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Authors: Shana Burton

BOOK: Catt Chasing
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“Jamal, you're not fine!” argued Catt. “Why won't you let me help you?”
“There's nothing you can do because there's nothing going on. I just need to get out of here for a minute.” He staggered to his feet. “I'm going to walk around a minute. I need to clear my head.”
“You could talk to me,” she suggested. “Jamal, tell me about these nightmares. What is causing you to jump up out of your sleep in a cold sweat?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled. “I'm just stressed out about work. I need to be by myself for a while. I need to think.”
“Then let me come with you,” she pleaded.
“You can't. Catt, the place I'm in right now is so dark that I don't think you could handle going there with me,” replied Jamal, defeated.
Catt touched his face. “I can try. I just want to understand you . . . if you'll let me.”
He dropped his head. “Don't waste your time.”
Jamal darted across the field, still hearing the yelling, the pleading, and the gunshot in his head. No matter what he did, stifling the images that haunted him wasn't an option. They visited him every day without fail. There were times when it was so overpowering that Jamal would break down crying, covering his ears and closing his eyes in a futile attempt to block it out of his mind. Most of the time, he would try to distract himself and repress the memories. Here lately, however, it seemed that he couldn't escape fast enough.
Catt's last words were still echoing in his head:
I just want to understand you
, she'd said. But how could he make her understand what he couldn't put into words himself?
This was one part of himself that Jamal could never understand. Why couldn't he just fall in love, be happy, and enjoy life like everyone else? After his father's death twenty-two years prior, it seemed as if he could no longer relate to people in the same way, especially women. Despite even Tonya's unwavering love and loyalty, something in him would not let him give himself completely to her—or any woman.
He longed to be happy and at peace. He couldn't understand why this was seemingly more difficult for him than for other people, but he did know that the reason was intractably tied to his mother, the yelling, the pleading, and the gunshot.
Chapter 24
Jamal knocked on Catt's hotel room door prepared to dish out an apology. He barely spoke to her after returning from his walk and continuing the ride to Baltimore.
She opened the door and looked him up and down. “Yes?” she replied coldly.
“You can drop the attitude. I came to say I'm sorry.”
Catt crossed her arms in front of her. “I don't hear you saying it.”
“Can I come in first?”
Catt waited a few seconds before widening the door enough for him to pass through, then closed it again. “Now, you were saying . . .”
He faced her. “I'm sorry for the way I acted earlier. I know you were only trying to help. I was being a jerk, and I apologize. Hopefully, you can find it in your very loving and generous heart to forgive me.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
He sighed. “No, Catt, I'm being 100 percent sincere. I shouldn't have stormed off that way, leaving you vulnerable to another assault from the mob of angry, vindictive ducks.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “All right, you're forgiven this time; just don't make it a habit.” She sat down at her small table, which had pictures scattered across the top.
“Hey, what you got going on over here?” asked Jamal, picking up one of the pictures.
“I'm scrapbooking. I've been collecting pictures from all of the beautiful places we've seen. I wanted to go ahead and preserve them while the memories are still fresh.”
He looked over at her photo album and noticed a picture of a little girl in afro-puffs holding up a fish. A man was crouching down behind her beaming proudly.
“Is that you?” asked Jamal, pointing to the picture.
“Yeah, that's me and my dad.” She smiled and lifted the picture out of the album. “It was taken near my grandmother's house. I spent practically every summer there catching fish at the creek with my dad or running around with my cousins. I was about eight years old in that picture. It was my first fish.” She handed the picture to Jamal.
“Sounds like you had the perfect childhood. I was lucky just to survive mine.” He studied the picture. “They should have known you were going to be trouble even back then. What kind of little girl holds a dead animal like that with such bravado and pride,” he teased.
“I was a sweet, adorable child,” she bragged.
“Yeah, but I bet you went through that ugly phase as a teen.”
“Who?” she scoffed and flipped through the pages until she came to one of a lanky teenager wearing a pastel-pink, bouffantlike gown with a red sash across the front and a tiara. She was holding a bundle of roses and standing on a football field.
“I'll have you to know that you are looking at Miss Sophomore for the Homecoming Court of Englewood High School. There isn't a drop of ugly on this queen!”
“I guess you were all right. You were a scrawny ol' thing back then.” Jamal continued to look through the book.
“Don't hate just because your adolescence was plagued with acne and awkwardness.”
“Please—I was
the man
in high school.” Jamal stumbled across her senior prom picture. “I guess this was the boyfriend, huh?”
