What's His Is Mine (2 page)

—Adrienne Sheppard

 

I
t was 7 a.m. and it was already forming into a hot August day. I was off from my job as a nurse at the Mantua Nursing Home. I couldn't wait to get home and get in my bed. I was so exhausted. I did three double shifts in the last week and was so happy I had the next two days off. I planned to get some rest and get refreshed.

Right now the only thing standing in my way of getting home was the slow-moving traffic on 76 West in Philly. I tried not to fall asleep at the wheel of my Nissan Maxima. I turned on the radio and rolled down the window. I was so sleepy and really needed rest. Sleep right now was a privilege. It was the equivalent of money, an exotic vacation, or some real good sex. I wished I had all those things right now. I was so deprived. I was one hour away from sleep. I had it all planned out, how I was going to get to my bed faster. I was going to go straight to my mom's house and pick up my daughter, Malaysia. Then I was going to drop her off at day care and after that I was going to keep my appointment with my bed. I could not wait.

After fighting traffic for forty minutes I arrived at my mother's home. I walked in my mother's eccentrically decorated home. Since my grandfather had passed, my mom tried to fix up the old row home. She got an E for effort. You're not supposed to put new furniture in a house with old carpet and wallpaper. There were touches of zebra and leopard prints here and there, with mixtures of chiffon and a lot of bright-ass colored Ikea furniture. In two words: hot mess. But that was my mother, Debbie, for you—over the top, crazy Deb. My mom is white and my father is black, which makes me black. I was raised by my white mom and white grandparents, but I still always felt like I was a 100 percent black, even though I didn't necessarily look it. My complexion was cocoa butter yellow, and I had long curly hair that without a flatiron would be big and curly. I have had Spanish people try to speak Spanish to me and I always say “No español” back to them. My mother raised me without my father's assistance. Neither he nor his family ever accepted his mixed race child, and I never cared.

My mother was feeding oatmeal to my daughter, Asia, in high chair. As soon as Asia saw me she smiled and raised her hands so I could pick her up. I took her out of her high chair.

“Hey, Asia, girl. Hey, Mommie's baby,” I said as I kissed her all over her dimpled cheeks. She was only sixteen months, but so smart and adorable. Asia has her father's chocolate skin and my naturally curly hair. The combination of complexions made a beautiful, cinnamon baby doll.

My mom handed me the bowl of oatmeal and said, “You can finish this. I have to get ready for work. I hope you brought her some clean clothes, because she doesn't have any.”

“There's nothing clean in her bag? Mom, you couldn't do me a favor and wash her clothes? You know I have to take her to school.”

“No, I couldn't have, Adrienne. I'm tired. She is your daughter. Sometimes I think you forget that and take advantage. You are going to have to find yourself a teenager or someone else to babysit. I love her, but I can't watch her all the time.”

“You don't watch her all the time.” I sighed.

“Yes, I do, and I can't watch her this Saturday because me and Joe are going to Foxwoods out in Connecticut. We're seeing a show and going to dinner.”

“Huh? This weekend? I have to work,” I said, annoyed.

“Adrienne, I told you two weeks ago to try to find someone else to watch her, because I have something planned.”

“Great, Mom, now I'm going to have to call out,” I said as I packed my baby up and headed toward the door.

Whatever,
I thought as I put Asia in her car seat and I got back in my car. My mom really irked me. She was always complaining about watching her own grandchild. I didn't get it. Since she'd been with her boyfriend, Joe, and lost her weight from gastric bypass surgery, she thought she was young now and it was so damn irritating. She was always talking about going out and how she was not a built-in babysitter. She stayed talking trash about watching Asia, except for the days it was time for me to pay her. Then she was all smiles.

Forget her! I was tired and ready to fall asleep at every light. I was mad I had to go all the way home to get Asia dressed. I honestly thought about letting her do a repeat at day care. Who would notice? But I couldn't send my baby girl to school looking unwanted and unloved. The other option, if I didn't take her to day care, was to let her stay home. That wouldn't work. I would never get any rest with her there. She would be up all morning bothering me. It would have worked when she was a little younger. I used to be able to feed her, give her a bottle, and sit her in her playpen in front of the television. Now I can't do that, because she has learned how to get out of there. So I had to find the strength to take her to school so I could get rest.

 

 

I took Asia to school and came back home, took off my scrubs, showered, and fell onto my bed. As soon as I dozed off the phone rang. I picked up the phone groggily, only to hear my daughter's father, DeCarious Simmons, shouting, “When can I see my daughter?”

