Page 38 of Our Mother's Sons

“Let the fucking car seat go bitch!” One of the two masked men boomed. My baby jumped, and her little cries broke my heart. Looking up front, I saw Dutton getting stomped out.

“I don’t have any money! We are broke! Please just let us go!”

The masked man snatched the baby carrier and pointed a gun at my face.

“Bitch if you scream you die!”

Tears fell, but my eyes were studying the carrier in his arms. This couldn’t be happening.

“I won’t scream. Please give me my baby! Please!”

An unwelcome tension stretched tighter between us. I tried to study the man’s eyes but could not pinpoint him or his voice.

“We taking this fucking baby.”

What? Nooooo!”

The gunman placed the carrier on the ground, keeping the gun trained on me. He pulled out a photo and held it up.

“Forget about this day. Forget about this baby. If you report this to the laws, I’m killing your cousin Baela and I’ll have some niggas to shank Riker’s ass in the pen. You want to be the reason your people die?”

Feverishly, I shook my head, "No," but I wanted my baby back. Picking the carrier back up, he grabbed the diaper bag on the backseat floor, and I spotted her folder with all of her essential paperwork. His accomplice kicked Dutton one last time, and the two of them ran through the back alley.

“Baby. You good?”

Dutton got back in the car holding his stomach and that man’s licks must was weak as fuck because there wasn’t a scratch on him. His ribs may have been bruised, but that didn’t matter. Our daughter had been kidnapped.

“You have a gun, right? Go after them! They took our daughter!”

“Man its two of them and just one of me,” Dutton’s weak ass excused.

“Well, give me my phone! Call the police!”

“They just said no police! They gone kill Baela and them! That shit not worth it!”

“My fucking daughter is worth everything!”

“No the fuck it ain’t. We young! We can have another baby! We can make another her and I promise the next one not gone have no problems. She gone be perfect…”

Tears drenched my face as Baela sat there crying herself as I finished my story. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about my baby. Dutton never did let up with trying to get me pregnant. When I blew up on his ass and he saw that I was not giving him what he wanted, only then did he pack up his shit and leave. I was hurt. I wanted to end it all, but I knew Baela needed me, and a small part of me felt like I would cross paths with my daughter again. I knew she wasn’t dead. I just felt it in my soul.

“Cousin. Cousin. Wow. I can’t believe that shit. I should have known something was up when you went ghost on me. Plus, your nose had spread. I feel so dumb because I’m a nurse, so I should have seen the signs. I’m so fucking sorry. You have a daughter. A fucking daughter. I know she’s so beautiful.”

“She is,” I cried. “She’s so damn gorgeous. Dutton thought she was defective because she was born… different.”

Cocking her head, Baela blinked away her tears.

“How so?”

I held my right hand up and pushed my two fingers together.

“She was born with webbed hands and feet. Her index and middle fingers are fused on both hands. Same with her toes, too. Dutton asked the doctors at the hospital how old she would have to be to get the surgery to fix it. She was only a few minutes old and he was asking that shit. Then again, at her two-week checkup, he inquired. We didn’t even have the money for our bills, and he was asking about a cosmetic surgery. My baby was perfect. Is perfect! I was going to see about getting her the surgery in the future, just so she wouldn’t be different and have to deal with bullies, but that wasn’t a priority.”

Baela pulled me in for a hug, where I came undone on her shoulder.

“It’s okay. Riker will have Dutton hunted down like the dog he is, and we will find her. We will find her. I promise. I am so sorry. I wish I had done more. I should have pulled up, but didn’t want to disrupt your life.”

“Voyage.”

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