What's His Is Mine

Books by Daaimah S. Poole

Another Man Will

What’s His Is Mine

Somebody Else’s Man

A Rich Man’s Baby

Diamond Playgirls

Ex-Girl to the Next Girl

What’s Real

Got A Man

Yo-Yo Love

WHAT’S HIS IS MINE

DAAIMAH S. POOLE

Kensington Publishing Corp.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

DAFINA BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2010 by Daaimah S. Poole

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

Dafina and the Dafina logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-0-7582-4622-6

Table of Contents

Books by Daaimah S. Poole

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

ANOTHER MAN WILL

Copyright Page

Thank you to Allah for making this and all things possible.

My boys Hamid and Ahsan, I love you. Thank you to my mother, Robin Sampson; father, Auzzie Poole; stepmother, Pulcheria Ricks-Poole; and sisters Daaiyah, Najah, and Nadirah Goldstein. Also, lots of love to all my extended family. It’s a lot of y’all.

Thank you to Ieshea Dandridge, Tamika Wilson, Maryam Abdus-Shahid, Miana White, Carla Lewis, Darryl Fitzgerald, Gina Del Lior, Sharon Long, Elaine Petitt, Fred Holman, Nyla Goldstein, Lacretia Saunders, Linda Saunders, Devon Walls of Starshooterz, Camille Miller, Candice Dow, and Allison Hobbs.

Special thanks to Black and Nobel bookstore, Khalil at City Hall (Philly Book Man), DC Book Diva, and African World Book Distributors.

To my readers, I thank you a million times for your constant support and for spreading the word. Thank you for e-mailing, Facebooking, and always showing love. I so appreciate it. E-mail [email protected], DSPbooks.com, Facebook.com/DSPbooks, and Twitter.com/DSPbooks.

Thank you so very much to Audrey LaFehr and Martin Biro of Kensington Books. You will never know how much I appreciate you both. Also thanks to the entire staff at Kensington Books.

Thank you, Karen E. Quinones Miller. I owe you the world—you are the greatest agent, friend, and mentor.

Thanks,

Daaimah

Prologue

Tanisha Butler

"Hello. Hello. Hel-lo!" my daughter Alexis yelled. I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t. I just listened intently from the other end of the call. I wanted to tell my oldest child to stop yelling, but I was getting comfort from just hearing her voice.

Ugh, I wish they’d stop playing on our phone, she said as she hung up.

I wish I were playing. What my daughter thought was a prank call was actually me, checking in. If she only knew how desperately I wanted to say, Hello, it’s Mommy. I’m in Detroit. I miss you. Don’t be mad at me—I’m sorry I killed that woman and I want to come home.

I wish I could say that to her, because I missed her. I missed my children, my boyfriend, and my entire life that I left behind. When life gets hard, people say, I wish I could just get up and walk away. I used to have those types of thoughts, but it is not that easy or fun.

Last year, I accidentally killed a woman, and instead of turning myself in, I ran. And since then I have experienced the hardest twelve months of my life. When life goes wrong, all you can ask yourself is, How did I get here? If someone were to ask me, I wouldn’t know what to say. My life hadn’t been great, but it hadn’t been like this, either.

I had my daughter Alexis at sixteen and my son, Jamil, was born a year later when I was seventeen. Then by the time I was nineteen, I was married to my ex-husband Tyrone, a truck driver thirteen years older than me. We had a daughter, Kierra, and our marriage lasted about fifteen years. I wanted out of the marriage because I was tired of being tied down. So I divorced my husband and decided I wanted to make up for lost time.

I began hanging out with my coworker’s ex, Adrienne. It was all so exciting at first. We went and did everything. Adrienne took me to some really nice parties filled with young, handsome, and rich professional athletes. My life changed instantly—I went from sitting on the sofa watching movies to partying all night in Vegas. My life had become so exciting, and then to top it off I met the man of my dreams. I met my Kevin at a basketball game and we hit it off.