“I don't know. In a few weeks,” I said as I yawned. I turned over on my stomach to look at my alarm clock. I couldn't believe I had only been asleep for about fifteen minutes. I was sleep deprived and not in the mood to have a conversation with him.

“I'm tired. I'll call you back,” I said.

“No, don't hang up. Why do I have to wait a few weeks?”

“DeCarious, because that's what I said. That's the only time I'll be able to take off again. I wouldn't have to work like a slave if you gave me more money to take care of your daughter.”

“Since when is four thousand a month not enough to take care of a one-year-old? I pay my child support,” he yelled in my ear.

“Who are you yelling at?” I asked, sitting up in the bed. I wasn't about to let this moron get me upset. “No, four thousand is not enough, DeCarious. You spend that on drinks and dirty whores in the club.”

“I don't . . . Whatever, man. Can I just come up there and get my daughter?”

“No, you can't take
my
daughter anywhere without me. As a matter of fact, I just got off work and I'm tired. Good-bye,” I said as I powered my phone off. If I didn't turn the phone off, it was guaranteed he would call back.

I hated my daughter's father, DeCarious Simmons. He is a certified asshole. In the beginning of our relationship he would do anything for me. The first day I met him in Vegas, he took me shopping and had a car take me to the airport. Back then you couldn't have told me that I didn't hit the jackpot. He was a rookie in the NFL and played for the Seattle Seahawks, making great money, and wanted to be with me. When I got pregnant he was so happy. But then his hating-ass cousin Rock told him he wasn't my first athlete and a bunch of other shit. Some of it was true, some of it wasn't. Okay, so what if I hung out with other guys in the league before . . . And? I didn't think it was a deal breaker, but DeCarious thought it was.

Once he heard about my other indiscretions, he confronted me and I did what I was supposed to do, which was deny, deny, deny, and deny some more. I wasn't there, it wasn't me, wrong girl, and I don't know what you're talking about. But it didn't work or matter, because his whole attitude changed toward me.

He changed from “Baby, whatever you want” to “I'm going to do whatever I want and you can take it or leave it.” I decided to leave it, and as soon as I did, I felt like I took a flight from the glamorous life back to the below average life. Let me tell you, it was not a fun transition at all. I had to go back to work and pay my own bills and do everything for my daughter on my own. And it's been so hard.

And to make matters worse, he was not in Seattle anymore. He got traded to his home team, Atlanta, and was doing good. So he thought he was somebody for real now, and he was not. He was just a dumb jock who was making a lot of money. You would think that since he was in the NFL and made two million dollars a year, I would have had it made. Wrong! I only got four thousand a month in child support. How the judge did that math, I will never know. You might think four thousand a month was a lot, but it wasn't, because I had real bills.

My mortgage was twenty-seven hundred dollars a month. Then let's not forget day care, student loans, my car note, car and home owner's insurance, gas, electric, cable, cell phone, clothes, and all the money I paid my mom for keeping Asia overnight. And then I had so much debt. When I was with my daughter's father, I paid my credit cards down, but over the last year, I'd run them all back up. I didn't know how, but I guess because I found a reason to shop all the time. I just liked shopping. Me and Asia always needed things. It's like after the third time I wore something, it lost its newness and I didn't want to wear it anymore. I just couldn't walk past a store without buying something. When I was at the mall, I always saw cute shoes or sneakers for Asia and I had to buy them.

So, long story short, living off of my child support was not an option. I was about to try to see if I could get my child support modified. I needed seven thousand a month to take care of myself and daughter properly, at the very least. That's not asking a lot. And don't try to judge me and say I needed to be happy with what I had. Please. My daughter needed to be living the same lifestyle as her father.

Okay, let's get something clear right now. Everybody wants money and likes money. Everyone wants to be comfortable and not have to work hard every day. That's why people play the lottery—to get ahead, to get that extra. I was trying to get my extra by having my daughter by someone rich. I thought I was securing my future for the next eighteen years and making an investment, but I wasn't and I didn't. All I did was buy myself a lot of headaches. My first headache would be DeCarious's ass. My second headache was my missing friend, Tanisha, who I haven't seen in a year.

