Page 6 of This Is Law 3
Instead of answering her question, I just reached for my phone that was resting on the table in front of us. I unlocked it, and I went for the message that was sent to me by the dude, Dedrick. Before I played the audio, I was going to give her a quick disclaimer, so that she could know what to listen out for.
“After that shit went down with me and you at the ball, I went out and sat down in the parking lot. I had my work phone on me, and an unknown number kept calling me. I went ahead and answered it. It was a dude named Dedrick. He told me how he knew my pops, and shit like that, and how his dad is buried just a few headstones away from my pops. He goes out there and records the meetings that he has with his dad because he’s putting together a documentary or some shit like that for him. He’s into poetry, so he’ll go out there and recite some of the poems that he wrote to his dad. He told me that he was playing one of the clips back, and in the clip, you could hear some shit in the background that Dutch was saying to my pops. Dutch was out there the same day that Dedrick went to the gravesite. Whatyou going to hear Dutch say, it’s not too clear. You gotta really listen to it. It took me a few times to really make out what he was saying. I’m not going to tell you what I heard. I want you to keep listening to it until you hear it because I don’t want it to feel like I’m convincing you to hear what I hear,” I let her know, and she nodded.
I went ahead, and I fast forwarded the video, going to 3:52. That was the first important part. Once it was there, I handed the phone to Yaya, telling her to put the phone to her ear, and really pay attention.
“It’s windy, and the other dudes voice is loud, so I can’t hear anything else in the background,” Yaya said. That was my same impression of the video the first time that I heard it, but the more I played it, the clearer Dutch’s voice became, and I was able to make out what he was saying.
“Keep rewinding it to 3:52. Tune out the wind, and Dedrick’s voice. I know it’s hard to, but I really need you to hear what Dutch said in the background,” I let her know, and she nodded, and rewind the video again.
I sat here, and watched her do that shit over twenty times, and each time that she would rewind it, her face would grow more serious, and she would look at me.
“Did he say, ‘I think your son might be on to me?’ Something like that, right?” she asked, hearing the same thing that I’d heard in the video.
“Yeah. Now fast forward to 7:34. Tell me what you hear then,” I let her know, and she nodded, using her finger to drag the bar further out in the video, so that she could fast forward to where I told her.
I watched her as she pressed play, and then she put the phone to her ear. This part of the video, the wind in the background was the loudest, so this was the one that I had toplay more times than the first clip to really make out what it was that he said.
“I keep hearing ‘finds out’. I don’t know what the rest it is that he’s saying,” she let me know.
“Keep listening to it. Tune out the rest of that shit,” I said, really needing her to tap in, and listen.
I didn’t want to tell her what I heard because then I would feel like she was forcing herself to hear what I said and only saying that she heard what I said so that I wouldn’t look like I was being delusional. I could tell that Soraya was getting frustrated with herself because she wasn’t hearing what I needed her to.
After about the 50thtime of her playing it, she screamed, threw the phone down on the couch, and she quickly stood up, putting both hands over her mouth. Immediately, her eyes got watery, I could see the way that her body was shaking, and she looked freaked out by it.
With me sitting on the edge of the couch, I pulled her into me again by the string that was on her shorts, and I made her stand right in the middle of my legs. I put my hands on the back of her thighs, and I could feel her body trembling.
“Sevyn, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she kept repeating that over, and over to me as she started crying.
“What you heard?” I just wanted to see if we’d heard the same thing.
“He said, ‘finds out that I killed you’. That’s what you heard?” she asked me, tears streaming down her face, as she was trying to use the back of her hands to wipe her eyes, but it was to no avail because the tears kept falling.
“That’s exactly what that fuck nigga said,” my voice held so much hate, and distain.
The fact that Yaya heard the same exact thing as me, and Dedrick proved that we were all correct, and none of us were outof our minds. Dedrick never told me what he heard. I just knew that it was bad from the shit that he told me over the phone. I never told Soraya what I heard, either. I put her in a position to sit here, continue to play the audio, until she made the shit out on her own.
She stepped closer to me, straddling my lap, and she laid her head on my chest, softly crying. I threw my body into the back of the couch, while picking my hands up, and I rubbed her back in circular motions. I never needed any kind of indications on whether this girl loved me. I knew she loved me since we were little ass kids. This moment though, where I had her right in front of me, and she was breaking down crying like this all because the hurt that I was feeling, she allowed herself to feel it too, that was all the indication for me to know that she loved me. I felt it in the way she was shaking. I felt it in the way that she kept repeating to me that she was sorry, even though none of this shit was her fault.
Since I was eight years old, I had been expressing to her how I wish my pops was still here, and how I wished that he would have been the one to raise me. I expressed to her that I hated what his death had done to my mom, causing her to lose her mind, and be in this fucked up position that she was in now. They say that death came in three’s, and I truly believe that that was the case that happened in my life. I lost my pops, my grandma, and even though my mama is physically here, I lost her too.
I was angry for so many fuckin reasons. One man destroyed the whole dynamic of my family, and before I made that nigga look down the barrel of my gun, and die a slow, painful death, he was going to talk, and he was going to give me some fuckin answers to make this shit make sense on why he chose to murder my father. He took that man away from me on my 3rdbirthday. That was some pure, evil ass shit. Shot him in his fuckin back,not even giving him a chance to defend himself. Did it right when he was coming in the house, knowing that I was inside, along with my mom.
I would never in my life be able to forgive him for that shit. If that wasn’t disrespectful enough, he took me in, and he raised me. There was no way in hell my pops was somewhere getting some peaceful rest. That shit had to hurt him to his core, knowing that the same person that killed him was the same person that raised me. Then, my mind goes to my mom, and how she must feel. For years, she has been throwing it out there, telling me that I needed to watch Dutch. I allowed that statement to go in one ear, and out the other, always feeling like she didn’t know what she was talking about because of the mental state that she was in, when in actuality, she had been warning me all along.
“What are you going to do?” Yaya asked me, after she’d calmed down a little bit. She removed her head from my chest, so that she could sit up, and look me in my eyes.
“Ima kill that nigga. You know the answer to that question,” I responded, and she nodded. She’s known since she was six years old that if I ever found out who was responsible for taking my pops out, that I was going to kill them in cold blood, just as what was done to him.
“Remember when your mom made the comment to you about watching out for Dutch? The second you got around him; you brought that up. When you did that, it put a shift in your relationship with Dutch to the point that week’s had gone by, and the two of you didn’t speak. The same way you lost a level of trust for him, I’m sure he felt the same way about you, which is why he kept his distance. That time, it was only speculation that you had. This time, you have proof, so Sevyn, you can’t go bringing that to the table to him. You just have to handle your business and end it. As much as I want to sit here, and beg, andplead for you not to do it because I want you to be safe, so that you can continue to be here for me, and the kids, that would be selfish for me to even ask you to do that, especially since I know how much it means for you to get justice for your father. I just want you to be safe. That’s all,” she assured me, and I nodded my head, taking in everything that she said to me.
Yaya had a look on her face like she wanted to say something but was acting as if she was scared to say it.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing because I might be wrong,” she responded, trying to stand up, but I put my hands on her hips, not letting her move.
“Just say it. Even if you are wrong, I can just say whether I agree with you or not,” I let her know, and she nodded. Nervously, she picked up her hand, and she scratched her head.
