Broken Promises
Chapter 3
Abilasha
“I must have the wrong address,” I mumbled to myself as I put my car in park and double checked the address.
Sure enough, beneath the address was the easily scribed name of Pelican Hill, one of the better known (and hard to get into) gated communities in California. It was an area I became familiar with after catching an episode or two of the O.C. I tossed my paperwork on the passenger seat and drove towards the gatemaster who promptly asked me who I was there to visit, my name to cross reference with the visitor’s sheet he’d been provided, and proof of identification before giving me a placard and sending me on my way with vague directions to my employer’s home. The neighborhood was clearly home to the affluent. If the pristine golf course and country club located inside of the little bubble wasn’t a clear sign of the caliber of people living inside the guarded gates, than the lavish estates and huge connected driveways filled with exotic cars did the job.
To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable being thrust into all this. I was the girl who grew up with working class parents and while my husband had made a more than decent living, we were far from this. Our, excuse me, his four thousand square foot home had been the talk of our families. It was large, well decorated, and (to put it simply) it was our dream home. Compared to the homes I currently found myself surrounded by, my dream home could very well compare to a modest starter home for these people.
The house’s personal gates were open so I drove through them and parked my car in the welcome circle in front of the house, which was several feet away from an elevated five foot, three tiered, water feature. The palms of my hands were slick with sweat, wondering if Mr. Benford would actually answer the door and if he did, would he take one look at me and send me on my merry way. My worries were unfounded seeing as Mr. Benford didn’t answer the door. In fact, he wasn’t even home. Elliot Winters, Mr. Benford’s butler, answered the door and proceeded to show me to my quarters, which (as I’d assumed) wasn’t a guest bedroom but the guesthouse.
“I hope everything is to your liking,” Mr. Winters spoke as he handed me a set of keys after having unlocked the door.
The house was a fully furnished two level with three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and a kitchen to die for. It must be nice to afford a lifestyle like this.
Omari
“She doesn’t like me Omari,” Priscilla complained after a disastrous dinner.
Talk about stating the obvious. Ava might be a lot like me, but she got her passive aggressive nature straight from her mother. She was a child and yet she could make you feel like shit without saying anything. While Abilasha and I had our problems, I can’t deny that she was an amazing mother who raised our daughter to be respectful of adults and to mind her manners. The situation involving my ex, Priscilla, and myself wasn’t one of the best and Ava had always been a precocious child. I knew she had a few theories and as a child wanting their parents together, I’m sure she didn’t look too highly upon Priscilla but she hadn’t made a smart remark. However, her disdainful expressions, monosyllabic answers towards Priscilla’s questions, and her lack of appetite concerning anything Priscilla fixed made her position on the matter crystal clear.
“What did you expect Priscilla? Her mother and I divorced less than a month ago and here you are being introduced as my fiance. She may be a child, but she isn’t stupid.”
“I know she’s not stupid but she isn’t even giving me a chance Omari!” she whined. “I want her to like me and it’s like she’s dead set against that.”
“And that’s her right,” I told her easily. The fact of the matter is that Priscilla knew I had a child from the beginning. How she thought this transition was going to be seamless was anyone’s guess. “What she’d known as her life was torn apart not too long ago and our relationship is a large part of the reason behind that. She will get used to you, though, because you’re not going anywhere. Just be patient.”
“Maybe I can take her shopping tomorrow. Does she like that sort of thing?” Priscilla questioned with a hopeful look in her eyes.
“Yes, she does. You should maybe make a stop by Toys-R-Us so she could pick up a new Barbie and some accessories. She’d like that.”
Priscilla
“Good morning,” I spoke energetically as Ava came down from her bedroom.
She glanced from me to Omari before saying, “Good morning.” I glanced at Omari to see if he would reprimand her for her tone of voice, but he said nothing. I understood that she was put off by the way things had turned out for her parents, but damnit she was going to have to respect me. Where I come from, children stayed in a child’s place. I was trying to be nice...to make this transition as easy as possible but she was making it hard. Didn’t she realize that I could have been a total bitch and pressured Omari to forgo his visitation rights for a while? I could have easily claimed that she needed time to get used to the new surrounding of wherever she and her mother now resided, but I didn’t do that.
“I hope you’re hungry because I’ve made breakfast. Omari said you liked buttermilk pancakes and turkey sausage,” I replied as if I didn’t hear the disdain in her tone and placed the hot plate in front of her.
