Love in the Hood

The very first time I saw him I was six years old , he came over to visit his cousins every weekend and he stayed with them during the summer. There was nothing that really stood out about him , he was just one of us bad kids running through the neighborhood stealing fruit from our neighbors trees .

I don’t even remember when I started to develop a crush on him , but it came out of nowhere , He was always playing too much pulling my ponytails just a hyperactive little boy who was constantly joking and smiling with a mischievous grin, like he was always up to something,as kids we played “House” so we were always one of the parents , It was at this time that I began to call him “Daddy” we were eight , I don’t think i have ever called him by his government name since then!

As “Daddy” and I grew older , we grew closer he was the one who gave me my first kiss, we were 10 years old when he proposed to me with a whistle, I happily accepted the proposal , as if we were really getting married soon . From the ages of ten thru thirteen, we were thick as thieves , boyfriend and girlfriend , who also happened to be bestfriends , I loved him from the moment i first saw him. Once we hit our teen years I didn’t see as much of him and his kids gone number had been changed , I had lost contact with him but I never forgot him.

I’ll never forget , I was twenty and pregnant with my first child , I wasn’t married but I was with my son to be born child’s father . One day I was at my grandmothers house in my old neighborhood visiting , when i received a call from an old friend named Michael , we reminisced about the past then Michael said “Hey , why don’t you stop down at my house before you leave the block.” I agreed it would be nice to chat face to face. After i finished my visit , I went down the street , I walked into the house and the first person I saw was “Daddy” he stood as I entered the house , I screamed “Daddy!!!!” and ran to him and jumped into his arms I hadn’t seen him in years and it was like we were never apart . We kissed and hugged , even though I was pregnant with another mans baby, we could not let each other go , I actually began to cry I had missed him so much and he was just as excited . He asked me to leave and go with him , I didn’t even think about it , I left with him without a thought that I was already planning a life with someone, OMG I was carrying someone else’s baby and here I am wishing he was the father . We went to eat , there was something different about him , not sad but almost as if he was tired as if he was missing something, but the night went well and we ended Up going back to his house. “Daddy” began to tell me how much he missed me and he always thought about me and that he would try to call out to me using his mind because he was convinced that I was his soulmate, I couldn’t stop smiling ,this is exactly what I wanted to hear , I was blushing like a schoolgirl, we went to the bed room and made love for the first time again in years , didn’t seem to matter to either one of us that I was pregnant, after our love making we held each other and shared with one another what had been happening in our lives since we last saw each other , I found out that over the course of the years his father had killed his mother and didn’t spend one night in jail , I never knew the details , like why he did it , but I realized that’s where his sadness came from , I held him and said “I am not your mother, but I love you and I will always be there for you no matter what.” He just head me tighter as he rested his head on my chest and whispered “I love you too, Montana”. ( Toni Montana is the nickname he gave me when we were younger , I am still called that to this day) . We spent the next month hanging out together and loving each other , I had left the father of my child , I actually explained to him that I was in love with someone else and had been since I was a little girl and now he is back in my life , was the way i explained it, when I went into the hospital to have my daughter , “Daddy” was the one who took me , after I gave birth he kissed me and the baby and left , I didn’t hear from him anymore, I was calling his phone number constantly, wondering what did I do wrong ? Why did he leave ? He said he loved me how could he just up and leave like that? My heart was broken and I was confused.

I repaired things with the father of my child and we moved along as planned with our relationship, like any relationship we had our ups and downs but we had a great relationship , I was Bonnie to his Clyde , there was nothing we couldn’t or wouldn’t do together , we were tighter than tight his friends called me “Shadow” because if he made a move , I was right there !

About a year later I’m at home , my daughter is almost a year and my boyfriend and I are in the bed watching television , life is simple and good , I was very happy at this point , It’s 2:30am and my phone rings , Kevin who is my boyfriend and father of my child looks at me and says “Who the hell is that??!!” I really didn’t know , so I responded I don’t know , of course he insisted that I answer the phone , I really didn’t want to because calls at that time of night is “bad news” or another man but I really wasn’t expecting either. I didn’t answer the phone and it stopped ringing , I was so relieved, until it began to ring again , this time I had no choice I had to answer the phone, “Hello” I said quietly and it seems like it took forever for the person on the phone to respond , “Hello Baby , it’s Daddy” My skipped a beat , I felt butterflies in my stomach , I didn’t know what to do, I looked over at my boyfriend who began to become upset , not because he heard a male voice but because of how I responded.

