Cursed (3 page)

His mother spoke to his uncle for a few minutes before trotting down the steps to the car.

“Oh, thank god!” she exclaimed, leaning forward to the vent. “Mama’s AC broke last week.”

Jayden bit back his response, that his grandmother’s AC was broken every time they visited. It just added to the misery of visiting.

“Well, we made it,” he said as he pulled away from the house. “You and Bess have another fallin’ out?”

“Don’t we always.”

“Pretty much.”

“Mama had some good things to say about you,” she said. “She says you’re blessed, and you’ll make it big.”

“So she read the newspaper about me being scouted.”

“No, child, that’s not what she does.” Cora rolled her eyes. “She’s got the divine touch. She’s been right about everything. Marrying your daddy, my divorce, you kids, everything.”

“Mama, if you made your own decisions about life instead of waiting for some dead relative to tell you what to do, you –” he started, his frustration emerging.

“Jayden!” she snapped. “Have some respect for the spirits of your ancestors. You don’t want to anger them, do you? You’re so much like your father. You don’t even try to understand …”

He ignored her lecture about ancestral spirits and other nonsense. He didn’t believe in magic and agreed with his father that such beliefs were ridiculous. Marie Toussaint’s crazy visions and weekly discussions with dead people made him cringe, but not as much as the faith the family put in them. He constantly battled their influence on his mother.

His mother finished talking. They were silent, Jayden brooding and his mother satisfied that he’d listened to her this time. As important as it was for him to talk to her about Isabelle, his eight-year old sister, he didn’t think his mood would allow him to be calm enough for the sensitive subject.

“Did you tell your Uncle Joe about the football scholarships?” she asked.

“It didn’t come up,” he lied.

“Aw. You know he had an offer when he was in high school? Turned it down. Huge mistake. I was hoping you’d tell them,” she said with a sigh. “They might not think me such a screw up.”

“Mama.” Jayden glanced at her. “You’re not a screw up. Your mama and I agree on that, if nothing else. You’ve made mistakes, but you’ve taken steps to make up for them.”
Sorta.

“My little prince.”

His face grew warm at the motherly nickname. He hated it.

“Can’t even drive my car to see my own family.”

Thank god,
Jayden said silently. She’d be in her mama’s voodoo shed every weekend, if she had a decent car.

He felt like he was seventeen going on seventy. He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Mama said you broke up with your girlfriend,” she said. “Did you?”

“Yep.”

“You see? She
does
know things!”

“Kinda obvious. It’s the first barbecue in a year I didn’t bring her to,” Jayden pointed out.

“She was a bitch anyway, like all the girls at that snooty school your daddy put you in. She wouldn’t even talk to Mama when she came. She thinks she too good for us.”

He said nothing. He loved his school, if for no other reason than it was the one part of his life that had some semblance of structure. A natural at sports and academics, he didn’t have to deal with resentment, his mama’s temper tantrums, his daddy’s pressure, or juggle the extended family when he was in class. He was almost normal for those few hours a day. Even better, he was allowed to be a typical teenager, something neither parent seemed to get.

“I did kinda like her, though,” his mama said after a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me you broke up?”

“No big deal, mama. She was looking for something more serious than…” he stopped, but it was too late.

Her eyes were narrowed again.

“Oh, you, Jayden Toussaint Washington, you better not have-”

“Mama, please!” he said quickly. “I’m seventeen. I don’t want to get married! I just want to be a normal teenager. Do normal things, play football, worry about what college I want to go to.”

“Just like your father. I thought I raised you better. You think life is so easy and you can fool around, cuz your daddy’s got money! I bet you didn’t even –”

Jayden sighed. The traffic into New Orleans after the last long weekend before school began was heavy. He bore through her lecture, knowing she spoke out of personal injury and not because she believed him to be the deadbeat jerk she considered his father. At least, this is what his therapist explained to him.

It took work being the only sane one in a family of lunatics.

It was two o’clock by the time he pulled in front of her apartment building in the slums of the Lower Ninth Ward, a section of New Orleans where damage from the hurricanes of the last decade was still apparent in crumbling buildings and structures plastered with health and safety warnings. His mother’s building had been gutted and the interior completely refurbished. While it appeared sad and battered on the outside, the inside was relatively new.

Jayden dropped her off then parked in street. For once, he was glad the elevator to the seventh floor was slow. Instead of waiting, he went to the stairwell. It gave him time to cool down and recover his normal high level of patience. His phone rang as he ascended the stairs.

“Hey, Jay,” the voice on the other end said.

“What’s up, Mickey?”

“You gonna be at the early practice tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah,” Jayden said with a grimace. “What the hell got into coach? Especially the first day of class. Half the team will show up drunk.”

“I wish I was one of them,” Mickey groaned. “Can I catch a ride?”

“Sure. Wait, another call.” Jayden glanced at his phone and hung up on the new caller. “Kimmie again.”

“I thought you broke up.”

“We did. She won’t stop calling.”

“Lame. Hopefully the cheer squad isn’t practicing in the morning, or she’ll corner you for sure.”

“I didn’t even think of that. She’ll definitely find me Friday at the game,” Jayden said, irritated.

“You’re too nice, Jay.”

“I was honest with her. She’s just not getting it.”

“If you have a new girl by the game, she’ll get the point. Take my advice: no more of this relationship crap. Girls always throw themselves at you. You could have a new one every week until we graduate. That’s my plan.”

Jayden snorted. “Too much drama. I got three sisters. It’s enough to deal with outside of school.”

