Control, p.23
Control, page 23
“Do you ever talk about me?” Ayana asked her father.
Joe swallowed his food and glanced at her mother before he answered.
“I didn’t used to.”
“But you do now?”
“I just started recently,” he admitted.
“Why?” she asked him again. “Your spirit told you to do it?”
There was a hint of sarcasm in her delivery. She was a cunning smart-ass, but Joe had to deal with it. She was asking him legitimate questions.
He shrugged and said, “I guess you can say that. Yeah.”
“Do you talk about my mom?”
Joe paused. “Occasionally.”
“Do you talk about her favorably or unfavorably?”
“That’s enough, Ayana,” Carole finally spoke up. Her daughter was going overboard.
“No, I can handle it,” Joe responded. He said, “I always speak favorably about your mother. Now, she definitely can be a little headstrong, but that’s one of the things that attracted me to her.”
Ayana nodded, taking it all in. She was barely eating. “Did you like her skin?”
Carole exhaled through her nose with food in her mouth.
Joe eyed her and said, “Of course.”
Carole’s deep brown skin was still as smooth as leather. Even Ayana smiled at that.
“You ever think about getting back with her?”
“Ayana,” Carole warned through her food with piercing eyes.
Her daughter grinned. “I’m just asking him questions, Mom.”
Joe took a gulp of his Jamaican ginger beer and sat it back on the table in front of them.
He answered, “I don’t think getting back with her is possible.” Then he looked into Carole’s deep brown eyes.
She sighed and didn’t respond to it, while continuing to eat her food.
“Ayana tells me you have a new boyfriend,” he commented.
“He’s not new,” Carole responded flatly.
“I didn’t say he was new,” Ayana stated, defending herself.
“You said he lived with you guys,” Joe responded to his daughter. “But did he live with you before? I mean, that had to be new.”
Carole didn’t like where the conversation was going.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she commented.
Joe eyed her and held his tongue. Or at least he attempted to. That’s when Ayana looked away and finally stuffed her mouth with her food.
“Well . . .” Joe started, and stopped.
Carole was just waiting for the argument. He couldn’t tell her who could live in her house just because he helped her on the down payment. It was still her house, and they were not a couple.
She even instigated the argument. “You have something you wanna say?”
Joe ate more of his food and shook his head. “It’s your house,” he mumbled.
Ayana eyed both of them and dropped her head to continue eating.
“I know it is,” Carole blurted. She was ready for the argument. When Joe failed to give her one, she added, “We have a daughter together. But we don’t have a relationship outside of that.”
Joe swallowed his bite of food and eyed her again. Realizing he was in a predominantly Black Caribbean restaurant in Hyde Park, he made sure to keep his cool.
“You don’t have to be so cavalier about it. I mean, I did help you to buy that house,” he commented with a measured and even tone.
Ayana eyed them both, like a tennis match.
“And I thanked you for it,” Carole reminded him. “But that doesn’t mean you get a say.”
“What if you burnt it to the ground?” he questioned disparagingly.
“Then my insurance would pay to rebuild it,” Carole answered curtly.
Joe nodded. “Sounds like you got it all mapped out.”
Ayana eyed him and grinned. Her father could be a smart-ass too.
Carole caught her daughter’s grin but didn’t comment on it as their table went silent. Joe felt as if someone had turned the heat up in the room, but he managed to ignore it.
“So . . . how’s your food, Dad?” Ayana teased him.
Joe eyed her and smirked. Despite her continued sarcasm, he loved the fact that she called him Dad. She was agreeing to a truce and sending him a message on it.
He said, “You, ah . . . have a great sense of humor.”
She chuckled and admitted it. “Yeah, I’ve been told that. I guess I get it from someone,” she hinted.
Joe grinned and said, “Yeah, I guess you do.” And he felt great about it. It was a small victory for him that his daughter had joined his team of sarcastic barbs. He then joked and said, “Maybe you’ll become a staff writer for Saturday Night Live after college.”
Ayana winced and didn’t catch the joke. “Saturday Night Live?” she questioned, confused.
“A lot of Harvard grads became writers for the New York City variety show on Saturday nights,” her mother filled in. She and Joe had spoken about it years ago.
“But I’m not even going to Harvard,” Ayana responded. “It’s too close to home. I’m applying for U. of Penn.”
Somehow, Joe had not previously asked her what university she wanted to attend. Imagine that. But he was glad to hear her talk about the University of Pennsylvania.
“That’s a great Ivy League business school,” he commented excitedly. “As long as you don’t follow after the Trumps,” he added.
“Oh, never that,” she told him. “John Legend, maybe.”
“Or Elon Musk,” Joe suggested.
“Yeah, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla. He has a very cool name, too,” his daughter gushed.
“You have a very cool name,” Joe told her. “Ayana Ogurah. It sounds important. And international.”
Carole grinned across the table, agreeing through her smile.
Ayana smiled back and said, “If I added Drake at the end, it would sound even more important. Ayana Ogurah Drake.”
Carole frowned and said, “It would sound like you’re married.”
Ayana ignored her mother and asked her father, “Would you even let me use it?”
