TO LOVE A NO GOOD NIGGA
As my sisters continued to talk about our genius brother and his work at a university in Rochester, my thoughts ventured to my parents. Jay and Tianna “T” Bird had been married for thirty-five long, melodramatic years which was a rarity in the black community. Personally, I believed they should have divorced thirty-four years ago.
My daddy, though I loved him dearly, was a whore. He had so many hoes running around town, it was ridiculous. I could not remember a single time when he didn’t have Mama at home, at least two women in the wings, and was sniffing after another.
Even now at the age of 59, about to be 60, he continued to chase women. Growing up, my parents constantly argued about his philandering. Actually, it was more like my mother screamed and cried while my dad sat and stared.
After every argument he would look at her and say, “T, baby, I love you dearly but I’m not going to change. I’m a man, baby. Just because I sleep with those girls don’t mean I love them or that I don’t love you. You will always have my heart.”
Every time he would say some mess like that, I would think to myself, this will be the time she will tell him to take his filthy dick and shove it up his ass, but I was disappointed every single time. She would just dry her eyes and walk into his outstretched arms. When I once asked her why she kept dealing with the bullshit my daddy kept slinging her way she got this far away look in her eyes and said on the end of a sigh, “When a woman loves…”
More like when a woman was stupid. That was the main reason I didn’t want to have anything to do with this sixtieth birthday celebration or whatever they were calling it. Just like every other time we had a family get together one of my dad’s mistresses would show up and show her ass, demanding that he claim her.
It didn’t matter if it was Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Earth Day, or whatever day these young gold digging sluts would show up at my parents’ house in Park Ridge and act a damn fool.
They would cry and carry on describing in graphic detail the things my father did to and with them. Some of them brought physical evidence like we were in court. I couldn’t begin tell you the number of pictures, panties, and stained bed sheets I had flaunted in my face. At least it wasn’t a baby being thrown in my arms.
Though that was embarrassing, the worst part was my mother. To watch my mom sit and cry while the police carried away another one of my daddy’s tramps, to watch her be humiliated in front of family, friends, and neighbors year after year, and then to watch her stay with the same man who continuously broke her heart left a sour taste in my mouth. I never wanted to be like her. I never wanted to be strung out on love and the empty promises of man who would emotionally use and abuse me.
