Hold Me in Contempt (4 page)

I don't know how I found the comedy, but I actually started laughing. And loudly.

“What? What are you laughing at?” Kent asked, looking like he was about to run back around the corner to fight Ronald.

“I don't know. I just,” I started, “I guess it's funny how you said you didn't fight him before because he wasn't good enough for me, but now you're all riled up and ready to throw down.”

Kent rolled his eyes and sucked his teeth like we were seven and I didn't want to play H-O-R-S-E with him on the basketball court.

“Look at you,” I went on, still laughing.

“Yeah, whatever. You better be glad you're a lawyer and I knew the last thing you wanted was for some nigga shit to go down in there, because we were both about to be rumbling—sister and brother.”

“Really?”

“I can't have that fool getting my Kiki Mimi all upset and hiding in a bathroom. Mess up my rep in these streets. Have niggas thinking I'm soft.”

I put my arms out and pulled Kent into a hug.

“Maybe you're just soft enough. Soft enough to save me,” I said, and I felt happiness wash over my twin brother.

“Ohh,” Kent said. “Well, how about you save me, too?”

“What? How?” I asked. I'd already forgotten about what he'd asked me at the table.

“Lydia. My fiancée. Your sister-in-law. Pull some strings. Make some calls!” Kent backed up so I could see his begging smile.

“Ahhh, to that I still say no. Not even in a million years, Kent. No. And hell no. Nice begging smile though, baby bro.”

Chapter 2

A
fter I left Kent and the drama at the restaurant, I took a cab home to lie down for a few hours before I was supposed to be in Fort Greene for my godson's fencing match. My lower back was hurting, and I knew it would only take a little while for the consistent throbbing to spread up my spine and make it nearly impossible for me to walk or even sit up without severe discomfort. That car accident I was in with Kim 2 had left a fracture in my lower spine, and while my doctor had given me a clean bill of health, the pain never left me. Some days it was impossible for me to get out of bed. Other days I'd manage for a few hours but then I'd feel the throbbing in my spine and know the pain was back. I'd need to get home, take my pills, and lie down until they took the pain away.

I slept a little longer than I expected and missed Miles's match, but I rushed all the way to Brooklyn from downtown and got there in time to see him receive his medal and pose for pictures. I'd made it to a few of his matches, and for some reason it always surprised me that so many kids were actually fencing in Brooklyn—not hooping it up, not gangbanging, but fencing, and loving it. But it really wasn't so far-fetched. Not in the new Brooklyn with its trimmed and manicured trees and community gardens and sidewalk cafés. The newfangled Brooklyn kids lived in newly renovated brownstones and had two parents at home who went to PTA meetings and volunteered after school. While Miles clearly benefitted from it, I sometimes wondered what had happened to all those poor people and their kids who'd lived in the old chain-popping, hip-hopping Brooklyn I knew growing up.

Tamika and my other cousin Leah were giving me some serious side eye for being late. I completely expected it. Like the other parents in the room, most of whom were white and dressed liked they'd purposely gotten ready in a dark closet, they thought the most important thing anyone could do was to be somewhere supporting someone's kid. Potty poop or pottery fair, we all had to stand at attention and act like whatever they were doing was the most important thing in the world. Still, I knew my cousins' issues ran even deeper than that, so I had to accept their ridiculous criticism.

“I'm sorry I missed it,” I said to them after I'd secretly slid twenty dollars into Miles's hand before he ran off to flaunt his victory medal in front of his friends. “My back was hurting and I had to lie down for a little while.”

“Hum,” Tamika said, cutting her eyes at me even harder. “You're his godmother. I'm just saying, it would be nice if you'd try to be here on time . . .  ​just once.” She looked at Leah for an agreeing nod that made me roll my eyes.

“Really? So, this is what we're doing? Right here? At the match? I've been at, like, half of his matches. I know most of the parents in this room. More than both you.” The same throbbing started at my spine again. I had to be careful with them. They were sisters and so catty, they'd make you feel like scratching their eyes out. When Kent and I were younger we'd call them “the wicked sisters of the East Coast.”

“Whatever, Kim. He's ten. This is important stuff. He needs you to be here for him right now,” Tamika said so sharply I knew nothing she was saying had anything to do with me or my tardiness.

Tamika and Leah were the children of my mother's baby sister. Like Kent and me, they grew up hard and fast while our mothers were in the street, and when most teenage girls were thinking about trying out for the cheerleading squad, they were both pushing baby strollers and collecting welfare checks. Neither one of them was stupid though. When Tamika got pregnant with Miles, she dropped out of high school, got her GED, and enrolled at LaGuardia Community College. Leah was only fifteen when she had her son, Monk, so she stayed in school, but after graduation she followed Tamika and they finished LaGuardia and City College together. Leah and Tamika were now beyond successful. They'd left Harlem for a changing Brooklyn when Aunt Donna died of AIDS in the late nineties; they were raising their sons together in a brownstone they'd purchased with the secret life insurance policy our grandfather took out on our mothers when they started using drugs. Any cliché you could apply to teenage mothers made good could be attached to their success, but my cousins remained psychologically tortured by everything that led to that actual success. The list was long, and somewhere in there was Aunt Donna's drug use, her death, and the fact that no matter how smart they were, there was nothing they could do about either of those things. But as heartbreaking as that was, that wasn't even what was at the top. There, like the final sentencing from a judge handing out twenty-five years to life, was a string of four fathers no one had seen since their children were conceived: Tamika's father, Leah's father, Monk's father, and Miles's father. It was a wound that had affected the sisters in different ways. For Tamika, it meant that she was set on making every man pay for what Miles's father had done to her by abandoning them. And since most of them had stopped coming around, I was on the list as well.