“Yes, his name was Jerrod Brown. He was our class president. We were madly in love and were supposed to get married and have a thousand babies,” she reminisced. “Unfortunately, we broke up two weeks after graduation.”
“He was a punk,” grumbled Jamal.
“He was not!” she squawked.
“Look at him, that played-out fade, the lame tux. He couldn't handle you.”
Jamal flipped to the next page. “Are they your parents?” He pointed to a young couple in wedding attire. The woman bore a striking resemblance to Catt.
“Yeah, it was their wedding day.”
“You look like your mom. What does she do?”
“She rests in peace now. She died a few years back.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. It's tough when you lose your parents. You become an orphan. You're no longer anybody's baby after that,” he added. Jamal turned the page. A yellow piece of carbon paper was folded inside. He opened it and saw that it was a hospital receipt with
The Summit Women's Center
on the letterhead.
Catt instantly recognized the paper and snatched it from him. “I forgot that was in there.” She balled up the paper and threw it in the trash. She seemed uncomfortable and nervous.
“It looked like it was from a doctor's office. Were you in the hospital?”
“It was outpatient surgery. I was only there a few hours.”
“Why did you have to have surgery?”
“I just did, all right?” she said in a huff and closed the book before taking it from him.
“I wasn't finished looking at it.”
“Yes, you were. It's time for you to go.” She was flushed and trembling.
“Go?” he asked surprised.
“Yes, I don't feel good. I have cramps.”
“You didn't five minutes ago.”
“Well, I do now!” she insisted.
Jamal stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I guess you're having a Midol moment, huh?”
She flung her hand. “Whatever, Jamal. Can you leave now? I really don't feel well.”
Sensing that she was anxious for him to leave, Jamal didn't press the matter. “All right, I'll see you in the morning. Get some rest,” he said and left.
Catt walked to the trash can and smoothed out the receipt and looked at it again. She saw her name and that it was dated eleven years prior. Her eyes moved down to her height, weight, and other vitals, and stopped at the section classified as “procedure.” To the right of it, the nurse had checked the box labeled “abortion.”
She balled the paper back up and put it into the trash. She didn't want anybody to know, especially Jamal. Even if he accepted her having the abortion, he'd never understand about the child's conception. She'd thought that in leaving the university, she could leave that shame and those painful memories behind too but soon discovered that the past wasn't a place; it was a part of her that she could not escape no matter how far she ran.
Life had also taught her to guard her heart, especially with a man like Jamal, a rule that she was guilty of ignoring by getting dangerously close to him. She could feel herself starting to care for Jamal in ways that she shouldn't, but withholding her feelings wasn't as easy as it had been before she met him.
“Don't go there with him, Catt,” she warned herself. “He can't do anything for you but hurt you. You can never let yourself get hurt like that by any man again. Plus, if he knew the truth, he wouldn't have anything to do with you anyway, not after what happened to Kennedy.”
She recovered the receipt from the trash can again and decided to hold on to it as a reminder that she had to keep her guard up at all times or risk repeating the mistakes of the past.
Chapter 25
“You got everything?” asked Jamal, then strapped on his seat belt.
“Yep,” replied Catt, buckling hers.
Jamal pulled out onto the highway. “All right. Looks like we can say ‘adios' to Milwaukee.”
“Not a moment too soon!” retorted Catt.
“You didn't like it here?”
“It's not the city. I'm just tired of riding. The irony is that I love to travel, but this is too much of a good thing.”
“I'll make a deal with you. If you drive the rest of the way, I'll take you fishing. You can add that picture to your photo album.”
“You just negotiated your way into driving us back to Charlotte!” Catt giggled. “I don't fish anymore. I haven't fished since I was a little girl.”
“Fishing is one of the few pleasant memories I have from being a kid. My family was nothing like yours,” he told her again.
Catt looked down at her hands as she spoke. “You know, um, what you said yesterday . . . it isn't exactly true.”
“What did I say?”
“About me having a perfect childhood.” She shook her head. “That's not true. I didn't—far from it to be honest with you.”
“Obviously no childhood is perfect, but I'm sure yours came a heck of a lot closer to perfection than mine,” declared Jamal.
“It's all relative, you know. My demons may not be your demons, but we fight them just the same.”
He cocked his head to the side. “What demons could you have possibly had in the holy household of the Casons?”
“Just because my dad's a preacher doesn't mean we didn't have our share of problems. I believe the devil probably attacked us more because of it.”
Jamal exhaled. “All right, I'll bite. So what happened to you that was so terrible?”
