Page 2 of Down With the King of the South (Down With the King of the South 1)

As pissed off and disappointed that my grandmother was with me and even my father, they did what they had to do to protect me. They hid me from the dangers of the world. Meaning, they knew that I would more than likely get bullied or get looked at sideways from teachers at school because I was thirteen and pregnant. I was homeschooled my entire pregnancy, and three months after I gave birth to Giovonte, I was back in school.

My grandmother would watch my son for me during the day, while I was at school, and she would work overnight at the hospital as a nurse. Statistics counted me out the moment I pissed on that stick and found out that I was pregnant. Not only did I graduate high school, but I ended up graduating one year early because being a young mom just pushed me, so not only was I going to school during the day, but at night, Giovonte would go over Trip’s house, which allowed me to go to night school.

By my junior year, I had more than enough credits to graduate with the seniors at the time, and I did just that with my son in the stands clapping for me. After high school was the real world for me. I was working during the day and going to community college at night. In a short three and a half years, I received my bachelor’s in accounting. With the degree and the knowledge that I had, it wasn’t much for me to find a good paying job that would allow me to provide for my son.

In the middle of me studying for my degree is when all of this madness went down with Trip confessing to the murder charge, so it was honestly by the grace of God that I was even able to complete it, but I did, especially knowing that I was about to take on both mother and father roles. I had to keep going to school for my son. Yes, I was angry at Trip. For months, I hated him! I wouldn’t go down for visitation, and I wouldn’t accept any of his phone calls because I was angry.

He expected a mother to raise a black male in this dirty ass world that we lived. I didn’t know how, but dammit, I did it the best way I knew how. My baby is now seventeen years old, never did drugs a day in his life, never been arrested, makes A’s and B’s every time he brings his report card home, he has colleges damn near knocking down our front door to get him to choose their school, and I can honestly say that I did that! It was me that got him enrolled in basketball when Trip started doing his time. I needed Giovonte to take his mind off that and get him involved in a sport. That was the best thing that I could have ever chosen to do because since then, I couldn’t get this little boy to put a ball down.

“I see it. The one in the front row with the jersey on that has the picture of her and Giovonte, that’s supposed to be his little girlfriend,” I said and rolled my eyes.

Her name was Taylor. All I can say was that a mother knows when certain people aren’t good for her child. Since kindergarten, I had been getting on Giovonte and letting him know that he needed to pay close attention to certain friends. I didn’t too much care for Taylor because I felt like when she looked at my son, all she saw was a meal ticket for herself. He’d brought her over a couple of nights ago to meet me for the first time, and it was the comment that she made about not being able to wait for him to go pro that got to me. Of course, I brought it up to my son after dinner, but either that girl had given my son some pussy and his judgment was all clouded, or he just really thought that she was the one for him.

I couldn’t even be mad at my son for wanting to see how things would play out on his own because I was once him. I was once young, dumb, and in love. Listen, I was stupid for Trip. It was worse when I was pregnant because I was so attached to him. By the time Trip and I were out of high school and older, I felt like I was chasing after him. At this time, he was known as the leader of the Miami Boyz. He was making a little money from hustling, so of course, he’d gotten big headed. It wasn’t just me anymore. It was me, him, and other bitches.

I never said this out loud to anyone, not even my best friend, who knew everything about me, but I felt like Trip kind of resented me when I got pregnant with Giovonte. He would always say that we were going to miss out on our childhood and stuff like that when I was pregnant, but he never really flat out came to me and told me to get an abortion.

Our son forced us both to grow up faster than we should have. When I was eighteen and Trip was twenty, we moved in together. I was a teenager working, going to school, a mother, and a girlfriend. No one knew this but Trip and I, but maybe three months before Trip was picked up for the murder charges, I found out that I was pregnant again. As much as I was against abortions, I knew that I couldn’t keep that baby. Trip ran the streets all day fuckin’ long. Most nights the sun would beat him home, leaving me to take care of Giovonte on my own. I was struggling with the situation that I already had so it

would be selfish as hell of me to bring another child into this world and make them have to struggle too.

We both decided that I should get an abortion. I cried about that for months. As if that wasn’t enough, months later, I was forced to accept the fact that the love of my life would be spending the rest of his life behind bars.

“Girllll, you have a problem on your hands,” Mahogany let me know.

I didn’t even bother to respond; I just shook my head and finished watching the game. I had been a basketball mom for over ten years, so I knew everything about the sport. I was the type of mom who would stand up, coach my son from where I was standing, yell out encouraging things for him, all of that. I guess it was safe to say that I was very competitive, especially when it came to my baby boy.

The game was finally over, and we won by six points. The final score was 106 to 100. Like I always did when the games were over, Mahogany and I went outside along with the rest of the crowd, and we waited by the locker room. It wasn’t long before the team walked out.

