“Regardless of the results I’ma need it. I need some answers.”
“For what, Rem? If she’s yours, you step up and handle your shit as a father. You don’t need Pynk for that. You got a whole fucking village. When she left her, she was crying, the type of crying that had Caya reaching for her and she didn’t even know the child’s name. It should never be that easy for a mother to walk away from her child in distress like that.”
“You right. If she is mine, I don’t need Pynk, but she still gotta see me behind this bullshit.” No amount of sense he could’ve talked would stop me from getting at Pynk behind this shit. Yeah, I’d stopped messing with her and blocked her ass afew years back, but truth was, if she wanted me to know about this child back then, she knew how to get in touch with me. Just like she knew to show up at my brother’s house three years later, right? The fuck outta here. Pynk’s skeeze ass knew what she was doing.
My brother didn’t get the chance to respond because less than a second later the nurse was calling my name at the door.Here we go.
Exactly ninety-seven minutes later I found out I was a father. Exactly how did one find out they were a father when the child looked exactly like them from the moment they laid eyes on her? Denial lived in me when I laid eyes on her, now I looked at her and felt like complete shit. She was mine and I didn’t know the first thing about being a father…Being her father.I had gotten the uncle thing down to a science, just laughing at the random shit they did, answering the phone, and being prepared to spend money on shit their parents said no to. Fatherhood wasn’t a hood I had ever foreseen myself in, but here I was, now seated in the back with it.
“Here, it’s dead.” She handed me the shattered iPad and pointed to my phone. “Games?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t have any. What happened to your iPad, shorty?” The screen was fully shattered, probably held together by the thick ass case it was in.
She shrugged dramatically. “I dunno.”
I didn’t know why I laughed, but I did.
“Can you put games on your phone?” she asked.
“Nah, but we’re gonna get you something else to play them on.” My eyes once again looked over the iPad in my lap. Shitcouldn’t be safe. What if a shard of glass had gotten out of the case and into her fucking finger? Pynk was so careless, man.
“Okay. Whea Mommy?” she then asked.
“Probably somewhere hoeing,” I mumbled.
“Reminisce.” I heard G say my name from the front.
“What, man? This my kid, right? I’m not about to be out here lying to her.” I had my face turned up because I meant that.
“You’re stupid, man, like for real,” Reminisce said.
“Maybe so. But I said what I said.”
For the rest of the ride my mind ran a mile a minute, never really slowing down to put any thoughts in order. The facts were that I had a daughter, a child who looked like me and I didn’t know anything about her, not even her favorite food. I had a child and I didn’t want children, but it was too late for my wants and needs. She was mine.
When we got back to the house, there were even more cars in the driveway. I recognized Indiri’s but not the olive Bronco. Then again, I remembered my sister telling me about Oden buying her a new car. Had all my siblings decided to bring their nosy asses here for this?
“Damn, did a discreet text message go through the group chat or something?”
“You can’t be in everybody else’s business then wanna keep yours to yourself. It doesn’t work like that.” G laughed, getting out of the passenger seat, then turning to open the door and help Romance out of her booster seat.
“Yo, she in pampers?” I asked, watching G fixing the lil ugly long ass skirt she was dressed in.
“Nah. She let Beyah know she had to go when we were in the house.”
I nodded.
“You’ll get the hang of things like that. I swear.”
“Easy for you to say, don’t you have sons?”
“True, but you got it, bro. I have faith in you.”
His words echoed in my head. It wasn’t a matter of me having it, but the fact that I now had a whole life depending on me to get it together and be something I never saw myself being. I had to be something I’d never had in my own childhood.
We were almost at the door when lil mama turned around looking from my brothers to me. She came to me and pointed to the tablet in my hand. “Can you charge?” she asked with the most expressive eyes.
I wanted to tell her I was throwing this motherfucker away, but I didn’t. I nodded. “Okay.” To my complete shock, she reached for my hand and we walked up the one stair into the house.
