He Doesn't Deserve My Love Read online

  I placed everything down on the table. He grabbed my hands once I settled into my seat.

  “What’s up?” he asked me.

  Corey was a mixed young man. He was black and white and had the prettiest brown eyes you’d ever seen. His smile was cunning, and he was taller than me.

  I was five-three and had smooth brown skin, so I was the type of chick who complimented any man I was dating. I was very intelligent and well mannered. I was what you called a lady. For a young black woman, I was blessed with lengthy hair. I didn’t have to wear a weave or tracks. In my town, where the haters lay, they liked to clown and say my hair was fusion weaved. I said, “Let them hoes think what they want,” but they didn’t hear me, though.

  I had been a volleyball star back in my day and had done a lot of summer cross-country training to keep my wind up. Thanks to all that running, my thighs were thick as hell, as was that ass I sat on. Although I haven’t touched a gym since before my son was born, my calves still served me well. Let’s just say, I was right in all the places that mattered the most. I was petite, built just right, and had a very cute face. I wore a 32C cup size, but who wanted double Ds? Not me, so dismiss me with that one.

  I smiled at my man. “Nothing much, love. Have you heard anything yet?”

  He shook his head. “Any day now. I’m going crazy back there.” He opened his bag of chips and ate one. His eyes never left mine. “I got it in the bag, though. The man that came and talked to me said he gonna recommend for me to come home.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I opened my water and took a sip.

  “I ain’t never had anybody who stayed around long enough like you have. You gonna be my wife, Dollie. For real.” He smiled at me.

  “Too bad I didn’t sign that proxy. I could have been a Knight!” I joked with him. I laughed.

  I remembered when he sent me that paper from the county. I’d been happy that day and the next. Then I’d got cold feet. Well, not really cold feet. My gut had told me not to do it, especially since he showed his ass our first six months together. I had got that shit bad, had wanted to ignore those feelings. Something had told me, though, Do not pass go! Do not collect two hundred dollars. Flashbacks of incidents that happened while he was using had kept flooding my mind. I’d decided he had to show me there was more to Corey than being a druggie and a drug dealer. So I hadn’t done it.

  Evidently, he thought that what I had said was funny, because he laughed right along with me. We continued our conversation, filling each other in on what had been going on in our lives. That was when I remembered my encounter with Moses up front.

  “What happened to Moses? What’s he doing in here?” I quizzed Corey.

  “Ah, he got caught up in some bullshit. I can honestly say this time that it wasn’t that nigga’s fault why he locked up,” Corey explained. “How you know he in here?”

  “He was out there sweeping the floor,” I said, taking a swig of my drink.

  “Oh yeah. I forgot he switched jobs. He’s in the same dorm as me. We always on the same team when we ball against them Dallas and Louisiana niggas.”

  Our two-hour visit flew by, and before I knew it, it was time to go. He stood up and pulled me close to him. He kissed me gently and played with my hair as we said our good-byes.

  “I’ll be home soon, Doll,” he whispered in my ear. He kissed me one more time and then left to get his ID.

  As I walked toward the double doors, we both turned around and waved to each other. Then he joined the line with the rest of the inmates who were headed back to their cells.

  Chapter 2

  Two weeks later . . .

  “Jerry Pine, attorney-at-law,” I said, greeting the caller on the other end of the line.

  I was right in the middle of entering this week’s payments from Jerry’s clients into the computer. The one I was working on was seriously on the verge of being dropped as a client. He had made only one payment, and that was six months ago. But his mom had come in on Monday and had dropped off fifteen hundred dollars. All he owed now was about 750 dollars, which she had promised to pay by the end of next month.

  Jerry was in the middle of three big trials. Two of them were murder cases, and the other one involved drug trafficking. He had been getting a lot of press from these cases and was working hard on them, on top of handling all the other cases, most of which were petty charges and weren’t in the “limelight.”

  When he was busy like this, it was up to me to stay on top of things. He was a pricey attorney, and he had an eight-months rule. If clients hadn’t been making steady payments within an eight- month period, he dropped them—with no refund. If they wanted to hire him back, they had to pay the remainder of what they owed up front. Depending on the case and the level of the offense, such as whether it was a first-degree felony and so on, that could easily range from twenty-five hundred to ten thousand dollars. As it turned out, a lot of people who had come in to pay this week were on the verge of being dropped.

  A woman whose daughter was looking at thirty years for stabbing an abusive boyfriend to death had come in and paid four hundred dollars. It had been almost seven months since we’d seen her. She had already paid sixty-five hundred, and Jerry had taken the case for eight thousand. That was a lot of money to lose out on, and she was already so close to paying him off.

  I wasn’t a bill collector at all. It was Jerry’s policy to send out two reminder notices. One at four months and one at six months. The final one advised the clients that they were about to be dropped. I went the extra mile and called them up and touched base with them as far as their payments went. My doing these reminder phone calls actually helped Jerry get his money.

