Page 59 of Rah
Imust have laid on that floor crying for hours. I was numb with shock. I wasn’t a sheltered woman. I had been through some things. I had been through a lot of hurt. But never ever had a man beat me.
I didn’t get up until my son began to cry. By now it was four in the morning, and he was hungry. When I stood from the floor, I realized how sore I was in various places. My face, thighs, and arms were sore to the touch.
I slipped the pacifier into his mouth to soothe him until I could make his bottle. Then, I checked my phone. There were no calls or text messages from Rah. Not that a call or text message would have made me feel better. Nevertheless, the fact that he hadn’t at least tried to contact me hurt worse than his blows. It was four in the morning. He wasn’t immediate family, so he wouldn’t be allowed to stay the night in the hospital with Moses.
He was with a woman; possibly even the one that had contacted me.
My heart sank.
My baby lay on the bed, looking at me with the most beautiful doe eyes. I watched him, wanting to be sure that I gave him the best mother and father figure that I could. A man that would put his hands on his woman was not what I wanted as a father figure for Junior. A woman that would put up with that was not what I wanted to portray as a mother.
If the cheating and abuse weren’t a sure sign to leave,thatwas. Being stupid enough to allow Rah to affect my life was one thing, but my child’s life was off limits.
It was clear to me now that Rah had been lying about Solae from the start. All those nights he swore he was stuck in the studio late, he was most likely playing house with her too. The thought made my stomach turn. I wanted to blame myself for being so foolish, for falling into the same trap I’d watched other women get caught in. I used to think I was smarter, that I’d never let a man run game on me like that. But Rah’s lies had been so precise, so polished, that I never once thought he was living a double life right in front of me.
“I have to get out of here,” I told myself.
I loved Rah, but loving him was clearly dangerous, and he obviously had no love for me. So, I went to the closet to pack, hoping that the pacifier would soothe Junior long enough to allow me to do so before Rah could return.
As I passed the mirror, I caught a glimpse of myself. My neck was bruised and purple in color. That made anger burn on the inside of my heart. Something told me to document this, so I got my phone and took a few images of the bruises. Then I left the mirror, realizing that this nigga had really put his hands on me, all because I asked him whyhewas disloyal.
On my way into the closet, I realized that my phone kept buzzing. I saw that I had multiple notifications from pagesthat I followed on social media. Curious, I clicked to see what was going on. I gasped aloud when I saw that Carlos had been found dead in his home by a friend. Carlos was a hood legend, so many of the Chicago blog pages had reported his murder.
Unfortunately, when dealing with men that lived in the streets, in the back of your mind, you expect this. You pray against it every day, but that was the world we lived in. Yet, I knew that having the preconceived notion didn’t make it any better. It still hurt. That hurt poured through the comments under the posts. Everyone was mourning who was such a kind and friendly guy.
My heart went out to him and his family. However, I was experiencing an emotional death, so I pushed past the mourning and packed. I figured that I had no choice but to finally take Aunt Sheree up on her offer to move to Houston. I didn’t have enough of my own money to make the drive, so after packing, I left the bedroom to dip in Rah’s stash.
It was the least he owed me.
While I entered the living room and moved the couch, I prayed that Rah wouldn’t return and catch me. Rah had been in such a rush the last time that he was there that he hadn’t even secured the floorboards. Dusty garbage bags stuck out. To my surprise, there was way more than the usual ten or so thousand inside. Lo and behold, I opened the bags to lay my eyes on bundles and bundles of cash. It was more money than I had ever seen before.
I sat on the floor in a daze, shocked at the countless faces of dead presidents looking back at me. I couldn’t even guess how much money it was.
I wondered where the hell Rah would get this kind of money. Weight had to be sold to make this kind of money, and a lot of it. Rah wasn’t on that level, no matter how bad hewanted to be. We didn’t even know people with this kind of paper, except...
Then, it dawned on me. I gasped so loudly that my astonishment echoed through the house.
This wasn’t a coincidence, Carlos’ murder, Moses getting shot the same night, and this cash. It all made sense that Rah had something to do with Carlos’ murder.
I didn’t want to believe it. The thought that Rah could kill his best friend felt impossible, like something straight out of a nightmare. But the more I pieced it together, the more the truth became more obvious. Lately, he’d been moving in ways I once swore were out of his character. Now I knew thatwashis character. All this time, I’d been sleeping next to a stranger.
The idea of going to the police crossed my mind, but it died just as fast. Rah had already shown me how ruthless he could be. If he ever found out I talked, he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me, or worse, hurt Rahzan or my mama. I couldn’t take that chance. And I didn’t believe the police could protect me from someone like him. In my world, calling the police wasn’t safe; it was actually asking for more trouble.
Rah had pull in the streets. He didn’t even need to be free to reach me; his goons would handle it for him, no questions asked. I’d seen what happened to women who thought telling was a way out. That wasn’t gonna be me. As much as it made me sick, I kept my mouth shut. Because better the devil I knew than the one I couldn’t see coming.
KAHLANI
The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a court room. But I couldn’t miss my preliminary hearing. So, I didn’t have a choice. I would’ve much rather been at the hospital waiting for them to bring Moses out of the coma. If I had missed court though, they would put a warrant out for my arrest. Reluctantly, I left Moses’ bedside. He was still out, but I wanted to be the first face that he saw when they woke him up.
There was such an eerie feeling over me. I didn’t understand what was happening to me and my family. They say that you go through the worst storm right before your blessing. Yet, my vision was blurry. I couldn’t see whether this was a blessing on its way or hell that I put myself in because of bad decisions.
“How much time can I get if I just plead guilty?”
The public defender assigned to my case looked at me like I was crazy. He was a white older man. Therefore, his face flushed red as he thought about it. “Are you sure that you want to do that?”
I looked into those ocean blue eyes and nodded my head.
I knew that I was giving up. Yet, after seeing Moses lay in that bed appearing lifeless, I didn’t have any energy to fight.
