“The doctors said that if I’m sober for a year, I’ll be able to get on the donor’s list. In the meantime, I’ll do dialysis every week.” Doniese coughed aggressively into the napkin clutched in her palms. Hospitals made me uncomfortable, but not quite as uncomfortable as being in the room with the woman who birthed me.
“Thank you for coming, Dreaux. I know?—”
“You don’t need to thank me. I didn’t come here for you.” I didn’t want her to think for one second that I showed up because I cared about her health. She didn’t deserve that. There were many dark secrets my siblings knew nothing about, and I kept them hidden to protect their image of her.
“Aye, man. Nobody forced you to come. If you’re gonna be ignorant, you can leave.” Drayden spat. I chuckled, then stood up from my seat. He had been making excuses for her for years, so I expected nothing different.
“Gladly. I never wanted to be here in the first place.”
“Dreaux, wait!” Doniese yelled weakly, followed by another coughing fit. My jaw flexed as I turned back towards her. She stopped looking like my mother years ago, but I was still stunned by her appearance. Her hair was thin and brittle, with streaks of gray scattered throughout. Her once-bright, vibrant skin was dry and cracked.
As a kid, I used to fight the older boys for making passes at my mother. She used to be one of the finest women in the neighborhood, and my father kept her close to him because he knew it, too. I used to fight with everyone over her because she meant so much to me. It was crazy how life changed in the blink of an eye. I no longer knew who the woman in front of me was.
“I have someplace to be. The only reason I came was because my sisters still care about you for some reason. I would say that I hope you get better, but I doubt you’ll be able to stay away from the bottle for a month, let alone six. I’ll make sure you have a good send-off when it’s time.”
“Dreaux, you’ve got me fucked up. Nigga, have you lost your mind!” Drayden got in my face, but I laughed at his attempt to boss up on me.
“What the fuck are you gonna do, little nigga? Huh? You can sit here and feel sorry for her all you want, but I don’t have the time or the energy. I’m too busy raising the daughters she seems to have forgotten about. If you think for one second I’m about to have sympathy for her, then it’s you who has lost your mind. I don’t owe her shit, but my ass to kiss and that’s all I’ve got right now.”
“She’s our momma. I understand that she may have made some mistakes, but that doesn’t change the facts. You’re so caught up in anger and unforgiveness that it’s turned your heart cold.”
“You want to talk about facts? Alright, well, I have a few facts for you. Your momma hasn’t been a mother to me since I was a youngin’. I’m the one who raised her daughters on my own. I’m the one who had to hustle and sell guns and dope to keep a roof over our heads because your mother was too busy drowning her sorrows in that alcohol, amongst a few other things. It’s no wonder her insides are destroyed. She’s rotten from the inside out. You call her a mother, but you’re using that term too loosely for me.”
“When the girls started their periods, it was I who had to buy their feminine products and have the sex talk with them. I’m the one who took them to all of their appointments and attended their parent-teacher conferences. Hell, I’m still doing that shit. You chose to stand beside her and take care of her, but that’s on you. She doesn’t deserve my forgiveness or my sympathy. That’s energy I could use towards the children she abandoned. You can pretend that everything is all good, but I live in the real world. The truth is that my momma died the day those sucka ass niggas shot our pops, and I’ve been grieving them both ever since. Now, let this be the last time you contact me unless it’s to pay for funeral arrangements, pussy.”
Drayden lunged for me, but I pushed his ass to the ground. When he got back up, he tried to square up with me, but Doniese intervened.
“Drayden, could you give me a moment to speak with your brother alone?”
“Are you sure? I don’t want him stressing you out more.”
I scoffed at his soft ass. He couldn’t even defend his own mother the way he needed to.
“I’ll be fine. Go down to the cafe and grab me one of those banana nut muffins and some apple juice.”
“Okay, mama. I love you,” he kissed her head, then turned to me. “Dreaux, if you upset her in any way, I’m gonna beat your ass.”
“You and I both know you don’t have what it takes to beat my ass. As far as I’m concerned, it’s fuck you and her. Make sure you get your money up so you can pay her bills going forward. Hell, let her show you how to get money the same way she showed me.” I smirked when I saw her eyes balloon with fear. These mothafuckas had awakened the beast, and I was done sparing folks. Drayden stormed out of the room like the weak nigga he was, but we weren’t alone for long.
“And this is why I told you not to take his ass in. You should have let that coked-out bitch take care of her own child.” Aunt Rita walked into the room with a scowl on her face. I wasn’t concerned with her attitude, but the statement she made caught my attention. When I glanced back at Doniese, she looked as if she had seen a ghost.
“Rita, now is not a good time,” Doniese croaked.
“I stood outside of your door and listened to the way he talked to you, and I’m tired of it. You keep letting this illegitimate bastard treat you like scum when he’s really the lowlife. Dreaux always thought he was better than Chop, but at least my son knows who his real mother is.”
I normally had a comeback anytime someone tried to come for me, but I was completely stunned. This was my first time hearing this, and from the horrified expression on Doniese’s face, I knew it was true.
“I’ve got to take this call. When I come back, you’d better be gone,” Rita warned as she wobbled her ass out of the room.
“Dreaux, let me explain,” Doniese pleaded. I couldn’t even bring myself to call her my mother anymore.
“This shit just gets better and better, doesn’t it? What are you going to tell me? Huh? That you lied to me my entire life? I guessI shouldn’t be surprised because I don’t put anything past you. Now, it makes sense why you were so comfortable selling me to those sorry-ass bitches in the neighborhood. You weren’t my real momma, so you didn’t give a fuck about what happened to me.” I chuckled even though there was nothing humorous about the situation.
“I was young, your father was dead, and we needed the money. The women loved you and always talked about how handsome you were. I didn’t think it was a big deal. Plus, you didn’t seem to have a problem getting the job done, so I thought you liked it.” Her reasoning was a bunch of bullshit, but I shouldn’t have expected anything different.
As a young nigga, I thought it was cool to be fucking bitches who were older than me until I realized how wrong it was. The first time it happened, we were behind on utilities. Truth paid our rent, but he had no idea my momma had spent my father’s life insurance policy within the first two months. Doniese told me she knew of a way for us to make some easy money. She kept telling me that I was the man of the house and I needed to make my father proud.
The first bitch I fucked was a fine, brown-skinned woman by the name of T’nasha. She dated one of Pop’s homeboys, and I thought she was the baddest bitch on the block. When Doniese dropped me off at the hotel, and I saw T’nasha standing there, I was excited to live out one of my fantasies. I wasn’t a virgin, so I had plenty of experience, but it was different with her. We fucked all night, and then she dropped me off at school as if nothing had happened. We fucked plenty of times after that. Every time I went home, I would hand my momma the money and go back to my regular life.
