by Tiana Laveen
“She graduated, T.J. That was a long time ago.”
Confusion swam in T.J.’s eyes. The man took a step back, his gaze fixed on his beat up shoes, then on Tony’s nice Nike sneakers.
“Hey man, you got like five or ten dollars I can… I can hold, man?”
Tony hesitated for a moment then pulled his wallet out.
“DON’T GIVE THAT MOTHAFUCKA NO DAMN MONEY, MONTANA! He gonna smoke it up!”
Tony paused and looked in the direction of the voice.
“Who… who tha fuck is that?” T.J. asked, peering across the street at the car, clearly vexed. Tony chuckled.
“T.J., I’ll give you a hint. What girl did we hang with that would fight a grown ass man without thinking twice, and probably win?”
“Awww, shit!” T.J. busted out laughing. “Dat’s Danica ol’ loud-mouthed ass! Danica! DANICA! Hey, baby! Wit’ cho fine ass! Bitch, mind yo’ business, aiight?!”
“Tony is my business! You need to get yo’ one-fourth of a Slim Jim lookin’ ass up in treatment somewhere! I done told you that you need medicine and care! Out here scarin’ the children, lookin’ like some gotdamn burnt up scarecrow from the Wizard of Odd. You ol’ black sugar skull lookin’ mothafucka! Get off tha damn street! We love you, nigga!”
“Awww, girl! Stop bein’ so mean! You gone let me fuck again?” He cackled. “Woooo weeee, Tony! Danica had some good ass pussy!”
“I ain’t never fuck you, T.J.! In yo’ crackpipe dreams.” Danica chuckled.
“Yeah, she did,” he whispered sheepishly. “I had kept … her panties and showed them to everybody. She had a big ol’ ass…dem panties coulda been used as curtains.”
Tony slipped a ten-dollar bill in his dirty palm.
“I know you’re going to smoke it up, just like she said, T.J., but you have to want to get some help. I can’t make you want to. This breaks my heart, T.J. It didn’t have to be like this.”
The man slid the money into his pocket, his gaze still on his shoes.
“I know… I fucked up, Montana. Don’t eva get involved in this shit. It’s too… too late… for me now though.”
“It’s never too late, T.J. As long as you have breath in your body and a will to live, it is never too late, brother…” He grabbed the man and hugged him. When he touched his back, it was nothing but bone, and he feared the slightest embrace would crack the guy in two. Tony let him go then headed across the street back to the car. He sat there for a long while, not saying a word. T.J. began to sing…
“I’ll maaake love to you, liiike you want me to! And I’ll hold you tiiight! Baaaby, all through tha niiight!”
He can still sing. Listen to his voice…
T.J. hobbled away, moving like sand in an hourglass until there was nothing of him left. Danica was silent while Tony fell apart, his tears flowing silently.
“From the looks of things, he’s going to be dead in three months, D. He’s like a walking corpse. I hugged him and it was like… it was like air!” His voice cracked.
Danica nodded in agreement. She then grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
“It’s just the three of us left now, Tony. The last of our crew. We’re a family.”
They looked at one another, both of them crying, trying to hold on to their resolve.
“Yeah, we’re a family.” He started up the car and merged with traffic. “Welcome to Hell Glades… Where love don’t love nobody…”
The ‘For Sale’ sign in front of Grandmama’s house brought the message home, loud and clear. It was over.
Cassidy stood in the empty living room, looking out the window at the sign jammed into the freshly cut lawn with the realtor’s name and contact information. Tony was in the kitchen looking for another recipe for them to whip up together that night.
She clasped the chain around her neck, rubbing it between her fingers as she paced back and forth. The polished hardwood floors felt good beneath her bare feet. On top of an old crate, she’d set a glass of red wine. She practically skipped to it, needing a sip. Monica’s ‘Angel Of Mine’ played on the radio, making her sigh.
“I always loved this song, Tony!”
“You know Monica was singing about me in that song, Cassidy. She and I dated for a while. I told her we couldn’t be together anymore though once you and I got back together, had to let her down easy.”
