My head was in my hands, and I hadn’t even realized that I was crying until I felt a tear hit my lip. I let that bitch play me. I let that bitch get into my fuckin’ head, only to fuckin’ play with me. I knew I wasn’t the best nigga in the world, but you don’t get a nigga back like that! From the jump, if she didn’t want to go through with this shit, then she could have just told me that. It wasn’t like I had a fuckin’ gun to put to her damn head. I might have called her out her name, made a few threats, but because I was a nigga who didn’t have shit, I wouldn’t have been able to hold any power over her or coerce her to do shit that she didn’t want to do.
I was angry. I was hurt. I felt motha fuckin’ defeated. I got so fuckin’ angry that I could feel myself shaking.
“Ughhhhhhh,” I screamed, standing up and punching the fuck out of the cement walls.
I continued to do it until so much blood poured out of my hands, that I knew for a fact that I’d broken both of them. It was the way my knuckles were barely hanging on that let me know that they were broken. I slouched down on the dirty ass floor and cried like a little bitch, and I didn’t give a fuck who heard me. This was a gruesome cry that I was supposed to let out when the judge told me that I would never see the light of day again, but I guess back then, I was too hard to let people hear me cry.
At this moment, I just simply didn’t give a fuck. These pussy ass niggas could pick on me all the fuck they wanted to in the morning. Yes, I was a man, but I had fuckin’ feelings, and them motha fuckas were played with. With all the noise that I was making in my cell, no one had ever come to check up on me. The correctional officers were used to this type of shit.
When our feelings came out about our current status, it would usually come out at night. It took me about a good fifteen minutes to get myself together, and when I did, I stood up and went over to the small sink that was inside the cell. For what felt like forever, I ran the cold water over my bleeding fist. No matter what, the blood just continued to come down. I ended up having to take two pair of my socks and tying them both on my hands. This would have to work until I saw a nurse in the morning.
One day, my wrists were just going to fall the fuck off because this wasn’t the first time that I’ve gotten so upset with the wall that I decided to fight it. In the end, it was always me getting my ass beat. With nothing but defeat falling from my body, I went over to my bed and lay down. I had no plans to check my phone, but because it’s been something that I religiously do every night before I go to sleep, I decided to check it.
After this silly bitch had the fuckin’ nerve to leave a nigga fuckin’ hanging, I couldn’t even believe that she had the fuckin’ balls to text me. As much as I just wanted to delete the text message without even reading it and cut my phone off, a big part of me still wanted to see what this bitch had to say. I swear after this, I will never put my trust into another bitch’s hands. Every bitch that I ever trusted in my fuckin’ life always shitted on me in the end; my ole girl, Shae, and now this bitch! I was convinced that all these bitches were the same.
Raynell: You don’t have to tell me how much you hate me; trust me, I already know. You have every right to hate me, to wish death on me, and to even kill me if you were given the chance. I’m texting you right now with tears falling from my eyes because I hate myself for doing this to you; for doing this to us. I want you to know that I love you, Giovonni, like really love you, and my actions weren’t to be malicious at all, but I found something out yesterday morning, and I had to make the decision for us.
I know I stood there and gave you this whole speech about how I was going to stop fuckin’ you, especially when I knew that you were dealing with other women, but you have a way with your words and actions that just has me losing the good sense that God blessed me with. I had to kill our first baby a few months ago, Trip, due to my carelessness with taking my pills, and here I am again, months later, in this same predicament. Only thing is, I cannot kill another baby. Our baby. You probably think I’m the dumbest bitch in the world to even consider keeping your baby, especially when I know that you’ll never see the light of day again, but Trip, I’m smart. I just let you get in my head, and I lost all my sense.
Not that this even matters, but I graduated class valedictorian from high school, and when I decided that I wanted to be a correctional officer, I graduated number one in the class on that too. I’m book smart as hell, but when it comes to men like you, I guess I tend to lose all of my sense. I hate that I’m doing this to you, but for the past few months, I’ve been putting you first and myself last, and with this child growing in my stomach, that stops today.
I made the decision to resign and not go through with what we had planned because God had better for me. I knew God letting me find out the day before we were supposed to do this wasn’t by coincidence. There was a strong possibility that I could have been trading in my work uniform for a jail uniform, and as selfish as this may sound to you, I’m glad that I didn’t go through with what we had planned.
I want you to know that I love you, Giovonni. I don’t have the right words to offer you, to make you feel like everything is going to be okay, but what I will say is that you are a smart man, and you should use your intelligence to better yourself. Believe it or not, a lot of the younger boys that come into the prison, they actually look up to you. For whatever reason, they do whatever you do. Take advantage of it. Open a group. That’s positive, and I know that the warden will approve of it. I just don’t want to see you self-destruct in there. If this is going to be your reality, then at least try to make the best of it.
After I finished the message, I deleted it and powered off my phone. There was nothing else that needed to be said. As mad as I wanted to be at Raynell, I could honestly say that I got it. If she was pregnant like she said she was, then okay. The selfish part of me wouldn’t admit that right now because this shit was still fresh. Maybe weeks from now, I would be able to wholeheartedly agree with her on why she made that decision, but right now, I was still in my feelings.
It was so crazy to me how I was a nigga serving a life sentence, yet I was still out here having kids. Not only was I thinking about the child that I possibly had on the way, but I was also thinking about the last part of her message. The part where she told me to open some sort of group. I had what it took to be an advocate, especially with the life that I lived, but it just all depended on these little niggas and if they wanted to listen. Shit, I had stories, and I didn’t mind telling them.
