Down With the King of the South Read online

  “Right after you let me sit this pussy on your beard. I’m about to go. I’m not about to keep standing here and going back and forth with your stupid ass! Miami, remember what I said,” Mahogany said, turning her attention to me and giving me one last hug before she left.

  “Don’t run away now, shorty. Let me finish fuckin’ with your ass,” Jabari called out.

  Mahogany just kept walking, but she did raise her hand and give him the finger on the way out.

  “I know that’s what you want me to do, that’s why you let a nigga get you so riled up. Meet me in the bathroom, shorty. I’ll even eat your pussy for you,” Jabari yelled, standing up from his seat.

  He was loud as hell, screaming that shit out in a club. I had to admit the shit was funny as hell, though.

  “Yo, why you ask her if she was a lawyer?” I asked after I finished taking a swig of my drink.

  “Cuz she running down that nigga’s business, so I thought maybe she was a lawyer. That’s my type of woman, though. I like crazy, and I could look in that bitch’s pretty ass eyes and tell that she fuckin’ crazy. She looks like she’ll run down on me while I’m with a bitch and slice me and the bitch up for fuckin’ around. She’ll clean up a nigga’s wounds when we get back to the house and cry while she doing it because she saw the damage that she did to me,” he went on to say,

  Again, all I could do was shake my head and laugh.

  “That pretty bitch will have me in jail, though. I don’t want none of her or her pussy, although I know it’s good. I can tell by her slick ass mouth and that stank ass walk that she got some good pussy on her,” and he ended it just like that.

  For at least another thirty minutes, we drank together, puffed on our own blunts, and we ended up leaving at the same time. What a night!

  Jashae Johnson

  “Oh my God. Look at my handsome baby. Oooh, look at you,” I cooed, as my son came from out of the fitting room in his white and black tux.

  His homecoming dance was in two weeks. The two of us had gone to breakfast this morning, and now we were in Men’s Wearhouse trying to find the best tux for him. This was the third one that he’d come out in, and I thought that the first two were going to be the one that we went with, but this one right here was my favorite.

  I was damn near crying just from watching my son try on the tux, so imagine how I was going to be on the actual night of homecoming or prom. I never really saw my son dress up like this. Vonte had his own little style, so when we went to church, he would usually wear a dress shirt, some jeans, and a pair of Forces. To stand there and witness my son rocking a tux had me feeling a wave of emotions.

  “Ma, you trippin’. This is why I was going to ask Pop Pop to take me because I knew you were going to do the most,” Vonte called out.

  Pop Pop was my dad, and that was the nickname that my son had been calling him since he was about two years old.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll try to stop. Vonte, I didn’t attend these things when I was growing up. My senior year, you were three, about to be four. Trip had already graduated, and I let him tell me that if he couldn’t go with me, then I couldn’t go. Not even just that, but Grandma was already doing so much for me like watching you during the day while I went to school, so if anything, I was afraid to ask if I could go to homecoming, prom, hell even grad bash. I didn’t do any of those things. It’s cool because I get to witness you doing them. This is the closest that I ever got to doing any of those things.

  “Just be a little patient with your mama and know that when I get a little extra excited about stuff like this, it’s because, at this moment, I am kind of living my life vicariously through you. I’ll stop doing the most, though. Is that the tux you want or one of the first two?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Vonte didn’t answer me. Instead, he turned away from the mirrors that he was originally looking in and looked down at me. My phone was in my hand from me being so happy that I’d started taking pictures of Vonte. I had about three different kinds of ties on my shoulders because we were trying to figure out which one he would wear, and I was holding a pair of dress shoes in my hands so that we could pick the perfect shoe for the tux. I was literally just all over the place.

  “I didn’t know you didn’t go to your prom and stuff, Ma,” Vonte said, and his voice softened toward me a little bit.

  “Yeah, I didn’t go. That’s why you never saw those pictures and stuff,” I let him know as I set the shoe back on the stand.

  “I just assumed that y’all didn’t take pictures that night. Social media wasn’t as crazy when you were in high school as it is now. I always thought that you did all of the same stuff that I did,” Vonte said.

  “No, that’s why I always get a little extra happy whenever something comes around like homecoming. I’m excited about prom in a few more months, even helping you pick out your outfit for grad bash. When I ride you constantly about you not having kids, it’s not strictly because I don’t want you to make me a grandmother while I’m in my thirties. It’s mainly because I want you to enjoy your life. Enjoy your teenage years, Giovonte. Kids can wait. I missed out on a lot of things when I had you. I just don’t want you to miss out on those same things as well,” I let him know.

  I wasn’t sure if I was making him emotional by the stuff that I was saying, but I saw a look of sadness in his eyes. Hell, I was trying to avoid this by dropping the subject, but he brought it back up.

  “What you had planned for that Friday night when I go to homecoming?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really. The same thing I do every Friday. Is this the tux that you’re going to get, Vonte? Come on now,” I rushed him.

  We’d been in this store for almost an hour.

  “Nah, I want the second one. The olive green one and I want you to find something that matches it,” he said.

  “Okay, I think I have an olive green shirt or something in my closet. We can have pop pop and grandma come over, and they can take your pictures,” I let him know.

