Page 8 of Wasn't Supposed To Be Yours
“Are you going to fuck that bitch?” she asked me.
“Ay, this ain’t got shit to do with a bitch right now. Open my fuckin door and close it back the right way. Fuck all that other shit that you talking about!” I spat.
She took a few seconds, but she walked her ass over to the car, opened the door, and she closed it like she had some sense, just as I told her. When she was finished, she tried to spark up a conversation with me, but I left her ass standing right there, hopped back in the driver’s seat, and I pulled off.
During my drive, all I could think about was the conversation that I had with June at the party. That nigga told me that fuckin women and thinking that we had an understanding was going to come with some complications. Granted, I believed him because I knew that before he’d got married, he was living the same life that I’m out here leaving, but for whatever reason, I felt like I had it all under control.
I didn’t need the headache. I didn’t need a woman in my life hounding me, questioning me, and threatening me and shit, especially when we weren’t on that kind of timing with each other. I knew that I was in a place right now in my life where I wasn’t trying to commit to anybody because I was focused on my business, and because I felt that way, and because I didn’t need the added stress with Renee’s ass, I just might have to leave that bitch alone. My temper was too short to be dealing with that shit.
Chapter 3
Dionne Henry
The Things We Don’t Speak About
“This is the day,
This is the day that the Lord has made,”.
The choir was singing one of my favorite songs, as I strolled into church this Sunday morning, and I was well over thirty minutes late. I went out last night with my best friend Blake, and she had me out until after two in the morning, which caused for me to push my alarm back twice this morning.
Blake was my best friend of many years. We met in middle school. After high school, Blake moved to New York because she wanted to pursue her dreams in fashion. She wanted to get into wardrobe directing, and fashion show coordination. I was heartbroken when my girl moved to New York and left me. Blake was the only friend that I had outside my sisters. Bitches didn’t like me like that. I was always the girl that everybody thought that I thought I was all that (which I did), and because of that, I never really had a lot of friends like that. Blake and I were damn near the same person, so it was easy for us to get along.
After Blake did her years of fashion school in New York, she chose to stay out there, and that’s where she’s been for 15 plus years, and she’s made a big name for herself in the fashion industry. My girl just moved back to Miami about three monthsago, and you would have thought that she was my man that had just come back home from war because I was happy to have my girl back. Coming back to Miami was a great business move for her because there have been big fashion shows taking place here, and my girl would be behind the scenes, coordinating runway looks, working with designers, and things like that. She would still be back and forth to New York, but for now, Miami was going to be home for her, and I couldn’t be happier. She had me out in Brickell with her last night, lounge, and bar hopping, and that explained me walking in here late with dark shades over my eyes, trying to hide the hangover that I was fighting.
I scanned the large church, and I was able to find my mom. She was sitting in the 10throw, which was the row that she would always sit in whenever she came to church. She was up, out of her seat, just like everyone else, and she had Liberty in her arms, who was knocked out, with her little head buried into the crook of my mom’s neck. My mom thought that Liberty was her child, so she would go to June’s and Free’s house, take her grandchild, and be on her way. She was a good grandmother, and no lie, it was shocking to see her in this light because growing up, she wasn’t the best mother. Well, she wasn’t the best mother in the beginning. She eventually got it together.
My mom had us young. She literally got pregnant with me when she was only fifteen, but she had me at sixteen. By the time I was one years old, my father had gotten a prison sentence, and instead of her sitting her ass down, she got pregnant two years later with Tommie. Four years after that, she had Free, and another four years after that, she had Nivea. Having kids back-to-back, getting into fucked up relationships that didn’t end up working out, caused my mom to miss out on a lot of her youth. Because of that, we would spend a lot of time with our grandma, while our mom went out, partied, and did her own thing. She wasn’t the mother that we needed.
Growing up, it felt like she was our big sister that never liked to bring her ass home. I feel like my mama didn’t really slow down and fully get it together until Tommie got pregnant with Tailynn. Because Tommie was a hot girl like our mom, who didn’t know how to sit her ass down after having kids, my mom had taken on the responsibility of watching after my niece, so that’s what slowed my mom down, ultimately.
My mom was very much still a hot girl, but these days, she didn’t play about her kids, and she damn sure didn’t play about her grandchildren. She had three granddaughters that I knew she would go to war for, and the way she loved them was her getting it right this time and being there for them in a way that she wasn’t there for us. I didn’t hang it over her head though. I wasn’t going to judge her on her past. I was too busy worried about the present, and what was in store for our future.
