Cursed (4 page)

“It’s not a problem, Daddy,” he said. “If my way fails, we can try yours. Besides, I don’t have Kimmie to complicate life, so I’ve got an opening for some drama.” He laughed.

“What happened with Kimmie?”

“She’s just too much work.”

His father regarded him for a moment. “Kimmie’s parents are wealthy and well-connected here in town. You’d make a great pair.”

“I’m seventeen. I just want to be a normal teenager. Date other girls without caring how rich their parents are or if they can help your company,” Jayden said, frustrated.

“I don’t want you to make the mistake I did,” his father replied. He considered Jayden for a long moment. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Just don’t lose focus. You’re meant for great things, Jay.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

His father was quiet, pensive to the point of troubled.

“What’s wrong?” Jayden asked curiously. His dad wasn’t one to dwell on the troubles of life.

“You’re right, Jayden. We do put a lot of responsibility on your shoulders,” his dad answered. “You can handle it all well, but it makes me not want to add to your burden.”

“How so? Are we broke?”

“No.” His dad smiled. “You’re probably not going to want to hear this. It’s one of the reasons I pressure you so much to excel.”

Jayden leaned forward, intrigued by the enigmatic response from the laid-back, technological genius known for wearing jeans and sandals to business meetings.

His father rose and went to his desk, retrieving something from the top drawer. It was small enough for his fist to hide it from view, and Jayden sat on the edge of his seat in anticipation.

“This has been passed down for four hundred years.” His father held out his closed fist.

Jayden glanced at him, unsettled by the grim tone. He held out his hand.

His father dropped an old skeleton key into his palm. At one time, the iron might’ve been smooth, but it was rough now, chipped and rusted, with a dark patina covering what remained of the smooth surfaces.

“I hope this opens a treasure chest,” Jayden said, studying it.

“Not exactly.” His father took it. “This is the family legacy, Jayden, a very dark, horrible, disturbing one. This key went to the set of chains belonging to the first slave our ancestor sold to the Americas.”

Jayden was silent, surprised.

“Once upon a time” his dad flashed a quick smile “about twenty generations ago, an impoverished man in Africa began selling men and women to the Europeans who needed slave labor in the New World. He started with his cousins then the other members of his village and soon expanded his operation to incorporate every village he could reach. He sold tens of thousands of Africans into slavery and killed those who refused to go. He became a very, very wealthy man virtually overnight, sought out by nobility and rich Europeans for his ability to supply human laborers and servants fast, no questions asked. There wasn’t an order too big or unique for him to fill. His sons and their sons – a total of ten generations – followed in his footsteps, selling our people into slavery until the Civil War.”

“You’re serious?” Jayden managed, not expecting to hear such news about his father’s highly respected family.

“Very. He became corrupt with power, influence and riches. His deeds are why no one in our family is named Charles. Somewhere along the line, he crossed paths with one of those backwards types who believed in magic, a woman named Brianne. An alleged curse was placed upon the family, so that every firstborn would die, until ninety-nine had been killed. They say he claims the lives himself. Then, after ninety nine, his penance would be fulfilled.”

After his bizarre dealings with his grandmother, Jayden couldn’t help but laugh. He understood the mystery and myths about voodoo – the tourists they brought in were what helped save New Orleans after the hurricanes hit. But that didn’t mean he believed any of it.

“I know,” his father said, relaxing. “
That
part of the tale, I don’t believe either. Though I will admit I’m glad you’re number one hundred. My older brother was number ninety-nine and died in a car accident. Got hit by a drunk driver that was certainly not a four hundred year old African.”

“That’s insane, Daddy,” Jayden said.

“Agreed. Your Grandmama Toussaint told me about the curse when I married your mother. Said her spirits told her, and our families were linked.
I put as much credence into that as I do any of that superstitious nonsense. How she knew about the unfortunate family business, I don’t know.” He gave the key back to Jayden. “The rest is true, though. This key, the history of our family, all of it.”

Regarding it uneasily, Jayden didn’t let him self imagine who the first slave might’ve been or how many lives this key had condemned. Holding it made his skin crawl.

“I keep waiting for someone to figure it out,” his father continued. “Before me, my family never had national attention. All it takes is one person interested in tracing our roots back to Africa for the family legacy to explode. We’d be expelled from the African American community as a whole and publicly disgraced.”

“I can’t imagine what people would say,” Jayden said, grappling to understand how large and dark the family legacy was. Tens of thousands of lives four hundred years ago could have left millions of descendants today.

“All the more reason for you to pave a new path, the way I have, one that contributes more than our ancestors took away. I started, and you’ll continue.”

“Is it even possible to wipe away such a horrific past?”

“We are not our ancestors. That’s what will save us, if the truth ever comes out.”

“You don’t know that it will.”

“Some secrets are too bad to be kept forever. Your grandmama knows. Others might know, too, and are just waiting to blackmail me or humiliate the family. I don’t know. We have a lot of people watching us, Jayden, a good reason not to draw attention by giving them a reason to dig. Be conservative in everything you do. Don’t give anyone a reason to pry.”

“So I shouldn’t tell anyone,” Jayden guessed.

“It’s up to you. I did tell your stepmother. I think I’ll tell Tara and the twins eventually, so they aren’t blindsided when the truth comes out.”

Jayden said nothing, disgusted by the weight of the key in his hand. School hadn’t even started, and he was overwhelmed.

