The Realest Ever (36 page)

“
Donovan, I need you!  Please don’t leave me
!” Kyra cried.

“I gotta go,” he said.

“
Donovan, please
.”

“Kyra, I’ll call you later.  I gotta go.  I need to think.”

“
Baby, please
!”

“
Kyra please let me call you back
!”  Donovan didn’t mean to shout, but his heart, mind and soul were all swirling in a whirlwind of uncertainty.  But as upset as he was, he still loved Kyra too much to simply hang up in her face.

“
I’m sorry
!” she wailed.  Kyra released a litany of sounds that weren’t intelligible before ending the call herself.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Donovan stayed with his mother for another thirty minutes.  Beverly didn’t offer much advice.  She thought Kyra was wrong for doing drugs and even more wrong for keeping it from her son, but there was no need to speak on it. 

Instead she pulled D
onovan into her arms when he got off the phone.  He surprised her by allowing it.  They were quite a sight.  Donovan was nearly twice his mother’s size.  She could barely wrap her arms around him, but a mother’s love cannot be hindered by simple physics.

Beverly
rubbed Donovan’s shoulder while he sobbed on hers.  He only cried for a few moments before he sat up and wiped his face.  Beverly went to the kitchen to get him a drink of water and a face towel. 

After a while Donovan rose from the couch and went to the bathroom to straighten up.  When he emerged, he looked almost normal
.  Except for his eyes.  They were filled with so much pain, it broke Beverly’s heart.  She had to look away.

Donovan went to his truck and got his toolbox.  He took it to his mother’s bathroom and hunkered down under the sink. 
Beverly tried to stop him.  She told him he didn’t have to do that today.  But Donovan insisted, saying it would only take a minute. 

He took the pipes apart
and rescued a diamond earring his mother lost two days ago.  He put the pipes back together and washed his hands and gave her a kiss on the way out.

Beverly stood on her porch watching the road after he drove away.  She finally went inside because, after a great crackle of thunder, it started to rain.

CHAPTER TWENTY

RAINY DAYS

Kyra hung up the phone.  She looked around her ro
om and saw that Kat and Quinell were both crying, nearly as hard as her.  Kyra wiped her face and ran to the bathroom.  She closed the door and sat on the toilet and hugged herself as she cried her eyes out, as hard and as quietly as she could. 

She would’ve stayed in
the bathroom indefinitely if it wasn’t for Quinell and Katavia. They had no idea what was going on except Mama was upset and they were no longer going to live with Donovan.  Kyra washed her face and exited the bathroom, red-eyed and red-nosed, but strong enough to face her children and deal with the mistakes she made.  She sat on the side of the bed and reached for both of them.  They were eager for her affection.  They held her without words.

Kyra knew she had to confront her aunt, but
at that moment she needed to be there for her children.  She had to let them know that she would always be with them, no matter how badly the world treated them.  If it was just the three of them, so be it.  They could take on the world together, and they would be just fine.  Together.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

When Donovan left church at twelve-thirty and spoke to his mother about having lunch with the love of his life, Kyra was standing in her aunt’s living room staring at a ghost.  Leonard put on twenty pounds while he was in jail, and his hair was shaved close to his scalp now.  He was still attractive.  He looked stylish in his baggy jeans, Polo boots and collar shirt, but Kyra reacted as if he’d risen from the dead and still had graveyard dirt clumped in his mouth.

She didn’t say anything at all while Leonard looked her up and down, deciding how he would approach this delicate situation, wondering how much control he still had over Kyra.  Aunt Ruth stood off to the side, watching them both.  Kyra may have remained frozen
for another minute, but Quinell hurried from the bedroom with Kat in tow.  Kyra turned quickly and pushed them back inside the one room Aunt Ruth allowed them.

“No!” she nearly screamed.  “Stay in here.  I’ll come get you in a minute!”

She slammed the door in Quinell’s confused face.  She turned back and saw Leonard watching her peculiarly.  He tried to look over her shoulder, but Kyra effectively blocked his view.  Her brain was going a mile a minute, but she had no idea what she should do.  Aunt Ruth shook her head at the whole sorry scene, and she finally retreated to her bedroom.

“What’s going on?” Leonard asked Kyra.  “Why you
running the kids off like that?”

Kyra approached him cautiously.  She hadn’t seen Leonard in more than six months.  The last time they were together
, Leonard was at the lowest point of his addiction.  Kyra was too, even though she was a relatively new user.  The police were there that night.  They took Leonard to jail.  Kyra remained free, but it was by no means a blessing.  She spent the next three months fighting to regain custody of her children, fighting to prove to total strangers that she was not the lowlife their paperwork said she was.  Leonard didn’t know anything about that struggle, just as Kyra didn’t know what he went through in jail. 

“You can’t talk to me?” he said.  “You ain’t got nothing to say to me?” 

He sounded more hurt than upset.  Kyra finally found her voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I been calling you for weeks!” Leonard said.  “What’d you expect me to do?”  He was loud, but it was frustration rather than anger. 

Kyra’s heart
knocked against her sternum.  Her nervous system flooded her blood with adrenaline, which helped her make smart, quick decisions.

“Let’s go outside,” she said, moving in that direction. 
She knew her aunt was eavesdropping.  And the kids were already traumatized enough.  Kyra needed to get Leonard out of her life as quickly as possible.  Getting him out of the house was the first step.

She opened the front door and was greeted by cloudy skies, the taste of ozone in the air.  The weatherman predicted rain for later in the day, but Kyra knew it was coming a lot sooner. 

