God's Broken Lil' Baby. E. Jay Ford
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I was mad at everybody. How many of my family members knew and never said anything to me? The betrayal was too much for me to bare.
Family is everything to me. That feeling of not belonging was crushing me. I sat through the rest of that visit stoic. I was numb, and I needed to talk to my mommy, I needed her to ease this pain. I didn’t even understand the pain. Why did I even give a fuck? Neither of the dudes had done shit for me. One I had not heard about until tonight and the one that I know disappeared years ago. He left us and never looked back. Why did that fact that he might not be my biological father bother me so much? I still can’t answer that question to this day. He clearly didn’t give a fuck about any of his five children or four, whichever the case may be. I suddenly felt a disconnection from my siblings that I had always had. That bond that I had felt like I had with my siblings seemed as if it disappeared. I was a hot mess. I couldn’t wait to talk to my mommy.
It was finally time to go home. When I got in the car, my uncle had the nerve to ask me what was wrong. I just said nothing as I was finally able to cry like I wanted. He knew fuckin’ well what was wrong, so shut the fuck up right now. When I didn’t answer him after about five minutes, he went on this long rant about how wrong my mommy was by not telling me the truth. You judging my mommy and you and a bunch of grown ass men just told a child she doesn’t know her daddy. In my head, I was thinking how he should have kept his damn mouth shut, but oh, well, my mommy was going to handle this. He talked and talked, and I just looked out the window and cried.
We finally made it home. It was late, but I immediately called home to my mommy. I was crying so hard she could hardly understand what I was saying. I had to start over like eight times. I finally calmed down enough so that she could hear the horrible words that had been told to me that night. I was finally able to tell her how she was judged and damned by these people who hardly knew me. My mommy was pissed! She started cussing so hard I thought she was going to come through the phone. She finally calmed down and explained to me that at the end of the day, I was her child. She was all the momma and daddy I needed. She let me know that people, all my life, were going to tell you and anybody that would listen shit about you like they knew you better than you. Learn to know and love yourself enough to tell them to kiss yo’ ass when they come with that shit. She ended the conversation with, “My daddy is my daddy.” Nobody was in that room, so can’t nobody tell you shit. After we hung up, she must have called and gave them the business. She checked they ass and shut that shit down. I got a formal apology from my uncle. Much as I love my mommy and as deadbeat as my daddy was, there was no DNA test done, and the question had never left my mind.
Who’s my daddy, who’s not my daddy. Who gives a shit. Family is what you make of it. I live and breathe my siblings. I know who they are. I get jealous of the father-daughter relationships I see sometimes, but you can’t miss what you never had. I still had questions but I didn’t ask because the subject always upset my mommy. After my mommy died, I went to the man they said was my daddy and got a DNA test done. He is not my father. I did a gene test with my daddy’s sisters. There was no genetic connection their either. I still have more questions than answers.
Chapter 20
20 All Love Ain’t Good Love
It’s a Thin Line between Being in Love and Being a Fool
Love is crazy thing;
it could make you scream or make you sing.
Compromise, confusion, and insecurity—
are you thinking with your heart or our mind? Not sure I see.
You’re doing the things you said you would never do,
finding out you are not the person you thought you knew.
Hurt or happy? It doesn’t matter; it’s out of control.
It’s got a grip and won’t let go.
Crossing that line is an easy thing to do
because it’s a thin line between being in love and being a fool.
It started off like any other day. It was the Fourth of July weekend. Baby Girl was about six months at the time. I was living in Compton, California, with Man Of The House and his wife. They weren’t my real aunt and uncle, but they were longtime family friends from when I lived in California as a child. Boyfriend and I had been married for about ten months when I moved to California to be with him. It was not a happy ten months, but I signed up for this dumb shit, so I was going to try to see it through. We had got into it a lot before he was reassigned to Barstow, California. I believe he was trying to leave me, but I wasn’t smart enough to read the signals. I followed like a dumb ass. The first two months we spent in East St. Louis, Illinois, in two separate homes. Then he was shipped to basic training for two months. He came home after basic and was immediately sent off to Germany for six months. After the Germany tour, he came back rude and disrespectful and a pain in my ass. Not to mention, cheating his ass off with all the little chickens that didn’t pay his ass no mind in high school. He thought he was the shit. I still saw that stale ass little nerd I fell in love with my senior year of high school.
My daddy and his people lived in Pomona, California. It wasn’t that far from Compton where I was staying, but my people didn’t have enough room in their house for me and my baby. We had to wait on housing from the military, and so I went to California for that wait so I could immediately move in when the papers were signed. Needless to say, I didn’t last long enough to even get that far. As I said, it started off like any other day. He was in Compton with me for the holiday weekend. He came with one of his white Army buddies from the base. It was a four-day weekend because of the holiday. He would come visit the baby as often as he could while we were there. It was a little bit of a drive, but he made the trip faithfully. We had decided to start this weekend at the beach. Being from the Midwest made visiting the beach a big deal. We had gone to the Santa Monica Beach because it had the pier. It was a great day until once again, he got into one of his moods.
The beach was disgusting. It wasn’t like it used to be when I was a child. There was trash everywhere and needles all in the sand. The water was beautiful, but with every wave, you could see the debris of what washed up on the sea. With all this being quite evident, Boyfriend still felt it was okay to put Baby Girl’s feet in the water. I was not having it. When he first made the suggestion, I thought he was kidding, so I kind of blew it off. He started walking toward the water, and I panicked. Not only was the beach a cesspool of disease, but also the Baby Girl hadn’t had any immunizations at this point because of the moving and my lack of handling my responsibilities. I warned him of this, but Boyfriend, being the asshole he was, put her in the water. I went crazy on his ass. We were creating a whole scene on the beach, and in the commotion, Baby Girl’s binky fell out her mouth and was washed away in the ocean. This was a big deal because she was a binky baby. She did nothing without that damn binky. It was a terrible habit that I had created for her, but at this point, it was too late to stop. We had already lost the two other binkies she had. This was our last one. I was irritated as fuck now and wanted to smash his mothafuckin’ head in. When Baby Girl realized the binky was gone, she immediately started to scream her head off. It was time to go.
On the way home, she finally cried herself to sleep. I was calm by the time we made it home. I took her into the house and put her to bed. When I came out of the room, everyone was drinking and laughing and having a good time, so I decided to join. I told Boyfriend that at some point, we would have to go and get her a binky. He said something slick, so of course, I responded twice as slick. Everybody began to laugh vigorously. I was pretty funny when I wanted to be. He didn’t think I was, at least, not at that moment. He was embarrassed and pissed because he knew some of what I was dishing was because of earlier that day. We sat for a few hours, but I knew Baby Girl would be up looking for that damn binky soon, so I had to go to the store. It was also getting dark, and we were a block over from the Piru Bloods, and you didn’t want to get caught after dark accidentally going into any of their territory. No one was allowed on Piru Street without their permission, and if you miss your turn and end up on that block, shit could be bad.
As I rose to go to the store, he told me to sit my ass down. I laughed because he had never talked