“You aren’t a technological genius, but you can still pave a pathway few black men have. Graduate first in your class at the academy. Get a scholarship to some big football school with a decent academic program and graduate first there. If you go to the NFL, you’ll be the first in this family and among the greatest black quarterbacks, because you aren’t just athletic – you can think strategically inside the game and in real life. If you take another route, you’ll find a way to be the best. You’ve got my ambition and your mama’s looks. If you remember why you’re doing this, you’ll always find a way to excel and contribute to our community.”

“Can I just be a seventeen-year-old who wants to play ball and date hot chicks?” Jayden complained.

“I wish it was that easy, Jay. We shouldn’t be paying the price for what someone twenty generations ago did. But his deeds can take away everything we have, if we don’t prove we are different.”

“Why did you pick today to tell me this?” Jayden asked. He rose and paced, wired with emotional energy from his nerve-wracking day.

“The timing seemed right. Every big decision you make your senior year will determine your future. What college you go to, how well you do in school, who you date. I want to make sure you understand that you’re a part of something bigger. Don’t make the mistake I did and knock up some poor, backwards, superstitious woman like your mama. Marry up, not down.”

Jayden nodded. He was a man now, and his father was entrusting him with the family secret. His gaze lingered on the key.

He hated it. It felt cold, heavy, evil.

“Keep it. That’s for you to pass down to your firstborn, along with the legacy.”

Jayden knew exactly where he’d put it: in the back of his closet, with the weird birthday presents his grandmama gave him.

“I need an answer this week about Izzy,” his dad added. “The injunction ends next Monday. I won’t turn my little girl over to that woman. I need to be in court next Monday, either with a signed agreement from your mother or with a lawyer filing a suit.”

“I know. I’ll do my best.”

“You always do, Jayden.”

“Thanks. I got a lot to do before school tomorrow.” Without waiting for his father to say anything else, Jayden left.

So much for this being the best year of school ever.
No, while others were out partying, sliding through half their classes and touring colleges, he’d be stuck trying to right the wrongs committed by some long dead ancestor.

He trotted up the stairs to the second floor of the house and passed by the rooms of his two stepsisters. He paused in front of his sister’s room and pushed it open. It was nap time for the two younger girls, and the eight-year-old was asleep, clutching one of her many stuffed animals. The scar down one side of her cherubic face was barely noticeable, and the mark of his mother’s family was dark.

Every time he looked at her, he saw his own failure to protect her from a drunken fight his mother and her ex-boyfriend got into two years before. One of them sliced the girl’s face open. Even if by accident, it was something no good mother would let happen to her daughter. Since the incident, his mother had been under a restraining order to stay away from her daughter, one that Jayden’s father was certain to keep in place with injunction after injunction. Izzy still had nightmares about the incident.

His father was right. Isabelle could never go home to her mother. Jayden didn’t like the idea of hurting his mother, but he wasn’t willing to put his sister in danger again. The past two years, he’d dedicated himself to helping his mother through treatment for drugs and alcohol, only to admit he didn’t think her capable of staying away long enough to raise her kid.

Maybe this was the first step he could take to redeem his family’s legacy: save his sister.

Jayden retreated to his room. He flipped on the lights to his walk-in closet and went to the back corner, where he kept a box of voodoo-inspired gifts his mother’s family gave him for holidays and birthdays. He dropped the key into it.

“Good riddance.” He wiped his hand on his jeans then left the closet to wash his hands thoroughly.

It didn’t help. He still felt dirty after touching a piece of the family legacy.

“Jay!”

His step-sister, Tara, was his age and tall, gorgeous with light brown hair and blue eyes. She marched into his room without knocking. She was dressed perfectly as always in a trendy skirt and top, her feet in ballet-style shoes.

“Will you take me somewhere?” she asked.

“You ever gonna get a driver’s license?” he grumbled, wanting some quiet time after his stressful day.

She gave him her pouting puppy dog look, the one that always made him laugh. Jayden had too much trouble disappointing the women in his life to send the relatively tolerable Tara away.

“I put the twins down for naps, so you wouldn’t have to,” she added, referring to their two younger sisters.

“Fine,” he said, smiling. “You have to buy me ice cream.”

“Deal.”

“Where we going?” he asked, grabbing his keys and wallet from the dresser once more.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

“You only say that when we’re going someplace I don’t want to go.”

She grinned.

Jayden sighed and followed her out of his room and through the house, exiting out the back door leading to the garden. He unlocked his car and got in. The interior of his car was already scorching.

“Smells like incense,” Tara said, plopping into the passenger seat.

He grimaced and started the car. A glance at Tara revealed that she was texting, and he guessed this was the real reason she preferred for him to drive her. She rarely stopped messaging her friends. He doubted she’d be able to set her phone aside for five minutes.

“Where?” he asked again.

“Irish Channel.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, not wanting to drive through the throngs of tourists in town to reach a rundown part of the city edged by the Mississippi River.

“Yeah. It’s light out. No one will steal your car.”

It’s not my car I worry about,
he grated silently with a glance at her.

Turning on the radio, he focused on driving while she played with her phone. He purposely tried not to think about what his father had just revealed and instead, thought about football practice the next morning. He drove back into the middle of town and hopped off I-10 to take highway ninety across the Mississippi River and into the Lower Garden District. The Irish Channel was on the rough side of the touristy district.

“Where next?” he asked.

Tara looked out the window to orient herself. “It’s supposed to be right off First Street.”

“Got a name?”

“Madame Estelle’s Psychic Arts.”