It wasn’t. I stood there processing about fourteen different emotions at once. Bryce was my half-brother. Technically his name was Muhammad Bryce Ali because our father insisted on giving all of us Arabic first names but he’d gone by Bryce for as long as I could remember. He was nineteen, one of the youngest of Shamir Ali’s children, born to Khadija, who was our father’s third wife. I was born to Fatima, the second wife. Zainab and Zahara were born to Ashera, his first wife.Growing up in that house was its own kind of prison. Our father ran it like a compound—rules for everything, punishment for anything, religion weaponized into a system of control that kept the women silent and the children terrified. And the wives were both victims and enforcers.
Kim was the nicest. My mother Fatima, was pretty much an airhead. She never challenged my father and worshipped him like he was God himself. And then Khadijah was the youngest, she was stupid, too. They were all trapped and took their helplessness out on the children. I didn’t hate them for it anymore, but I didn’t forgive her either. Understanding and forgiveness were two different currencies. However, I did feel guilty about those I’d left behind. There were other sisters of mine that I fell out of touch with after I left Ahmad. I did regret not helping them.
Now that I was out, now that I had almost two years and distance and a therapist helping me untangle the wreckage, I could see the house for what it was. An abusive man surrounded by women who had been broken into compliance, and children who absorbed the violence like sponges. Bryce was a baby. The one who cried the quietest because he learned early that crying loud got you hit.
And now he was standing in a parking lot in Silver Spring, grinning at me like we were normal siblings who saw each other on holidays.
“Boy, what are you doing out here?” I walked toward him but didn’t open my arms. He hugged me anyway, wrapping me up in one of those full-body squeezes. I let him hold on for a few seconds because he was my brother, but my shoulders were back up around my ears and every muscle in my body was tense. Physical affection from men, even the ones I loved, still made my skin crawl. Janelle and I had talked about that. Apparently it was another gift from our father and from Ahmad.
“I been out here for a minute,” he said, stepping back and looking me over like he was checking to make sure I was real. “Moved out here a couple months ago. Got a spot off of Georgia Ave. I got a baby on the way.”
“What?! You are too young!” I playfully, yet forcefully, hit his arm. I couldn’t believe that my little brother was having a baby. That was something I was never going to do. After losing my fallopian tube, I was never going through that trauma again.
“My girl, Samaya, don’t think so.”
“Ew,” I playfully gagged.
“Trust me, I’m grown. But I missed you. After that shit with Ahmad… Did you have something to do with that? That nigga is down bad!”
I smirked and looked away. “You eat today?”
“Nah.”
“Come on then. Let’s go get food. We got a lot to talk about.”
His face brightened in a way that reminded me he was still basically a kid.
“Let’s do it.”
11
QUEST
Today you would’ve been fourteen.
Had things worked out, I’d have you boxing, playing ball, and learning the business. You’d be at that age where your voice was starting to crack and you were too cool to hug your pops in public, but still wanted me to come to your games. I’d have you shadowing me at Banks Reserve, understanding what it meant to build something generational. I’d have bought you your first suit by now. Your first pair of Jordans too, because every young king needs both.
But shit ain’t go the way it was supposed to. You know that now. More than anything.
Sometimes I wonder why I even come out here. What would’ve happened had you made it? How would shit have truly turned out? I don’t know. I guess a part of me hasn’t healed from the betrayal. Hasn’t healed from the loss. But whatever. My love for you is and was real. I pray that you’re in heaven knowing I did my best, lil man.
I crouched in front of the headstone and ran my thumb across the engraved name the way I did every year. The cemetery was quiet on weekday mornings, just the groundskeeper riding a mower in the distance and a few birds that didn’t give a damnabout anybody’s grief. I’d brought a small bouquet of white roses because Rita used to say white roses meant new beginnings.
I set the flowers down and stayed low for a minute, just breathing. This was the one place in the world where I didn’t have to perform.
Fourteen birthdays. Every single one of them, I showed up. Rain, snow, ninety-degree heat, didn’t matter. And yeah, Aprils in DC could be fickle like that. I came, I talked to my boy, and I left before the weight of it crushed me flat. It was a ritual that nobody knew about because grief was the one thing I refused to share. Prime had his own shit. Justice had his quiet grief. I had this cemetery and a twenty-minute conversation with a headstone once a year, and that was enough.
“Quest?”
My whole body went rigid. I knew that voice the way you know a sound that used to mean something good before it became the worst thing you ever heard. I didn’t stand up right away. I let the anger arrive first, let it settle into my shoulders and my jaw and my fists, because I needed it there before I turned around.
When I stood and faced her, Peanut was about ten feet away, holding her own bouquet of flowers like she had any right to be here.
She looked the same. That was the fucked-up part. Fourteen years and Peanut still looked like the woman I fell in love with at twenty years old. She was dressed simply in a pair of jeans, a blazer. Her hair was pulled back, and she was looking at me with an expression that I think was supposed to be tenderness but landed somewhere closer to audacity.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked. My voice came out calm, but internally I was outraged.
“It’s my son’s birthday, Quest. I’m here the same reason you are,” She said it softly, like that was supposed to disarm me. Likeinvoking him would make me forget why I couldn’t look at her without my vision going red at the edges.