Kevin was the most compassionate, romantic, humble, and attractive man I had ever met. We fell in love quickly and had a beautiful, long-distance relationship. I visited him in Rome, Italy, where he played for the Italian basketball team, Lottomatica Roma. My life was like a fairy tale. Then the fairy tale began unraveling when Kevin came back to the States to play basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. That’s when I learned I was pregnant and I had to come clean about all the lies I had told Kevin. I deceived Kevin about so many things in the beginning of our relationship because I didn’t think we were going to become serious.

I lied to him about my age. I said I was twenty-nine when I was actually thirty-three. I told him I was a nurse, but my real job was in the hospital’s billing department. I also told him I had only one daughter, who was five, but I failed to mention my two other teenage children. When I came to Kevin with the truth, he was upset with me, but he forgave me and things went back to normal.

Everything was fine until I started receiving threatening notes. The notes said Go kill yourself bitch! Six million ways to die . . . choose one, and Watch your back, bitch. I didn’t know what to make of the notes, so I just threw them in the trash. I figured they were from a crazy groupie. Not keeping the notes was the worst mistake I could have made. If I would have just told Kevin, I would have been prepared when Kevin’s ex-girlfriend—not crazy groupie—tried to kill me.

She came to the hospital while I was visiting my newborn and put a gun to my head and carjacked me. Then she made me drive to a park and basically let me know she was going to kill me. I didn’t want to die, so I fought back and we tussled for the gun and it went off. When I stood up she was on the ground, bleeding and lifeless. At that very moment I should have called the police and explained, but instead I got scared and called Adrienne.

Adrienne helped me dump the gun and suggested that I go on the run. At the time, running made sense. I had just committed a murder, I didn’t want to go to jail, and I didn’t have any proof that she was stalking me. I didn’t mean to kill her—it was self-defense. But who would believe me? What proof did I have? The only thing I could think of was being sent to prison for life. I couldn’t go to jail, so I ran. I wanted to get far away from Philadelphia, so I ran all the way to The D—Detroit.

The D is cold. Literally and figuratively. A lot of the auto plants and a bunch of other companies have closed, and people just don’t have jobs here. There is so much crime and drugs, and the unemployment rate is horrible.

Adrienne dropped me off at the train station and I just jumped on the first train and somehow I ended up here. The train ride was crazy. I just remembered asking myself, Where the hell am I going? What am I doing? But I couldn’t turn back. I knew the police were looking for me and had a warrant for my arrest. I knew my DNA was all over that park and on that crazy lady’s clothes.

In my mind I envisioned my face plastered all over the news and on posters with WANTED in big, bold, capital letters. But I figured the longer I stayed away, the easier it would become to disappear. Big news stories only last for a few days . . . weeks at best. I knew eventually I would be able to simply blend into society.

On the train ride I found the driver’s license of a woman from Milwaukee. Surprisingly, the photo sort of resembled me. To make myself look more like the identification photo, I cut and dyed my hair blond and started wearing glasses. I don’t really worry about anyone recognizing me, because I don’t recognize myself. I’ve been living under the name Brenda Douglas and have everything in her name.

I worked in a Detroit restaurant owned by a Chinese man named Mr. Kim. There was a bar in the back of the restaurant. I was employed as a waitress during the day and also worked as a barmaid a few evenings a week. I found the job looking through the classified section of the Detroit Free Press newspaper.

Mr. Kim trusted me enough to let me run his Laundromat on the nights when I was not working the bar. At the Laundromat, I basically made sure the machines didn’t overflow, gave out change, and sold laundry detergent. I didn’t make a lot of money, but on the side I washed and folded clothes.

I think my coworkers at the restaurant assume I’m a battered woman on the run. I heard two other waitresses talking about me. They asked me a lot of questions that I never answered. I just acted busy and ignored them. I always looked mean and unapproachable. I kept my guard up. I basically lived like a hermit over the last year, because I didn’t need anyone in my business.

I rented a studio apartment—one big room. I didn’t have any friends and I didn’t socialize. I read a lot of novels and tabloid magazines. I watched television, but I stayed away from the Law & Order type of shows. Every time I tried to watch the news my body shut down and I got really scared and extremely nervous.