“You are so full of shit!” She picked up Grandmama’s old Bible from a side table; she was taking it back to California with her. Bringing it to her chest, she closed her eyes and swayed with it, keeping it close to her heart. After a while, she plopped down on the floor in her jeans and red t-shirt, and flipped through it. A small piece of light blue paper was wedged in the book of Proverbs. One of the scriptures was highlighted. She held onto the paper and read the scripture:
Proverbs 22:6. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
She then opened the folded note and read it…
‘Today I called my grandbaby up there in California. She was in the middle of a meeting or something, but I had gotten some terrible news that couldn’t wait. I broached the topic with her, but Cassidy wouldn’t hear nothing of it. As soon as I said the woman’s name, she told me she didn’t have time to talk about it. I can’t too much blame her. She felt abandoned. One day, I will try again. Today was just not the right day for her to receive the information.
It’s like that sometimes. I was going to tell Cassidy that I got a call her mother died last week. I asked about her father and was told he’d been dead for over 20 years. My daughter, Cassandra, had gotten married and had more children apparently. Grandchildren that I never got to meet or see, and had not come to see about Cassidy. I was angry and sad about this. How could I tell my grandbaby something like that? I certainly didn’t want to, but I knew I had to tell her that her mother died. Today was just not that day…’
“Hey, baby, I think I found what we can make today! This has those little green peppers I used to like and… Cassidy… what’s wrong?”
She heard Tony’s voice, but all she could do was slump down on the floor, shaking, falling apart inside.
“Cassidy!” He picked her up in his arms.
“I remember it!” she screamed.
“You remember what, baby?”
“I remember when Grandmama tried to call me. She tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen to a word of it!”
“Come on and sit down. I can’t understand what you’re talking about.” He took her to the floor with him and coaxed her to rest against his chest.
“It was about eight months ago.” She sniffed, unable to stop the flow of tears as Tony cradled her in his arms. “I was talking to a bunch of people, giving a presentation, and I got a call from Grandmama at work. The receptionist said it was urgent. I got the phone, thinking she was in the hospital or sick but the first thing out of her mouth was, ‘I know something about your mother.’ Tony, I was pissed! I was dragged out of an important meeting for this?! That’s all I could think about… Before she could even finish, I started yellin’ and tellin’ her I didn’t care, that I didn’t wanna hear it! I talked all over her voice, being disrespectful. Something in my soul knew what she was gonna say, but I had no idea that right here, right now… it would hurt like this! Tony, look!”
She pushed the handwritten note in Tony’s hands. When he finished reading it, he held her tighter.
“I’m sorry, Cassidy…” He kissed her lips, then squeezed her.
“I’m sorry, too! But what could I do?” she screamed. “She ain’t want me, Tony. How was I supposed to feel? Tell me the right way to feel! She never wanted me!”
She sobbed, feeling like her entire life was falling apart all over again, like she was losing her mind. “People think just because I had my grandmama, that meant I should’ve been okay. I wasn’t! I wanted my mama, too. Everybody else had their mama, or at least knew where they were. I felt okay knowin’ she was on drugs and c
ouldn’t help herself, but to find out she’d gotten clean and was living a good ol’ life, and didn’t even care to see if I was dead or alive… Oh my God! Oh my God! I feel like, the hell wit’ her! Cassandra, you can go to hell!” She clawed at the fabric of his shirt as he rocked her back and forth.
“Cassidy, baby… come on now… Shhh… You don’t know that, all right?” He ran his hand up and down her back. “She might have been ashamed, figured you were better off without her. And you don’t know if she was clean; it could’ve been an ongoing battle. You know how that goes, we’ve both seen it. I bet she knew you were happier with Grandmama, regardless.”
“That don’t change nothin’, Tony. It wasn’t Grandmama’s job to raise me! It was hers!”
“I know. I’m not saying what she did was right, but there must have been some things going on with that. It just hit you all at once right now. You’re still grieving over Grandmama, and you’re tired, too. You told me you’d become more curious about your mother recently, so you’re not thinking about all the possibilities for why she did what she did, but I bet there was more to the story than you realize.”