“We're a lot more alike than you think, Jamal. For starters, I had issues with my mother just like you did . . . I did something else too.”
“You did what?”
Catt hesitated before answering. She bit her lips to keep them from trembling. Then she took a deep breath. “I killed my cousin.”
Jamal swerved a little, not expecting to hear anything that traumatic. “
You what?
”
She nodded. “I told you, my life hasn't exactly been a fairy tale.”
Jamal slowed the car down. “Okay, seriously, Catt, did you really
kill
your cousin?”
“In terms of legalities, no. Technically, I didn't kill him, but I do feel responsible for his death.”
Jamal heaved a sigh of relief. “Why do you feel responsible?”
“It's like I said, my family has had its share of demons to fight. One of the biggest ones we've had to face is drug abuse.”
“Drugs?”
“What I tell you goes no further than this car!”
“It won't. After all we've confided in each other, do you really think you have to tell me that?”
Catt braced herself to reveal a family secret that very few were privy to. “My mother was a drug addict, Jamal.”
His jaw dropped. “What?”
“Yeah, it went on for a couple of years. I was young at the time and didn't really understand what was going on. My parents were living a different life then too. They weren't Pastor Jeremiah and First Lady Ola Cason during those days, just Jerry and Ola, two young, struggling parents who didn't know the Lord.”
“Wow, I never would've guessed it. The way you talk about them, you would think they've always walked the straight and narrow.”
“Not always, trust me. When they were younger, both of my parents were heavy drinkers and partygoers. I think my mom started dabbling in drugs shortly after I was born. She was going through postpartum depression. Rather than getting the proper help for it, she self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. At one point, it had gotten so bad that we had to move in with my grandmother. That's when I had the situation with my cousin.”
“What happened?”
“My parents did a great job of hiding how bad things were from me. I mean, I knew that they were arguing about my mother spending all the money and hanging around strange people, but I was a kid. To me, drug addicts were
other
people, not my family members,
especially
not my mother. I knew she drank, and I knew she smoked. I just didn't realize it was crack.”
Catt closed her eyes and thought back. “It happened during the time we were living with my grandmother. My grandmother kept my cousin Jimmy during the day while my aunt Debbie worked. He was a year older than me, but I was bigger. I was always kind of big and strong for my age.
“Anyway, one day, one of the little kids in the neighborhood asked if my mother smoked crack. The mere fact that he'd asked me that was enough to earn him a beat down. I guess he could sense that, because he wasted no time divulging his source of information. He said that Jimmy had been running his mouth, telling everyone who would listen that my mama was some junkie.
“I was furious! I couldn't believe that my own cousin was out spreading lies about my mother, and I was intent on making him pay for it. I tore out, combing the neighborhood looking for him. Eventually I spotted him throwing rocks into the ravine at the end of the street, an abandoned area in the neighborhood. A passing hurricane had just dumped several feet of rain into the city that week. As a result, the ravine had filled with water. The water was rushing down the creek to the mouth of a ditch.
“When I saw him, I made all kinds of threats to kill and make him regret the day he was born.” Catt's eyes began to water, and her voice quivered. “I told him to take back what he'd said about my mother, to say it wasn't true. Then he told me he overheard my mother and grandmother arguing because Big Mama wouldn't give her any more money to buy dope. Then he said, ‘My mama said Auntie Ola is a crackhead! I know it's true 'cause that's what everybody says.'”
Jamal placed his hand on her shoulder, giving her an out if she wanted to take it. “Catt, you don't have to—”
She shook her head. She wanted to go on. “I remember feeling this rage and anger that, 'til this day, I never felt before. I told him to shut up, but he kept taunting me and laughing at my mother. I pounced on Jimmy and wrestled him to the ground. I just wanted him to shut up!” Catt took a moment for herself. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.
“I remember wrapping my fingers around his throat as he thrashed about beneath me, trying to remove my hands and catch his breath, but I was relentless. I kept choking him, telling him to take it back. He managed to topple me and get up. Then he said something I won't ever forget.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘You're crazy, and your mama's crazy too! That's why nobody is ever going to love you!' When he said that, something in me just snapped. I got up and attacked him again. I pushed him, and he fell to the ground. As he was lunging at me in retaliation, his foot slipped in the mud, and he fell down into the creek. He went underwater, engulfed by the rushing current.
“A few seconds later, he resurfaced and started yelling for help. He tried to fight against the pull of the water by grabbing onto the banks of the ravine, but it dissolved into his fingernails almost as soon as he touched it.”