I lay in bed every night and I thought about my family. I wondered what they were doing and how they were. I wished I could kiss them and hold them. Sometimes being without them was so hard, I felt like I was going to go crazy. So to keep my mind off of things, I prayed. I prayed a lot. I thought of going to church, but it was too crowded. So I just developed my own personal relationship with God. I prayed that I would be forgiven for taking that woman’s life. I prayed to be united with my family. I prayed to get my old life back. I prayed for the strength to do the right thing. I thought I was ready to do the right thing, which was go back home and turn myself in. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me when I did, but being alone was miserable. It was hell. I had my freedom, but I didn’t have peace. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my children. I was ready to go back to face my fate. If I got five months or even if I got a life sentence, I knew I would be able to pull through. If nothing else, at least I would be able to see my children again.

From working all my jobs, I was able to save six thousand dollars and I was thinking about getting a good attorney to prove my innocence. Six thousand should be at least a good down payment on an attorney.

After a little more thought I decided it was the right time. I was ready and my decision was made. I was going home. I didn’t have any choice. I wrote down everything I wanted to do once I got back and mentally prepared myself to leave. I even wrote Adrienne a letter and mailed it. I thanked her for her help and let her know I would be home soon.

Chapter 1

Adrienne Sheppard

What’s wrong with wanting half? Some women dream of becoming doctors, athletes, and lawyers. Others dream of marrying them.

—Adrienne Sheppard

It was 7 a.m. and it was already forming into a hot August day. I was off from my job as a nurse at the Mantua Nursing Home. I couldn’t wait to get home and get in my bed. I was so exhausted. I did three double shifts in the last week and was so happy I had the next two days off. I planned to get some rest and get refreshed.

Right now the only thing standing in my way of getting home was the slow-moving traffic on 76 West in Philly. I tried not to fall asleep at the wheel of my Nissan Maxima. I turned on the radio and rolled down the window. I was so sleepy and really needed rest. Sleep right now was a privilege. It was the equivalent of money, an exotic vacation, or some real good sex. I wished I had all those things right now. I was so deprived. I was one hour away from sleep. I had it all planned out, how I was going to get to my bed faster. I was going to go straight to my mom’s house and pick up my daughter, Malaysia. Then I was going to drop her off at day care and after that I was going to keep my appointment with my bed. I could not wait.

After fighting traffic for forty minutes I arrived at my mother’s home. I walked in my mother’s eccentrically decorated home. Since my grandfather had passed, my mom tried to fix up the old row home. She got an E for effort. You’re not supposed to put new furniture in a house with old carpet and wallpaper. There were touches of zebra and leopard prints here and there, with mixtures of chiffon and a lot of bright-ass colored Ikea furniture. In two words: hot mess. But that was my mother, Debbie, for you—over the top, crazy Deb. My mom is white and my father is black, which makes me black. I was raised by my white mom and white grandparents, but I still always felt like I was a 100 percent black, even though I didn’t necessarily look it. My complexion was cocoa butter yellow, and I had long curly hair that without a flatiron would be big and curly. I have had Spanish people try to speak Spanish to me and I always say No español back to them. My mother raised me without my father’s assistance. Neither he nor his family ever accepted his mixed race child, and I never cared.

My mother was feeding oatmeal to my daughter, Asia, in high chair. As soon as Asia saw me she smiled and raised her hands so I could pick her up. I took her out of her high chair.

Hey, Asia, girl. Hey, Mommie’s baby, I said as I kissed her all over her dimpled cheeks. She was only sixteen months, but so smart and adorable. Asia has her father’s chocolate skin and my naturally curly hair. The combination of complexions made a beautiful, cinnamon baby doll.

My mom handed me the bowl of oatmeal and said, You can finish this. I have to get ready for work. I hope you brought her some clean clothes, because she doesn’t have any.

There’s nothing clean in her bag? Mom, you couldn’t do me a favor and wash her clothes? You know I have to take her to school.

No, I couldn’t have, Adrienne. I’m tired. She is your daughter. Sometimes I think you forget that and take advantage. You are going to have to find yourself a teenager or someone else to babysit. I love her, but I can’t watch her all the time.

You don’t watch her all the time. I sighed.

