Captured By The Game

Chapter 8

5:45AM From Alicia To Johana: Good morning, sorry to text so early. Just informing you that you don't have to come into day

5:47AM From Johana To Alicia: Don't come in? Is everything ok?

5:50AM From Alicia To Johana: I should've known you were already up lol

5:51AM From Alicia To Johana: Today is my audit day for purge accounts. I'll be closing at noon today. So get the kids ready for school and enjoy your day off. See you next week, bright and early Monday morning.

5:57AM From Johana To Alicia: The life of a workaholic. What am I supposed to do with a day off lol. See you Monday.

Placing the phone on her nightstand. Johana went to the kitchen and began to make breakfast like she did for her family every morning. Scrambled eggs, sausage, cheese grits and fresh pineapples, kiwi, and mangos sat in three different place settings on the kitchen table.

"Ezra, Bella, and Elise. Come eat your breakfast so you won't miss the bus. If you miss the bus I'm not going to that school." She screamed.

Every morning it was the same routine of her lying about not taking them to school and every morning they missed the bus.

"Hey Ma." Bella said when she entered the kitchen still in her pajamas with hair in the ponytail she wore to bed.

"I can't believe my eyes. Really Bella. Why are you still in your pajamas?" Johana fumed. The sight before her was not the sight that she was expecting to see when she turned around. The frown on her face let Bella know she was seriously upset.

"I don't feel well. I took some of the Mucinex from the cabinet last night, but it didn't help." Bella said.

Looking at Bella, Johana could clearly see that she was genuinely sick. Placing her hand on her forehead, the heat coming from Bella's body felt like a furnace.

"Bella, you're hot as fuck. Why didn't you tell me yesterday you were sick? I would've taken you to the hospital either before or after work."

"I didn't start feeling bad until after I got home. I thought it was just a cold. I took some cold medicine, but it didn't work. My body is itching. I don't know what's wrong?" Bella said starting to cry.

A clear sign that she wasn't feeling well. She turned into a real baby when she was sick.

"Just calm down. Go back to bed. I'ma get the kids ready for school, then I'll come up and help you get dressed so we can go to the ER."

Sending her back to bed, Johana screamed for her children to come down the stairs.

"Ezra and Elise! Come on."

"Mommy, I don't want this for breakfast." Five-year-old Elise said. "I want snow crab legs and shrimp. Mommy, where is Bella?"

Elise and Ezra looked so much like their father, that it hurt to look at them at times. Her kids were her beautiful little monsters. They had her milk chocolate skin, but their eyes and super curly hair belonged to exactly like their father.

Her kids were the best and worst thing that ever happened to her. She would give her last for her children and die for her children.  She couldn't understand how any parent, could turn their back on their children. These little people were her reason for living.

"Little Miss Elise Cheyenne Singleton, we have this same conversation about shrimp and crab legs every morning. If I put shrimp and crab legs on this table one morning, what are you going to do with them?"

"Mommy why are you trying to play me? That's a silly question Little Miss Mommy Johana Nadine Singleton. I'd eat them." Elise said and shrugged as she placed the mangos in her mouth.