Page 70 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
“Yuh cyah say nothing, Daddy! Yuh have any idea how everyone in town is talking? What kind of humiliation yuh putting us through? Our whole family, we the fucking scandal of the week. Your little wutless girlfriend, she know what that means? What that’s going to be like, when she all up in the gossip section of the papers? Or maybe that’s what she come here for—any kinda fame, any attention. And yuh here giving it to her. Yuh was that lonely, to fall for this bullshit?”
Feyi stifled a gasp, covering her mouth with both hands, her heart wrenching as she listened to the barbs Lorraine was throwing. Didn’t she know how cruel she was being, couldn’t she hear herself?
Alim’s voice cracked. “I’m glad your mother isn’t here to hear you say that to me.”
“Don’t bring Mummy into this. Not when yuh fucking that girl.”
“You were always so angry when you were in pain, even when you were little. My sea urchin, my spiky one.” There was warmth in his words, pain and love all wound tightly together. “I know worlds more about my loneliness than you ever will, and I like to think your mother does, too.”
“Yuh think she would be okay with any of this? You sleeping with a girl young enough to be yuh daughter, destroying the family, breaking Nasir’s heart? This is what yuh think Mummy would want?”
Alim gave a short, dry laugh and sighed. “Your mother would be furious, but she knew me, Lorraine. She knew that I can be impetuous, fast, that I could bruise things when I’m making other things. But, baby girl, I’m not trying to break what I have with you and your brother. I know I’ve stretched it, I know I’ve hurt it, frayed it, but I am here, fighting to keep it, keep us together. I’m here to have the difficult conversations, I’m here to take whatever spikes you throw at me, always, forever. I will never love you any less. I am so grateful you came here to talk. Thank you.”
Feyi heard Lorraine sniffle and take a deep breath. “Why can’t yuh just send her away, Daddy? Please? We could try and fix everything, the three of us, we could get through this and forgive you and put it behind us. It’s what I want, it’s what Nasir wants. Please?”
“Baby girl …” Alim’s voice was thick with tears. “I can’t do that. I know you real vex with me right now, but I can’t do the ultimatums. I’m so sorry.”
“Why? Why can’t yuh just stop this?” Lorraine’s voice was raised and shaking. “Why is she worth all this to you? She worth losing yuh kids?! She worth the scandal, the gossip, losing face in front of the whole fucking island? Yuh know how many people look up to you here? They eh care when the tabloids say all that shit about you, they eh care about how you dress, how you does present yuhself. Because you’re Alim Blake, yuh a champion. And now what? Yuh want to be some old man who fucking his son’s girl? Fuh real?”
“This isn’t about Feyi—”
Lorraine steamrolled over his words, her voice tumbling frantic and angry. “Nasir and I, we trying our damn best to fix this, and yuh keep saying yuh want to, but yuh refusing to do anything, to change anything. Yuh just want us to fall in line with this bullshit!” She slammed into a pause, and a note of incredulity slid into her voice. “Oh my God. Yuh not sorry … yuh don’t even think yuh done anything wrong.”
Alim hesitated.
“Wow, Daddy, really? Really?”
He sighed. “I made a choice. It might be hurtful and hard and difficult, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I thought I had taught you that by now.”
Lorraine scoffed, contempt dripping from her words. “Yuh could try all the loopholes yuh want, but it cyah change how fucked-up this is, and the fact that yuh refusing to see that is madness. I don’t even know why I bothering to talk to you.”
Alim exhaled a slow breath, and there was silence for a while. Feyi swallowed hard but didn’t dare move until they started talking again, when she could leave without being heard. She’d already stayed for too long, listened to too much.
“I wish you could see me,” he finally said, and there was grief packed in his words, a stone sinking into blackness. “I’m trying to explain to you and Nasir why I’m choosing myself in this, how that doesn’t mean I’m choosing Feyi over you two, or that I’m not choosing you as well. How it doesn’t have to be these binaries, these ultimatums.”
“Daddy, we—”
“No.” His voice was heavy. “No, let me talk. You’ve said so much already, and I hear you. I hear that you want me to end things with Feyi, to do what you and your brother want, what would make it easier for this family. I hear you. I feel with you and for you, this pain I’ve caused by seeking out a relationship like this. I wish it had been another way, that I had met her somewhere else, that she had come to the mountain some other way, but I can’t change the circumstances that brought her to me, and with her, the possibility that my life could go in a direction I thought was closed off. And for this, this possibility? You’re so young, baby girl, your whole life is still nothing but possibilities. You can’t possibly know what it’s like to lose it, and how much even a chance of its return is worth to me.”
“Daddy …” Lorraine’s voice was full of pity. “None of this is real, don’t yuh see? If yuh going to do alla this, do it for something real, not for a groupie. All she does want is a fling with a man who rich and famous. She trying to take advantage of you. Nasir and I just trying to protect you.”
Feyi couldn’t bear to listen anymore. She started edging away from the door, but their voices still spilled into the corridor.
“I appreciate your concern, baby girl, but let me take care of myself, okay? This is not how I want things to be between us.”
“We eh want this, either, Daddy. But Nasir and I cyah pretend like we think this is okay, not while she still here, while all this still going on.”
“Lorraine, this is your home, too. That hasn’t changed.”
“Nah. It eh feel like home right now.”
“Lorraine—”
“I gotta go, Daddy. Call us if yuh decide to come to yuh senses.”
Feyi slipped into a side room just as Lorraine left the library, her heels clacking against the marble tiles, her ponytail shiny as it bounced down her back. She was dabbing at her eyes as she hurried out of the house, and soon the engine of her car roared to life, and the wheels spun gravel along the driveway as she sped back down the mountain.
Feyi stood with her forehead against the door, her heart pounding. This was worse than she’d imagined, somehow even worse than Nasir’s rage, this cold stating of terms, the way she’d laid it out for Alim. Feyi, or his kids. His family, or this attempt they were foolish enough to think they could make. The thought of Nasir deciding that she was a gold-digging groupie cut Feyi deeply. He’d known her. He’d held her while she slept, kissed her forehead in the morning, made her breakfast. That was the Nasir she knew, the patient and sweet man, not the swirling rage that had barged into her room, not this revisionist storyteller making her into a lie. This one was a stranger. And the things Lorraine had said to Alim! He must be devastated.