STRINGS of COLOR (14 page)

"Were you scared?"

"Yes. Some I guess, but at the time I felt like I couldn't go back, I couldn't go back to a house where I didn't exist.

"Back at home, in that house with him, I felt like I was more of a roommate than his daughter. When he looked at me, I knew that all he saw was her."

Jake saw that she was growing silent again.

"How did you live in New York at thirteen?"

"You might say, barely breathing to be honest with you. I found a shelter and lied to get in, told everyone I was eighteen. That was where I met Viola.

"Viola was a tall, lanky eighteen-year old white girl, with long red hair and a deep southern accent. She had been living in shelters ever since she was twelve. She came to New York by way of Alabama. Both of her parents had been killed in a car accident and she refused to go into the 'system' as she called it.

"She was more than a friend to me. She and I were like sisters. She dreamed of becoming an Interior Designer one day. Kept old magazines hidden under her mattress. Said she was going to make the world over, one piece of furniture at a time. Sounds stupid now, but she had dreams, real dreams and she didn't take any mess from anyone. She was tough, smart and kind.

"She made me want to believe in dreams again.

"Viola landed a job as a waitress at this small Blues restaurant called: Down by The River-Blues Joint. We just called it, The River. It had a small piece of water in the back, but the food was amazing and the music—well, it was better than the food.

"It was run by a short, bald and very chunky white man. His name was Charlie. Boy did he love him some Blues and good-old Soul food. He was very nice to Viola and I. He allowed me to come in after the place was closed and clean things up. He didn't pay as much as I felt he should have, but I couldn't complain. It was money and I needed it.

"I had been cleaning for Charlie for about two months or so when I met Freddie Lee Thomas. Charlie called him Big Fred, because of his amazing voice. Freddie would come in on the weekends to sing with his band.

"Viola had a fit when she found out I had been secretly seeing him. She told me that I needed to be focusing on my dreams not some man. But she couldn't do anything about it. I told her I was grown, to mind her business and let me do my thing.

"I had my chest puffed out at her, my chin up in the air and my attitude bouncing off the walls.

"I'm not going to lie, Freddie was the blackest man I had ever laid eyes on, but when he opened his mouth on that stage, no one cared. Not one single person in there. They only cared about what they heard.

"Man, Freddie made music do what it was supposed to do when he sang. I was like, 'can I have some more, please.' My heart was tied to his sleeve. Dangling like a fool.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush here, Jake, I was stupid. I thought I was in love with him. I didn't listen to Viola who tried to warn me about everything, especially the really important things. She tried to tell me to wait for marriage, to wait for real love, but I called her 'old-fashioned'. Besides, I would always say to her—he loves me.

"Those three little words can cause a girl to lose her cotton-picking mind.

"She would tell me that I didn't know anything about love at thirteen. That I didn't even know myself.

"Honestly I thought I did. I thought I was a woman because I was in love with what I thought was a real man, but in reality I couldn't even fit into a real woman's shoes at the time. I was smack-dead in the bloom of youth. Smelling myself and yet I was too blind to see that I was doing nothing but stinking up my life.

"Freddie would come in with these super shining black shoes on. I'd watch him perform on that stage and sometimes he would let me perform with him. He brought me clothes and took me out to eat sometimes. Whispered in my ear all the things a young and dumb girl thinks they want to hear.

"I had to learn the hard way."

"Did Freddie buy you the shoes you have on?"

Monà looked down at her shoes. The right string had come undone again.

"No. These belonged to my mother."

Jake saw the tears form in the corners of her eyes.

"What happened between you and Freddie?"

"Nine months later I was in the hospital pushing out a baby girl. That was only the beginning of my troubles. It seems that Freddie was really twenty-four years old and married to a thirty-eight year old who had a ten-year old boy named Lynden.

"Yes, you could say it was a real jacked up situation from every angle."

Monà stopped, she watched for Jake's reaction.

He forced himself not to show one.

"What happened to the baby?"

"Viola stepped in. She threatened Freddie with going to the police for getting a minor pregnant. I had to tell her the truth about my age, broke her heart. I think that was the first time I felt real tears.

"Freddie and his wife took my baby girl. They took her and raised her as if she was their own.

"You know I think I got to hold her in my arms for no less than a few hours. I remember looking at her; she was so small and swaddled. Her hazel brown eyes looked up at me as if she knew. She knew that I was giving her away. I saw traces of me in her eyes and when she smiled, I knew in my heart that she would be okay.

"In my mind she already belonged to them."

"What happened to you after that?"

"Viola sent me back home. By then, JK had sunk even deeper in his own sorrow. A year later I gave birth to Naya."

"Why did you leave her with him?"

"I don't know to be honest. I just knew that I couldn't stay. I was almost fifteen. I packed my bags a few days after she was born and walked away. I was ashamed of my life. Ashamed of her I guess. Ashamed at everything that had happened to me up to that point and I just needed to get away from it all.

"I went back to New York and pleaded with Viola to let me stay with her. She had finally saved enough money to buy herself a small apartment and put herself through school. I slept on her couch until I was eighteen. Then I got a job here and there singing in various clubs until I came to realize that I was never going to be a star. When I was around twenty-one, I landed a job at a power company, which was where I worked until the day I retired.

