Page 7

THIRTY YEARS EARLIER

Damascus is screaming. That’s the first thing that I hear before the crash. The next thing that I hear is the girls screaming, “Let my daddy go!”

I jump out of bed, and the twins instantly wake up.

“Go back to sleep, boys.”

“What’s wrong, Z?” Denver asks as tears fill his eyes.

Aspen rubs his eyes sleepily and yawns.

“Go back to sleep. Both of you and I ain’t playing with your bad little asses. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell them. “I’m gonna lock the door. Don’t open it for anybody but me, you hear?”

They nod, but the fear doesn’t erase from their eyes as they lie down in their twin beds. I slip out of our bedroom, locking the door behind me.

“I said, get on the floor!” I hear someone say as I creep toward the other room and stare at the chaos.

It’s not the first time that my dad has been robbed, but they’ve never come into our home before. It’s always been something my mom worried about, but my dad has a lot of men on the streets who fear him. They wouldn’t dare do shit like that.

This ain’t that.

The dining room table is broken, chairs are turned over on their sides, and some dishes lie shattered on the floor. The girls are crying on the couch, sitting beside a woman police officer who’s restraining them from going to my parents. That same officer is holding Damascus, who is crying.

My parents both lie on the floor in handcuffs.

“What the fuck is going on?” I ask, rushing to my sisters.

“Hey, buddy. Slow up,” another cop orders.

The house is crawling with police officers, and for the first time, I notice that they’re in the kitchen, my parents’ bedroom, and there’s another one heading to my sisters’ bedroom.

“I want to know what’s going on. Why are my parents being arrested?” I demand while another cop shoves his gun under my chin.

Fear and rage flow through me. I want so badly to snatch this gun out of his hand and then beat the brakes off his ass with it. Then I want to put a bullet in his brain.

Unfortunately, I have a quick temper. It’s something that I’ve struggled with all my life. In school, I’m in anger management classes, and I see a therapist twice a week.

“Z, calm down, son. Everything’s going to be okay. Just chill out. It’s all a misunderstanding that I need to straighten out,” my father commands.

“If you call a misunderstanding a few bricks stored in the same house your kids are in, a misunderstanding, I guess we can call it that,” the arresting officer states.

My mother is crying and saying my dad’s name repeatedly.

“Sir, please let my wife go. She has nothing to do with this. Neither do my children. Please, tell your officer to get that gun from underneath my son’s chin.”

“Richards, you can remove the gun. I’m not letting your wife go until I finish my investigation,” the officer professes.

“I’m not lying, sir. She didn’t know any of this stuff was stashed here,” my father pleads.

“I didn’t, officer. I swear that I wouldn’t have had this around my children,” my mom cries.

“Listen, Mr. Knight, we’ve been watching you and your home for some time. Now, I know that you’ve been dealing drugs, and there’s no misunderstanding,” the officer counters.

My father drops his forehead against the floor with a thud.

“Officer, please. Do what you've got to do with me, but please let my wife and kids go.”

I reach for my sisters, and the female cop releases them, and they run into my arms.

I hold them as they tremble and cry for our parents. I stroke their thick hair and whisper to them both, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I ain’t gonna let nothing happen to either of you, you hear me?”

They both nod, but they don’t stop crying. Eventually, the cops move to the rear of the house, where they find my twin brothers. The boys are obedient and don’t unlock the door until I tell them to. I only do that to prevent the officers from kicking the door in as they’ve threatened to do.

The investigation goes on for another two hours before they take my father away and put him into the back of the police car. They’ve released my mother, and she’s a wreck. She huddles with both girls and the twins on the couch and the twins. Damascus is now in her lap.

“I’ll be back, Mama.”

She nods woodenly, but I swear it’s like she doesn’t even see me. She’s so zoned out and shivering her ass off. I could kick my daddy’s ass. What the hell was he thinking?

I head outside into the night, where the entire neighborhood looks on.

“May I speak to my father?” I ask an officer.

He nods and replies. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Okay.”

Shoving my hands into the pockets of my sleep shorts, I stick my head inside the car.

“Daddy, what’s up, man?”

“I don’t know, son. I never bring shit into the house. I have no idea how it got there. I swear.”

Jutting my chin at him and then widening my eyes, I’m nonverbally asking him if it was his stash. He blinks once to confirm that it is.

I lean a bit closer and whisper, “Where was it?”

He glances sideways and up. I lean out of the car in the direction that he’s looking at and see Essence’s house. She’s standing on the porch with her arms folded. Her eyebrow lifts, and she’s wearing a smirk.

My father was a fucking fool for that bitch.

“Word? With her?”

He nods.

“Son, I’ll be gone for a while. There ain’t no way around it. I’ll do what I can to beat this thing, but the reality is, it ain’t happening. Hold things down and keep your mama strong.”

“I’ll come visit, Daddy.”

“I don’t want that for you, son.”

“It ain’t about what you want no more, now is it?” I ask, hardening my gaze and my voice as I take a step back from the car.

I head inside the house to check on my mother.

I pull Damascus off her lap and sit him on Savannah’s lap. I pull my mother into my arms and rock with her. I kiss the top of her head as she cries and wraps her arms around me so tightly.

What am I going to do with this?

My mama’s a good, loving woman. She doesn’t deserve this bullshit. I ask her, “Mama, did anyone come over here today?”

“Not that I can recall. Not any of his boys. What? You think that somebody placed it here and set him up?”

I nod.

She shakes her head. “Your daddy didn’t have any visitors today. The only person who came to visit was Essence.”

“What did she want?”

“That was earlier this afternoon when your dad was still at work and you were at school. She came to give me a break with Damascus so that I could run to the laundromat since the washer is acting up.”

“That was today?”

“Uh-huh.”

“For how long?”

Shrugging, my mama sniffles and answers. “About a couple of hours, at least. No, it was more like three because I remember I drove to the school to pick the little ones up after I was finished at the laundromat.”

My mama wouldn’t have thought it odd that Essence came by.

She’s done that from time to time, pretending to be neighborly with my mom.

She’ll come asking to borrow a cup of sugar or saying that she made too much of something or other and thought she would share with us since there were so many of us.

Or she’d say she was going to the store and ask if my mama needed her to pick up anything.

She even pretended to be her friend. Mama and Essence were the only two ladies on our block who were the same age or even in the same age group.

Whenever Julius beat up Essence, she ran to our house, and Mama would fix her up, but she’d only come if Daddy weren’t home.

Those visits to my mama started before Essence started fucking my daddy.

All the while, she was getting closer and closer to my daddy, sneaking him in and out of her bed, all so she could see what was going on in our home and use that as leverage.

That bitch set my daddy up, and she’s going to pay.

If it’s the last thing that I do, I’ll see that she suffers for the hell that she’s put my mama through.