My mom felt my presence, so she turned her head to look over at me. It’s like she knew that I was working with a hangover because all she could do was shake her head, as she stepped back a little bit, so that I could cut through, and get in the same pew that she was sitting on. Usually, I would be up out of my seat, praising, and worshipping right along with her, but this morning, I only had the energy to sit down.
I placed my purse on the side of me, and I crossed my legs, rocking my body from side to side to the song that the choir was still up there singing. They didn’t finish until another two minutes, and when they did, that’s when the congregation, along with my mom, found their seats.
My mom sat down, and she cradled Liberty in her lap, as she looked over at me. I reached my hand out, putting it on my niece’s little white, ballerina church shoes that she had on, and then my eyes traveled up, looking at Liberty, so in love with her. She was knocked out, and looking so adorable in her yellowchurch dress, with a white sweater on. Her jet-black curly hair was hanging loosely with a yellow, and white headband.
“Why you got them sunglasses on? These messy behind church people going to think that you got a man at home that’s beating on you,” my mom said to me in an aggressive whisper. I couldn’t do anything but laugh because her ass was so dramatic.
“I have a hangover. I’m trying to disguise it,” I let her know, and she just waved me off, and she went back to looking ahead of her.
I haven’t been to church in over a month because I had been in Milan. I attended one of those old school churches, so they weren’t up to date in terms of technology, so it wasn’t like I could watch service online while I was away. Because I haven’t been up to date on everything that was taking place at the church, here I was, finally laying eyes on the new pastor that my mom had been ranting, and raving about. Pastor Dukes had been our pastor for years. He was getting old though. Pastor Dukes had to have been in his eighties. For years, there have been rumors around the church on who they believed he was going to give the position to. Pastor Dukes had six sons, but none of them gave that they had the maturity, or the mindset to run a church, so I never believed that he would pass it to any of his boys. I was right about that. He’d chosen to give the position to his godson. His name was Corey, and my mom kept rushing me to come back from Milan because she wanted me to see him in person and hear his ministering.
I couldn’t lie though and say that my mom was being dramatic when she talked about how handsome Corey was. Corey had light skin, and with him standing up there on the pulpit, and the lights flashing on him, you could see the sparkle in his beautiful hazel eyes. His hair was sandy brown, and it was cut low. He didn’t have any waves or anything, and his face was clear of a beard. All he had was a little chin hair at the bottom.Corey had tattoos. From where I was sitting, I could see the tattoos that he had on his fist.
Before he became a pastor, you could just tell that he had a different kind of life before this one. The tattoos, and just the way he spoke, showed that. I didn’t mind it though. I loved a pastor that was relatable. One that still fell short of glory sometimes and didn’t think that they were perfect.
My mom had already told me that Corey was 40, but because he didn’t have the beard, and everything else going on, it made him look much younger. Very handsome, but not my type, nonetheless.
“I’m going to introduce you to him when service is over. That’s the kind of man that you need in your life. Someone that’s just a few years older than you. Not those old men that you like to deal with. Corey is only 40, and he doesn’t have any children. He’s single too. That man wants a wife. He got up there and said it last week in church. He’s a good man,” my mama said to me.
“Ma, please. Don’t go trying to play matchmaker. I don’t want him. I don’t want to be a preachers wife, either,” I said to her in a harsh whisper, hoping that she would understand how serious I was.
When her ass just waved me off, and she didn’t respond, I knew that she was going to do what she wanted to do, which is why I already had plans to get out of here the second service was over, so that I could stop her from doing whatever it was that she thought she was going to do.
Almost an hour later, and service was finally over. Not going to lie, pastor Corey did his thing. I found myself going in my purse, pulling out some tissue, so that I could wipe my eyes a few times because when he was preaching, it’s almost like someone had given him my story, and he was up there speaking directly to me. The sermon came from Isaiah 61:3. That sermon spoke about God taking the ugliest parts of our story, whether it wasany shame, pain, or mistakes that we’ve made along the way, and how He would still bring something beautiful out of it in the end. I feel like that story resonates with my life so bad, mainly about the mess that I went through because of my part that I chose to play with dealing with a married man like Garrus.
