Game On

Also by Calvin Slater

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Dafina Books

Calvin Slater

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

 

T
his was too early in the morning for him, and during his summer vacation. At a time when Xavier should've been in his bed with the covers pulled up to his chin and copping some serious z's, he was yawning while following a short correctional officer with no neck and a butt the size of a small Buick down a drab, dreary corridor.

Xavier still couldn't believe that in another month he would be entering his senior year of high school. Never in his wildest dreams when starting out as a freshman at Coleman High did he ever think he'd make it all the way, given all the drama he'd had to deal with in his personal life. But as much as he wanted to celebrate, he knew there were some real hard truths he hadn't overcome yet. He was still a wanted man with an undisclosed bounty riding on his bald head, placed there by Slick Eddie, a pissed-off kingpin who'd at one time owned and operated a multimillion-dollar chop shop out of a huge junkyard on Detroit's Westside. Slick Eddie was now doing a life stretch in prison because Xavier had ratted him, and his former soldier Romello Anderson, out to the police. Since then Eddie had sworn revenge. Xavier was sure he would never live to see graduation, and Eddie almost made good on his promise with a couple of unsuccessful attempts. It didn't matter how many hitters Eddie sent Xavier's way. Xavier was focused, and he possessed a deep-rooted conviction that nothing, not even Eddie, was going to keep him from stepping across the stage at his graduation ceremony.

As he trailed behind the correctional officer, Xavier had to admit to himself that it took a lot of guts to get him to this point. This was the women's side of Portus Correctional Facility, a place where his mother Ne Ne had been cooling her heels for a little over a year now. There was once a time where he didn't care about ever seeing her again, especially after the crazy move she'd pulled at the end of his sophomore year. Ne Ne and her jailbird boyfriend Nate had breezed through Coleman High's back parking lot in an attempt to abduct Xavier's now ex-girlfriend Samantha during the last school dance. Ne Ne was the main reason his relationship with Samantha was no longer. But since then Xavier had had some time to think about mending fences with his mother. Although her selfish butt didn't deserve his forgiveness, Xavier's father Noah had been instrumental in convincing the boy that nobody was perfect and everybody deserved a second chance.

And that's why Xavier was now sitting down in a graffiti-riddled booth with a thick glass partition separating him from an empty chair, awaiting the arrival of his inmate mother. He hadn't been able to understand it. Through the first ten months of her sentence, Ne Ne didn't look like she gave a crap about her son.

No letters. No collect phone calls.

But Noah hadn't left her any room to bring the noise with some weak excuse. Even though Ne Ne hadn't passed along any of the letters Noah had sent to Xavier and his brother while Noah was in prison, he wasn't about to do the same to her. So he had gone online and found her inmate number and mailing address through OTIS (Offender Tracking Information System) and wrote to her, providing the address and phone numbers where she could reach her boys. But still there was nothing. Then all of a sudden, three weeks ago, it had been like a switch flipping when Ne Ne started calling collect and sending the boys letters like she'd lost her mind, each claiming that she was new and reformed from her old ways. She had found the Lord and became born again and whatnot. Just what Xavier needed—another highly religious nut running loose in the family. And just when he'd gotten his relationship tight with his Bible-thumping old man too. Now he had to deal with this junk. But she was his mother and he respected the title.

Nothing surprised him about his mother.

Even as she took her seat on the other side of the glass partition, seeing her, Xavier wondered if her newly acquired faith was some scheme she'd cooked up to weasel her way back into his life. To convince him by using King James scripture to aid in her clever disguise of a woman who'd truly seen the error of her ways.

Ne Ne's looks had changed a bit. Age seemed to set in overnight. Where her face once held the unmistakable arrogance of the ghetto, it now seemed to be home to traces of humility. Gray lived in the tangles of her hairline. There were bags underneath her hard eyes, and she looked to be down quite a few pounds from the last time he'd seen her.

Xavier kept his eyes focused on her face. He just wanted to see if her new way of life existed there. But he couldn't really tell because his mother looked to be anxious, shifting around in her seat and avoiding eye contact. It was wrong to judge her primarily on her emotions. This behavior could stem from shame. After all, the last time Xavier had laid eyes on her was when she and her knucklehead boyfriend Nate tried to kidnap Samantha. Xavier surmised that if he'd pulled something so desperate, low-down, and despicable, he'd be ashamed to look that someone in the eyes too.