“Tell them up front. It’s what I do.” Mickey laughed.

“Whatever. I’ve seen you trip over yourself whenever you see Tara,” Jayden said, referring to one of the two stepsisters he’d inherited when his father remarried a few years ago.

“God, she’s hot.” Mickey’s voice took on a dreamy quality that made Jayden laugh. “I tried to ask her out last week. Epic fail.”

“She’s like her mommy - not into white guys.”

“I’m the top running back in high school, which means I’m black on the inside.”

“You’re crazy, man,” Jayden said, entertained. He reached his mother’s door and paused. “I gotta go. Be there at five to get your crazy ass.”

“Alright. Peace.”

Jayden hung up. His phone rang again, and he saw Kimmie’s name flash across the screen. Any other day, he’d try to be polite and answer. After dealing with his mother’s family and being lectured about how crappy of a son he was all the way home, he didn’t want any more drama.

He rejected the call and walked into his mother’s cozy, clean apartment. She was on the phone. He didn’t have to listen long to guess she was talking to one of her sisters about the felon that asked her out.

Frustrated, Jayden grabbed his gym bag and waved to her. He hoped to talk to her before he left, but that wasn’t going to happen. He left her apartment and jogged down the stairs, emerging into the humid afternoon.

The white zombie is going to kill you.

Grandmama hadn’t said someone would
try
. She said someone would
succeed
.

He didn’t believe in this stuff, but her words added to his sour mood. Getting in his car, he cut across town to Interstate 10 and headed east, away from downtown New Orleans, towards the wealthy suburbs.

Jayden zoned out on the way home, nervous about his senior year of school. Soon, everything changed. His comfortable routine would be gone, and he’d be too far away to help his mother, if she went back to drugs.

He passed through the prestigious neighborhood in the Eastover Ward where his father lived. Huge houses were hidden beyond thick gates and tall trees. His father’s was located at the end of a cul de sac – the largest of the estate-sized properties on his street.

Jayden clicked the remote for the gate and drove up a stone driveway leading to a Georgian style manor house. He continued around back to the twenty-car garage housing his father’s precious antique race car collection and parked in the second garage built for the family’s daily commuting cars.

A massive garden punctuated by waterfalls was directly behind the house and ended at an expanse of closely cropped, green yard hedged in the distance by stone walls to keep out paparazzi and trespassers.

He was still considering his college options when he walked in the kitchen door of the stately mansion and through the quiet house. The scent of familiar cigar smoke tickled his nose, coming from his father’s study. He glanced through the cracked doors as he passed then stopped. His father was alone in the masculine study with its heavy wood furniture, thick drapes, and natural lighting.

“Hey,” he said, pushing open the door. “You have guests?”

“Waiting for you.”

Frederick Washington was a slender, tall man with stylish, rectangular glasses and a quick smile. Jayden’s chiseled looks came from his mother’s side, but his height and charisma he got directly from his father.

“Really?” Jayden crossed to the chair across from his father and sat.

“You look rough, kiddo,” his father said. “Not going to ask why.”

There was no open animosity between his parents anymore, though Jayden knew they weren’t on friendly terms, either.

“You talk to her about Izzy?” his father asked.

“Not yet.”

“You wanted me to wait.”

“I know, Daddy. Just … give me ‘til the end of the week. The last thing she needs is to be dragged to court over this. I barely got her together after her last incident.”

“
Dolo toujou couri lariviere
. It’s in her nature,” his father recited the Creole proverb.
Again, different than regular French where the word would be toujours, I believe.
“It’s not your responsibility to put your mother together.”

“It’s not my responsibility to babysit the girls every day either or go to their PTA meetings and soccer matches because you’re too busy being the black Steve Jobs!” Jayden shot back.

His father was unaffected by the outburst. “One day, they’ll refer to someone as the white Frederick Washington,” came the amused response.

“Whatever, dad.”

“You’ve got it good, Jay. When people see you, they don’t see your skin. They see your daddy’s wallet. You never had to deal with what I did growing up. Our family is respectable, but once was poor.”

“Mama’s family says I’m too white already.”

“Backwards, superstitious, and ignorant. White people aren’t the only ones who can get a good education. Still into voodoo?” his father asked.

“Yeah.”

“If it were real, they’d buy themselves winning lotto tickets.”

Jayden snorted, aware he’d thought the same earlier.

“They’d spend it all and end up back in the Lower Ninth. It’s how backwards people behave.”

Hearing the words out loud made Jayden aware of how harsh they were. He was embarrassed to think he’d thought the same earlier in the day, when he was itching to get away from people who were so unlike him.

“I don’t want Izzy ever exposed to that,” his father said softly. “You know why. You can handle it. She’s a sensitive girl with a good future. It’s in her best interest if your mama signs away her parental rights, so I can raise the girl right.”

“I agree,” Jayden replied, hating himself a little for it. He loved his mother, and it hurt to know she wasn’t capable of taking care of his sweet little sister.

“I know this is a lot for you to handle, Jayden. You got college, football, Kimmie, and now this. Why not just let me take her to court and you can focus on school?”

“Because it doesn’t seem right to take Izzy. Mama won’t negotiate with you. She will…might with me,” Jayden said firmly. “Daddy, she’s got no one to take care of her except those relatives of hers – of mine! – who are making her crazy.”

“If your mama wanted to change, she would. They don’t make her do anything. She’s as messed up as they are.”

A small piece of Jayden knew as much, but she was his mother! How did he walk away from her, after all he’d done to try to help?