Scream My Name. Kimberly Kaye Terry

great-aunt, the indomitable Aunt Sadie the café was named for, started the business forty years ago, and had lovingly created such delicious meals that the small diner had grown and prospered. When Leila graduated from culinary school, she’d joined her great-aunt, and the two expanded the café to include a catering business.

      Her great-aunt was not only a great chef, but was also an astute businesswoman. Leila had been excited about their new ideas, and the pair began to make plans for expansion. They started talks with the shop owner next door, Mr. Gomez, who was ready to retire, about buying his shop. Plans included remodeling the café and adding to the menu some of the more exotic dishes that Leila had become expert at creating, as well as teaching their small staff some of the culinary skills she’d learned in school.

      All of that had come to a screeching halt when Sadie had suffered a stroke. After her stroke, she’d had rehab, and although she had to take it easier, she’d rebounded and joined Leila back in the business. Then, everything had been going fine until her great-aunt had suffered more back-to-back strokes that had ultimately proved fatal.

      Leila had been lost without Sadie.

      Her great-aunt had raised her from infancy after her parents died in a car accident. Sadie had been the only mother, the only family, she’d ever known. Without her, Leila was alone and grief stricken, and the business had suffered.

      It had taken reading one of her aunt’s old notes she’d found folded in her favorite Bible while clearing out the old dusty attic, to finally allow the pain of her loss to be relieved.

      Sadie had always had some quip, always said the right thing at the right time to make Leila feel better. Leila had been going through her things when she’d found her personal black Bible, and opening it, she found a letter Sadie had written to her. In the note she’d written a simple passage that had allowed the tears to flow from Leila’s eyes, the pent-up emotions she’d held in check for so long to have free reign, and in doing so, her healing had begun.

      Leila, baby, you’ve been my joy. Without you my life would not have been as rich or as blessed as it has been. Now I know you’re probably sad, crying, and carrying on, girl…stop those tears. I still want my grandbabies and won’t no man want to look at you all red in the face, eyes all swollen, snot running down your nose, if you keep on with all that!

      Through her tears, Leila had laughed out loud at Sadie’s words. Swallowing her tears and wiping her face with the back of her sleeve, she’d continued reading.

      There is “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” I’m not going to quote the rest, because I raised you right and I know you know the passage. Baby, the best thing you can do for your auntie is live and enjoy your life, make Aunt Sadie’s all we knew it could be, and find a good man! You do all that, and know that your mama—cause you know you’re like my very own baby, the child of my heart—is smiling down at you, happy that her baby is living her life the way I taught her to. And don’t forget my grandbabies!

      By the end of the note, the tears had gradually come to an end, and Leila was smiling. She’d groaned and laughed when she read the last line, carefully refolded the note, and tucked it back into the worn old Bible, determined to honor her great-aunt’s request.

      “All except that last line,” Leila murmured out loud as she maneuvered in the heavy traffic. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Auntie Sadie, I need a man for that, and the ones I’ve come across lately definitely don’t bring out any maternal longings in me.”

      When she noticed the traffic easing, she sighed in relief, downshifted her gears, and switched lanes, seeing her exit coming up ahead.

      “Hell, I once took a woman to a lake for a good time with a sack lunch and a smile, and when it was time to get down with it…let’s just say that the young lady was nice and wet…and not from the lake, if you catchin’ what I’m throwin’ you, girl,” the caller Andre guffawed, still on the air with Carmelicious.

      Leila put her thoughts of Aunt Sadie and the woes of her business out of her mind, a small grin stretching her mouth as she listened to Carmelicious’s caller.

      “Oh, God…no, he didn’t,” Leila groaned, her attention divided between the hellacious traffic and the nut job on the radio who didn’t know Carmelicious was about to serve him his balls on the proverbial platter.

      “Oh, yeah, Andre, I do indeed get what you throwing me, playa,” the disc jockey laughed lightly. “Tell me more.” Carmelicious encouraged the man, her voice still low, sexy, and totally in control.

      As though what the caller was saying didn’t bother her in the least.

      As though she wasn’t about to lower the boom. As though she wasn’t seconds away from letting him have it.

      “You’re about to get schooled, dude,” Leila murmured out loud. The traffic eased and she pressed her foot on the accelerator and shifted the gear stick, finally able to pass the accident, and sped along the highway.

      The man didn’t know what he had coming, had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. Leila picked up the remote and tapped one of her short nail tips on the small button to raise the volume on her car radio.

      “What would you call a nice time? Hmmm…why don’t you tell Carmelicious about this park date, about what you did to get her all nice and wet. Hmmm? I’m listening, Boo.” Her voice practically oozed sugar and sweetness as she handed poor Andre the rope to hang himself.

      And she called him Boo.

      Leila made a tsk sound and shook her head.

      Whenever Carmelicious called one of the hapless males that called into the show Boo, it wasn’t an endearment.

      This was going to get ugly.

      Leila reached down and moved the lever on the side of the seat, and eased herself back. Might as well get comfortable and watch—or listen, as the case may be—to the upcoming train wreck. She lightly rested her hands on her Jeep Cherokee’s leathered-covered steering wheel, and relaxed.

      “Okay, well…after I picked her up, I noticed she was all dressed up, real fancy like, you know?”

      “I could imagine,” Carmelicious said.

      “Yeah, well, uh, then,” Andre paused, hesitant, no longer feeling so confident. But he plowed through anyway: “I told her, I said, ‘Girl, you might as well change clothes now. Where we’re going don’t require all that fancy stuff you got on.’ Told her there was a change in plans. I was taking her to the lake for a nice moonlit picnic.”

      “And she was okay with that, Andre? The change in plans, I mean?”

      “Yeah, she was cool. Got real excited in fact. So we got to the lake and swam for a while. At first she acted all sididy when the lake I took her to didn’t have nobody there. Hell, I thought she’d ’preciate that it was so cozy, with nobody around, just me and her.”

      “Maybe she was expecting something a little less…destitute?” Carmelicious piped in, and if the man had had any sense he would have noticed that her smooth voice had a distinctly sharp edge to it.

      He didn’t.

      Instead, he went on as though he was the wronged party.

      “Desti-what? Anyways, I spread out a blanket. It was kind of itchy, was one of my green army blankets, so I made sure I put my T-shirt on top of the spot she was sitting so she wouldn’t get itchy.”

      He went on to explain how when the time came for him to make his move, after they’d eaten the authentic Philly steak sandwiches he’d bought back from Austin from the barbeque joint his cousin Melford owned, the young lady refused him.

      “Come talkin’ ’bout how she don’t roll like that! I told her ass she better roll like somethin’ cause I didn’t go all the way to Austin for them sammiches for nothing!” The more he got into his story of how she was unappreciative of his moonlit picnic at the abandoned lake,