“Mika, you know I love Miles, and I'm always here for him. He knows that,” I said as calmly as I could. “Please forgive me,” I added sweetly before opening my arms for a hug.

Tamika rolled her eyes at me again and looked to Leah. She tried to play hard for a few more seconds, but then she softened and halfheartedly accepted my hug.

“Fine. I'll accept your apology. But don't be late again. You've been late, like, the last three times,” she said dismissively, like I was one of her ex-boyfriends trying to get back in good with her. She was crazy as hell, but she was my favorite cousin. We both looked like our grandmother—had long, slender arms and dimples on either side of our lower lip.

“I won't be late anymore. I promise,” I said. “Hey, Lee!” I hugged Leah and gave her twenty dollars for Monk, who was away in Washington, DC, on a fifth-grade history-class field trip. Leah had been an out lesbian since Monk was born. She never let her hair grow beyond an inch and wore jeans and Adidases everywhere she went. She was twenty-six, but she only dated women in their forties. Still, she was just as unlucky in love as Tamika, and I couldn't recall any affair she'd had that lasted past six months.

“So, how was brunch with Kent?” Tamika asked with her disposition decidedly changed. “What's his ass up to?”

“A whole lot of crazy,” I said, knowing I wouldn't mention seeing Kim 2 and Ronald. Tamika felt she was responsible for the whole thing because she'd introduced me to Kim 2 and promised on the Bible that if she ever saw her again, she'd “beat her down to the white meat.” Now, considering Tamika's age and success, that might sound like an idle threat, but being born and bred in Harlem, I had no reason not to believe it. If I even mentioned Kim's name, we'd be in a cab riding back to the restaurant to try to find her.

“Everything Kent does is crazy,” Leah pointed out.

“Well, this is the craziest yet,” I said. “He claims he's getting married.”

“Married? To whom?” Leah and Tamika asked together so loudly, all of the other parents who were standing in groups turned and looked at us quickly.

“He can't be marrying Keisha. She's . . . ​you know,” Leah said, looking at Tamika hesitantly before I could answer.

“What? Keisha's what?” I asked.

“I saw her at the club a few weeks ago,” Leah answered, frowning a little. “She was with this dom I know named K.D. And I'll just say this, K.D. likes turning bitches out. I wouldn't be surprised if Keisha's next.”

“Come on, Lee. We both know plenty of straight women go to the gay club for entertainment only. I've gone with you before. That doesn't mean she's turned out by some butch named K.D.,” I said.

Tamika looked away like I was in denial.

“I guess the way she was grinding on K.D.'s lap was just for entertainment, too,” Leah said. “I'm not saying . . .  ​I'm
just
saying.”

I stood there with my mouth agape for a minute as I added Kent's sudden desire to marry his Latin lover to the equation. He'd loved Keisha since they'd met in junior high school, and she'd gotten suspended after taking the rap for his having stolen their science teacher's wallet. They were one of those couples who lived to break up, but you always knew they'd get back together in the end.

I told Tamika and Leah all about Kent trying to get me to pull some strings to get Lydia into the US. We had a good laugh and agreed there was no way he'd ever make it down the aisle to actually marry that woman. If Keisha was that open with her underground dealings at the club, there was no way someone from somewhere didn't see what she was doing and send word to Kent. New York was a big city, but the circles people traveled in were so small. And while Leah wasn't rushing to tell her cousin anything about his baby mama being in K.D.'s arms at the gay club on account of all the drama he'd put Keisha through over the years, the cat was probably let out of the bag by someone else—someone who needed a free carton of Newports. Anyway, Kent's action was probably a reaction. We decided to put the entire case on hold until more drama ensued.

Somewhere in there, one of Tamika's archenemies walked into our little familial circle holding a glass of red punch and nodding along as if she'd been invited. One of a handful of black mothers in the room, Yolanda Johnson was a late-thirties NYC newbie whose perfect exterior and nosy nature made it easy for the other mothers to hate her. She'd had three boys but managed to keep herself a size 4, and everything from her ducktail flip to her perfectly manicured pinky toes was so on-point that it could make a drag queen envious. And that's all fine, but in the handful of times I'd seen her, those things seemed to be the only things she could talk about—where she'd gotten her hair done, what color her nail lacquer was, her workouts with Madonna's trainer, and how wonderful her sons and husband were to her. It was enough to make anyone vomit. Or beg her to shut up. As Tamika had reminded me one night after she'd scared Yolanda off with an evil eye, Yolanda was a housewife, so staying slim and trim was technically a part of her job. And all of that stuff about her perfect sons and husband was a bunch of crap—her sweet sons wreaked havoc whenever she wasn't around, and she kept her hair and nails tight because her lawyer husband had been cheating with the single mother of another boy in the fencing class—even worse, the other mother let him go because he had a little penis, and she wasn't shy about telling people.

“Well, I think it's exciting,” Yolanda said, pushing herself into the conversation at a point where there was no way she could be clear on what we were talking about. Most times she stayed away from Tamika, but Leah pointed out that whenever I came around, Yolanda would pop up. She was one of those opportunists who thought that because I was an ADA, I was a “somebody,” and therefore she had to know me. “Marriage? A wedding! Nothing more exciting than that—especially when it's a brother getting married.” She grinned and leaned into me, laughing. “Know what I'm saying? Who is it?”

I could see Tamika gritting her teeth to stop herself from telling Yolanda to get the hell away from us, so I jumped in.

“My brother,” I said.

“Oh, that's so sweet. Are you looking for a wedding planner? Because I know the sister who planned Jay and Bey's wedding. She's wonderful. Just amazing.” Yolanda's voice took on the inflection of a Valley Girl when she said “wonderful” and “amazing.”