“Of course,” Joe responded without thinking.
Carole eyed him and didn’t know how to respond. Was he telling their daughter the truth? Or was it a spur-of-the-moment lie from a question that had obviously caught him off guard?
“That name has a lot of bad history on it,” Carole commented to her daughter. She had discussed that topic with Joe before as well.
Ayana eyed her mother and asked, “Would you have taken it if you two had gotten married?”
Great question! Joe thought. He looked at Carole and waited for her answer.
“In that case, I guess I would’ve had to,” her mother answered. “But it didn’t happen,” she added quickly.
Their table went silent again.
“Hey, Carole? Every’ting irie,” an older Jamaican man greeted her.
She turned and eyed the man with a long, gray beard and a colorful Jamaican hat.
“Hey, Bernard? Yeah, mon, every’ting irie,” she greeted him back in their Caribbean tongue.
He walked closer to their table and immediately eyed the White man sitting with them.
“Who’s ’dat?”
“My daughter’s father,” Carole answered, drama free.
Bernard eyed Ayana and back to Joe. “Ohhh, I see. The eyes, they never lie.”
“They sure don’t,” Carole agreed with him.
“Are you still with Yusef?” he asked her openly. There was no shame in his old-school game. Bernard liked Yusef.
Carole answered, “Yeah, mon. I’m just having food with my daughter’s father,” in a full Jamaican accent.
Bernard nodded furiously. “All right. Good. Okay. Nice to meet you, sir,” he finally said, extending his aged brown hand to Joe.
Joe took his hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
It was a good natural break of their awkward silence at the table. But then Ayana brought the awkwardness back up again.
“So . . . if you could do it all over again, would you have asked my mom to marry you?” she asked her father.
Carole exhaled and shook her head, but the loaded question was already asked.
Joe exhaled as well. He had been through tons of regrets since then, regrets that all added to his feelings of loneliness and unsatisfaction.
He said, “With all things considered, I believe that would have been the best thing for me to do. And you could have had a couple of brothers or sisters who look like you.”
Carole heard that and didn’t comment. What was the point? It was all aimless hypotheses.
Ayana nodded to her father and said, “Interesting.”
The hypothesis had brought their energies back down again. However, Joe was determined to end their dinner on a good note.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t all start something new,” he commented. He even reached out and squeezed his daughter’s right hand.
Carole saw that and exhaled again. She didn’t know how she felt about any of it. The sudden surprise of Joe’s visit had taken her out of her normal comfort zone of ignoring him. But was his presence there a good disturbance or a bad one? She had yet to know. She only wondered how consistent he could be in his new efforts with their daughter.
* * *
That first mother-and-daughter meeting took so much out of Joseph that he felt too drained to follow through on his late drive up to Hartford, Connecticut. He needed a minute to recharge, and he had already allotted himself a week off from work, while telling his staff he’d check back in with them—unless his personal mission ended earlier than he expected it to.
And after his excursion in Boston, he booked a hotel room that was closer to Interstate 90 for his drive to Connecticut in the morning. And he crashed hard on the king-sized bed.
I wish I could go back and do it all over again, he told himself. More courage would have helped me to make the right decision years ago.
MRS. MELODY
Reflection 34
A LACK OF COURAGE WAS NOT THE CASE WITH MRS. MELODY. SHE possibly had too much courage and not enough discernment. So, after her little scare at the Lenox Square mall, she went right back to her overconfident norm at a recording studio with BJ.
“Ain’t nobody rockin’ the party / like I rock it / ain’t nobody droppin’ this beat / like I drop it / ain’t nobody stoppin’ my flow / you can’t stop it / and if you ever bet against me / you out of pocket . . .”
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM . . . / Boom, Boom / BOOM, BOOM, BOOM . . . / Boom, Boom / BOOM, BOOM, BOOM . . . / Boom, Boom / BOOM, BOOM, BOOM . . .
BJ smiled and nodded in the engineer’s room with several of his crew members, all iced out in the expensive hip-hop jewelry and clothes of excess income, while swinging to the infectious track production as Melody laid her lyrics inside a small, dark recording booth in front of them.
“Man, this beat is a monster!” BJ commented.
“Who produced it again?” one of his friends asked.
“Um, Dark and Groovy, or something like that.”
“Dark and Moody,” the engineer corrected him.
“Yeah, she on her way over here now,” BJ added.
“A girl made this beat?” the same friend asked him.
“Yeah, Melody know her,” BJ filled in.
“Aw’ight, well, I need to get me a few beats when she pops through.”
BJ nodded to him. “Do that. I hear she got a lot of beats.”
As soon as Mrs. Melody walked out of the booth, looking fabulous as usual, and joined them inside the engineer’s room, they all raved on Dark & Moody’s track production.
“Yo, I hear you got a girl producer who did this beat,” the same friend commented.
Melody smiled and said, “Woman producer,” correcting him.
“Yeah, you know what I meant. She coming over here tonight?”
Mrs. Melody looked down at her cell phone that read 10:07 PM.
“Any minute now,” she stated. “She told me around ten.”
“How much she charge for beats?”