My eyes landed on my son, who was coming out holding a bottle of water in one hand and his gym bag in the other. His basketball shorts bottoms were still on, but he’d thrown on his school t-shirt. You would have thought that my baby was Lebron James by the way the people approached him, giving him hugs, high fives, and daps. The little girlfriend, Taylor, who I was talking about was right there, and I turned my head when I watched the two of them engage in a kiss right in front of everyone.

“Sis, please tell me you bought that boy condoms. That ain’t no regular kiss, Jashae. That kiss screams that the two of them are fuckin’,” Mahogany chimed in, not making the situation any better.

I couldn’t wait for her ass to have some kids of her own so she could feel what I felt. Mahogany was like a nigga, though, when it came to love. She wasn’t a sucker for love like I was. I was a lover. I loved the feeling of being in love. Trip will tell you that I love so hard. I’m talking wanting to be all in your personal space, taking a shower while you take a shit. I have no understanding of what it means to have space. As much as I love the feeling of being in love, I can say that I haven’t been with anybody since Trip started his sentence, and that was a whole ten years ago. I swear that it is cobwebs on my pussy. I get by from using toys.

In my top drawer at home, I had all types of toys. These days, I had been feening to have something more, though. These men that were hollering at me, fine men at that, I wanted to take them up on their offer and allow them to take me on a date. I wanted to be like Mahogany and fuck one dude so he can scratch that itch of mine, but I was so scared to do that. On top of that, I was too into Trip to move on.

Ask Trip, and he will tell you that he and I are very much in a relationship. Crazy because if someone were to ask me right now if I was single or taken, I would holler out that I was taken, even though my baby daddy would never see the light of day again. Although Trip was incarcerated, I swore that man didn’t miss shit! A few weeks ago, while I was grocery shopping for the house, a dude tried to talk to me. Later that evening, when Trip did his evening phone call, I got cursed out so bad because someone had told him that they saw me in the store talking to another dude. It wasn’t Giovonte who told his dad on me because he wasn’t there. Giovonte would snitch on me in a second, but I knew it wasn’t him.

In the beginning, I was willing to be that ride or die girlfriend who would hold it down for my man, but after ten years of doing this hit, I didn’t want it, but I was too afraid to tell Trip that. He let it be known that if he found out that I was dealing with somebody, he could easily have them killed. I didn’t want anyone to die because of me, so for years, I wouldn’t date. I wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted love. Not the love that I’ve been getting lately where I go and see my man, and we risk me wearing a skirt, so I could get fingered under the table, or we have to sneak and kiss each other when the guards aren’t looking. I was tired of phone sex with Trip at night. I wanted someone to do all that shit to me that Trip was telling me over the phone. After a long week of work, I wanted to come home to somebody. Yes, I had my son, and yes, I had my puppy, Princess, but I wanted something more.

“He has a drawer full. I told Giovonte that I would kill him if he makes me a grandmother at thirty,” I said, and Mahogany laughed.

My son had left his girlfriend where she was standing and made his way over to where we were waiting for him. The moment he was close enough to me, he lifted me in the air and spun me around.

“You saw me out there tonight, Ma? They going to have to get some bigger and faster niggas. Them niggas they making me play against, they can’t guard me! I’m too fast for them, Ma,” he boasted right after he put me down and kissed me on my cheek.

“I saw you, baby. Keep playing like this so we can make it to the Championship. You did so good,” I said with my arms wrapped around his waist.

“What’s up, Auntie? Don’t be trying to talk to none of the niggas on the team either. They too young for your ass,” Giovonte told Mahogany, and I popped his arm for cursing.

Although Mahogany wasn’t his blood auntie, I swear she took on the role as if she was. Just like me, she didn’t miss a basketball game. When Trip went to prison, Mahogany stepped up. I’m talking pitching in to help pay for birthday parties, helping me with back to school clothes, shoes, and supplies, picking him up from school if I was still in the office, all of that. Mahogany was definitely Heaven sent.

When we were kids, and I got pregnant, there really wasn’t much that she could do because she was young, still staying with her mama, and didn’t have a job. Although she couldn’t help me financially back then with Giovonte, she helped by being there and just giving me moral support. She also helped because she didn’t judge me. We were young when I found out that I was pregnant so Mahogany could have stopped being my friend, or her mother could have made her stop being my friend because she would think that I was too grown. There would always be a special place in my heart for this woman because she loved my son as if he was her own.

“And I don’t want their young asses either, nephew. They can’t afford me. I’ll hurt one of them little ass boys,” Mahogany shot back at Giovonte, and he laughed while throwing his hands up in surrender, letting her basically know that he didn’t want none of her smoke.

Their relationship was shits and giggles all day long. They talked shit to each other all day, but they loved each other to death.

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