Never Keeping Secrets (20 page)

 

“O
kay, what else can go?”

Keesha looked across her desk at Corey and fought the urge to snap “You motherfucker.” It would have been just her anger talking and not something she meant. “I just hate doing this shit, Corey,” she said. “What's the purpose up moving on up like George and Weezy if you just gone fall back down like James and Florida in the projects?”

Corey laughed.

Keesha was able to break a smile. “I'm sorry but I will not give up my car and the house. It's too many motherfuckers back in the hood waiting for me to fall. I refuse. I re-fuse. Fuck that.”

“So you gone live life worrying about what people think?”

“What I'm saying is if we have to live in this motherfucker with nothing but beds, no lights, and just eating Oodles and Noodles in this bitch to keep it then I'm cool with it,” she said, putting her palms up and leaning back in her chair.

Corey shook his head. “Look we're not going to lose our house or the car or pull Kimani out her school. I'd work two jobs before I let that happen.”

Corey's cell phone sounded off. “Yo.”

Keesha turned her attention back to her computer screen. She pushed her bob back behind her ears as she read the e-mail. Her lips moved as she read it. “The deal is done. I'll let you know when the contracts arrive.”

As she skimmed through her list of e-mails she rolled her eyes at the “secret, secret” bullshit Shawn tried to play her with. He had still been blowing up her phone all week but she ignored him. She was going to play it out by his rules and if he thought it was going to end up with them booking a room he was about to get his face cracked in embarrassment.

“What hospital they took her to?” Corey said, rising to his feet.

Keesha shifted her eyes to him and he looked away from her. Her heart stopped.

“We're on the way.”

She stood up slowly. “What happened, Corey?” she asked.

He came over and tried to hug her. She knocked his hands away and leaned back to eye him. “What happened?” she repeated.

“Your moms got in a fight today with some lady over some bullshit and . . . and the lady shot her, babe,” he said, his voice filled with his anguish.

Keesha felt only a little relief at knowing her daughter was safe. Kimani was spending the weekend with Keesha's father. “Where?” she asked, as she stood up and grabbed her keys.

“Huh?” Corey asked, his face confused.

“Where did she get shot?” she asked, as they left the office and walked down the stairs together.

“Outside her apartment building,” he said as if she was daft.

She picked up her pocketbook from the table by the door as they walked out of the house. “No, where the bullet land?” Keesha asked. She turned when she reached the passenger door of their Benz and realized Corey wasn't behind her. He still stood on the porch.

“Why are you calm?” he asked. “Your mother got shot.”

“Yes . . . I heard you.”

Corey came down the stairs and the look on his face changed from incredulous to annoyed. “Damn, you a coldhearted bitch sometimes, Keesha,” he said, deactivating the alarm.

She opened the passenger door and climbed inside, settling her purse on the floor by her feet before she pressed both hands to the soft swell of her stomach again. “So you don't know where she got shot?” she calmly asked as soon as he climbed behind the wheel and closed the driver's door.

“No, I don't know. The ambulance is headed to UMDNJ now,” he said, his voice cold as he started the car and reversed down the driveway before he settled back into his seat and fell silent.

Keesha closed her eyes. She allowed herself to enjoy the silence he angrily provided for the majority of the twenty-minute ride from South Orange to Newark. “Do you know how badly I want to smoke right now?” she asked, finally breaking the silence as he navigated congested South Orange Avenue.

Corey glanced over at her. “Weed?”

She licked her lips and shook her head. “A Newport. You know I don't smoke weed no more,” she said, her voice still calm. “If I let myself freak the fuck out over this I will smoke a pack and that ain't good for the baby.”

He pulled to a red light and reached over to press his hand over hers still setting on her stomach. “My bad, Keesh,” he said.

She nodded calmly. “So you enjoy this Zen shit right here
because
as soon as I find out what's going on with my mother—and if she is okay—I am going to tear you a new asshole and be that coldhearted
bitch
you think I am,” she said sweetly, turning her head on the headrest to smile at him.

Corey removed his hand and frowned.

“I'm dead-ass serious too,” she said.

He nodded. “I know.”

“Good,” she said before turning her head and closing her eyes again.

Keesha didn't know a thing about praying. She'd never been to church. Growing up, Diane never pressed the issue because she was too busy sleeping in from partying until dawn the night before. When Keesha became the adult she continued the cycle of partying hard Saturday night and sleeping in Sunday morning.

“We here, baby,” Corey said. “You go in and I'll park the car.”

She opened her eyes and through the slightly tinted glass saw the entrance to the emergency room. She placed her hand on the door but she couldn't move.

“Baby, you all right? I said you go in and I'll park.”

Keesha had no idea what awaited her inside. She felt all kinds of cravings hit her as the nerves and fear she was fighting crept up on her. Dope, nicotine, shot of brown liquor, pickles and cheese. All of her vices past and current. She forced herself to calm down as she finally climbed from the car and made her way inside.