Yes, I do, and I can’t watch her this Saturday because me and Joe are going to Foxwoods out in Connecticut. We’re seeing a show and going to dinner.

Huh? This weekend? I have to work, I said, annoyed.

Adrienne, I told you two weeks ago to try to find someone else to watch her, because I have something planned.

Great, Mom, now I’m going to have to call out, I said as I packed my baby up and headed toward the door.

Whatever, I thought as I put Asia in her car seat and I got back in my car. My mom really irked me. She was always complaining about watching her own grandchild. I didn’t get it. Since she’d been with her boyfriend, Joe, and lost her weight from gastric bypass surgery, she thought she was young now and it was so damn irritating. She was always talking about going out and how she was not a built-in babysitter. She stayed talking trash about watching Asia, except for the days it was time for me to pay her. Then she was all smiles.

Forget her! I was tired and ready to fall asleep at every light. I was mad I had to go all the way home to get Asia dressed. I honestly thought about letting her do a repeat at day care. Who would notice? But I couldn’t send my baby girl to school looking unwanted and unloved. The other option, if I didn’t take her to day care, was to let her stay home. That wouldn’t work. I would never get any rest with her there. She would be up all morning bothering me. It would have worked when she was a little younger. I used to be able to feed her, give her a bottle, and sit her in her playpen in front of the television. Now I can’t do that, because she has learned how to get out of there. So I had to find the strength to take her to school so I could get rest.

I took Asia to school and came back home, took off my scrubs, showered, and fell onto my bed. As soon as I dozed off the phone rang. I picked up the phone groggily, only to hear my daughter’s father, DeCarious Simmons, shouting, When can I see my daughter?

I don’t know. In a few weeks, I said as I yawned. I turned over on my stomach to look at my alarm clock. I couldn’t believe I had only been asleep for about fifteen minutes. I was sleep deprived and not in the mood to have a conversation with him.

I’m tired. I’ll call you back, I said.

No, don’t hang up. Why do I have to wait a few weeks?

DeCarious, because that’s what I said. That’s the only time I’ll be able to take off again. I wouldn’t have to work like a slave if you gave me more money to take care of your daughter.

Since when is four thousand a month not enough to take care of a one-year-old? I pay my child support, he yelled in my ear.

Who are you yelling at? I asked, sitting up in the bed. I wasn’t about to let this moron get me upset. No, four thousand is not enough, DeCarious. You spend that on drinks and dirty whores in the club.

I don’t . . . Whatever, man. Can I just come up there and get my daughter?

"No, you can’t take my daughter anywhere without me. As a matter of fact, I just got off work and I’m tired. Good-bye," I said as I powered my phone off. If I didn’t turn the phone off, it was guaranteed he would call back.

I hated my daughter’s father, DeCarious Simmons. He is a certified asshole. In the beginning of our relationship he would do anything for me. The first day I met him in Vegas, he took me shopping and had a car take me to the airport. Back then you couldn’t have told me that I didn’t hit the jackpot. He was a rookie in the NFL and played for the Seattle Seahawks, making great money, and wanted to be with me. When I got pregnant he was so happy. But then his hating-ass cousin Rock told him he wasn’t my first athlete and a bunch of other shit. Some of it was true, some of it wasn’t. Okay, so what if I hung out with other guys in the league before . . . And? I didn’t think it was a deal breaker, but DeCarious thought it was.

Once he heard about my other indiscretions, he confronted me and I did what I was supposed to do, which was deny, deny, deny, and deny some more. I wasn’t there, it wasn’t me, wrong girl, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. But it didn’t work or matter, because his whole attitude changed toward me.

He changed from Baby, whatever you want to I’m going to do whatever I want and you can take it or leave it. I decided to leave it, and as soon as I did, I felt like I took a flight from the glamorous life back to the below average life. Let me tell you, it was not a fun transition at all. I had to go back to work and pay my own bills and do everything for my daughter on my own. And it’s been so hard.

And to make matters worse, he was not in Seattle anymore. He got traded to his home team, Atlanta, and was doing good. So he thought he was somebody for real now, and he was not. He was just a dumb jock who was making a lot of money. You would think that since he was in the NFL and made two million dollars a year, I would have had it made. Wrong! I only got four thousand a month in child support. How the judge did that math, I will never know. You might think four thousand a month was a lot, but it wasn’t, because I had real bills.