“But Tony, it don’t matter what the story was, the possibilities… What matters to me, right at this moment, is that not once did she try to see me, call, or find out how I was doing. Now she’s dead. I didn’t even know that woman… It’s the principle of the thing.” He nodded in understanding. “I will never have the answers to those questions. I got siblings out there… people I ain’t never met. She deprived me of that, stole that from me, too. She went on with her life, and you’re right, she may have been dealing with all the stuff you said, but how can you…” She took a deep breath. “How can you have a baby, give birth to that child and do ’em like that?!”
He looked into her eyes, but her man remained quiet. What else could he say? That door was now officially closed. There was no coming back from it.
Her heart pounded as he kept rocking her, holding her, loving her.
“Tony, she wouldn’t have even had to tell me why. She coulda just walked up to the door and said, ‘Cassidy, I’m sorry.’” She sobbed. “I woulda been happy to get the closure. I wouldn’t have made her feel bad. I woulda done just like Grandmama taught me. I would’ve said, ‘Mama, I forgive you…’”
“There’s your closure right there, Cassidy… and now, she knows…”
…One week later
“Just for a few days, then that’s it.” Tony swiped the sweat from his brow.
He was in Mom’s New Jersey home, the place filled with nice furniture, pretty paintings, and the smell of bacon still wafting in the air from breakfast that morning. Having placed his last box inside the moving van, he’d returned inside for a much-needed drink.
“So, I cleared out my apartment,” he said. “That’s done. You told me I had a few things over here… I believe I got it all, did I?”
Mom looked around from her seat at the kitchen table, her thick white robe wrapped around her body. “Yeah. It wasn’t that much. I had placed it by the side door here. Well, your step-father did. He should be back soon from his jog. I can ask to make sure. So, it’s official, huh?”
“Yeah.” He put his hands on his hips. “It’s all going to California, to Cass’s house, but I have to head back down to Belle Glades tonight and take care of a few final things with Grandmama’s place.”
“Oh okay. Where’s Cassidy? California?”
“Not yet. She’s still down there. We’ll be leaving to head out to California together and then, well, that’s it. That’ll be my new residence.”
Mom took a sip from her coffee cup, and placed it back down on the coaster.
“I’m proud of ya, and happy for you two, Tony. I haven’t seen Cassidy in forever. It was nice talking on the phone with her the other day. So, when are you proposing to her?” Her cheeks grew rosy. “I’d like to see both of my boys married before I croak.”
He smiled at her. “I’m actually plannin’ on doing that soon. I just needed some things to fall into place first. Right as I was leavin’ to come up here, I got the call I was waiting on. I got that job at the Los Angeles Times as one of their illustrators. My new boss’ name is Jerome Hopkins… real nice guy. I start in two weeks.”
“Oh my God! When were you gonna tell me this?!” Mom jumped up from her chair and gave him a big hug and a juicy kiss on the cheek. She grabbed his arms and looked into his eyes. “The L.A. Times?! My God! I have to tell your cousin Abby! Does Dante know?!”
“Not yet. Like I said, I just found out. I told Cassidy and that was pretty much it.”
“Congratulations! I am ova the moon! I can’t believe it!” Mom was damn near giddy. “Okay, let me ask you somethin’, okay? Totally off topic.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I don’t understand why Cassidy left her grandmother in Belle Glade when she’d made it for herself. I mean, she got out of there and started her own business, and I’m not counting her coins, but the lady is well off.” Mom rolled her eyes and dropped her hands to her side. “I love Cassidy, you know I do, she’s the sweetest damn girl ever, but that always bothered me, Antonio.”
“Ma, trust me, she tried a million times to get Grandmama to move, but the woman wouldn’t come. She said it was home. That was even our plan all along. After she graduated college and got a job, we were going to—in our teenage minds—get Grandmama, as well as the whole crew, and move them to California, too. I had even tried to talk Maize into it and something tells me he would’ve come eventually… Anyway, Cassidy would pay all of her bills, get her anything she wanted from afar. But that’s all she could do, Mom.” He shrugged. “She didn’t want to move; she flat out refused. It was all she knew… She didn’t want to leave her church and she was attached to that house. Her husband had worked hard for them to get it.”