In the driveway she saw a new sedan with Arkansas plates.  The drive from Little Rock was five and a half hours.  Kyra knew that Leonard cursed her name plenty of times along the way.  If his goal was to rattle Kyra by catching her off guard, he couldn’t have done a better job.

She stepped into the front yard, inviting Leonard to follow her.  Inside the house Donovan called Kyra for the first time. 
Quinell heard the phone and saw Donovan’s name on the display, but he didn’t answer it.  He had been forbidden to, ever since Leonard started calling the house. 

Kat’s parents
faced each other on Aunt Ruth’s lawn.  Leonard stared into Kyra’s eyes for a few seconds before he asked the question that had been burning in his heart for the past six months.

“Yo, baby, why you leave me?”

Kyra had been waiting just as long to give him his answer.  “You the one who went to jail, Leonard.”

“But you didn’t try to ride it out for me or nothing, Kyra.  Soon as I got locked up, that was it.  You didn’t take my calls.  No visits.  Nothing.  It was like you
just said
fuck him
.  You forgot about me when I needed you the most.”

“
You needed me
?  They took my kids, Leonard.”  Even as she looked into the eyes of the man who caused the worst pain she would ever know, Kyra tried to keep the blame out of her voice. 

“I know they did,” Leonard said.  “I can’t tell you how many
times I cried about that.  I heard that you got clean and got them back.  I was proud of you, even though you didn’t give a damn about me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kyra said.  And she meant it.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.  But I had bigger problems for myself.  I couldn’t help you no more.”

“I didn’t ask for no help,” Leonard said.  He was more fair-skinned than Kyra.  She watched his face redden with anger.  “All I wanted was to know that you still had my back.”

Kyra shook her head.  “I didn’t have your back no more
, Leonard.  I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I found out for myself,”
he said.  “You had your cousins telling me you didn’t want to be with me no more.  But you couldn’t do it yourself?”

Kyra
lowered her eyes.  She regretted the way she handled their breakup, which was nothing more than full abandonment.  But no one understood the power Leonard had over her.  Kyra had to lose everything to finally find the strength to break free.  She feared that if she talked to Leonard, even from jail, he would’ve convinced her to believe in him again.

“What do you want now?” Kyra asked.  She didn’t feel weak at all anymore.  The worst Leonard could do was sue
her for visitation rights for Kat.  And even that was no longer a frightening scenario.  Not with Donovan by her side.

“I want you to come back to me.”

Kyra shook her head.  “That’s never going to happen.”

“Why not?  I still love you, Kyra.  And I know you love me, too.  I see it in your eyes.”

Kyra frowned and blinked away whatever misleading messages her eyes were giving off.  “Leonard, getting back with you is the absolute last thing I would ever do.  I’d turn my kids in to CPS myself before I do some mess like that.”

He flinched.  “Kyra, this ain’t you, baby.  Why you talking to me like that?”

“This is me now,” she said.  “This is the me
you
made, Leonard.  And stop calling me baby.”

“Come with me,” Leonard said.  He took her hand.  “I got this rental.  Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

Kyra jerked her hand away.  “I’m not going anywhere with you.  We talking now, and you ain’t said nothing.”

“I got a room,” Leonard
said.  “Come with me.  We need to, we need to talk things thing out, Kyra.  You all mad.  You need to calm down.  Relax a little.  Get you a little taste, so you can think about what I’m saying…”

“A little taste?”

“What?”

“I heard what you said.”  Kyra had her hands on her hips now, the last of her compassion gone.

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“Whatever, man.  Are you high
right now?  You still shooting up?”

“No!  Why you gon’ say some shit like that?”

“Let me see your arms.”

“What?”

“Let me see your arms, if you not getting high.”

“Man, this some ol’ bullshit,” Leonard said.  “I love you, Kyra.  I never did nothing
but love you.  I treated you the best I could, better than I treated anybody!”

Kyra rolled her eyes
.  She took note of how Leonard still wouldn’t show her his arms as he embarked on a tirade about how much he loved her and how wrong she did him. 

Kyra listened because she wanted to know how long he’d be there before he mentioned Kat.  She would’ve cut
his rant off, however, if she knew Aunt Ruth was on the phone with Donovan at that very moment, divulging her ugliest secrets.

By the end of his
speech, Leonard was crying.  Kyra was pissed because she gave him this much of her time.  She knew Donovan had called her by now.  She hoped he would round the corner in his truck, so she could show him the loser who was threatening to take her to court.

“What does all this have to do with Kat?” she asked.

“Yeah.  And I want my baby, too!” Leonard said.  “Where she at?  Let me see her?”

“Get out my face,” Kyra said, shaking her head. 

“You can’t stop me from seeing my daughter!”

“
Call the police and show them the papers that says today is your visitation day.  I’ll wait on you.  I’ll be right here.”

“I’ma sue y
our ass.  You can’t take my daughter out of state.”

“What’s your daughter’s middle name?” Kyra asked.

Leonard didn’t even try to guess.

After five second
s, Kyra told him, “Leonard, if you get cleaned up, I’ll do whatever I can to allow you to be in Kat’s life, even if it means I have to move back to Little Rock.”

“I am clean.  You don’t know what you talking about.”

“Boy, you just tried to give me
a taste
three minutes ago.  You full of shit, and you know it.  I don’t wanna be with you no more, and you know you don’t give a damn about Kat.  So why don’t you just leave me alone?  I don’t want child support from you or nothing.  I just want you gone.”