“No thank you,” she spoke and shook her head as she pushed the plate away and headed to the fridge to grab the carton of soy milk. “I think I’ll have some frosted flakes.”
I turned to Omari and gave him a hard look. He cleared his throat and said, “Ava, eat the food.”
“I said I don’t want any,” she answered evenly as she went to grab the bowl.
“Ava-” Omari started with a warning tone, but before he could go any farther Ava glanced toward him and arched a thick ebony brow.
“So you’re going to make me eat something I don’t want?”
“Ava.”
“Yes?” she asked as she poured a cup of cereal into her personal bowl.
“Why won’t you eat the pancakes?” he asked.
“You know, perfectly well, why I don’t want pancakes,” she enunciated.
What sort of six-year-old is this?
“Ava, just eat the damn breakfast!” Omari yelled.
“Fine,” the child hissed with a pout as she stomped over to her plate and sat down.
“Little girl,” Omari started as he gave her a look that told her he meant business, “if you don’t fix your face, I’ll definitely give you something to pout about.”
“After breakfast can I call my mommy?” she asked as she picked with her food.
“What? Why?” Omari asked, shocked at her request.
“I want to go home.”
Abilasha
I was in the midst of unpacking Ava’s things when my cell phone went off. I glanced at the caller-id and frowned when I saw the digits of my old house number flash across the screen. It was eleven in the morning and while it wasn’t too early for people to be calling me, it was too early into Omari’s weekend visit for him to be ringing me.
“Abilasha speaking,” I answered politely, as if I didn’t know who was on the other line.
“What the fuck have you been putting in this child’s head?” Omari’s angry baritone spat from the other end.
“Well good morning to you too,” I spoke sarcastically as I placed a few of Ava’s teddy bears on her new queen sized bed.
“What the fuck have you been telling our daughter?!” he reiterated. “She comes in this house, sees Pricilla and automatically starts acting as if she wasn’t raised the way I know she was.”
“Okay, you’re going to lower you voice when you speak to me because I’m not your child,” I spoke evenly. “You want to yell at someone? Look in the mirror because you will not take your aggression out on me or our child. Now I’ll talk to Ava, because I don’t tolerate her disrespecting adults, but you have to realize that just because she’s young doesn’t mean she’s stupid. She hears and observes everything. We might not want her to know certain things, but the children of today are a lot smarter than we were at their age. They have the internet, TV shows, and peers that give them the unedited version of things we try to mask.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he spoke in an accusatory tone.
“I didn’t speak an ill word about you or your tramp,” I spat nastily. “In fact, she was quite excited about her weekend with you when I dropped her off. Anything that has happened to cause her attitude change happened because of your end of this scenario. As much as you try to point the finger at me, the fact remains that I didn’t go outside of our marriage; that was you. It was you who threw our vows away and kicked me and our child out of our home and moved some next bitch in! Let me guess, your new play thing was there when Ava arrived and you introduced her as your new wife...fiance...her step mother? How did you expect her to react?”
“She’s just a child Abilasha,” he admonished.
“So what? That means she’s stupid now?” I asked.
“Just talk to her. She says she wants to come home-”
“Then I’ll come and pick her up,” I spoke easily.
“Abilasha!” he bellowed.
“I’m not hearing impaired,” I warned lightly.
“I just-I just need you to talk to her. She needs to spend time with me...needs to get to know Pricilla because, whether she likes it or not, Pricilla’s here to stay,” he spoke uncaringly.
“No,” I spoke and I could see his surprised expression from my side of the phone.
“No?” he asked.
“No,” I repeated. “This is your problem so you fix it. I’m not going to sit Ava down and pretend as if everything is fine and Priscilla is such a wonderful woman that she has just got to get to know. I’m also not going to pretend as if you and I sat down and decided that my moving out of the house was a great idea when the truth of the matter is that you couldn’t be bothered to care if your daughter and I had a place to stay so that your new play thing was comfortable and happy. You can sit there and lie in our daughter’s face, but I won’t be a part of that.”
“You are so selfish-”
“Look,” I interrupted him, not caring to hear him play the blame game, “if you aren’t going to talk about Ava or put her on the phone, I’m going to end this call. I have better things to do than to talk to you right now.”
I took his silence as confirmation that he had nothing important to say and hung up the phone.