Melody grinned. “How much can you afford?” She and Tasha had spoken on the subject before. A higher price created a higher respect, especially from the so-called ballers. So, she was calling the man out.
Like clockwork, the late-twenties Black man dug into his deep right pocket and pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
“What, you got hundreds on the outside and singles in the middle?” Melody joked to him.
“You wish.”
BJ laughed and said, “We’ll see what she says when she gets here.”
As soon as he finished his comment, the outside buzzer went off.
“She’s here,” the engineer informed them all. He buzzed the producer in.
Dark & Moody walked in, dressed very ladylike on purpose in all black, accented with red, suede heels. She didn’t want these guys thinking about anything but business. Mrs. Melody had already prepped her on them.
“It’s the woman of the hour,” the engineer responded.
Tasha looked around skeptically and grinned. “What, y’all were in here talking about me?”
“Yeah, just a li’l bit,” BJ told her. “They all couldn’t believe you did this beat.”
She grinned and said, “I got more, too.”
“How much you selling ’em for?” the eager friend asked on cue. He still had his wad of money in hand.
Dark & Moody eyed his cash and said, “Now, that’s real business. I like you already.”
They all laughed in the room. She was making an immediate impact on them.
“That’s my girl,” Mrs. Melody bragged.
The man with the money in hand smirked.
“I thought you just called her a woman a few minutes ago.”
“I did. But she still my girl,” Melody joked.
Tasha chuckled and felt great about it. Her relationship with Mrs. Melody was flourishing right before her eyes. All she had to do was be a little bit patient.
As was her norm, a new message popped up on Mrs. Melody’s cell phone. She looked and ignored it, but the damage was already done. Since she was already in studio with BJ, Dark & Moody assumed someone else was sending her a message. Another eager man.
When BJ received a message on his cell phone seconds later, Tasha glanced at him as well and felt uneasy about it. Especially when he read the message and frowned. Whatever he had read, he didn’t bother to share it with the rest of the group either.
“It looks like this gon’ be a good end of the year,” he commented, smiling.
Dark & Moody was impressed with his ability to mask his emotions so effortlessly, but that also made her leery. A man possessing such meticulous poker skills could be dangerous. But Mrs. Melody paid no attention to it.
“It’s fifteen thousand a beat, right?” she asked Tasha.
Tasha grinned, allowing Melody to work her magic.
“Is that what she charged you?” the man with money in hand asked.
“You’re not me. You don’t get no discount,” Melody told him. “But you gon’ get your money back if you make it a hit. You need me to write for you?” she joked.
They all laughed again.
“Aw, you on a roll tonight,” the money man responded. “But for fifteen thousand, I need two beats.” He looked right at Tasha when he said it.
DM grinned and remained cautious. She didn’t want to ruin their good vibes with the wrong response. “You haven’t even heard them yet,” she responded civilly. Her crafty reply allowed her to stall on his price question a bit longer.
“Yeah, bang his head off with that new shit. He can’t handle your old shit,” Mrs. Melody hinted.
That made the money man even more curious. “What’s your old shit?” he asked.
They all wanted to know.
Dark & Moody smiled and eyed Mrs. Melody. “I thought you told me you’re not into my gothic funk.”
“Yeah, but they might be,” Melody responded. “You know I like that up-tempo shit for the strip clubs. But guys . . . they be on that dark trap music shit, and yours is even darker than that. The way you play the keys and shit.”
“Yeah, let us hear it,” the engineer asked her.
BJ watched and listened to it all while mentally distracted. He was thinking about speaking to Mrs. Melody alone about the disturbing text he had received. So, once Dark & Moody took a zip drive out of her bag to load her tracks into the soundboard, BJ tapped Melody on her shoulder to leave the room with him.
Still alert to it all, Dark & Moody watched them walk out into the empty hallway.
“What’s up?” Mrs. Melody asked BJ, concerned.
BJ slid his cell phone screen into her face and showed her the text he had received. It was a picture of her with Gary at a hotel bar.
“You know him?” BJ asked her.
Mrs. Melody sighed, understanding that she had just been pulled into some nonsense. So, she showed him her cell phone message.
BJ looked and read it. Do your boy BJ know about us?
When he looked up into her face, she said, “Now, why would he text me that shit and then text you a picture if he wasn’t try’na start some shit. I mean, that’s so obvious.”
BJ paused, understanding that she was telling him the truth. Nevertheless, he was now curious. “Was you with him though?”
Melody paused. “What do you want me to say?” she asked him. “Do you want me to lie? Or you want me to tell the truth?” And she waited for the verdict.
“When did you take this picture?”
“Like, three months ago?”
He stopped and thought about it. “That’s when you first started dealing with me.”
“Exactly.”
BJ thought more about it. “Are you sure this wasn’t more recent than that?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
At that moment, Dark & Moody popped out in the hallway, looking for the restroom.
“Is there a bathroom this way?” she asked, pointing to the other side of them.
BJ pointed in the opposite direction. “It’s that way.”
Mrs. Melody smiled, knowing better. She knew Tasha was checking in on them. It was women’s intuition at work.
“Are they digging your beats?” she asked her protective producer and friend.
