“Eden.” Momma called my name when I hadn’t acknowledged her.
I looked up to find her watching me. Her aggrevation with me shone bright in her eyes.
“Your and my definition of good are very fucking different. I know you don’t want me here, and I won’t be here for long,” I said.
Just as I finished my declaration, King came sauntering into the kitchen wearing only a pair of boxers, looking refreshed, as if he hadn’t kept me up all night fucking me raw and bitching about my supposed betrayal.
When he turned to look at me, I dropped my head into the cereal bowl I was eating from. But I could see momma's face light up out of my peripheral. I’m not sure if my Momma wanted to fuck King or if she saw him as her actual son, but either way she always treated him better than she’d ever treated me.
Like flipping a switch, I watched as her entire demeanor changed. A smile curved her thick lips, and her tone dropped an octave too soft. She bounced on her feet.
I squeezed the bridge of my nose hoping to stave off an incoming headache.
“It’s not that I don’t want you here. It’s just that I’m concerned by how depressed you seem being away from your husband.” She was putting on a show, playing the concerned mother.
Yeah, clean that shit up, I thought.
“Good morning, Ashford.” She smiled at him after letting bullshit spew from between her lips.
“Good morning, Momma.” I could feel his eyes heavy on me.
A aggravated sigh slipped from between my lips.
I hated when he called her Momma. He only did it because he knew it annoyed me.
Momma giggled. “I cooked you a welcome home breakfast. I’ve got sausage and biscuit, grits with butter and milk like you like it.”
I sucked my teeth. She hadn’t even offered me anything.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry.
“Okay,” I said aloud. “Whatever,” I mumbled under my breath.
“You two are always bickering.” King interjected in this sugary sweet tone that made my ass itch. I looked up just to roll my eyes at him.
He was watching my face, studying me. That was the first time we’d seen each other in the light of day in nearly four years. King looked exactly the same, like time had frozen him. His glasses were back though.
He searched my eyes as if looking for something and a deep line etched in his forehead.
I dropped my head.
I heard him thank Momma for the plate she handed him. I felt it when he took a seat next to me. His knee brushed mine.
“We’re not arguing,” my momma lied. “I’m just trying to get her to see the errors in her ways. She needs to go back to her husband. I was trying to explain to her that some things are bound to happen in marriage and she just has to learn how to deal with them.” “She turned her back to us. King’s eyes narrowed dangerously in my direction. The cold fury in them lifted the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Is that so? What things are bound to happen?” If Momma knew about our relationship his tone would have set off all kinds of alarms. He was angry at the mention of me and Ellis together.
“They had a fight,” she volunteered.
King’s eyes suddenly zeroed in on the cut on my lip, the bruising around my eyes, the handprints around my neck. He knew they weren’t his. He never left marks.
He scowled. “He hit you?”
“No. They fought. He said Eden hit him too.” Momma defended Ellis. She thought he was the best thing to ever happen to us. As long I was married to him, he paid her bill’s and sent her an allowance. I had married the man she wanted. They talked more than we did. When she came to visit me, she was really visiting him. He would also call her weekly to complain about me and make excuses for beating my ass when he felt like it, then momma would chastise me for not being a good wife.
King cut his eyes at Momma before swinging them back to me.
“When will you be going back to hubby?” He said it like he was daring me to answer him and telling me I was never going back all in the same breath.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” I spat.
Momma spoke up for him right away. “You don’t have to talk to him like that.”
He waved her off. “It’s okay, Momma. I know how Eden is.”
Momma changed the subject and started talking about the coronavirus, safer at home guidelines and King’s parole. I guess he was staying with her until he got all his legal issues worked out.
Then she fussed at him about adding more tats to his body and he told her how pretty she looked
They made me nauseous.
They continued to talk while my mind drifted…
Eden: The Story of Us
Past
I met King when I was fifteen years old. At first, he didn’t matter. When I was told I’d have a new brother, it had gone in one ear and out the other. I had more important issues to deal with than a fake brother. I was trying to maintain my 4.5 GPA so I could get into Spellman, my dream college.
I was stressing over how my life would turn out, and I was still resentful and angry at my momma for moving us from Brooklyn away from my friends and family to Florida with no consideration for my feelings.
She hadn’t even given me notice. One morning she woke me up and told me to pack all my shit because we were moving. All because of a man she had known for three weeks. But that was Momma’s modus operandi. She needed men. She would do anything for them, and she always put them ahead of me even though they all eventually broke her heart.
When I met James, I immediately knew he wasn’t any different than the men before him, except he was white and had nice things. A big eight-bedroom house, expensive cars and a nice size bank account. James was a plump, middle-aged, stereotypical looking Italian who sold luxury vehicles. Momma thought she’d hit the jackpot.
She was loving the trips and new clothes, and I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy some of the benefits. We had been struggling back in New York. Momma only worked enough to feed and clothe us. There weren’t any extras. James came with extras – a car, an allowance, shopping sprees. He basically kept my credit card paid and let me be. I was grateful for that because Momma had dealt with some creeps before who thought they could talk and manipulate their way between my thighs like they had done Momma. James turned out to be exactly how I imagined, an abusive cheater, but at least he’d kept all his B.S. between him and Momma and his son.
It was a month after we moved to Florida before I was actually introduced to King. Even though he lived with his father, he seemed to never be home. I found out why at the wedding.
If either one of them breathed hard in the others direction, they’d turn into two snarling pit bulls. At the reception they made a spectacle of themselves. Their family partied around them as if they weren’t about to come to blows, which made me believe it was their usual behavior.
That night Momma had jumped in between them. She said wasn’t about to let them ruin her day. We had family visiting, she was showing off all the new things her pussy had gotten her.
After momma calmed them down and put them in their respective corners, I didn’t see King for the rest of the reception. But I heard a lot about him. His family said he was quick-tempered and could be mean and downright evil. Some said there were rumors that he and his father were criminals, and some said he was married with a secret family. I really didn’t put much stock in anything I heard though. If you asked my mother’s family about me, they’d say I was fast and had a bad attitude because that’s what Momma told them.