Page 52 of If I Gave You My Heart
Although Murray was an absent father, he would send cards for Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Jolene's birthday every year. It was the fall of 1972 and Jolene's second birthday when I heard this song play for the first time. Murray had sent a delivery boy to my house with this record and a written note that I still had to this day. He wanted his wife and family back. I looked into his dying eyes as the music played.
"Ever since you went away
I ain't been doing nothing but
(Thinking, thinking)
(Thinking, thinking)"
My momma said that I was a damn fool to take that man back, but I was in love. So much that I gave a man who didn't even deserve the first shot with me a second one.
"I miss my wife," he repeated.
I never filed for divorce because deep down, I had gotten married with the intent to only do it once, and I was standing firmly on that. I knew Murray was only having this realization of missing his wife because he was dying. A big part of me felt like I owed him. My momma and I didn't always have the best relationship. So when Murray found me on a Mississippi street, I was kicked out once again at eighteen years old with nowhere to go.
He was ten years my senior so when he started to take care of me, I naturally took to him. He had raised me when my own mother had checked out. Call me crazy, but I felt the need to see him in his dying days because he had raised me in my worst ones.
"I need a few days, so handle whatever business you need to and then come home." I knew it wouldn't be hard for him to find me.
Murray flipped over my hand that was in his and then kissed the back of it. I just offered him a slight smile. We were nowhere near what we were and probably never would be, but it was a step in the right direction. When he let go of my hand, I took that moment to make my exit.
"I swearI miss you
You done heard it ten times or more but
I swear I done changed
I swear I done changed…"
I listened as I exited to the song that made me reconsider being a family with this man for a third time. Before I pushed the door to the restaurant open to leave, I looked back and saw that Murray was staring at me.
I strolled out of Miano Café with a smile on my face. Jolene was given what she had always wanted. I had protected Baby and Nyoka, and Murray was coming home. I knew I had to sit down with both Jolene and Nyoka. I also had to come clean to these kids about who had raised them. I walked proudly to my truck, knowing that the last seventy years of my life had substance. With Murray's coming to an end I figured that his wanting to come back to me was him trying to right his wrongs and create some of his own substance before leaving this earth. He had raised me and skipped out on raising Jolene, Adonis, and Adira, but he could at least right a little bit of wrong by being there for Adira's kids if she allowed it. I prayed for my daughter and hoped she would find substance in her life with this new role that she was about to be handed.
Jolene "Onyx" Loving
Seeing Nyoka all grown up put the same pit in my stomach as when my eyes lay on Adira and Adonis. Although she was not my child, I had done something for her that I hadn't even done for my own children — raise them. I was busy chasing the money and settled for being the financial provider for my family instead of being the loving parent who was by their side, teaching and coaching them through life lessons, which I now regret. The path I had chosen for myself is the reason Nyoka had ever come into my life. I couldn't forget those sly eyes even if I wanted to.
The very first time I had laid eyes on her, those slanted slits were puffy from her crying. She was no more than thirteen years old when she was outside on a corner in New York, getting her ass beat senseless. I had just finished fulfilling a contract, and while I was gracefully making my escape after slitting a man's throat in a Brooklyn alley, I came across the mayhem. Nyoka's caramel-colored face was blushed red from the whooping that I only assumed to be her mother was putting on her. Her little facial expression looked more angry than anything else. More than the anger that was harbored in her eyes, I could see the embarrassment.
"And how dare your ugly little ass steal from that store?"
The last thing Nyoka was, was ugly. She was actually a gorgeous little girl. I looked at the damp concrete beside them and saw that a pack of menstrual pads was on the floor. This damn woman was beating on this little girl shitless out in the rain for stealing menstrual pads.
"Sorry," I quickly said as I bumped into the woman who had her foot lifted off the ground, about to stomp the little girl in front of me. She turned around and mean-mugged me before she collected herself.
"Get ya ass up! Another whooping is coming your way when we get inside!"
I was pissed at how everyone around was just letting the shit happen. When the girl slowly picked her body up from the ground, I saw she had a crimson-colored stain on the back of her white pants. I let the woman and girl walk right past me as I opened the wallet I had just lifted off her. I went straight toward the window slot and pulled the driver's license out before tossing the wallet in a nearby garbage.
Right then and there, I had made it up in my mind that I was going to take the woman's life and that the little girl would be coming with me. One thing I hated was an unfit parent. At the time, I didn't know if that was Nyoka's mother or not, but the woman responsible for her was a guardian from hell, and Nyoka didn't deserve that. Seeing shit like that made me appreciate the hell out of my mother. Growing up, she took me everywhere with her. I remember being a young girl, around the same age as Nyoka at the time, and being put up in a motel room while my mother handled business. I never knew who my dad was, and with the amount of love that Joy showered me with, it never mattered.
If you ask me, that little girl that I saw being abused was better off with Joy raising her. She had to have been the same age as my Adira at the time, so I was sure that Joy wouldn't mind having another little girl in the house. Instead of catching my flight to Los Angeles, where my next mark would be, I was waiting until dark to pay the small one-family home in East New York a visit. The moon was at its highest when I exited my rental and made my way toward the backyard of the address on the woman's driver's license. I always thought of New York as a city that never slept, but an eerie silence outside had my heart racing a bit.
I didn't mind killing anyone, but what had my nerves going was the decision I had made to take the child with me. I could already tell that by how the woman was beating the little girl shitless outside that there was probably no other family that loved the girl. Once I killed the woman, I'm sure the local police would either think that the little girl ran away or that whoever was responsible for the murder had taken her as well. Out of habit, before entering the house, I had picked the necklace I wore up from my neck and kissed the crescent moon and sun pendant on it. As I entered the house, I told myself the little girl would have a better life with Joy raising her alongside my children to keep myself going with my original plan.
The radio was playing lightly somewhere in the house.
"All this commotion, emotions run deep as oceans, explodin'