The blend of the smell of illness and the smell of the products used to keep the hospital sterile caused her to gag. She stood there breathing deeply hoping the baby wasn't about to send the fried chicken and fries she had for lunch up and onto the floor.

As the wave of nausea passed, Keesha continued to the admitting desk. “My mother, Diane Lands, was shot and the ambulance was supposed to bring her here.”

“I am glad you're here,” the woman said. “Room three. Straight through that door on your right.”

Keesha headed toward the door.

“Keesha.”

She turned. Her face filled with pure aggravation at seeing Shawn walking up toward her. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“I heard about your moms and came to check on you,” he said, his eyes shifting down to her stomach.

“I'm good. Corey is here,” she said, turning away from him.

He lightly grabbed her hand. “We need to talk, Keesha.”

“Right now?” she snapped, feeling all of her calm quickly fade as she snatched her hand away. “Besides didn't you want to meet at the Hilton and reveal secrets and shit? Sending all those e-mails threatening me. Fuck outta here.”

Shawn made a face. “I never e-mailed. I don't have no e-mail account.”

Keesha studied his face and believed him.

Over Shawn's shoulder she saw Corey in the distance walking from the parking deck. “Look, I have to check on my mother. A'ight? And I know you feel this could be your baby but we don't know. I really feel like it's Corey's.”

Shawn opened his mouth to protest.

She kept her eyes on Corey's figure even as she held up her hand. “Look we can't have a DNA test until the baby is born and that's over six months away. Could you please just chill 'til then and if the DNA proves the baby is yours then I will tell Corey the truth.”

“I want to claim and take care of what's mine,” Shawn insisted.

The emergency room door slid open and Corey walked up to them. He looked surprised to see his cousin. He dapped him.

“I heard about the shooting and decided to come through and check on my fam,” Shawn said.

“Good looking out, cuz,” Corey said.

“Come with me, Corey,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him behind her through the door.

“Well, damn, bitch. Who taught you how to give shots?”

Both Keesha and Corey stopped dead in their tracks and looked at each other before they both looked at the closed curtain from behind which Diane's voice was vibrant and loud.

Keesha pulled the curtain back and they stepped into the small room.

Diane was laid on the bed on her side with a sheet partially draped over her hips. “There's my family. I told Junie to call you. Can y'all believe this
shit
?” she said.

Keesha's eyes skimmed over her mother's body. “I thought they said you got shot,” she said, more than thoroughly confused.

“I did. In my ass,” she said, chucking her thumb over her shoulder, pointing down toward her rear.

“Okay, I'm out,” Corey said, turning and breezing past the curtain.

“These horrible nurses gone kill me before that bullet will,” she said, looking over her shoulder to give the nurse a mean face.

“What happened?” Keesha asked as the nurse left the room.

“Frankie's old lady caught us in his car—”

Keesha's shoulders slumped. “Who is Frankie?”

“My side piece,” she supplied, wincing as she shifted on the bed. “So anyway, she opened the door and boxed me. I jumped out the car and politely whipped that ass good—just ask anybody—and when I was turned to grab my keys from Frankie's whip he's long gone. My keys on the ground along with my bag of White Castles he just brought me. I bend down to scoop up my shit and pow, the trick shot me.”

Keesha looked at her mother long and hard. She could hardly believe that it was a fifty-year-old grandmother talking like that and telling a story that no one should experience but especially not a fifty-year-old woman. And there was a complete absence of shock or terror about being shot. Diane made it seem like the woman nudged her in the ass instead of shot her in it.

“She better be glad she got locked up on the spot because I got a few more of these blows for her ass.”

“So you know I have to stay with y'all while I recoopate—”

Keesha eyed her. “While you what?” she asked.

“Recoopate.”

“Diane, it's recuperate,” Keesha said.

“Well, I'm gone have to do all
that
at y'all house . . . unless you can get your mama a nurse,” she said.

Keesha sat her purse on the chair and leaned back against the wall. She had discovered that her mother was fine but she wanted all her vices more than ever.

“The Elizabeth Ballroom, please?”

The short and thick white man working the desk of the Hilton looked up at Keesha with a smile that just read “I'm paid to do this.”

“Straight down the hall and just follow the signs,” he said, that smile still in place.

She looked down the hall before she turned and headed toward it.

Keesha had convinced herself that Shawn was behind this meeting but he denied it. In fact when Diane was released and they took her back to their townhouse in South Orange, Shawn had followed them and was still sitting in the house with Corey when she left with the excuse of needing to go back to Diane's apartment to pack up some of her clothes.

Keesha came to the door and opened it. There was a room big enough for a wedding reception with just four chairs sitting together in a row. “Hello,” she called out, her hand clenching the door handle tight as hell.

“Keesha?”

She jumped back as Monica stepped in front of the doorway.

“What the fuck is this shit all about?” Keesha asked, pushing past her ex-friend to step into the ballroom. “You behind all this bullshit?”

Monica took her hand out of her purse and pointed the finger back. “Me? Hell you the one obviously,” she balked.

They eyed each other.