Down Chick

Chapter Twenty: Revelations of Truth (Part III)

Part III

Later that night I was in Angel’s living room on the floor. I was lying on the floor on my stomach with my legs bent slightly, my feet kicking at the air as I used to when I was younger. A notebook lay open with the pen in my hand. I was doing something that I hadn’t done in a few years. Tense wasn’t the word that begin to describe how I felt in that moment. I was still irritated with Angel about a few things, but I wasn’t angry about him taking his frustrations out on me earlier.

As annoyed as I was about a few things, I was taking his advice on this round. I hadn’t written to my dad in years and he deserved to hear from me. I was disappointed that he was in jail and that he wasn’t around for me because he was in jail, but he was the only family member that I considered myself to have left. Circumstances had placed him in jail and he couldn’t take those circumstances back. All he could do was hope that he’d be let out on early parole. I didn’t have to let him suffer his jail time alone.

As a young girl I had adored him. He had been everything that my mom wasn’t even then. He had always had a positive effect on both of us. He had made her days bright. She had laughed and played around when they were together. I could remember those days. We’d been a family and I still longed for them, even though I knew that it was never to be again. Monica wasn’t a mother to me any longer; instead, she was a faithful crack head. I was finding myself wrapped up in a relationship with a guy involved in the same things that had forced my dad into jail. I wondered what my dad would think of that, today. I knew in the past he would’ve been opposed. I could remember his earlier words.

“Keisha, you keep yo’ ass away from that little boy. Him and his brother into some shit that I don’t want you involved in. I don’t ever want to hear that you lowered yourself down to being involved with a thug. Thugs aren’t any good for anything except illegal activities. They use and abuse women.”

He had told me that when I was four years old. He had written it to me in a previous letter, when I was eight. I had told him I was hanging out with the little brother of a guy named Romero. At the time I hadn’t known what a thug was. My dad had always been blunt and straight to the point. That was where I’d learned to be outspoken.

He had been who I looked up to.

Every time I did something in the following years it was with his image in mind. I had kept that going until I was nine. That was when I had stopped all communication with my dad. At the time I had felt that everything was hopeless. Monica had been falling more and more into her drugs. Biting my bottom lip, I lifted one finger slowly and brushed away one single tear.

I missed my daddy. I missed having him in my confidence. It had taken all ten years to realize that something was better than nothing. Even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to write to him as of now, I figured it was a start. Earlier when we’d got back from the bowling alley, Angel had spoken to me about a few things, which had led to me going off on him. The subjects that he brought up were about my parents. He had wanted to know who my dad was and why he wasn’t around.

When I’d told him it was none of his damn business, he’d claimed that it was important so that he could find out if either one of them had any connections with Darius. He wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t contact me with the idea of harming me or harming him through me. That conversation was another one of the many going through my head. I didn’t want to think about it. He had left me with a headache and the suggestion to contact my dad. 

That had sparked this idea to write this letter to him. I was planning on going to visit him in a few days and I knew that I’d have to take Angel with me because he wouldn’t let me go alone. Shifting slightly, I grabbed the pen and jotted down the first thing that I could think of.