Catt stared out the window, pensive and somber, talking more to herself than to Jamal. “I remember looking down at him as he was drowning. Maybe I was too young or too mad to really understand what was going on. I told him to say he was sorry for what he said about me and about my mama. He tried to talk, but his mouth filled with water. Then a wave swept over Jimmy, causing him to lose whatever grip he had. He was soon flailing about in the center of the creek being dragged along by the raging current. He pleaded for help again, causing more water to flood into his mouth and choke him. Another wave washed over his head, and he was taken underwater again. This time, only an arm appeared above the water that seemed to be grasping for anything sturdy to hold on to. His head briefly resurfaced, and he seemed to be gasping for air but was immediately sucked back down. The strong current pushed Jimmy further down the ravine until he disappeared into the dark, gaping mouth of the large drainage tunnel.”
Catt wiped her face, wet with tears, with the back of her hand. “I can still see myself watching, completely emotionless as Jimmy was being pulled to his death. It was a few minutes before something clicked inside of me to go get help. When it did, I ran and got my grandmother, but it was too late. Jimmy was already gone.”
The car was stifled in silence. Jamal wasn't quite sure what to say, and Catt was doing all she could not to dissolve into a blubbering mess.
Jamal reached for her hand again. “Catt, it wasn't your fault. It was just a freak accident.”
“Yeah, that's what everybody told me, but how can I not blame myself, Jamal? I shouldn't have attacked him. And I could've gotten help quicker.”
“You were a kid!” argued Jamal. “You did what you thought was right.”
“No, I didn't. I wanted something bad to happen to him. I wanted him dead for saying those things about my mother, and, at the time, I wasn't sorry that he died. I thought he deserved it.”
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
“Of course. My parents had me in counseling for months afterward—we all were. In fact, it was Jimmy's death that made my mother see what her addiction was doing to our family. She sought help after that; we started going to church, and it was then that my dad heard the call on his life to preach.”
“At least something positive came out of all that,” he reasoned.
“Yes, I believe that having gone through and lived it gave my parents a powerful testimony and a stronger ministry. I just wish it hadn't happened that way. Even now, it's hard for me to face my aunt Debbie.”
“Does she blame you?”
“She says she doesn't. Both she and my grandmother had been warning Jimmy about playing down at the creek for years, but it doesn't matter whether they blame me.
I
blame me!”
“But it wasn't your fault.”
“I know that in my head. The heart is a different story.”
“Catt, you're always talking about God and forgiveness. Don't you think at some point He wants you to forgive yourself?”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “You're right. My dad has been telling me the same thing for years. It's just . . .” She sighed. “I feel like I need to know that Jimmy forgives me, that he knows how sorry I am that I let that happen to him.”
“I admit that I don't know as much about this heaven and religion stuff as you do, but I have a feeling that he does know and that he forgave you a long time ago.”
A tear rolled down Catt's cheek. “If I could just talk to him one last time. There's so much I want to say to him.”
Jamal looked over at her. “Why don't you trying talking to me?” he asked softly.
“I'm talking to you now.”
“No, I mean, talk to me like I'm him. Pretend like I'm Jimmy.”
She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Jamal pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center and took the keys out of the ignition. Catt looked around their surroundings. “Why are we here?”
“I trusted you when you led me to Christ. I want you to trust me now.”
Catt pressed her lips together and looked him in the eye. “I do trust you.”
“Good. Jimmy's gone, and you can't talk to him, but you can say everything you want to say to him to me. Get it off your chest.”
She shook her head. “Jamal, that's sweet of you to offer, but you don't have to do this.”
“Have you ever known me to do anything I didn't want to do? I know it's weird, but I think it'll help. Trust me . . . I've seen this done on TV.”
“Wow, that really makes me feel better,” she threw in sarcastically.
“Just try it. It can't hurt, right?”
“Okay . . .” She drew in a deep breath and squeezed his hands. “Umm, there's something I want to say to you, that I've wanted to say to you for a long time.”
“Go on.”
She looked at Jamal but projected Jimmy's face onto his. She could almost see Jimmy's heart-shaped face, dimpled cheeks, and fuzzy mane. “First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry. I never should have come after you the way I did. You weren't much older than me, and I know you weren't trying to be malicious. You were just repeating what everyone else had said.
“I was hurt because deep down, I knew you were telling the truth. No one wants to believe that their mother is a drug addict, so it's easier to kill the messenger. I think in my mind, I believed that if I could make you stop saying that, it wouldn't be true. I loved her so much, I didn't want to see her as anything other than perfect.” Catt paused.

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