“No, he don’t cause if he did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I seriously didn’t know what else BJwanted from me. I didn’t have no kids, but she wanted me to treat Marv as such.
She then folded her hands together, squeezing them so tightly her knuckles turned white. “He needs somebody.”
“Nah, he needs rehab.”
“Then put him in one.”
I leaned back and shook my head because she still wasn’t getting it. “I can’t pick him up, throw him over my shoulder, and lock him in rehab because you said so. He gotta want help.”
“He’s not in his right mind to know what he wants.”
“And if I keep chasing behind him every time he gets high, starts a fight, or goes looking for something that ain’t there, he gonna have me back in jail or tied into street shit I spent years getting away from.”
Her expression changed at the word jail. BJ rarely softened when she believed she was right, but her eyes moved away from mine, toward the framed photograph on the wall of me wearing a cap and gown at a graduation I had almost missed because my probation officer had threatened not to approve the travel and that was from a juvenile case.
“I prayed too hard for you,” she said quietly. “I sat in too many courtrooms and watched them take you away from me.”
My jaws flexed, but I kept my voice steady. “And I’m telling you I’m not going back.”
“Then don’t.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
She glanced down at her hands. “I love all y’all the same. But Marv…” She shook her head slowly. “That boy always made me worry different.”
BJ loved every grandchild and great-grandchild she claimed, including the ones not connected to her by blood but had eaten enough meals in her kitchen to become family. She remembered birthdays nobody else remembered, kept money tucked insidecards, and defended all of us publicly even when she planned to tear us apart privately, but Marv had always occupied a fragile place inside her.
Maybe because my auntie had left him with BJ more often than she kept him. “He stood right there,” she said, pointing toward the space near the television, “and asked me if I had cameras in my smoke detectors. I told him the only thing watching him in this house was Jesus, and from the looks of him, Jesus was tired.”
I looked up at the smoke detector as a laugh almost escaped me, but I caught it when I saw tears gathering along the bottom of her eyes. “He scared me, Lev.”
I stood and crossed the room, lowering myself onto the arm of her chair. She let me take one of her hands, though she kept her face turned away. “I’ll find him.”
“You just said that.”
I shook my head. “I said I can’t control him. I didn’t say I wouldn’t talk to him.”
Her fingers tightened around mine. “Don’t go over there fighting him.”
“I’m not.”
“And don’t let him pull no gun on you.”
“He not pulling no gun on me. If he does that, I’m shooting his ass before he shoots me.”
That did not satisfy her, but nothing would until Marv stood in front of her clean, sober, and apologizing. “I need you to promise me,” she said.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“No, promise me you’ll do something.”
“What you want me to promise? That I’ll fix him?” I shook my head. “I can’t promise you that.” I told her. The hurt on her face made me regret how bluntly I said it, but lying to her wouldhave been crueler. I bent and kissed her forehead. “I’ll handle what I can.”
She caught my wrist before I could step away. “And call me.”
“I will.”
I walked into the kitchen before leaving, checked that the stove was off because she was distracted, and poured out the cold tea she had forgotten. When I set a fresh cup in front of her, she complained that I made it too light, took a sip, and kept drinking it anyway.
