.”

“So are we. Let’s all leave and have dinner together. I’m done here anyway,” Jess said as she and Elaine followed us outside.

I’ve been done with this place for years.

It was great being with my sister again. Later that night, Jessica and I met in the bar of the hotel to talk. My one drink on the airplane was enough to last me a lifetime but Jessica ordered a couple of glasses of wine. I was there to keep her company.

“So Shannon just left the baby at the hospital?” Jessica asked after I told her the entire sordid story about our middle sister.

“Yep.”

“And after all that went down, you stayed married to Ahmad
and
you’re raising the child he fathered by your sister?”

“Yep, sure am.”

“Damn, girl. If you ain’t going to heaven, ain’t nobody,” Jessica said, shaking her head and ordering another drink.

I laughed at Jessica’s humor but deep down inside I understood exactly where she was coming from. Not many women would have chosen the route I did. After all, women leave their husbands for far less crimes.

“When was the last time you heard from Shannon?” I asked, taking a sip of water.

“The last time I talked to Shannon, I was still in high school and we both know how long ago that has been. She has always been the wild one, Nikki, you know that. None of what you have just told me about her behavior surprises me one bit.”

“Speaking of surprises. You and Elaine?”

Jessica laughed out loud. “What about me and Elaine?”

“Stop playing, Jessica. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. Like I said earlier, we met last year in Europe.”

“And…”

“And what, cow?”

I folded my arms and didn’t say another word because I knew that Jessica was being evasive on purpose.

“You want to know how long I’ve been a lesbian, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“I’ve been into women ever since I left home. Women have a better understanding of women. After Daddy, I never wanted to have another man put his hands on me.”

After Daddy? Oh God no, not you, too.

“I can definitely understand that. What Daddy did to you, he did to us all,” I confessed. “I think we’ve all dealt with it in different ways.”

“Do you think Mama knew?”

“I know she did. She had to. At my college graduation, I confronted her about it and she just cried like she always did. Daddy just denied it and called me a liar.”

“Why do you think she stayed with him through all of the women, incest, and other bullshit? Did she love him that much? Did she love us at all?”

If I had a nickel for every time I’d asked myself those same questions…

“Maybe she did. Maybe she stayed with him because she thought that she couldn’t do any better. However much she loved him, she loved herself a whole lot less.”

“You’re damn sure right about that,” Jessica agreed, taking another long swig of her drink.

Chapter 28

Shannon

My mother is dead? How did this happen and why didn’t my sisters let me know? Well, I guess I really have no one to blame for that but myself. I mean, look at me. I’m a mess. For two years, I’ve been living on the streets of New Orleans. If it weren’t for one of my home girls, who lived there and volunteered at one of the shelters where I sometimes go for a hot meal and a goodnight’s rest, I still wouldn’t know what was going on with my family.

Look at Aliyah. She’s absolutely gorgeous. She looks so happy and healthy. I wish I could take the credit for that but I can’t. I tried to do everything in my power to hurt her. Ahmad and Nikki have done all of the hard work, I just gave birth to her. Leaving Aliyah with them was the only sane decision that I have made throughout my entire life. Oh, how I would love to go and hold her in my arms but I can’t. I would love to feel the love of both of my sister’s arms around me. Instead, I’m reduced to mourning my mother in a phone booth across the street from the cemetery. How pitiful is that?

I’m angry with myself because I know that it didn’t have to be this way. My life could have been about something but I threw away every opportunity given to me with both hands. I allowed the ghosts of my past to get in the way of a promising future. Why did I do that? How did I get stuck there but Nikki and Jessica was able to move on? It seems that they were only scarred by our father’s abuse but I was the one that got broken. Were they able to feel more loved than I was? I don’t see how they could but something was different for them. I have to believe that. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe they were just able to find the love inside themselves and that’s what is different.

I looked for love and acceptance everywhere except for inside of myself. I looked for it in every type of drug imaginable and in sex with a lot of different men and a few women. For a while, I thought that going away to college would somehow cure me but all that did was present more opportunities for me to fuck my life up even further.

Oh my! Look at Aliyah. She is so big. I wonder if Ahmad and Nikki have told her anything about me. I hope not. I would hate her to know that her mother just abandoned her. Yeah, I read the notices that were put in the newspaper about the adoption but there was nothing for me to contest. No judge in his right mind would have allowed me, a crack whore, to take Aliyah home. No, I knew it was best for me to do what I do best. Stay away.

My father looks so old with his receding gray hair and bent back. I can see that he is still The Right Reverend Gigaho. He has brought a date disguised as the church secretary to his wife’s funeral. Some things never change. He should be the one in the casket not my mother. What was my mother thinking staying married to that man? Couldn’t she see him for what he really was? Why didn’t she kill him when she realized that he was fucking her daughters? I still remember the first time he touched me like it was yesterday. He didn’t even have the decency to be subtle about it. He just grabbed me right there in the pastor’s study and made me suck his dick. I was only seven years old and too scared to raise an objection to anything my parents said. To object would have been disrespectful, my father taught. “Children must obey their parents.” He even went so far as to show me the scripture in the Bible that said as much. My mother knocked on the door and I thought that I had been saved. He told her that he was disciplining me for chewing gum during church service and he needed her to go away and she just left, without questioning him. By the time I was older and understood that what he was doing was wrong, it didn’t matter anymore because I was already dead inside.

So many times, I’d wish that I’d had the power to kill him but instead, I chose to kill myself, literally and figuratively. My irresponsible lifestyle has cost me my life. I don’t know how much longer I have before this disease leaves me in one of the wooden boxes that my mother is lying in. I’ve lost so much weight. When I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize the face looking back at me. I didn’t think this could happen to me. I guess no one ever does. It’s the chance you take believing that you’re invincible and putting yourself out there like I have.

After I left Aliyah at the hospital that day, I ran back to Bone. He said that I could stay with him but that I would have to earn my keep so I hit the streets, selling my body. I didn’t have a problem with it. I thought that after all, who could suck dick better than I could. I’d been doing that shit since I was seven. I know now that I should have gone back to school or someplace where I could get my life together. In order to work as much as Bone wanted me to, I had to have a little something to keep me going and I got hooked on that hard shit. I relied on it to numb the pain inside so that I could do what I had to do. I wasn’t careful about it at all. If I needed to get high, it didn’t matter where the needle came from. When one of my tricks literally kicked me from his car without paying for his blowjob, Bone accused me of stealing and beat me within an inch of my life. I roamed the streets of DC for a while, fucking whomever I could for a fix and a warm bed.

It looks like the service is over. Everyone is leaving the cemetery. Jessica has certainly put on quite a bit of weight. Looks good though. Jessica and Nikki both look like everything is going well for them. I’m happy for them. I really am. Ahmad is just as fine as he ever was. I wish that I could apologize for what I did to him. He didn’t deserve that. I was just being selfish. I wanted everyone around me to hurt because I was hurting. Would he and Nikki forgive me? Will God?

There is Sabrina. I wonder if she is still working at the hospital in Maryland. Nikki is lucky to have found such a great friend. I wish now that I had listened to Sabrina that day in the car. Her words were harsh but she was speaking the truth only I wouldn’t or couldn’t hear her. At the time, I thought nobody knew more than I did. It is clear to me now that I was delusional about so many things.

I wish I could cross the street and be closer to my family. I’d love to hear my sister’s voices one more time.

Let me take one last look at Aliyah. She’s the only thing that I have done right my entire life.