"I thought about them every day and I fought myself all the time, because I knew that I should have gone back for them both, but I just couldn't. How would I ever be able to explain things to them?"

Monà grew silent again.

"I remember the day my phone rang. I had just finished working a double-shift. I almost fell off my sofa when I realized it was JK on the other end, telling me that Naya had given birth to twins."

"Did he tell you then what he had done to Jazzmyne?"

"Yes."

"How did that make you feel?"

"How do you think I felt? I wanted to kill him."

"Why didn't you go to the police then? Why didn't you tell someone?"

"Because, then I would have to tell them what he did to me. It still wasn't something I had wanted to face. It wasn't something I wanted to admit happened to me. Just like I was a reminder to him about my mother, Naya was a reminder to me about what happened. I felt like I would be forced to live it all over again."

"Why didn't you take Jazzmyne and Simone then?"

"I guess you could say that I felt a lot of fear, guilt and stupidity. I also felt like I had already lost her. I couldn't go back and undo what I had done, but I thought that maybe I could somehow make things better by raising Simone."

"Why did JK split them up like that? Jonathan and Simone I mean."

"For him, I'm sure it was the same as it was for me, fear and guilt that made him do what he did to them."

"Have you spoken to him since?"

"I was forced to see him once, when Simone was thirteen. I had to have surgery in Chicago. He was the only person I knew there and I didn't have enough money to find someone else to care for her."

"How did you know that he wouldn't try something with Simone?"

"I had told him that if he put one finger on my baby girl, I would have him locked up."

"Did you know that he was not the father of Simone and Jonathan and that Jazzmyne had been raped by another man while coming home from school one day?"

"Carl told me a few weeks ago."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Relieved and sad all at the same time, no child should ever have to go through that. Not by her father or any other man."

"Is that why you seem to have thought more about Jazzmyne than your first child?"

"I told you that I thought about them both."

"True, but I see a different light in your eyes when you speak about Jazzmyne. You have yet to even mention your first child by name."

"You see what you want to see, I feel how I feel. My insides don't lie. My past doesn't change the fact that I gave birth to two daughters."

Jake decided to leave the topic alone for a moment.

"What do you think you will say to Jazzmyne when you two finally meet?"

"I don't want to see her."

Jake took it all back as he allowed her shocking words to sink deep within his mind. He didn't like her one bit.

"Because of what happened to you? Don't you care about what happened to her?"

"Yes, I care. That is why I came to see you. Look Jake, I have to fight now to make amends with my baby girl Simone. She will always be my daughter. I know that Naya needs to know what happened. She needs to know and Simone needs to know. I just can't be the one to tell them. I figure your book can do it for me."

"Don't you think that is…?"

"Selfish? Being a coward? Yes. But it is what it is. Naya will never forgive me for leaving her with that beast, but I hope that she will somehow find it in her heart to understand."

"What about Simone? Do you think she will come to forgive you?"

"I don't know. All I can do is hope."

"What about your first daughter? Don't you think she has a right to know that she has a sister?"

Monà looked away again.

"In some ways, I guess she does."

"What do you mean—you guess? You're her mother too, and she is out there somewhere. Aren't you curious about what she has done with her life, what she has become?"

She stood up to leave. She didn't care for Jake's tone.

"No. I'm not. She had a father and a mother that loved her. She had a real life. What did I have?"

"How do you know that for sure?"

"Because, when she was a little girl I saw her and that woman Freddie called his wife, going into a clothing store one day. They were all smiles. She had on good clothes, didn't look like she wanted for nothing. She got that because of me! She can't say I didn't give her that."

"But you didn't give her that, Viola did."

Jake was sure he could see fire come out of her nostrils.

"Call it whatever you want. She got a life. Shoot, I heard they lived in some big fancy house. That she rode around in some big fancy car. That she even went to one of them fancy type schools. I know about The Skinny, that Jazz place that Freddie owned. She can't complain. I'm the one who got reasons to be complaining. I got plenty of reasons!"

"So you kept tabs on her?"

Monà didn't respond.

Jake sat on the edge of his chair with his mouth still hitting the floor. She was beyond arrogant to him.

He watched her walk slowly to the door with her one shoe untied, yet again.

"You know you're still allowing it to happen?"

"Allowing what to happen?"

"You're still allowing the strings of color to pull you along."

"Some people follow, some people lead, and some people are just pulled along. That's life, Jake. That is my life. I have learned to accept it."

"No, you learned to use it as an excuse for your actions!"

"Go back to writing your column, Jake. One day, you will understand what it means to be a
real
journalist. You ask the questions to get the story, but you have yet to learn how to leave your heart out of it."

Just as she reached the door, he stopped her.

"What was your first daughter's name?" She had mentioned The Skinny earlier and Jake needed to be sure his thinking was correct.

"They named her Misty, but I called her—Viola."

"Her eyes traveled back to the house that sat as high as a mountain. She smiled.
I could have never given her a life that would have given her all of this. She got the better end. In fact, my baby girl got more than I ever had."