What's His Is Mine Read online

  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 bea
utiful, 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.