As I lay in my room in bed, the fact that my phone wasn’t vibrating anymore, just let me know that my phone must have died. It had been vibrating since this morning, and I’ve had yet to move, and even attempt like I was going to answer it.
Suddenly, my front door was opening, and because I haven’t left the house in two days, you could hear my alarm system going off. The alarm was still armed, since there hadn’t been any movement on my end to disarm it.
The fact that whoever had let themselves inside my house knew the code to the alarm, I knew that it was probably one of my kids because they each had keys to my house, along with knew the alarm code. I knew that it was only a matter of time before one of them came looking for me.
“Maaaaaa!” it was Tommie screaming for me.
“Girl, where you at? I been calling you all morning. Make me feel like you got a nigga laid up in the bed with you!” Tommie fussed right after the alarm stopped making all that noise because she went ahead and disarmed it.
“Ma. Where you at na?” she screamed again, and I could hear her coming up the stairs now.
It wasn’t long before I heard her out in the hallway, and seconds later, my bedroom doors were pushed open.
“Why you got it so dark in here? Girl, what you got going on?” she asked, and then I heard her tumble, as if she’d just tripped over something. I didn’t hear her hit the floor, so she must have been able to hold onto something, breaking the fall.
“Damn ma,” she cursed.
I felt her moving around the room, and not long after, the curtains in my bedroom were being pulled back, which gave light to the room that hadn’t been in here in days.
Once Tommie turned around, and she saw me in bed, you could tell that she was about to attempt to get on me about not answering the phone for her, plus the way she almost bust her ass in this dark ass room, but she read the room perfectly, saw that something was indeed wrong with me, and that’s when the look on her face softened.
“What’s wrong with you? You sick?” she asked, coming over to the bed, putting her knee in it, so that she could lean over, and like the mom that she was, who at times thought that she was my damn mama, she put her hand on my forehead, just to check if I had a temperature, but I didn’t.
“No. What’s going on? Where are you coming from?” I asked. Her hair was nicely styled, and she was dressed in a cute denim look.
“I’m about to head to the airport. I’m going to New York, but I’ll be back in the morning. You not saying what’s wrong with you. What’s going on? Me, and Free have been trying to get in contact with you all morning. She’s at the shop right now with back-to-back appointments, so she couldn’t come. That’s why she sent me. What happened?” she was on my ass, looking at me with her arms folded, waiting for me to spill the beans, and let her know what was bothering me.
You could look into her eyes and tell that she cared. Tommie was my girl. She was my child that would push every button of mine with her mouth, but I loved her to death. Our relationship hadn’t always been this perfect. When my girls were younger, I used to get on them, telling them not to be like me by going out there, and having babies while they were teenagers. I didn’t expect my kids to be perfect because I was once a kid, so I knew that kids would fuck up from time to time, but as heavy as I pushed them to not have kids during their teenage years, you would think that they would have heard me loud, and clear. There was always that one that was going to try you though.Tommie ended up being that one, getting pregnant at sixteen, following in the same footsteps that I didn’t want her following in.
I remember beating her ass for getting pregnant because that was honestly the last thing that I wanted for any of my children. I beat her ass the same way my mama beat mine when I got pregnant as a teen.
As if her getting pregnant with her first child at sixteen wasn’t enough, she turns around and does the same thing two years later. Tommie didn’t fear me, and that’s where her and I would clash at. The same way that my mama ended up raising my girls for me when I was a young mom, so that I could run the streets, and chase behind a fast life that I felt like I was missing out on, was the same way that I was forced to raise Tommie’s kids at a point in their life.
Tommie and I used to go at it hard. Like, there were times when I wanted to fight that girl like she was a stranger off the streets. Our relationship didn’t get better until her girls got older. It came with maturity on her end. These days, Tommie and I had the best kind of relationship. She carried on like I was her homegirl, always wanting to sit on the phone with me, and invite me out to places with her. I didn’t mind though because I would rather that, than to be beefing with any of my children.
“Have you talked to Dionne?” I asked her.
“Not since yesterday. She told me that she wasn’t feeling good, so I left her alone. What Dionne gotta do with you laying up in the dark and not answering the phone?” she continued to press the issue.
“Your sister told me something the other day, and it was very disturbing. It’s not my secret to tell though. Talk to Dionne when you get back from New York,” I responded, sitting up in bed, and I pressed my back against the headboard.
I pulled my knees up, and I just stared off into space. The whole time, I could feel Tommie’s eyes on me, and I’m sure the wheels in her head were turning, as she was trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about.
“So, you just going to give me broken pieces of information, and think that I’m not going to be confused on what you’re talking about? What’s going on ma? Is it something with Dionte? He’s not eligible for parole anymore?” she asked, shooting out what she thought it was. I just nodded my head no, letting her know that that’s not what it was.
Tommie sighed heavy, and I watched her as she took her knee out of the bed, walked around the bed, and she came over to where I was. She took a seat on the side, and her leg was bouncing up and down, trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
She picked her hand up, put it on my knee, and those beautiful, big brown eyes of hers that I often wanted to pull out of her head because of the way that she would work my nerves, were staring back at me, holding onto so much confusion, and worry. Tommie was my hard child. The child that rarely showed any emotion, and when she did, her ass tends to get violent. Tommie wasn’t tapped into her sensitive side like my oldest child. Tommie was hard, and a lot of that had to do with a lot of the daddy issues that she had, due to her father not being in the picture, and some of the men that she’s entertained over the years. So, to see her sitting before me, showing signs of worry, and care, this was a lot because in serious moments, she tends to laugh stuff off, so that she didn’t have to deal with the root of the problem. She was genuinely concerned right now.
“What happened then, ma? Your scaring me a little bit, and if you’re not going to tell me, I’m not about to get on this flight to New York because this is all that I’m going to be worried about. Is it Nivea? Your thinking about her? I know you tend to getsad and miss her the most when the holidays come up, or her birthday. Is that it? How come you’re laying up in the room in the dark?” she continued to press the issue.
As she was asking me these questions, I was biting my lip, fighting like hell to keep my tears to myself. My throat was burning because of the fight that I was putting up.
I eventually lost the fight because tears started pouring from my eyes, and I dropped the gaze that I had on my daughter, lifting my hands up, so that I could clasps them together, and I just sat there, twiddling with my fingers.
“Dionne… she went to church with me the other morning. She had a real tough… a real tough time in service. She was screaming and crying. It was to the point that a few of the church members had… had to come over and help me out with her. After… After service, she went up front and... and she asked for prayer,” I was crying, trying to get through this, and tell Tommie what was going on, and I couldn’t keep my gaze on her because I feared the kind of reaction that I was going to get from her.
I could feel her stare piercing through me though, so I knew that she was hanging onto my every word.
