Page 8 of Through Treacherous Weather
“Yeah,” he mumbled gruffly and hopped in his Escalade.
Pulling off and leaving Sophie on the block made him feel like an elephant was standing on his chest. Even after two years, he still wasn’t used to seeing her in such a state. He lived in constant fear of getting that phone call. The one telling him that her body had been found.
Esco gritted his back teeth together the entire time he drove and by the time he got to his mother’s house, his jaws were aching. Sitting in the car for a few minutes, he attempted to compose himself before going inside. When Esco finally entered his mother’s house, she was sitting on the couch knitting, and his four-year-old daughter, Star was engrossed in watching her favorite cartoon on the television. She looked over absentmindedly to see who entered the house and when she saw it was her father, she gasped and smiled wide as she jumped up.
“Daddy!” Star ran over to him, and Esco scooped her up in his arms.
“What it do, shawty? You ready to go?”
She nodded eagerly, and he placed her back on the floor.
“Go to the back and get your things.”
Star ran to the back bedroom that used to belong to him, and he sat down on the couch. “What up, ma?” he mumbled.
“I made you a plate. Star already ate, but I made her one too. I’m sure she’ll get hungry later.”
“Thanks.”
Bianca stopped knitting and looked over at her son. “What’s wrong?”
Esco wouldn’t even look at her. He stared at the television while trying to keep his emotions in check. “Nothing.”
“You lying to me now?” she asked in a soft tone. A mother always knew. No matter how hard he tried to mask it, Bianca could see that her son was hurting and only one person could cause the look of despair that she’d seen on his handsome face one too many times.
When Esco didn’t respond, she chose to let it go. He didn’t like talking about Sophie, and she didn’t blame him. Star entered the room with her backpack on, and her favorite stuffed animal in hand. It was the last thing Sophie bought for her before she left Star and Esco. Star carried it everywhere she went. It had been months since she last asked about her mother. Despite her being very young, Star was able to grasp the concept that no one knew when her mother was coming or if she was coming at all. The excuse they gave was that Sophie was sick. Star had been sick before, and she’d seen her grandmother sick. The sick people she knew of always got better, but her mother had been sick for a very long time.
Star was almost three when Sophie left. She didn’t have many memories of home life with her mother, but the rare times thatSophie came to visit her, Star knew who she was. She also knew that all the other kids in her Pre-K class had a mommy that was around. She was the only one that didn’t, and it made her sad. Star didn’t understand why her mommy had to be sick and no one else’s mother was.
Sophie and Esco were high school sweethearts. They got together their senior year and became inseparable. There was a brief period after graduation when Sophie changed. She was withdrawn and sad. She shut her friends and Esco out for months. It took her three months to confess to him that she’d been raped by her mother’s pimp. Esco took her virginity. They’d only had sex twice before she was violated in the worst way. When she finally confessed, Esco saw red. No matter how much she begged, he wouldn’t let it go. It took him months to run into the man that violated Sophie but when he did, Esco beat the man within inches of his life. He had to get his jaw wired shut, and he stayed in ICU for two weeks. Had Esco been captured by the police, he would have been charged with attempted murder.
Knowing that her attacker had been beaten to a pulp made Sophie feel a little better but not as good as opioids made her feel. Not long after her rape, Sophie was suffering from intense period cramps. She was in so much pain that her grandmother felt sorry for her, and with genuine intentions, she gave Sophie four pain pills that she had left over from surgery. When Sophie took the medication, she not only enjoyed the relief from pain, she enjoyed the subtle high that it gave her. For a short period after she took the pills, she’d feel a rush. An immense sense of euphoria that made her cloudy days a little brighter. By the time the euphoria began to fade, she was able to drift off into a peaceful slumber that wasn’t interrupted by nightmares.
When the pills were gone, Sophie had no clue where to get more from. She didn’t want to ask Esco because she didn’t want anyone to know that she was indulging. She even askedhim if she could smoke weed with him, but the weed made her paranoid. It didn’t give her the feels that opioids did. Alcohol didn’t either. Sophie was about to lose her mind until she got the idea to go to a therapist and complain of bad anxiety caused by her rape. She wasn’t lying. The way that she’d been woken up out of her sleep, choked, and violated traumatized her indeed. Anxiety and depression were very real factors for her.
