I whip my head to look at his face. “You don’t get to say shit about my daddy when you left his kids alone. You don’t know nothing about me or my life or what my daddy would’ve thought.”
The day of Daddy’s arrest, Mama was doing our hair. It was the first time she gave me real box braids, ones that went past my shoulders. Marcus was nine and she still did his hair too, mostly twists or cornrows at that point, if it wasn’t buzzed short. It was an all-day activity and Mama sat us down on the floor in front of the couch, letting us watch cartoons on the old TV.
Halfway through the day, two of Daddy’s Panther friends came over to watch the football game, so he turned off our cartoons and I threw a fit until Daddy promised he’d put me to bed that night. I always begged for Daddy to tuck me in because Mama wouldn’t do nothing but kiss my forehead, but Daddy would stay until I fell asleep, tell me all kinds of stories about times before I existed, when it was just him and Uncle Ty.
That day, Daddy’s friends sat next to Mama on the couch and one of them leaned down to me, his beard long and crooked, and told me that my hair looked just fine. We had no reason to think that day was any different from our other hair days until the door pounded and Daddy opened it and next thing we knew guns were being pointed and Daddy was handcuffed along with his friends, charged with accessory to drug trafficking even though Daddy claimed he never even knew what drugs they were talking about. Mama begged for them to let Daddy go while Marcus and I hid behind the couch with our hair only halfway done and waited for the door to finally shut, for Mama to rush us into the bathroom just in case the cops came back, and get on the phone with every person she knew, trying to find a way to get to Daddy. That night, I waited for him to come home and fulfill his promise, tuck me under my covers, but he never did.
Daddy knew what it meant to disappoint and be disappointed and I never once thought he’d look at me and say I had failed him, say anything but that he loved me.
“I had to say it.” Uncle Ty shakes his head.
“You don’t have to say shit to me. This about Marcus.” I keep my head straight on the road and try to drown out Uncle Ty’s presence in music that sounds far too similar to the kind Marcus tried to make.
Uncle Ty tries to tell me about L.A., but I don’t listen, not as we near the jail, the long driveway lined in cop cars and a looming building of cement, a trap just smaller than the one Daddy spent three years inside. He pulls into the parking lot and I get out of the car, leaving my phone on the seat. Uncle Ty does the same and then follows me up the ramp and into the building where we check in and wait for our appointment with Marcus.
They call us in and Uncle Ty stands first, jittering, looking like he’s about to start heaving as we follow a guard through the corridor and into the large room lined in tables, different men dressed in gray across from their visitors, and Marcus sitting there with his eyes scanning until he sees us, his whole face lifting upward as he takes in Uncle Ty and then me, then back to Uncle Ty.
We sit down across from him and he reaches for one of my hands, squeezes. None of us say anything, the hand holding mine shaking. Uncle Ty looks down at the table and then back to Marcus, finally speaks.
“Flew all the way up here to see you.”
I shake my head, thinking how these men never learn, how Uncle Ty only needed to show up and care and instead he starts with this.
I glare at Uncle Ty before turning back to Marcus. “Say whatever you need to say to him, but know I got a lawyer and I’m gonna help get you outta here.”
Marcus nods and I wish he looked more angry but instead he looks resigned or wounded, his eyes floating around the room and landing on Uncle Ty.
“You the reason I’m in here.” Marcus says it calmly, like he’s telling Uncle Ty what he ate for breakfast.
Uncle Ty looks taken aback. “I didn’t do nothing but help you out, bring you with me when you asked, help you learn how to spit better. Don’t go blaming this shit on me, this all your mama’s fault.” He pounds a fist on the table.
“I ain’t trusted Mama to do nothing for me. It was you, you was the only one raising me and then you turned on me and I didn’t have nothing left of you but music, so I got myself in a mess so I could keep on living like you would, but I ain’t you.” His eyelids are crinkling the way they do right before he starts crying. “I left Ki alone for you and now we here and I need you to see it. Look around, Ty, look.”
Uncle Ty’s eyes jerk around for a second, but Marcus waits until he twists his torso, takes in the knees in sweatpants shaking under tables, two toddlers chasing each other up to the metal detector and back, two pipes in the ceiling taking turns dripping. He looks back at me, sitting in this chair grasping on to the only family I got left, Marcus holding right back, both of us staring at Uncle Ty, at this man who don’t belong to us no more.