None of us got sleep. None of us wanted sleep.
He cried and I listened with a heavy hurt heart.
I felt helpless.
“Jeremy, talk to me.” I petitioned.
We were in his bedroom, he sat in one corner and I sat in the other watching and waiting. Every time he opened his mouth, wails came out instead of words.
“I-I I kil…killed him,” he sobbed.
That I knew. With the amount of blood, we found on his clothes and in his car we knew someone had died.
“Where is the body?”
“Behind Troy’s Liquor store on Sunrise right before you get to 31st.”
I sent a text to Amp to hurry up and handle it before whomever body it was started stinking. “Who is… who is the person?”
Raising his head to show beyond puffy and red eyes, he wiped his face with his shirt. “Johnny.” Who in the hell is Johnny? “He…he.” His words fought with the cries that wanted to escape.
“Did he do something to you?”
“I’m not gay. I’m not gay, Amell. I don’t get down like that.”
At the sound of his words I felt like I was being transported back in time with Odom. Seeing the bruises and the limp in his walk. Watching him cry, how did I let this happen right under my watch?
“It started back with my grandmother’s brother Roosevelt.” I stopped breathing. I knew all about his Uncle Roosevelt. He liked to take JD fishing since he was a young boy…fuck.
“He started touching me when I was a jit. I knew the shit was wrong,” he swallowed his sobs with his knees up to his chest. “He always threatened me. Telling me that he’d hurt grandma if I did. One day I got away from him and was about to run and call you.” He cried harder. “Grandma was in the kitchen cooking. He bumped into her so hard that the grits she was cooking wasted on her. Remember when she had to stay in the hospital because of the burns?”
I did remember. While she recouped, I took JD with me for a few weeks. He was so happy to be with me that I never thought twice about it.
“He said that if I ever told you or her, next time wouldn’t be an accident.”
“How…how,” I cleared my throat of the heavy emotion in my throat. “How long did he do this?”
“Up until about two years ago but every time he came to visit, he tried me, and I fought him back. He’s gotten older but that motherfucker is strong, and I fight until I can get away.”
“Isn’t he in jail?” In my head I was doing the calculations to the last time he was here, and it was around the time JD got caught with the three girls in the house.
“Yeah. His stupid ass call himself being a dope boy and sold to an undercover cop. I thought the devil had left since he got a twenty-five-year bid but that sick bastard is in there bragging to them sick perverts about me like I’m some faggot. His bunkmate Johnny recently got out and came looking for me. Saying that he had heard about,” he cried harder.
“Roosevelt showed him pictures of me and everything. Pictures that he took when we went fishing. I was a jit, Amell. He even gave them to Johnny like that shit was a fucking token. I was up at Troy’s getting a fish plate when the nigga approached me out of nowhere. He tried to touch me, and I fucking snapped. I kept banging his head into my car window until it broke and then I stabbed him in the neck with a piece of glass.” He held out his shaking hands. “I tried to stop but I couldn’t.”
“Did anybody see you?” Troy’s stayed crowded on the weekends, so I knew there was a good possibility that he was seen.
“I’m not sure. You know in the back where it’s dark but easy access to the backroad, that’s where I parked so I could get my plate and go. At the time no one was around, and I hid the body in the bushes.”
I sent Amp another text with everything JD just told me and for him to get all the cameras. “Jeremy, you know I’ll always do any and everything to protect. You could’ve told me.”
“I know but at the time I thought he’d hurt you and once I got older to understand that you’re crazier than half the world, I felt ashamed and embarrassed to admit what he’d done to me.”
Standing, I walked over and hugged him. He cried and I unraveled…I broke. I never said I was perfect. Never claimed that type of energy in my life. But I prided myself on keeping those around me safe. Protecting my brothers from our father showed me that I had the capability to do so, but then Odom happened. Then O’Nesha, and now Jeremy.
I failed him three times.
Failed him in protecting his uncle.
Failed him in protecting his mother.
Failed him in protecting him from predators.
I gave JD so much leeway because I wanted him to be a kid and enjoy his youth. Enjoy what I never got to experience. All I ever asked from the kid was to keep God first, stay in school, and go to college. He did that and in return I vowed to always be there.
What profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
Why did that haunt me all of a sudden?
I never gained the whole world, but I tried to give to those I loved because I had long ago lost my soul.
“Where is your uncle? What prison is he in?” I needed to know.
“Raiford in Bradford County.”
We sat in a grieving silence. I didn’t have the mental capacity to talk or form sentences on my tongue. All that replayed through my mind is every person I let down, and I know life happens and people are just evil, but all that I am, the wholeness in me that makes me a man, it comes from protecting people.
How am I able to save a pregnant woman from her rapist but not do the same with Jeremy and I had a million and one eyes on him? How is that I know the minute Atlas wakes up and when Cassian is about to take a shit but failed to be there for O’Nesha?
I failed my brothers because I left them for a wagon of food.
I failed Odom because I acted without thinking.
I failed O’Nesha because I let my feelings stand in the way of protecting her.
I failed Jeremy because I focused more on making sure that he never went without and giving him freedom as a teenager than really protecting him as I know I’m capable of.
And I failed Krishna, failed my heart because no matter what she asks of me I’d never be able to give her my all what she deserved. If I did, I’d fail her too.
Chapter 15
Krishna
I’m floating on clouds. I had to be. Floating on dark rainy clouds. Why did burying a parent exhaust you so much? My mother hasn’t said a full sentence in weeks and only eats when forced. Then all of my father’s old guards vanished and were replaced with new, more intimidating ones. What had become of my life?
Comfy cotton socks covered my feet. Walking through Amell’s house, my body felt cold. Ice cold. Candles guided me throughout the large estate. I refused to turn on any lights. Most days I opened the curtains and let the natural light bring in rays of sun hoping that happiness would find me. Hoping that a piece of him would wrap around me so tight that I’d snap out of this bad dream.
His pond of children, his fish, I fed them like they were my own. Fed his dogs and the family of turtles in his other pond. My actions had one goal feel closer to him.
In truth, I’ve grown a strong dislike for the only man capable of making me fall in love. Hate. Gosh that was such a strong word but the way I felt most days, especially having to sit through my father’s funeral alone, without him, the feeling had started to plant. Could he not pause his vengeance to be there for me?