Tanisha was not really missing. She just ran away. She thought she'd killed her boyfriend's crazy ex-girlfriend, who was trying to kill her. The ex-girlfriend carjacked Tanisha and then tried to shoot her. Somehow Tanisha got ahold of the gun and ended up shooting the ex-girl. She came to my house all upset, bloody, and crying, saying she killed a girl in the park. I tried to calm her down and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. I consoled her, gave her new clothes, and drove her back to the park so we could see if the woman was really dead. At the park there were red and blue flashing lights and yellow crime scene tape in every direction. Just looking at the chaotic scene, we knew she must have killed the woman.

Tanisha was hysterical and I had to help her. The first thing I did was to dump the gun. I thought if there was no gun and no one saw them together, how could they link her to the shooting? But then Tanisha's daughter called and said the cops had already been to her house and wanted to speak with her about something really important.

At that point I was so scared for her that I drove her to the train station. I just couldn't see her going to jail. The only thing I could think to tell her was to run and never come back. I shouldn't have told her to run, but at the time it seemed like the best idea.

When I told her to run, never would I have thought that the woman she thought she'd murdered really wasn't dead. And secondly, I wouldn't have dreamed that Tanisha wouldn't get in contact with me or her family for an entire year. After watching the news, I found out that Tanisha hadn't killed anyone, I ran back to the train station to get her, but she was gone. I was hoping she would call, even though I instructed her not to.

When all of this first happened, I was going crazy. I used to try to go and check on her children, but I couldn't look in their faces. They were devastated. They weren't sure what exactly happened to their mother, and I knew but couldn't say anything.

A few days after the shooting, the cops found her car down the street from my house. They questioned me twice and asked me if she had contacted me. I told them I spoke to her the night of the shooting, but our conversation was normal and she didn't mention anything unusual.

So, for a year I have been going through it. I wanted to tell the authorities what I knew. I wasn't sure if she was dead or alive. I had no idea what happened to her, until she wrote me a letter a few weeks ago saying she was okay, living in Detroit, and coming back soon. I was so happy because I felt so guilty and it had been weighing me down.

Initially, I thought about going to Detroit and finding her myself, but I decided against it. I was glad she was coming back, but I didn't know what kind of charges she was going to face. She didn't murder anyone, but she did shoot that girl.

Knowing that she was okay was a relief, but now I just hoped that I didn't go to jail, too. They could charge me with . . . I think it's called aiding and abetting. I should have dropped her off at the police station and kept it moving.

So I was already so over this. I lived with the guilt of her leaving. I'd already gained weight over worrying about the situation. I'd come to the conclusion that it was not my fault. I didn't know that the woman wasn't dead. I didn't know the lady who tried to kill Tanisha shot Kevin, too! I told Tanisha to run, but she didn't have to listen to me.

“A
unt Kiya! Aunt Kiya! They fighting again.”

I was startled out of my sleep by my six-year-old nephew Kyle's voice. I jumped up and threw some clothes on.

“Stay here,” I ordered him as I ran downstairs to the kitchen. My sister, Lisa, was throwing canned food and anything else she could find at her boyfriend, Mikey.

“You want to stay out, so just stay out. Don't do me any favors coming in at three in the damn morning. Just stay out all night,” she screamed at him. Mikey just stood against the stone-colored countertop, trying to explain himself and duck the objects Lisa threw at him. This was a common scene in our household. Fight. Love. Fight. Love.
I hate you! Get out! No, never mind . . . come back home.
My sister and her boyfriend had been together for as long as I could remember. You see one, you see the other.

Growing up it was always Lisa and Mikey. They were the cute couple that dressed alike and had the perfect prom picture. Back then, you would have thought they were going to grow up and have the big wedding and live happily ever after. I don't know what happened to the happily ever after. I guess they both grew up, had the twins, and reality set in. Everyone was so over the Lisa and Mikey drama. Especially me, because I was always in the middle, breaking it up. I hated Mikey, and Mikey's parents hated Lisa, and I wished they would just break up for good. But anytime you suggested breaking up with Mikey, Lisa would use the excuse that she had the boys, she was stuck, and she had already put too many years in with him to leave.

I coughed and stood in the doorway, letting my presence be known, in case Mikey got the dumb idea to throw something back at her, and then we would have to jump him. They both looked over at me. Instead of ending the argument, Lisa continued to cuss Mikey's ass out.

“Listen, go back out into the streets. I don't care. I know you were out there cheating on me, probably at the bar with some bitch.”

“I wasn't cheating on you. I don't want to go back out there. I just want to go to sleep, Lisa. I'm tired,” he said, sighing and rubbing his forehead.

“You are a damn liar,” Lisa said as she threw the toaster directly at his knee. He bent down to grab his knee.