The therapist did exactly what Sophie wanted her to do, and she prescribed Xanax for Sophie. Taking more than the prescribed dosage was the norm for her. Over the years, Sophie dabbled in an array of drugs including Xanax, opioids, and even cocaine. By the time Esco noticed there was a problem, she was in too deep, and Star was two months old. He began watching her like a hawk, and she hated it. Sophie loved Esco, and she loved her child. But the demons that she was fighting was too much to do alone. She needed to be numb. She needed to be able to forget, and only pills and coke did that for her. With a dull ache in her heart, she left Star with Esco and moved back in with her grandmother.
Esco had never in his life experienced heartbreak the way he did when Sophie left him and Star. He didn’t get it. There was nothing in this world that he would have chosen over Star. He knew the kind of person Sophie was before addiction took over, and he tried so hard not to hold it against her. Hence the reason he spent way too much time making sure she was good even though she had made the decision to live the way she was. Esco simply couldn’t throw her to the wolves and forget about her. The man that raped her, suffered a stroke while he was in ICU, and he never fully recovered. Esco slept great at night knowing the man lived in an assisted care facility.
Standing, Esco grabbed the plastic bag containing the food his mother packed for them. He walked over and gave her a hug. Esco waited for Star to hug her grandmother, then he usheredher out to the car. From the day Sophie left them, he’d been Star’s full-time parent. Having sole custody of her prompted Esco to leave the drug game and start a security company. There was no way he was trying to end up in prison and have to leave her too. Esco got his act together and with the help of his mother, father, grandparents, his homeboy, and his homeboy’s wife, they made sure Star had the village that she needed.
Between mourning the loss of Sophie, getting his business off the ground, and being a single father, a relationship wasn’t on the agenda. Esco was afraid to set his daughter up for disappointment. He didn’t want women in and out of her life. The last thing he wanted was for her to become excited about the prospect of a ‘new mommy’ and then that blow up. Nah, he refused to do it to her. Esco had fun with women when he had free time from his daughter. The situations he had with women weren’t just sex, but they were nowhere near serious enough that he’d ever introduce them to Star. He had to damn near be ready for marriage before that happened. Protecting his daughter was way more important to him than finding a woman to fill a void in his life or to even help him raise her. In Esco’s opinion he had the single father role down pact.
Swallowing the hurt that he felt from seeing Sophie out on the block, Esco looked into the rearview mirror at his daughter’s reflection. Her light skin came from Sophie, but her thick eyebrows, long eyelashes, broad nose, and deep dimples all came from him. She was his literal twin.
“How was school today, Baby Girl?”
That one simple question made Star’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Excited to tell her father all about her day, she talked a mile a minute making Esco forget all about the ache in his heart.
The moment Justice emerged from his car; a familiar smell infiltrated his nostrils. Sniffing the air with a scowl on his face, he knew he wasn’t tripping. “Who the fuck?” Justice’s head whipped from the left to the right. “I know damn well.” Justice walked around to the back of the group home. When he spotted Calvin posted up in the backyard smoking a blunt like the activity was legal, Justice’s nostrils expanded from anger. He took long strides toward the young man that began to choke on weed smoke as he spotted Justice.
“You lost yo’ fuckin’ mind or something?” Justice asked in a calm tone. He treated every resident in his group home with respect. Justice harbored a lot of patience for the young men, but he would never hesitate to put his foot down. With most of them, it was necessary to be his true self. He’d rather be his true self than constantly fronting and putting on fake professional airs that didn’t come across as genuine.
Calvin looked Justice up and down with a scowl on his peanut butter colored face. “You smoke, and don’t lie and say you don’t because everybody knows who the triplets are. Y’all are like that. Daddy is a kingpin and shit. You can’t tell me nothing.”
Justice had to remember where he was as his fists clenched at his sides. “I’m a grown ass muhfuckin’ man, so whatever I do is my business. You live in my house and if you get caught, you’re going to juvie, and the state could shut me down. There are kids that appreciate living here, and you’re not fucking it up for them. I don’t know what you think you know about me, but don’t make me get back on my bullshit, Calvin. You don’t want it with me lil’ nigga. I can’t tell you not to smoke. But you won’t smoke atthishouse. You got that?”
Calvin sucked his teeth, but he didn’t give a verbal response. Aggressively, Justice snatched the blunt from Calvin’ hand and turned to walk away. Before entering the house, he ashed the blunt on the ground and tossed the roach out into the street. Inside the house, Justice walked through the kitchen and into the living room. He found one of the two staff members in the living room, smiling with her cellphone up to her ear.