  “Ma, I don’t think you understand me right now. I want you to go into one of those girly stores with the long gowns and stuff, and I want you to pick out an olive green dress to match my tux because I’m taking you with me to my homecoming. I want you to go,” he said.

  I was taken aback by what he’d said, so I took a seat in the chair that I was originally sitting down in and stared at him.

  “What? Vonte, no! I wasn’t telling you all of this stuff because I wanted to go with you. I just wanted you to know why I was so happy to see you go. These are your memories to have, not mine. It’s your senior year, your homecoming. I’ll be fine. Trust me, two weeks from now, I’ll be just as happy to be on the sideline with my camera in my hands, taking pictures of you,” I let him know.

  “Ma, I get all of that, but I want to take you. I want you to have some type of knowledge of what it feels like to attend homecoming. Do this for me, ma,” Vonte said as he walked over to me with a serious look on his face.

  Because I knew that this wasn’t just some cruel prank that he was playing on me, I found myself getting emotional. I was such a big baby, especially when it came to my child. Tears started running down my face, and I used the back of my hands to wipe them away.

  “What about Taylor? I thought you would take her,” I said.

  “We not on the best of terms right now. Even if we were, I’m supposed to put another woman ahead of you? Don’t worry about all of that stuff right now. I know how picky you are, so just focus on finding a dress and praying that you don’t let me out dress you for homecoming,” he joked then pulled me into his arms and kissed my cheek.

  “That’s the least of my worries, baby. You know when I step out, I’m always dressed to impress,” I let him know.

  We stayed in the store for another fifteen minutes because the seamstress had come over after Vonte had tried on the second tux again. She let us know the different alterations that she would have to make on it, but she assured us that she would have it
done before the homecoming. Finding a dress wasn’t something that could happen in a blink of an eye, and I knew how much my son hated going shopping with me, so I figured that I would either come back later tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.

  In the car, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Never in a million years did I think that my son would invite me to go with him to his homecoming. I felt like a teenager again, getting ready to attend homecoming for the first time. Since it was still early, and I didn’t have anything else to do for the majority of the day, I decided that I would swing by my grandmother’s place since we were already in the area. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks because I had been so busy with work, but we talked on the phone just about every day.

  I was close as hell with my grandmother, which wasn’t a surprise because she was the woman who raised me. She was the one who talked to me about sex when I got my period for the very first time, although everything she told me went in one ear and out the other because I’d gotten pregnant at a young age. She was the one who signed off on all of my field trip forms if my daddy wasn’t home to sign them. She did all of those things that my mother would have done for me had she been alive to do it.

  The moment we pulled up to the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home that my grandmother now lived in by herself, I noticed that her car, my dad’s car, and even Mahogany’s car was in the driveway. My daddy was pushing the lawn mower back and forth, cutting my grandma’s grass. It was hot as hell in Miami today, but I still didn’t know if that gave my daddy the right to be outside without a shirt on in his cargo shorts with his work boots. Granted, my daddy looked good as hell for his age, but still.

  “Look at this man. Pop Pop knows what he be doing. He’s going to have all the cougars coming over here,” my son called out the moment we stepped out of the car.

  All I could do was laugh and shake my head. My daddy was worse than the men my age when it came to women. These days, he swore up and down that he had a girlfriend, but I didn’t know if I believed that yet because no one had seen her. The moment he saw Vonte and me, he smiled big and cut the lawn mower off. He used the hand towel that was in his back pocket to wipe the sweat that was dripping down his face.

  When my son got closer to his grandfather, he reached his hand out, gave him a pound, and my daddy pulled him in for a hug. Sweating or not, I went in for a hug as well.

  “Why don’t you just hire somebody to come and cut Grandma’s grass? It’s too hot out here for you to be doing that,” I said, acting like more of a mother than his daughter.

  “Swear you every bit of your damn mama. You haven’t been around me for one whole minute, and you already trying to order a nigga around. Why Ima waste money on the next man, when I can get my ass out here and do it myself? I can do it better than them too. I saw your grass a couple of weeks ago, and I can cut your shit ten times better,” my daddy bragged.

  My dad and I have always been close. Never really had a falling out with each other either. He was that man in my life who I would call when I needed something fixed around the house. Whether it be him mounting a television on the wall, changing a light bulb in the ceiling, whatever it was that maybe my significant other was supposed to do, he was the one who would do it for me. No matter the time of day that I would call, he would always come running.

  I stayed outside with him for another five minutes or so, just talking, and then I went on into the house. The moment I walked in, my stomach began to rumble as I smelled whatever my grandmother was in the kitchen cooking. If you were from Miami, then you knew that grandma Olay could cook her ass off. Back when I was younger, my grandmother had picked up a little hustle on the weekends, and she would sell dinner plates out of the house. I swear people would be lined up outside our front door trying to get a plate.

  My grandmother was the best at soul fool, island food, Haitian food, you name it. Literally, every person who tasted her food always told her that she needed to open a restaurant of her own, but she always talked about the hard work that would have to go into running it and made it clear that she would much rather just cook for her family.