Miles ran over to his father to make sure he was okay and said, “Mommy, please don't hurt Daddy.”

Before Lisa could pick up anything else, Mikey looked over at Lisa and shook his head. He picked up his son and walked past Lisa. She stood in place—he knew she couldn't throw anything else. After he walked out of the kitchen, Lisa looked at me like
why was I up?
I began picking everything up off the floor.

“I don't think it is good for Miles to hear or see y'all fight,” I said.

Lisa flagged me and said, “It is not good for his father to come home in the middle of the night. I am so tired of this shit, I wish he would leave.”

My sister knew she really didn't want Mikey to leave. Because the moment Mikey left for a few days she was going crazy. She would go out and track him down. She would beg him to come home, he would apologize, and then they would be blissfully in love for about a week.

Lisa was very pretty—she could get another man easily. She was twenty-six, and people always asked if we were twins, but I'm seven years younger. We had the same build, but I was slightly taller, same brown skin, high cheekbones, slanted eyes, past-our-shoulders long permed hair, and big spearlike noses. I hated our noses. My nose was a little larger than hers. I thought it took up the majority of my face, but people said it fit me and I was cute. One day when I got money I was going to get a nose job. Not like Michael Jackson's or anything crazy. I just would like to make it a little smaller.

Lisa worked as an administrative assistant and Mikey did what he could. Which was not much. He was smart, but only wanted things the easy way. The easy way had landed him in jail a few times. No long stretches, but he had a record. Which made it harder each time for him to come home and get a real job. Somewhere along the line, Mikey decided if he couldn't be a baller, then he wasn't going to be anything. I don't know.

I was tired, and knew I had to be up in a few hours to take my nephews to school. They went to a charter school that had classes year round, and I had to get up on time to take them.

As soon as the alarm went off, I got up and got Kyle and Miles up for school. They're twins. Miles was my baby and always wanted to hug me, hold me, paint for me, and talk to me. Kyle was the opposite. He liked wrestling, skate boarding, and being a daredevil.

When I told them that it was time to get up for school, Kyle always pulled the covers over his head or hid under the bed, and Miles ran into the bathroom.

I wasn't in the mood to fool with them today. “Kyle, get up. I'm not playing with you. If you don't get up, then when you come home, you can't play the game.”

That was all he needed to hear. Kyle jumped up and started getting ready.

While they showered, I ironed and put their clothes on the bed. After they were dressed, I fed them and we walked three blocks to their school. We made it just as all the other students were rushing into the building. I told my nephews to have a good day and I kneeled down and tied Miles's sneaker. He thanked me and gave me a fast hug and told me bye. He looked around to see if anyone was watching.

“Are you going to give me a hug, too?” I asked Kyle. He looked around and shook his head no, and said, “After school. Not here, when I get home.”

“Okay,” I said as I watched him run after his brother into the building. I walked back home and cleaned up their mess. There was cereal and spilled milk all over the table, but I didn't mind. I always clean. I like to live in a neat house. That's one of the things I do remember about my mom. She used to always keep our house spotless. I got up every morning and cleaned. I don't have OCD or anything, but it just made me happy to be in a clean space. Sometimes it made Lisa upset, because she couldn't find things in her own house. Well, that's what she said. But I don't think it's that. I think that being really clean and organized reminded her of our mother. And neither of us liked to think about our mother because she committed suicide.

My mother wasn't a real weak woman, but she just couldn't handle the stress of taking care of two kids on her own anymore. My mother killed herself eight years ago, when I was eleven and my sister was seventeen. I came home from school one day and my mom wasn't home. It wasn't until my aunt arrived from Maryland that I found out my mother was dead.

My mother's sisters, Vicky, Tina, and Darla handled everything. Since Lisa was almost eighteen, they let us stay at our small south Philly row house and just helped us with the bills. If we needed anything they were there for us, but mostly me and Lisa had to do for ourselves.

 

 

I worked at Pathmark on Grays Ferry Avenue as a cashier. I had been working there for two years. I liked it, but everyone from my neighborhood tried to come into the market asking me to hook them up. I was not getting fired for them. I started off working part-time, and then when I graduated from Overbrook I started working full-time. I was going to go to college, but I didn't get any scholarships. Hopefully, by the fall I'll sign up for community college. Outside of work, I didn't have much of a life. I talked to guys, but it seemed like all they did was make you sad, get you pregnant, then make your life miserable. It happened to this girl Mina at the job. Her boyfriend begged her for months to be his girlfriend, then as soon as she got pregnant he said the baby wasn't his. Now she had the baby and no babysitter, so she couldn't work. Then my sister and Mikey loved each other, but he was always cheating on her. I don't know, I would always meet guys, but I would never call them. I just didn't like guys who aren't about anything. I didn't want the kind of guy who would bring me down. I'd rather not talk to anyone, plus as soon as I told guys I was still a virgin at nineteen, they usually ran when they found out they were not going to be my first. So right now, I was just taking care of my nephews. They were my world. I took them everywhere and bought them whatever I could.