Jabari Brooks
“Wahhhhh… Wahhhhh… Wahhhhhh,” was the first thing that I heard as I walked through my front door.
I loved my daughter to death with her pretty self, but that little girl had a pair of lungs on her, and her ass wasn’t afraid to fuckin’ use them. I swear all she did was damn cry. We barely took pictures of her because she was always showing her damn tonsils, crying and shit. I couldn’t wait until she got a little older and I could fuck with her, telling her how much of a fuckin’ cry baby she was when she was younger.
It’s been a month, and this shit wasn’t getting any better. She still took cat naps at night, and when she finally decided to go to sleep at night, it would usually be after midnight. Easily the prettiest little girl that I’ve ever seen in my life with that head full of curly, jet black hair, and pretty eyes that I knew would make it hard for a nigga to tell her no, down to the deep dimples that graced both of her cheeks. Those were all things that pretty much made her perfect in my eyes. Who would ever think that a gorgeous ass little girl like the one we had would cause all this fuckin’ hell? She was beating Mahogany’s ass the worst, though.
I felt that Jamaria performed at her absolute worst whenever Mahogany had her. She would do a different type of obnoxious cry that she wouldn’t do with anyone else. Granted, she would be a little fussy whenever I had her too, but most times, I was able to calm her down within a couple of seconds. My daughter had taken her rightful position as a daddy’s girl from the moment she came into this world, and she was placed on my chest for skin to skin time. Mahogany was so fuckin’ happy when she found out that we were having a girl, but I bet she never thought that she would be in constant competition for my attention with our own damn daughter.
Speaking of Mahogany, I loved her to death, but her ass was driving me fuckin’ crazy with all that fuckin’ crying. I felt like there were times when she was worse than the fuckin’ baby. On top of that, she was dealing with postpartum depression after the birth of our daughter, so it’s like I had to be real fuckin’ considerate of the shit that I said to her. Just yesterday, I gave her crazy ass a fuckin’ compliment, telling her that her ass looked fatter in the tights that she was wearing. This woman threw a whole fuckin’ tantrum, accusing me of calling her fat and all types of other shit. Never in my fuckin’ life did I think that my wife would be insecure because she had confidence out of this fuckin’ world. That was one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place.
I knew Mahogany’s body like a fat kid knew the McDonald’s menu. Therefore I picked up on the new changes since she had Jamaria, but they were good changes. Yes, she still had “mommy weight” on her, but that shit was sexy, and I couldn’t be more attracted to her. What really fucked with Mahogany the most was when she couldn’t go through with the breastfeeding. She beat herself up about that for days at a time, questioning her status as a mother and feeling less than since she wasn’t giving our daughter breast milk.
The pressures on a woman to be a mother are out of this world, and I will never understand for the life of me why the fuck my wife even compares herself to what other parents are during with their children. I didn’t think it made our daughter less than any other child who was getting breast milk but tell that shit to my wife, and there was like zero understanding. Then, she was always on these new mother websites and looking at shit online. If she felt like she wasn’t doing something that another parent was doing with their child, it made her less than. It was to the point that I just wanted to call Comcast and tell them to disconnect all of our services. That way, she wouldn’t be able to get on the internet and look up shit.
I came into the house from being at my shoe store all day and said a quick prayer because I didn’t have the slightest clue of what type of mood my wife would be in tonight with her moody ass. I kicked my shoes off, leaving them by the door, and jogged up the stairs, heading in the direction that I heard the crying coming from, which was Jamari’s nursery. A room that we spent thousands on, only for her little ass to sleep in the room with us.
My chest was where she slept because when she was lying on my chest, that’s the only time she would sleep for at least two hours straight, and those two hours were well needed. It was the only time that Mahogany and I were able to get some sleep. Since Mahogany was back cool with her mom, she had been coming over lately to watch the baby. That’s usually when we could get a little break just to clean the house, take a shower, or whatever other little shit that our demanding ass baby kept us from doing.
When I walked into the room, Mahogany had Jamaria in her crib, and our baby was screaming her lungs out. Mahogany wasn’t sitting too far from her in the rocking chair, but it’s as if she had zoned out. Her eyes weren’t even on me when I walked in the room. Instead, they were zoomed in on the wall in front of her. She was in the same clothes that I left her in this morning when I headed into work. It was a tank top and those same tights that she cried about last night when I told her that her ass looked fatter. Her hair was standing up on top of her head, and I couldn’t even remember the last time she ran a comb through that bitch.
We had a newborn baby, so I didn’t expect her to be walking around this bitch looking the way she looked when we first met because I knew how much hard work and dedication that Jamaria required. So, my wife looked like the epitome of a mommy with a newborn.
“Mahogany! Shorty, you don’t hear the motha fuckin’ baby crying, yo? Fuck is wrong with you?” I barked at her.
That’s when she snapped out of whatever daze she was in and sat up in her seat. I shook my head at her and picked Jamaria up from the crib. As soon as I held her, I could smell her and see that her diaper needed to be changed. I turned around and looked at my wife, who looked like she was ashamed of herself. She held her head down in shame, unable to even look at me, embarrassed that I walked in on her letting the baby just fuckin’ cry like this. I mean, we took a parenting class together, and we did learn that if we ever just got overwhelmed with the baby, then we needed to lay the baby down and walk away. But, damn, I couldn’t help but wonder how long she had the damn baby crying.
“I’m sorry. She’s just been crying… she’s been crying all day. I don’t know what to do, Jabari.” Her voice was gone, which was understandable because she cried all damn day too, so she’d made her voice go fuckin’ hoarse.