My mortgage was twenty-seven hundred dollars a month. Then let’s not forget day care, student loans, my car note, car and home owner’s insurance, gas, electric, cable, cell phone, clothes, and all the money I paid my mom for keeping Asia overnight. And then I had so much debt. When I was with my daughter’s father, I paid my credit cards down, but over the last year, I’d run them all back up. I didn’t know how, but I guess because I found a reason to shop all the time. I just liked shopping. Me and Asia always needed things. It’s like after the third time I wore something, it lost its newness and I didn’t want to wear it anymore. I just couldn’t walk past a store without buying something. When I was at the mall, I always saw cute shoes or sneakers for Asia and I had to buy them.

So, long story short, living off of my child support was not an option. I was about to try to see if I could get my child support modified. I needed seven thousand a month to take care of myself and daughter properly, at the very least. That’s not asking a lot. And don’t try to judge me and say I needed to be happy with what I had. Please. My daughter needed to be living the same lifestyle as her father.

Okay, let’s get something clear right now. Everybody wants money and likes money. Everyone wants to be comfortable and not have to work hard every day. That’s why people play the lottery—to get ahead, to get that extra. I was trying to get my extra by having my daughter by someone rich. I thought I was securing my future for the next eighteen years and making an investment, but I wasn’t and I didn’t. All I did was buy myself a lot of headaches. My first headache would be DeCarious’s ass. My second headache was my missing friend, Tanisha, who I haven’t seen in a year.

Tanisha was not really missing. She just ran away. She thought she’d killed her boyfriend’s crazy ex-girlfriend, who was trying to kill her. The ex-girlfriend carjacked Tanisha and then tried to shoot her. Somehow Tanisha got ahold of the gun and ended up shooting the ex-girl. She came to my house all upset, bloody, and crying, saying she killed a girl in the park. I tried to calm her down and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. I consoled her, gave her new clothes, and drove her back to the park so we could see if the woman was really dead. At the park there were red and blue flashing lights and yellow crime scene tape in every direction. Just looking at the chaotic scene, we knew she must have killed the woman.

Tanisha was hysterical and I had to help her. The first thing I did was to dump the gun. I thought if there was no gun and no one saw them together, how could they link her to the shooting? But then Tanisha’s daughter called and said the cops had already been to her house and wanted to speak with her about something really important.

At that point I was so scared for her that I drove her to the train station. I just couldn’t see her going to jail. The only thing I could think to tell her was to run and never come back. I shouldn’t have told her to run, but at the time it seemed like the best idea.

When I told her to run, never would I have thought that the woman she thought she’d murdered really wasn’t dead. And secondly, I wouldn’t have dreamed that Tanisha wouldn’t get in contact with me or her family for an entire year. After watching the news, I found out that Tanisha hadn’t killed anyone, I ran back to the train station to get her, but she was gone. I was hoping she would call, even though I instructed her not to.

When all of this first happened, I was going crazy. I used to try to go and check on her children, but I couldn’t look in their faces. They were devastated. They weren’t sure what exactly happened to their mother, and I knew but couldn’t say anything.

A few days after the shooting, the cops found her car down the street from my house. They questioned me twice and asked me if she had contacted me. I told them I spoke to her the night of the shooting, but our conversation was normal and she didn’t mention anything unusual.

So, for a year I have been going through it. I wanted to tell the authorities what I knew. I wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive. I had no idea what happened to her, until she wrote me a letter a few weeks ago saying she was okay, living in Detroit, and coming back soon. I was so happy because I felt so guilty and it had been weighing me down.

Initially, I thought about going to Detroit and finding her myself, but I decided against it. I was glad she was coming back, but I didn’t know what kind of charges she was going to face. She didn’t murder anyone, but she did shoot that girl.

Knowing that she was okay was a relief, but now I just hoped that I didn’t go to jail, too. They could charge me with . . . I think it’s called aiding and abetting. I should have dropped her off at the police station and kept it moving.

So I was already so over this. I lived with the