Mama’s body seems to slip down to the floor both gradually and all at once, until she’s suddenly sprawled across the carpet, her hair still dripping.
After that, Uncle Ty paid Mama’s bail and we thought we’d all recover, but she didn’t even come home. She went out partying until she got picked up again and we still went to her trial. We still testified for her, so she would get off on negligence and end up out here in a halfway house after a couple years instead of locked up for the rest of her life.
My teeth are chattering now and I gotta take a minute to slow down the words so she can hear them, really hear them.
I set my feet on the floor, lean down so my face is at her level, right at her ear. “We done kept ourselves alive. Without you. So now I come here asking for one thing—one thing, Mama—and you don’t even give enough of a shit to remember the day you killed her? Bet you wouldn’t give two fucks if I died too, huh? What about Marcus? That why you ain’t helping?”
I curl my lips, every word a deep cut. “So you know what, Mama? You sit there and you say her name. You say, ‘I killed Soraya three years ago from Monday.’ You say that and then you can have your fucking letter and I’ll get on up and go home ’cause Lord knows you ain’t gonna help me. Do you even have Uncle Ty’s number?”
She’s still in the same position, shakes her head once, all that hair and color, rumbling. Mama lifts her head up, stares right at me. Her eyes are gushing and, I swear, her tears come out violet.
“She died three years ago.” Mama’s voice isn’t the same, has shifted into a guttural grind.
I crouch on the floor next to her. “No. ‘I killed Soraya three years ago from Monday.’？”
Mama’s face cracks into shards, watering, eyes big and pooling. “I killed her three—”
“Her name, Mama. Say her name. Your name mean more than anything.” I’ve got tears to match, voice gone from thunder to blade.
She nods, one swift movement of the head, opens her mouth. “I killed Soraya three years ago from Monday.”
At the end of her sentence, Mama lets out a sob straight from her gut and I don’t even flinch. I stand, not bothering to retrieve Mama from the ground, and the moment I shut the door, I hear the muffled sounds of her singing “Pink Cashmere,” then wailing.
Strut, fly, gallop. There are so many ways to walk a street, but none of them will make you bulletproof. I got back from Mama’s and found myself stuck between street and gutter, Trevor knocking on the door early Sunday morning saying Vern been by again telling them they out if they don’t pay in three days. I know my knock isn’t far off. I gave Vernon every dime I got after Davon and the others, but it’s not nearly enough to make up for Dee’s rent debt or mine, and it doesn’t come close to the way they’re raising it after the sale. It was Trevor’s face staring up at me this morning that did it. Pulled me right out of the pit Mama made of me.
I have a body and a family that needs me, so I resigned to what I have to do to keep us whole, back on this blue street. I’m tilted, half walking, half stumbling. All up and down International: no music, no Tony, just me and a stomach full of tequila.
I’m shuffling and skipping and trying to warm hands in a sky that only breeds cold and real quick my heel snaps off the sole of shoes I stole from the Salvation Army and sidewalk meets cheek. Stings. Glass inside the cut. Blood spill. Blood clot. Voice.
“Lemme help you, mama.” He reaches down, pulling me up.
His eyes are rimmed in gray like he is aging only in the iris and his hand, too smooth, picks glass out of my cheek and throws it away. He doesn’t ask me shit about whether or not I’m okay, but I don’t expect him to. I don’t expect much of anything. He asks me to hand him the intact shoe and I do, watching him break the heel off and throw it. It tumbles into the street right as a car speeds through, crushing it into pieces of persona. I am four inches less of a woman. He is so tall.
The man gives me back my other shoe and I slip it on. He’s towering over me, his mouth showing a grill that is some kind of trophy color, but it isn’t gold.
“Thanks,” I tell him, the cut in my cheek beginning to itch the way cuts do when they are trying to remember how to heal.
He nods. “Now that I helped you out, can I have some of your time?” He asks this like it is a question, like he isn’t still holding on to one of my hands. I look down and see traces of my blood on his finger.
“Yeah.” This is what my lips say. This is what my breath says.