  Clients had to make sure their balance was paid in full before he would even represent them in court. If not, he’d push their court dates back to give them more time. But if he was not able to do that—or if he’d pushed the dates back too many times, to the point where he couldn’t do it anymore—he’d drop them as clients. Jerry was very reasonable, and he was all about his money, but he loved proving his clients’ innocence. Not to mention that this clean-cut blue-collar white man hated the DAs. Every single last one of them he could not stand, and that right there was the kind of lawyer you ought to be getting.

  “What’s up, big sis?” a cheerful voice answered back.

  I immediately smiled at the phone and stopped typing. It was Corey’s little sister, Naomi, calling me.

  “It’s about damn time!” I joked with her. “Have you heard from your brother?”

  “Nah,” she replied. “He ain’t heard anything from the parole board yet?”

  “Not as far as I know, he hasn’t,” I answered back.

  We talked about it for a little while. I hadn’t seen Corey in two weeks, and I was planning on going that weekend. I had been so caught up with helping Tammy, Jerry’s paralegal, research some similar cases to help out with the major drug trafficking case that I had been too tired to make that drive. Not to mention, one of the weekends my son had been sick, so naturally, I had not dared leave my child. He came first. I knew that was something Corey would understand, because he had seen how I was about my son firsthand out here. He loved the way I treated my son and always complimented me for being such a good mom.

  Naomi decided to meet me up at Formby. She had already made plans to go visit one of her aunts on their dad’s side who resided in Lubbock, and so it made sense for her to go from there to the prison. I was excited because I knew Corey would love to see his sister. We both agreed to keep it a secret and just let him be surprised when he saw us all walk in. We talked a little while longer, and then I let her go.

  It was almost three in the afternoon now, and I had to finish up posting these payments to everybody’s accounts. Then I had to type up all the new case information for the two people Jerry had been speaking with over the past couple of months. They were still debating about who they wanted to represent them, and surprisingly, they had both come in and paid to
day. One had paid her first half up front, and the other girl had paid the initial six hundred dollars for him to get started researching the case.

  I had just finished typing up the last person’s information when Jerry and Tammy both walked in. Normally, Jerry went to court by himself, but with major cases, he liked for his paralegals to attend with him. He had once explained that he did this so that if his paralegals did pursue a career as a lawyer, they would know what to expect. With Jerry being in such high demand, some days I saw him, and other days I didn’t. He worked on cases all over West Texas. Today, though, he had remained in Abilene all day, in court.

  Tammy, his paralegal, had been with us for over a year. Whenever she didn’t have to go to court with him, she did a lot of his interviewing for him. She went to the jails and prisons to talk to his clients, those who had either been court appointed to him or had been hired by loved ones.

  He was a passionate attorney, and he treated everybody with the same amount of respect he showed someone who had never committed a crime. To him, you were innocent until proven guilty, and if he thought that you were guilty, he’d let you know up front, before you hired him. Even if he was court appointed, he’d tell you like it was.

  Tammy wanted so much to be like him, so every time he had me schedule her for one of his court dates, she was super excited. She took his demeanor all in, because she wanted to represent her clients in that same respectful manner, but in her own style. She was currently going to Hardin Simmons and planned on attending graduate school in Houston the following school year or the year after that. Jerry had given her a good recommendation, as had a couple of other attorneys. Hell, one of the DAs had also given her a glowing recommendation letter, which she was ecstatic about. Jerry was proud about it too.

  Tammy was a very fashionable white girl. She wore only name-brand clothes and often appeared snotty. But once you got the chance to know her, she was the most caring person you could ever come across. She was very tall and slim. Tammy had long, curly red hair. I knew a lot of redheads who hated their hair, but not this girl. She flaunted what she had and was proud of it.

  It was almost time for me to close the office up to visitors, but Tammy had spared me this task. Upon entering, she had locked the office door behind her and had flipped the sign to CLOSED.

  “How’s it going?” she asked as she sat down. She turned on her computer so she could type up what had happened in court today from the notes she took.

  “Nothing much.” I gave her a recap of what had happened today, right down to Naomi’s phone call.

  “I’m glad you get along with your soon-to-be in-laws,” she muttered. “If you didn’t, that could end up being a nightmare in the long run.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. I offered my help to my coworker, but she declined. She was going to be there for another hour or so, and I probably would be a distraction to her.

  I took the files for the new clients into Jerry’s office and laid them on his desk. He was talking away on his phone, so I mouthed good-bye to him. He smiled at me and gave me two thumbs-up in the air. I smiled back as I exited his office, then got my things together.

  Before I left, I said my farewells to Tammy. Outside, I hopped into my blue Toyota Tundra. Everybody said it was way too big for me. I didn’t care. When I was in it, I felt like I was the biggest person, and I loved that I could drive that big ole truck with ease.

  I headed down the street to the busy intersection. I was on my way to the north side to pick up my son from his day care. I loved the location where my son was at. The day care was in a little, secluded area and on its own block near downtown. Big trees hovered over the dark brown brick building, which took up half the block. The vans they transported kids in usually parked in front of the building. The rest of the block was the day-care’s parking lot for the parents. The employees had reserved parking on both sides of the building. When you walked in, you could always count on the fresh smell of Pine Sol and a friendly face to greet you.