 

 

Today I had to work from nine until three in the afternoon. The market was wild; filled with crazy people, and there was always something going on. I walked in the break room and put on my blue polo-style shirt. Lenora, my shift manager, said, “I need you on register ten.”

The market was busy for a Tuesday morning. I took my till to register ten and turned on my light and began ringing up customers. Some lady in my line had all these coupons. I understand trying to save money, but she had stacks of clipped coupons and was trying to save on things she didn't even buy. I looked over all her purchases and had to break the news to her that she couldn't use all her coupons.

“Ma'am, this Tide detergent isn't on sale and you can't use that coupon.”

“Yes, it is,” she insisted.

“No, miss, it is one hundred ounces on sale, not this one.”

“The sign back there said this is the one on sale,” she said as she pointed at the detergent. “I can go and get the sign—matter of fact, can I see a manager?” the woman asked angrily.

All I could think of was
all this for a dollar off
. Could she see a manager—that's what I didn't want to hear.
Ugh!
I thought. People behind her were getting mad. One lady called out, “Come on now, I have to go to work.” There was nothing I could do but get her a manager. I called for Lenora to come to my register. She tried to explain to the woman that we couldn't use a coupon for something she didn't have. The lady wasn't hearing it. The one-hundred-ounce container was on sale, not the sixty-four-ounce container that she had, but Lenora just gave it to her anyway to keep the line moving.

 

 

When I got off work, I was supposed to be taking the boys to GameStop and to Burger King. I wanted to take a nap, but as soon as I came through the door, the twins came running.

“Aunt Key, you taking us to the GameStop to get a new game today, right?”

“Yeah, Kyle. Let me take a shower, then we are going to go. Where is your mom?”

“My mommy sleep. Her head hurt.”

I walked into Lisa's cluttered room. There were shoes and clothes piled knee high in heaps all around the room. An empty Pepsi bottle and an open bag of potato chips were in the bed with her. She was sprawled across the bed with the blanket covering her head.

“Lisa, you okay?” I asked.

“No, my head is hurting. This migraine is killing me.”

“Did you take anything?”

“Yeah, a few Excedrins. If I don't feel better by tomorrow, I'm going to go to the doctor.”

“Do you want me to get you something?”

“No, just close my door. I'm going to take a nap. Can you make sure the boys eat dinner?”

“I was going to take them out with me anyway.”

Lisa muttered, “Okay.” I tiptoed out of her room and went downstairs and told the boys to be quiet so their mom could rest. I felt sorry for my sister—she always got bad headaches. I think they come from stressing over Mikey. So until she left him her headaches were going to stay.

Me and the boys caught the bus to the plaza where the GameStop was. I was planning to spend only fifty dollars on them. As soon as we walked into the store, I steered them into the Used section of the store. I could not afford to buy them a single game for sixty dollars each. They didn't know any better, and picked out games in my price range and were happy with them.

From GameStop we went to Burger King, and then came home to play their new games. That would keep them busy the rest of the night. Once we were home I checked my messages. No one had called and that was sad. I needed to get a life besides my nephews. I walked out of my bedroom and into the living room and took a seat on the sofa.

“You going to play us in Smack Down vs. Raw?” Kyle asked. I told him I would and held my hand out to take the controller. It only took me a few moments to beat Kyle on the game.

“Aunt Kiya, you cheating,” Kyle said as my player pinned his down.

“How come every time I win, I cheated. You are a sore loser, Kyle.”

“I'm not a sore loser. I don't want to play anymore!” he shouted and threw the controller down and then he ran to the steps and began crying. Miles was teasing him and calling him a cry baby. I tried to comfort him, telling him that he couldn't cry every time he lost, but he was still huffing and puffing and refused to play. I'd had enough of the game and went and checked on Lisa.

I peeked in on her. She was asleep, but Mikey was in bed with her. I told him I was sorry for opening the door and not knocking. I was tired myself and couldn't wait for the weekend to come.