Page 29 of Down With the King of the South (Down With the King of the South 1)

“Cut the light on the room, Shae. I want to see you,” I told her.

“Trip, I—”

“Shorty, please. I’m begging you. Let a nigga have peace of mind in knowing that physically you’re alright,” I went on to say.

Minutes went by before I heard her moving around, and another few minutes had gone by before the light finally came on in the room. She was in the same clothes that she wore yesterday when I video called her in the afternoon. Her hair was all over the place, dark circles were under her eyes, more than likely from her not getting any sleep, her lips were dry and cracked, and of course, her eyes were red, looking like mine used to look when I smoked weed every day. Jashae looked exactly like I expected her to look; like a mother who had just lost her damn son. Appearance wasn’t something that I expected her to have up to par at the moment.

“You ate something today?” I asked, and she shook her head no. She told me that same shit yesterday, the day before that, and so on. Jashae was over there killing herself. “Jashae, I can’t even find the right words to say to you, shorty. I’m hurt by this shit too, and I only did so much with having him in my life. For the first six years, I was there for Vonte, but everything else after that, I been here, on the outside looking in. Yeah, we talked on the phone, and he would come down for visitation whenever you brought him, but that doesn’t even compare to the way you had him for the last seventeen years. I know you hurting, baby, but at the same time, Shae, you gotta take care of yourself. Vonte wouldn’t want to see you like this, and you know it,” I said.

The whole time I spoke to her, she was crying. I mean, hysterically crying to the point that I had to turn the volume down on the phone.

“I don’t want to be hereee… I don’t want to be here anymore, Trip…. I want to go with him.” she cried while wiping her eyes.

“Don’t talk like that, Jashae! Don’t say no shit like that, man! We gotta get through this together, yo! You stronger than you think you are. For real, baby, don’t talk like that,” I said as my voice cracked.

It hurt because I wasn’t there to watch her. I wasn’t there to stop her from harming herself if she tried to. She didn’t say anything for about five minutes. Her head was down, and she was crying. I didn’t say anything. I just allowed her to get it out. I was able to check out her surroundings, and it was plain and clear that she was in Vonte’s room. I could tell by the color of the walls and the plaques and ribbons that were hung up. When she finally pulled her head back up, she used the bottom of her shirt to wipe her eyes.

“Why don’t you go over to your grandma’s house or your pops? Even Mahogany’s place. I don’t want you in that house by yourself,” I let her know.

“I’m not here alone. Mahogany is here with me,” she said and wiped her eyes. “Did you get approved to come for the funeral?” she asked, and I shook my head.

“Fuck ass warden denied me. They looked at behavior and all that shit, and I guess he saw the number of fights and shit that I’ve been in since I got here, he denied it. Fuck that got to do with me burying my son? I bet if I was a cracka, they would have let me go. I guess this comes with the lifestyle, right? You do wrong, and wrong shit continues to happen to you. They only doing a nigga dirty because this is what I deserve,” I said, and a lone, angry tear escaped from my eyes.

“Giovonni, you don’t deserve this. Yes, you have been locked up for the majority of Vonte’s life, but you were still a father to him, even with you incarcerated. You don’t deserve to not be able to attend our son’s funeral. I never needed you here with me so bad before in my life. I need you, Trip,” she weakly let me know.

Those words tugged at my heart something crazy.

“I know you do, shorty, and it’s killing me that I’m not there to be with you. Baby, as much as I would like to stay on the phone with you, I don’t want to risk this shit. I can’t let them find this phone, and they throw me in the hole. Then I can’t be here to talk to you. For Vonte and me, Shae, go take a shower, eat something, and try to get some sleep tonight, alright? Promise me something, Jashae,” I called out, looking her dead in her eyes through the phone.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Promise me that you won’t do anything crazy and harm yourself. Just as much as you need me, I need your ass too,” I reasoned.

“I promise I won’t,” she after about two minutes of silence.

“Alright. I love you, girl. More than anything in this fuckin’ world, I swear I love you,” I let her know.

“I know. I love you too,” she said, and I hung up.

That shower that I told her to take along with eating, and getting a good night’s rest, I knew that neither of the three would happen. I’d been telling her for days to do the shit, and each day her face popped up on the screen, she looked like the day before when we last talked. I was trying to avoid having my ole girl go over and be there for Jashae in my absence, but that’s what was going to happen if she didn’t start taking care of herself.

Hearing Jashae speaking tonight and basically admit to wanting to kill herself had me up. I couldn’t sleep. I had no type of proof or sign that would leave me feeling confident that she wasn’t going to harm herself.

Jashae Johnson

Seventeen years ago, when my water broke in the middle of the night, and those contractions started ripping through my small, pregnant body, I just knew that it would forever be the worst kind of pain that I would ever feel in my life. I knew that nothing could beat that type of pain. Even till this day, I can remember what those contractions felt like. They were so powerful that went I crept down the hallway to my grandmother’s room to let her know that my water had broken, I could hardly talk due to the amount of pain that I was in.

Boy was I wrong about that being the greatest pain that I would ever have to feel. My son’s passing was the contractions for me, today being the funeral was the actual pushing, the no epidural, the ripping, and the blood. My body was in pain, and nothing was slowing it down. The funeral was today, and I couldn’t handle it. The sun rose this morning, and I was in the same place where my back was against the wall last night, which was in Vonte’s bedroom. My body reeked of must, sweat, and tears. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in days, so I could only imagine what I looked like.

The uniform that my son played in on the evening he died was still draped across my lap, and I’d been doing so much crying, yelling, and not taking care of my body in general that I had run myself sick. My voice was gone, I felt like I had a bad cold, and I had been having bad migraines for the past couple of days, which is why I was always in Vonte’s room sitting in the dark.

All of a sudden, the bedroom door flew open, and it was my grandmother. She was holding a black dress of mine in her hands, some heels, and my undergarments.

“Jashae, let’s go! Get up right now! I have a shower in the hallway bathroom running for you,” she sternly said.

My grandmother was the one person in the family who was holding us all together. I’m not sure how she was doing it, but she was so strong. Vonte was just as much a son to her as he was to me. That boy loved his great grandmother, and she loved him just as much. I watched her as she tossed the clothes and things that were in her hands on the bed before she went over to the curtains and pulled them back, lighting up the room.

My head started throbbing so badly from her doing that, and because I had stayed cooped up in this room for so long, I wasn’t used to the light. I brought my head into my lap in an attempt to block it out.

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