  The day care was run by my aunt Audrina. She would have a fit if he attended any other facility but hers. Her day care held up to two hundred kids, who ranged in age from newborn to twelve years old. Each little classroom had a theme, and the one that my son was in was Noah’s Ark. My aunt was big on education, nutrition, discipline, and manners. The parents loved my aunt because she had their kids saying, “No, ma’am” and “Yes, sir.” They said grace before they ate, and they learned all kinds of songs. Starting with the age four groups, the providers were required to help the kids practice spelling their names and learn their colors, their ABCs, and their 123s. That was to assist especially the four-year-olds who had been unable to attend Early Head Start because their parents made too much.

  She even had students from the three universities come in for a couple of hours in the afternoon to help the school-age kids out with their homework. She had a big outdoor playground that was gated, and those ten years old and up were taken on outings by their teachers, since their parents felt that they were too young to stay at home by themselves and too big to do a lot of the things the little kids did. She had her center on lock.

  I picked up my son and shot over to my uncle’s bakery on the way home. His bakery sat on the corner of one of the busiest streets in Abilene. He shared a facility with a grocery store, but the only way to enter was through the parking lot, not through the store. They had to close the original entrance off so they could extend the kitchen and the area they baked in. My uncle had had his shop for about ten years. His was a really good business, and he had got great ratings from the critics, the health department, and all three news stations.

  I always stopped by my uncle’s shop to get my son a big cookie. Drake enjoyed going there. Even though he always ended up with a big cookie, he liked to pretend he was having a hard time deciding what he wanted. Then my uncle would come through and say, “Drake! I got your cookie,” causing my son to dissolve into a fit of chuckles. He liked to eat his treat with ice cream and got this delicacy almost every day.

  My aunt Audrina and my uncle Justin were married. There were times when she would get off of work and would go and help him out. Sometimes, she would even stay and close down his store for him if he looked too tired.

  Their youngest daughter, Victoria, also helped run the store. She was the closest to my age, but she was still older than me. My uncle Justin, of course, was black, and my aunt Audrina was a Mexican. Victoria was the youngest of six. She and her oldest sister, Cecily, had both taken more from the Mexican side. But the other four kids had taken more from the black side. Needless to say, all six of them could read, write, and speak fluent Spanish.

  Victoria had always been their wild child and was quite spoiled. She didn’t have a husband and wasn’t blessed with any kids. She had once been heavily dependent on cocaine. Sometimes, she had done well when she was using; other times, she hadn’t. For a long time, nobody had known that she was even on that shit. There had been times when we would see Victoria on a regular basis, and there had been times that we wouldn’t see her or hear from her in days. My aunt and uncle were used to it. When she would finally come around, she would look so sickly thin.

  She would come up with the excuse that she had been sick and just hadn’t felt like bothering anybody. That was an easy story to believe since Victoria had frequented the doctor’s office ever since she was young. She was the child who had ended up sick with any and everything. They naturally believed she really had been ill and would scold her for not calling.

  I was the first one to find out that Victoria was a smoker. I found this out before Corey went to jail. Corey and I had been lounging around the house we shared at the time. One of his homeboys had come over, and they’d gone into the bathroom. Whenever they did that, I knew that my sweet boyfriend was leaving the house and a prick was going to emerge from that bathroom. That left a bitter taste in my mouth. Sure enough, that day the Devil came out of the bathroom, with bloodshot eyes and a runny nose
.

  Whatever he’d snorted must have been some pretty strong shit. Both boys came out walking into each other. They were running into the walls and shit. Had goofy looks plastered on their faces. Corey demanded that I dropped them off in the hood. I did not hesitate to grab my keys and take them. The sooner Corey got away from me, the better I’d be.

  On the way to their neighborhood, Corey received a phone call on his cell. He had me take him to hit a lick. I didn’t think twice about it. I did it to avoid an argument. If I had told him no, then things wouldn’t have ended well. Not long after I pulled up to a well-known, rundown, shabby-looking crack house, I saw my cousin stumble out of the house to meet him. If she saw my truck, she didn’t give a damn. She just wanted to hit that shit my awful boyfriend had.

  Victoria looked distraught. Her normally well-kept curly hair was matted to her face and neck. Although they were over six feet away, a horrible stench insulted my nose. I couldn’t tell if it was body odor, rotten eggs, or something like a dead body but not quite. My cousin looked dirty and wore a blue polo dress and some flip-flops. This nigga Corey knew she was my family, and he was sellin’ to her, anyway. I should have left his ass right fuckin’ then, but I didn’t. I should have told my aunt and uncle she was getting fucked up off that shit then, but I didn’t. I should have intervened in the whole thing, but I just didn’t.

  The memories of seeing her show up at her parents’ house after no one had seen her for three weeks came rushing back to me. That was because right then and there, I realized she was on a rock star binge. She was so bad that she used to rent out her Excursion, which my uncle had gotten her, for days at a time in exchange for crack. My aunt and uncle paid her rent and bills faithfully, not realizing that their child was on something.