Xavier picked up the telephone and waited until she did the same. When he spoke, his voice seemed to be a little harsh. “You know you didn't have a soul back then . . . the letters you keep sending to the house. How can I believe any of it?”

His mother kept her eyes cast downward. “I didn't know God the way I do now, son.”

“Excuse me for not really buying it, but when convicts go to prison, a lot of them come out claiming to be holier than thou, you feel me?”

Ne Ne's eyes kept darting from side to side like she was watching a tennis match when she tried to look at him. “You have a right to be angry. I put you and your brother through a lot with my own selfishness. All I can say is I'm sorry.”

He had come to see her with the intention of burying the hatchet, per his father's request. But when he finally caught her eyes, something inside him snapped and he went nuclear. “Are you sorry about hiding my father's letters from us? Trying to kidnap my girlfriend—you doggone right you put us through a lot. Then you had that bum that you called a boyfriend over us. And don't let me get started on how you threatened to throw me out of the house if I didn't sell drugs to help you—what kind of mother would say such things to her son?”

Ne Ne couldn't answer. The only sign of remorse was the tears sliding down from her eyes, leaving trails along her cheeks.

Xavier dug deeper. “When I was getting money, you didn't even have the decency to express concern about where it was coming from. All you knew was that you were lining your pockets. You didn't care”—he stopped and looked around—“if I ended up in a place like this, just as long as I kept breaking you off with the ends.”

Ne Ne still held the phone to her ear with her left hand as she covered her face and cried into the other, chest heaving.

Xavier knew it was wrong but he felt nothing for her. “But that's okay. You see, even with everything you put me through, I still managed to make it through to my senior year of high school. And I'm going to graduate too. Do something that you never believed in. Despite you telling me that education was useless, I made it. 'Member you told me the only ways that a black boy could make it out of the ghetto was by selling dope, going to prison, or death?”

Ne Ne finally looked up, and through tears, said to him, “I've made terrible mistakes and all I ask for is a chance to let me make good.”

Xavier was on the blink. He didn't have any sympathy for her. As far as he was concerned his mother was someone who had profited off the love he had in his heart for his family and then busted up and stripped away the one decent thing in his life. Samantha was gone, and it was all Ne Ne's fault!

“Ne Ne—”

His mother interrupted by saying, “Please, son—I'm your mother, it's okay to call me mom.”

Xavier sarcastically chuckled while shaking his head. “You can't be serious. Ne Ne, tell me this is a joke.” With both hands he flared out his ears. “I'm listening. Is this a joke?”

Tears streamed down Ne Ne's face as she tightly held the phone.

“
Mom
—that's rich. Whatever happened to ‘Don't y'all ever call me mama, it makes me sound old?' ” Xavier ruthlessly laughed at her as if her tears were a joke.

“Son, that's not fair. You forgave your dad.”

Xavier blazed, “Pop wasn't the one who withheld the letters from me and Alfonso, did he?”

Ne Ne wiped her eyes with the back of the right sleeve of her orange jumpsuit. “How's my baby?”

“You have some nerve.”

“Why ain't your brother with you?”

“I'm not gonna let you play with his head. Alfonso is doing well. I came here today to see if you were on the level, and I don't know. I don't trust you. Do you know how you affected that boy with your foolishness?”

Ne Ne's eyes were red and puffy. She sniffled. “So now I'm on trial here, is that it? You brought your behind up here knowing damn well you weren't gonna forgive me,” she yelled at him.

Xavier's face held a touch of animation. His smile said it all. “That's the old Ne Ne I know.”

Ne Ne let loose on him. “Look at you sitting there looking like your daddy. How dare you look down your nose at me, you little car thief. Here I am trying to tell you that I changed, but all you care about is losing your little rich girlfriend. You think the people in her world were going to accept you? Let me tell you one thing: All those old snobbish people were going to do for you was put a chauffeur's cap on your head and a broom in your hand.”

Xavier looked away and wiped his mouth. When he returned his gaze, there were tears welling up in his eyes. “My dad told me that anybody can change. But in your case, I don't think it's true. I did come to visit you with the hopes that you had changed.” He tightened his grip on the phone handle. “But all you are and always will be . . . is bitter.” With that Xavier got up and walked out.