My heart trampled in beats. She’d only said a couple words, but they held weight.
“Naw now, Linda. What’s going on? It’s late.”
She heavily exhaled with a sigh. “I know it is, but you really need to sit.”
Just then, my phone rang.
Both our heads went in its direction.
“Let me get that.” I started for the kitchen.
“Theresa, Andre’s gone!” she blurted, stopping me in my tracks.
My heart slammed into my chest, then stopped beating.
“What?” I retorted, slowly turning around.
She slowly shook her head. “Andre’s gone.”
“Gone to the gym, yes. I know. He had a match tonight. Wait… you were there.”
“Andre and Court was involved in something outback of the gym…” she explained.
That’s when I noticed the blood on her shirt then her hands.
This wasn’t a joke, but it wasn’t registering.
“Linda, what you mean? They were just home. I just saw them, Linda,” I rationalized.
“Theresa, I gotta get you down to the hospital. Courtland needs you.”
I jumped to my feet.
“Linda, stop. That can’t be.”
“Theresa, I’m not lying. Andre’s dead. I don’t know the condition of Court, but we gotta go.”
Her words took the life from me as the world halted. I couldn’t fathom any of it. Motion pictures of my husband andson right before they left the house registered with me. That’s all I remembered. Nothing else. None of it made sense. No way my husband, no way any of this happened.
Something out of my peripheral caught my attention. I blinked out my memory, wiping tears. Maleek stood in the doorway, anger seeping from his skin.
“Ma, why would you say that shit to Court?” he chastised, bass in his voice. “He didn’t have nothing to do with Daddy’s death.”
“I…” I stuttered, looking up at him. I swallowed hard, but the blob wouldn’t go down easy. He was right, but the words were out there. Courtland didn’t take his father from me.
The baby of the two was defending his oldest against me. That seems to be the story of our lives these days. Now wearing Courtland’s weight on his shoulders.
“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered, staring down at the ground.
“You’re such a damn hypocrite. You go at Court like the baddest woman on the planet then when he leaves, you stay in reflection like you have feelings. What about how he feels? He’s been trying to reconcile, make it right– something he had no control over, and you still treat him like wrong. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“I’m still your goddamn mom, Maleek.”
“Yeah, well sometimes I wished you wasn’t. I wanna go stay with Court.” His words punched me in the gut as he went into the house with his words lingering in the air.
“As long as I live, you’ll be right here with me,” I retorted, letting him know that despite how he felt, there’s no leaving.
My anthem, my song when I need to get my head back on right, “Masterpiece (Mona Lisa)”by Jazmine Sullivan played loudly on repeat for the last hour as I went through the house cleaning. The house was already spotless except for all the damn flowers Rayzor sent over having it looking like a flower shop. Besides that, you could eat off the floors, but my mind was far gone; too consumed with Rayzor’s and his dumb ass actions.