  “I knew your car was parked outside for a reason. You only come over here when my Grandma is cooking,” I playfully said to Mahogany.

  She was sitting at the kitchen island with a piece of fried chicken on a napkin that my grandma had probably allowed her to sample.

  “Leave her alone. Her skinny ass needs some meat on them bones,” my grandmother said from over by the stove.

  Listen, I was raised by one of those old school grandmothers like I already mentioned before. As much as my grandmother would get up every Sunday for church, this was the same woman who would sit up at the table with Mahogany and I and talk shit right along with us.

  Growing up, my grandma used to have some really long, jet black hair, and she would always wear it in a long ponytail. It had to be a special occasion to get her to let her hair hang loose. Even right now, she still had her long tresses. Even though she had specks of gray in it, it still looked nice on her. She had a chocolate skin tone just like I did, and if you got close up on her, you could see the few moles that she had on her face.

  With as much food as she cooked, you would think that my grandmother would be a heavy-set woman, but she wasn’t. She was short and petite, just like I was.

  “Grandma, trust me, the niggas aren’t complaining. They love my skinny ass,” Mahogany shot back to my grandmother.

  My grandma picked up a dishrag from the counter, and she threw it in Mahogany’s direction, but it missed her. I walked over to where my grandmother was, and I hugged her, kissing her on her cheek as well.

  “Did Vonte walk through here and tell y’all that he’s taking me to his homecoming? My baby asked me earlier while we were out looking at tuxedos,” I said after I finished hugging my grandmother and took a seat next to Mahogany at the island.

  “He told us. You raised a good boy, Jashae. I tell you that all the time,” my grandmother let me know.

  “I’m coming with you to look for a dress. You got to turn the whole fuckin’ homecoming out,” Mahogany let me know.

  All I could do was laugh at her silly ass comment.

  “Oh yeah. Why you didn’t tell me that Miami was over your house the other night?” Mahogany said, switching the subject quick as hell and jumping right into another one.

  “It was nothing worth telling. He came over looking for Vonte,” I told her.

  “Yeah, but Vonte wasn’t there. Spill the tea, hoe,” she pried.

  My grandma acted like she was so focused on cooking whatever she was cooking, but I knew that she was listening to our conversation. She knew Miami, and she also knew that he and Trip were actually friends once upon a time.

  “Girl, it was late at night, and somebody knocked on the door. I came with the knife in my hand because no one ever knocks on my door at that time of the night. Lo and behold, it’s Miami’s fine ass on the other side of the door. Mahogany, that man knows he wasn’t right coming to my door looking like that. Chest out, tattoos showing, smelling good, and he’s gotten bigger. Bigger with just pure muscle. He was looking for Vonte, but I told him that he was at the movies, so he ended up staying until Vonte got back. We talked about everything from his daughter, Trip, me dating, all of that. It’s been so long since I had a conversation with a man outside of Trip that when it was time for him to leave, I didn’t want him to,” I voiced.

  “I saw him at the club later on that night. I told him that he needs to take you away from Trip,” she said, and I looked at her like she was crazy.

  I still wanted to know what he said, though.

  “And what did he say?” I asked. I’m not sure why, but I was nervous as I waited for her to answer me.

  “He never got the chance to answer because his asshole of a friend jumped in. I didn’t even catch dude’s name, but I know that I hate his disrespectful ass. Really had me ready to kick off my red bottoms in the middle of the club and knock his
ass out with them,” Mahogany said, rolling her eyes in the top of her head.

  At this point, Vonte had called my grandmother to the back room so he could show her something, so it left just Mahogany and me to our conversation.

  “What does he look like? I probably know him,” I said.

  “Fine. That’s what he looks like. Too fuckin’ fine. His skin complexion is just a few shades darker than Miami. Now that I think about it, they actually kind of resemble each other. He’s cocky built just like Miami, a whole bunch of tattoos on his arms, some good hair that was in waves, and he had a tattoo on his face, right above his eyebrow, that said something that I couldn’t really make out,” Mahogany went on to say.

  I knew exactly who she was talking about.

  “That’s Miami’s cousin Jabari. He’s from Atlanta. I met him at Miami’s mother’s funeral,” I let her know.

  “I can’t stand that nigga. He’s toooo fuckin’ disrespectful, with his fine, big dick ass,” she went on to say, and I laughed.

  “Wait, what? How do you even know his dick is big?” I inquired.

  “Because his stupid ass showed it to me. Jashae, I swear I just wanted to sit on it right after I sit on his beard,” she said, and I shook my head.

  “You’re such a little hoe,” I joked.

  “If me loving sex makes me a hoe, then I’ll take it,” she said with a smirk on her face as she stood up to throw the chicken bone and napkin in the trash.

  When it came to Mahogany’s sex life, she didn’t hide anything from me. My sex life was literally so nonexistent that I actually found interest in hers when she would tell me about it. Whenever Mahogany talked about men, I could hear it in her voice that it was just sex with them. With Jabari, I couldn’t help but hear what sounded like she may have possibly liked him. Trust me, when a woman says she hates a man, usually it’s because she likes his ass too much, so she forces herself to believe that she hates him.