Mom nodded. “Okay, I understand now…”
“Yeah, so, that’s just how it went.”
Just then, the front door opened and in walked Dante. He pulled his hoodie off his head and marched into the kitchen.
“Hey, man! Glad I got to see ya real quick before you left again.” Dante opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a bottle of water, and chugged it. “So, uh, you promise to be back for the wedding, right?”
“Of course! I’m not gonna miss my big brother’s wedding! I’m your best man, for God’s sake! What do you take me for, huh?”
“Dante, your brother has big news! Tell him, Tony! Tell him!”
Tony’s cheeks warmed. “I got a good gig at the L.A. Times as an illustrator.”
“Get tha fuck outta here!”
“Nah, I’m serious!”
Dante grabbed him in his arms and squeezed. “My little brother is drawin’ for the fuckin’ L.A. Times! Whoa!” He gave him another hug. “That’s amazing, man! Proud of ya!”
“Thank you… got it fair ’nd square, too. Competed against other candidates. It worked out well.”
“Definitely. You’re one of the best, man. That’s amazing.” Dante looked as if he wanted to say something else, but instead, he just rested his hand on his shoulder.
“You wanna help me outside for a second, make sure I got everything strapped down okay in the U-Haul so they don’t wreck my shit?”
“Uh, yeah. I’ll come.”
The two walked out of the Tudor style brick house, down the pathway and to the small U-Haul he was driving to the moving company, the items inside to be flown to California. They leaned against the back of the truck, ankles crossed, mirroring each other.
“So, uh, I’m happy for ya, Tony.”
“I know you are, Dante. Thanks. Was something on your mind? You had that look…”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of thinkin’ since you’ve been gone back down to Florida.”
“Yeah?” Tony sat on the ledge on the back of the truck and crossed his arms. “About what?”
“About our time there… about everything that happened. I wanna tell you that I’ve al
ways blamed myself for you goin’ to prison, Tony. I’m sorry.”
“What? Dante, that doesn’t make sense. You didn’t have shit to do with that.”
“Nah, I kinda did. See, you wouldn’t have had that gun if you hadn’t been workin’ for Sly, and you woulda never met Sly if it hadn’t been for me.”
Tony’s heart broke. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Dante, don’t do this. It wasn’t your fault, okay? I had my first gun before I’d even dealt with Sly because people kept tryna rob us.”
“I know that, but you never carried it on ya 24/7, never kept it in your car like that. Not on a daily basis, anyway. After you got involved in dealing, it was with you all the time, like it was your leg. I know this sounds silly to you, but I’m serious. It caused me a hell of a lotta guilt, and Mom blamed me, too.”
Tony took a long, deep breath and shook his head.
“She never said anything like that when she’d come to visit me in prison. It never came outta her mouth.”
“Well, trust me, she thought it. She told me because of my problems, it bled all ova ya and now she’d lost her son. You always said I was the favorite. Well, let me tell ya, when you ended up in prison, her tune changed.” He grimaced. “She was pissed ’cause you were the one that seemed to know what you were doing, basically being the man of the house. We’d switched roles, ya know?”
Dante looked down at the ground and kicked a pebble. “I used to be the one to clean up the messes, make everything right, then I got… scared. I realized I’d never gotten over Dad dyin’, I’d never made peace with us havin’ to move, and things were just fallin’ apart. You stepped up to the plate. I saw you go from a little boy to a man, like overnight.” He smiled sadly. “You lost part of your childhood. It wasn’t right. That wasn’t fair to you.”
“It wasn’t fair to either of us. We both lost part of our childhood, Dante. We were all victims of circumstance, and so was Mom.” His brother nodded. “And for what it is worth, Mom blamed herself, too. She told me a million times that she shouldn’t have moved us there because then none of this would’ve happened. At first, I was so angry that I agreed with her. I lashed out at her, but as time went by and I grew older, I realized something, Dante.”
