Chapter Seven
~Gentry~
Well, if there is a way to fuck something up seven ways to Sunday, it is to get far too involved with the broad I’m fucking’s real life. She didn’t want me to know about Arika. From what I can gather, there are lots of reasons, the biggest one being she didn’t want the world to know about Arika.
I never felt the urge to settle down until I realized everywhere we went I wanted nothing more than another reason to come to Tennessee.
“You know how to reach me,” I say to Tempest before looking to Arika, “We have a deal. You do your part and I’ll do mine. Whatever you feel about your mom, Tempest has given everything she has to you, including her love. Some kids never get that. Some kids are raised in unimaginable ways. I’ve seen firsthand what kids raised with hate can do. Get over whatever is plaguing you, Arika, and go out into the world and make it a better place.”
The girl only nods while I stand up to make my exit. I didn’t have my workout this morning. I can feel the burn, this deep inside me fire where the demons want to crawl under my skin. I run to exhaust them. The prickles are hard to feel over the pain. This morning, I didn’t run though. I stayed here waiting, watching, and wondering.
“Deacon, please wait. I want to talk to you.” Tempest tells me before giving her attention to her daughter.
“Arika, get ready for school. I’ll take you. As for the protest, I have a meeting with Mrs. Starling today at three. You will do the project. It’s not negotiable.”
Arika looks around the room and never at Tempest. “And what about my running away?”
“We can discuss that later,” Tempest looks directly at me, “When we’ve both had time to rest and be clear headed.”
Arika nods her head and moves into the kitchen to have breakfast. I sit down and wait.
Tuning out the world around me I think about my own mother.
“Mom, who is my dad?”
Her blue eyes flicker with something I can’t read. “Your dad was a man who gave his all for his country.”
“Well, why don’t we ever talk to his family? He had to have a mom, right?”
She sighs and wipes her hands on the front of her nurse skirt. “Gentry, when your father died, we weren’t married. His family, they didn’t know about us.”
“Why can’t we tell them, Mom? If we tell them, they can help and then you won’t have to work the night shift at the hospital.”
I see her swallow hard. She’s doing what she always does and giving me the brave face. I’m ten now, I can see the details she hides from me. I’m growing into a man.
“Life isn’t always easy or fair, Gentry.”
Well, if that isn’t the damn truth. My mother worked herself into an early grave trying to feed, clothe, and provide for me. Some days, I think she only lived to see me make it to adulthood. At eighteen, I enlisted in the Navy. While I was completing my basic training in the Great Lakes, she passed away.
Heart attack – stress induced.
She was worried about me leaving. Her biggest fear was me going to war and dying like my dad. It also turns out my dad’s family knew about us. They turned her away, turned me away. There was a letter in my mother’s things where my father’s mother wrote to her and told her we would not be a shame upon his memory. My mother protected me from it, from them, and from the hurt.
It’s their loss because I may not be something spectacular, but my mom was a gift to the world.
I watch as Arika finishes her breakfast, gulping down some orange juice before putting her plate away. My entire childhood, I had all these questions about where I came from. I craved information on my past – on my family.
The funny thing is, after my mom passed away, I never looked into it after reading the letter. She gave so much for me to have a full life without depending on these strangers it almost felt like I would be disappointing her to find out who they were.
Even now, I have the hacking skills to sort out who my dad was and where his family is, but I don’t. I have enough connections that are still in intelligence I could easily get anything I seek.
I simply don’t.
I don’t need to know them to feel complete. Nothing about their presence in my life or lack thereof make me the man I am today. So I don’t dig. I let it go.
That single letter may be how my grandmother still feels to this day about me. She may have changed. I don’t know. I’ll never know because I’ll never seek it out.
Having been in Arika’s situation myself, I can understand her needs. At least I had my mother who was really my mother.
Not that Tempest hasn’t given everything to be a mother to Arika, I think the young girl just is wanting to know her roots.
I can give her this without putting her in danger or damaging her life with Tempest. I just need Tempest to trust me.
Tempest may hate me for it, but it’s information. What Arika does with the information when she turns eighteen will be on her.
The two of them quietly fall in sync together. The way Tempest watches Arika as she moves around without saying anything actually speaks volumes. The love is there.
The real love of a mother to a child is there.
Once I see they are ready to go, I stand and move to Tempest’s side. Taking her keys from her hand, I simply smile as she looks up at me.
“I’ll drive. You both have had a long night.”
Arika laughs to which Tempest looks at her and smirks. “What do you find so funny?”
“This man, Mom, he’s like swooping in and saving you.” Then Arika looks to me. “It’s kind of nice.”
I shake my head. “Don’t think I’m so nice Arika. No matter what happens, ever, running is not the right answer. We all fuck up, kiddo. Gotta be woman enough to stand up and take it. Running only drags shit out and makes it worse. Man up and it will be over quicker. Learn from your mistakes. Own your shit. And move on.”
“Mom doesn’t own that she’s keeping me from my family,” Arika mutters under her breath.
Reaching out, I drape my arm casually over the teen’s shoulders leading her out of the house with Tempest following.
“I get you don’t know me. I get you won’t believe this, but I don’t know my dad either. I’m a thirty-nine-year-old man with no family left biologically.”
The girl hesitates. She really thinks before she actually opens up and we have this moment between us. “How do you deal with being different? When everyone else talks about their parents and looking like their mom and dad, how do you take it?”
I sigh. Now we get to the root of the young girl’s problem. Her peers and what they think and see.
“I take it with no weight. You see, Arika, I am one of a kind and so are you. It’s not about who you look like, who you act like, but rather who you are when no one’s watching.”
She nods her head. “That makes sense.”
“Every once in a while adults manage to know a thing or two. Keep that in mind, Arika.” I take my arm off her. “And remember, family isn’t always blood.”
We reach Tempest’s car, a Chrysler three hundred. Arika climbs in the backseat and immediately buckles. I have to slide the driver’s seat back to get in. The ride to her school is quiet and quick.
Arika gets out of the car and looks to me. “I don’t know you Deacon, but thank you for talking to me and actually listening to what I am saying.” She turns her gaze to Tempest. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run away. You just don’t hear what I’m telling you because it’s not what you want to hear. I will do my suspension for the project protest and I will do the project their way without fighting with you.”
“I love you, Arika.” Tempest tells her daughter before Arika walks away and into her school.
Only when she’s safely inside the building do I pull away.
“Working miracles, Deacon.” Tempest tells the space between us more than she actually says it to me.
I’m not a miracle worker. I am a partner, a team player, and a companion. If only she will let me in.