I had informed “Daddy that it was too late to call me and don’t call anymore because I am with the father of my child now and that’s that. I hung up. I couldn’t sleep a wink that night , I was waiting on the sun to come up so that Kevin would go to work and I could catch up with “Daddy”, Kevin couldn’t leave quick enough for me . After Kevin was gone , I got up did a few chores and then got prepared to go see the Love of my life , dropped the baby at my mom’s house and headed to “Daddy” we didn’t have a conversation that morning , he just sent an address via text and here I am clean and smelling good headed straight to him. When I got to the door he held me and said he had something to tell me , I looked in his face and I saw that I wasn’t going to like what he said . Daddy looked me then looked down at the ground and said “I have a baby on the way too” but I could have sworn I seen that same devilish grin from childhood , I was floored , I didn’t know how to process that information ,and before i realized it we were in the bed going at it like we would never see each other again , afterwards while he was holding me , he informed me that he got a girl pregnant because he was mad at me for having a baby by a man other than him , I laid there in disbelief again I was crushed , I sat up in the bed , head spinning not sure I had just heard what I heard , I felt the tears start to fall from my eyes , he sat up and said “why are you crying ? “ your with me right now aren’t you ? I love only you . That made no sense but I ate it up it made me feel better at the moment , I needed to hold on to something , I didn’t understand because he said he never wanted kids , how can I be his soulmate and he’s bringing life into this world with some one else, It’s was different with me , wasn’t it , I hadn’t seen him in years , if he wanted a baby “WE” could have had one. Daddy begged me not to go , I stayed . I went and picked my daughter up and we stayed with him for about three months and I started to see changes in him , he started snapping at me and then I began to notice a mean streak, I felt maybe it was best that I moved out , we weren’t arguing but it was always a weird tension between us , as I was getting my things , he begged me not to go he explained that there’s nothing wrong , he loves having me and my kid there . I decided to stay, another month went by and we are sitting on the floor in the living room drinking by the fireplace with the lights off music playing in the background , out of nowhere “Daddy” jumps up from the floor and says “ I’m not this person , this ain’t what I do and went in the bedroom and slammed the door . I sat there stunned “what just happened ?” I got up knocked on the bedroom door and went inside , he would not talk to me or answer any of my questions at that moment of relationship changed , he became moody and impatient with me , constantly correcting me and the love making became rough and violent , one time after sex my tailbone was broken, I loved him still but couldn’t take more of this Side of “HIM” that i was now seeing more and more , his behaviors also changed . As if it wasn’t enough that the relationship appeared to be falling apart so was the house , the basement began to back up and flood, which allowed for a mild odor to rise from the basement , He wasn’t really working at the time so I bought a water pump to pump out all the nasty water until we could get it fixed .

One day I was getting ready for work and “Daddy’s cousin came over with a girl , I could not believe that he let his cousin take this random girl into the bedroom and bed that we slept in !! I was very angry so I asked him “where is your girl at ? This is what you two do?” He said “ Just go to work” I actually called off of work that day , because i felt like he was going to have a girl come over too, needless to say I ended up losing that job , from the moment I moved in with him my attendance was terrible, and they had enough. I had also had enough , I was angry , I didn’t go to work but I had to get out of there. When I returned he was gone , I felt like the both of them had slept with that girl , but i couldn’t prove it so I said nothing . A few days later that same cousin came and picked him up and dropped him back off , I never really questioned him , because he never really answered my questions , later that day the same cousin came back , I looked out the window and saw someone else in the car with the cousin but the windows were tinted , but what was strange was his cousin wasn’t right in front of the house , He was parked a few houses down , I instantly became angry. I waited for Daddy to leave then I took all of his shoes and threw them in the basement in the dirty water, I poured bleach on his clothes , I took his water pump and microwave and put it in my car as i was leaving out I decided I didn’t want the water pump after all so I threw it through the big picture window in the living room and took the electrical box from the back of his house , I left a note expressing all of my anger and hurt , then left his house with no intentions of seeing him again .. until he called one night.