“I am,” I said wondering if he would ever understand the way I felt.
I took Clara to see Foxy Brown that night and we made love in the back seat of my old Chevy as the movie played out on the big screen. I was so happy when I walked her to her parents’ door and gave her a kiss goodnight. But when I got back home, Pops kept me up much of the night talking about the controversy my relationship with Clara could cause. He said being with her was a death sentence over my life, career, and everything I held dear. He even said we could lose our family business, or even worse I could end up dead because of my relationship with Clara.
My father knew how much I loved our family business, how much I believed in our family’s legacy. He knew because he instilled it in me since I was old enough to walk. He knew if anything would get to me, the loss of my grandfather’s business might snap me back to the reality of the world we lived in. One of tight-lipped segregation in an officially desegregated society. One of evil that lurked in the nooks and crevices of America.
I held steadfast to my love for Clara, even when my father threatened not to pay my tuition for the following semester and to move me to another school in another state. And when my first semester at Wellmington ended, so did my financial support for that small, fine institution. My father had his own plan. He had pulled some strings and enrolled me at Yale University.
“You might as well go and tell that girlfriend of yours it’s over. It will be years before you get to see her again, if I have anything to do with it,” he told me as he held the acceptance papers for Yale in his hands about a month later. “Besides, once you get to Yale and start hanging around those kids, you will have forgotten everything about Wellmington.”
I put two and two together really fast. My father didn’t want me to be with Clara, so he was moving me clear across the country to Yale. I didn’t want to leave Clara, but I had no choice if I wanted to finish college and not bring shame to my family for being a bum.
She was heartbroken when I told her I was moving to another state to finish college. She knew my father disapproved of her and blamed me for giving up so easily. “You say you want to be with me and you don’t want to leave. If you really want to be with me, you would fight for us,” she’d said.
“I can’t make my father pay for Wellmington. If I could afford to pay for my own tuition, I would stay,” I tried to reason with her. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to fight for us. But I did what most young men did in the seventies. I did what my father asked of me. I assimilated into the world that was created many years before I was born.
Seeing how devastated she was and not knowing when we’d get to see each other again, I reluctantly broke things off. I wanted her to find someone to make her happy, someone that wasn’t thousands of miles away, and someone that wasn’t off limits to her in society’s eyes.
When I came back home for spring break, Clara wouldn’t accept my calls and told her mother not to allow me near their house. Eventually, I stopped bothering her. I felt there was nothing I could say or do to ease her pain but leave her alone. I told her I would never leave her and never hurt her, but I did.
Out of need for companionship, I took Tammy out on a date. One date led to two and before I knew anything, I was standing at the altar waiting for my bride to enter the chapel. When I pulled the veil from over Tammy’s head to kiss her, I closed my eyes and imagined it had been Clara’s pretty, brown eyes staring back at me. That was the day I signed away forty years of my life to a loveless marriage. It was the day I sealed my fate.
I tried like hell to forget Clara. I tried even harder to remember Tammy was the one I was supposed to love and cherish each day of my life. It was a goal I never reached. A goal I never wanted to reach.
Chapter 4
Destiny
Leave Well Enough Alone
While I could’ve lived my entire life and not seen Jacob’s mother again, my own mother had a few surprises up her sleeve, as well. She had some real explaining to do, once we touched down in Atlanta. I had the limo drive us to her house, where I was staying the night so she could answer the many questions running through my mind. The whole fiasco at Jacob’s parents’ house opened up chapters I had never read about my own mother.
I was sitting at her kitchen table with my foot in the chair. My chin rested on my knee, with my arms wrapped around my leg, as I was in deep thought.
“Don’t sit over there looking at me like that Destiny,” Mama said after fixing herself a cup of hot tea.
“Mama, you knew all along that Jacob’s father was the original heir of Turner Enterprises. So you knew when we left your house with your flowers that you would be going to the Turner’s home and that you would see Mr. Turner there.”
“Of course, I knew,” Mama said as she placed her tea on the table and sat across from me.
“So you planned for this mess to happen?”
“It’s been forty years since I saw that man. I didn’t expect anything to happen, except dinner.”
“Why didn’t you just come out and tell me you’d been in a relationship with Jacob’s father? You spent all this time talking down about Jacob and, come to find out, it stems from whatever his father did to you.”
“When the kids first started talking about you dating a white man from Miami named Jacob and all the gifts he was buying them and trips he was taking them on, the first person I thought about was John. I knew he had a son named Jacob. I was hoping it was some great big ole’ coincidence, so I started researching Jacob then.”
“You did research on Jacob?”
“Girl, I have researched every boy to man you’ve ever dated.”
“That’s a mess, Mom. I didn’t know you snooped in my business like that.”
Mom waved a hand at me. “When I realized he was John’s son, I almost flat lined. I couldn’t believe you were actually dating his son. It was more than I could handle, but I honestly didn’t plan to act up at their house. I’m sorry, Destiny.”
“I just can’t believe you knew Jacob was John’s son the entire time and you never said anything.”
“What was I going to say? You’re in love with the son of the man that broke my heart?”