The story I just told you is ugly, evil, and repugnant, and I tried not to tell it. I cared about my cousins and I didn’t want them to know what their dad was, because they had such a great relationship and he was such a good dad.
Facebook will do that to you. It will make you think everything is pleasant and rainbows, that all expressions of love are genuine and all of the evil from the past, just wasn’t there. But as I talked to my cousin and heard the kind of things she was saying and thinking, I realized I had been acting out of ignorance.
Still, I held back my pen. This is too ugly a story to tell about a living man, I guess was my idea. Let him die or something. Me and my Uncle Ball had reached an uneasy truce and we were on shaky but stable ground.
Then Fourth of July. It’s July 13th right now, but the day I got the message was July 5th. Something had happened on the Fourth of July to prompt an attack.
He has attacked me before and I let it go, because he came at me head first. He faced me like a man and we yelled it out like adults. He has blocked me, but has not blocked Bekah, and that is how he gets ahold of me and I get ahold of him.
We fight sometimes, but no one sees it, so it is between me and him. But this time, he did not face me like a man. This time, he made Smiley send me a message. He brought my cousin into his little burst of hate. See, that causes problems. He is abusing his daughter by making her his go-between. Me and Smiley have a great relationship and she had to send this message to someone she loved and respected. And by doing that, he made his attack on me in public. She has to tell her brother and sister, and as soon as she sent his message to me, all of them know that Uncle Ball put me in my place.
Guardian has a zero tolerance rule when it comes to his little sisters and his cousins. Under no circumstances can I ever just blow something off. If I blow off his attack, then she will start to wonder if her father is more powerful or more just than me. She will start to doubt herself. She will start to ask if I was ever right. I don’t have the option of walking beside her every day, so she cannot see what I am and how fervently I protect what I believe in. So I have to rise up every time I get hit. His hit was weak, and I would have blown it off, but Smiley saw it.
This is the hand he dealt. This is what he forced his daughter to send to me:
(Birth name) is dead according to you. Therefore
I have no nephew. I wish you the best but we are
done forever. Have a good life. If you ever
change that name to Mocking like you should
have done to begin with circumstances may change.
Live long & enjoy life. Goodbye.
Then she wrote:
This was from my dad.
Breaking this down from a literary standpoint I can say with no doubt in my mind that this message was indeed written by Uncle Ball.
It starts out bold “(Birth Name) is dead,” but weakens to a soft puff when “according to you” is added. This first very powerful line was hesitant and came off weak. It stinks of the man we just read about.
The next line is, “I wish you the best but we are done forever.” This is powerful to be sure. This was when he started to get his feet under him. He has made a devasting proclamation aimed at breaking my heart and asserting himself as the commander of this situation. But then almost immediately he describes how I can make it all go back to the way it used to be. His devastating statement now is just a stomping foot.
At this point his attack is obvious. He wanted to hurt me and tell me how I can come running back to him.
But he did it in front of my cousins, and Guardian has to be ready at a moment’s notice. About a half an hour later, I sent her this:
I’m sorry you had to send that to me, Smiley. I’m sorry that I have to
go through you to get to him. Please tell him I said:
At least I didn’t betray my children. Now I am forced to tell the world
exactly what you are. I spared you in my book
but it seems that I shouldn’t have.
I know every detail. You made sure of that.
Starting with the suicide of the first girl you took advantage of
and ending with what you did to my Aunt Breezy.
Now you have forced my hand. I tried to do right by you
but you’re a creature of hate. You can’t hurt me or scare me.
Using your daughter for this inane message of yours
was abusive to her. But you always were a coward.
I have a blog on WordPress. That is followed by soo many people.
If you want to see what I am saying about you, you can find it there.
Then in the book I publish about you.
Goodbye Uncle Ball. I’m truly sorry for the destruction
that is coming your way. I tried to tell my story without letting
your children know what you are but like I said you forced my hand.
I gave everyone code names in my book so I couldn’t be sued.
You have no way to hurt me. This message didn’t hurt me.
It just showed me that I have more writing to do.
Goodbye. Good luck. Godspeed. And remember, remember
that I loved you enough to leave you what dignity I could.
This hateful message was not necessary but you like to hurt helpless things.
Unfortunately I’m not helpless. Unfortunately for I have been roused.
Watch for the storm. Watch for the lightning. Watch for the flood.
Watch what you called down on yourself.
You cannot save yourself. I have your scent now.
I did have to go through my cousin because she needed to see that I was not laying down to her dad’s attack.
What brought us here, is my question.
God, I think. God wanted this story told.
Arrogance brought us here. Ball was always the one so important to me that he could hit harder with any discipline than anyone else. Maybe he thought he was the one to set me straight after all these years.
But the question I ask myself is, why in the world would he fuck with me?
I am intelligent. I have an audience. I have been trained in martial arts. I got in my first knife fight in second grade. I walked through the world without family for decades because my will is iron. I have already written books about the family and he knows it does not bother me to do so. He knows I have, in the last 23 years, never backed down from a fight.
Why?
The question that keeps running through my mind on a loop is, why would this man attack a proven badass? But more importantly, what happened on July 4th 2023? Because he attacked me July 5th.
Flush to the Ace.
Jesse Teller 
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