@babyphat04
Naomi Campbell who? Supermodel CeCe Hines reporting for duty.
@babyphat04
Ain’t my mama fine?
“What they saying about me?” Mama asks, shaking her temporary hair like she has on a waist length lace.
I smile at the first wave of likes, then her favorites—the retweets. Most of them are people I never met and never will, but my burning throat don’t care about technical things like that. All that matters is that their tweets don’t trigger my moist tear ducts because even they know better than to say that ugly C word.
“They say you aging like fine wine, girl.”
She shimmies her shoulders while I skim through their barrage of “Praying for you,” and “You got this!” tweets.
Ten tweets later, the gentle wheezing from her chest makes me glance up from my phone because an impromptu photo shoot and going semi-viral for battling an endless disease tires her out most. It’s not like back in the day where a blunt and a glass of wine put her to sleep after driving for MetroLift all day, toting Marcus around to his AAU games, and braiding my hair.
She lays back and catches my eyes before looking down at my fingers. “Marcus must got a nice tab over at Minh’s, huh?”
“Huh?”
“Your new set.” She nods at my new bedazzled nails. “That’s some tough shit, girl.”
Coffin-shaped, bubblegum pink, and rhinestones—lots of them. Ace said they “looked hella good” when the sun hit them through his windshield.
“Oh... yeah.” I shrug like I didn’t already show Twitter the masterpiece on my hands because I hadn’t left the house in days to show anybody else.
The only eyes they graced were hers and Ace’s because I couldn’t leave Mama at home to suffer with neuropathy alone and Marcus didn’t notice anything but drank and weed most days. So, I missed an entire week of classes and forgot what the air tasted like outside because me and her are conjoined again.
“I think Ason liked ‘em.”
I snort. “What you talking about?”
“I saw y’all holding hands up in the car.”
“You was high. You don’t know what you saw. You slept the whole way home. It was so bad you ain’t even eat your Frenchy’s.”
“I wasnothigh. You know how I get after I leave the clinic.”
That drive to our house was the quickest it’d ever been because Ace kept slipping his free hand under mine every time the car moved and Mama’s eyes drifted closed. God was always doing sly shit like that—making the best times the shortest.
“Yeah you was. That boy wasn’t holding my hand.”
My body heats in all the embarrassing ways being inexperienced makes it while Mama gives me her best Miss Cleo look. She strokes her eyes against my face, hands and thighs.
“It’s no reason to be shame about holding a man’s hand for the first time.”
“I held a dude’s hand before.”
“Bryson don’t count. He still hold hands with Lucy when they make groceries.”
“Mama, stop being messy!” I slap my hand across my face.
It’s bad enough that Chelsea’s had a more exciting love life than I have and she’s a damn holy roller—she’s kissed, stalked, fought, and her and Marcus fuck. Mother Lenola still thinks she’s saving herself for marriage.
When I spread my fingers, Mama’s still staring at me to confirm that at my big age, I held Ace’s hand underneath the beaming afternoon sun from the passenger seat of his spaceship.
“It’s okay to change your mind about people. You know that, right?” she asks.
