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“I do. Mya don’t. We been beefing all week. You know every time she gets pregnant, she always gets hyperemesis. She already sick. She been sick all week. I don’t put hands on my wife, but I told her Ima beat her ass if she kill my baby,” he told me.

I didn’t say anything to him after that. It wasn’t that I condoned what he said, but lately, all our problems stemmed from me having an opinion when it came to his marriage. I felt like I was beefing with my brother every other day, so to avoid that, I kept quiet. Shit, me and Kendrix still weren’t talking, so I didn’t want to beef with Kingston too.

I took a swig of the beer he gave me before resting it against my thigh.

“Today Wesley birthday. He turned fifteen,” he announced. He caught me off guard with that.

“You been talking to him?” I asked.

“Nah. Pops been talking to him though. I overheard him at the house talking to him, telling him happy birthday. I feel bad for that lil nigga, man. You know when it came to our birthdays, pops did it up for us. Well, he gave Emaye the money, and she would plan everything. You know pops never spared any expense when it came to our birthdays. Anything we wanted to do, any place we wanted to go, we never had a budget. Wesley over there getting pops leftovers. He’s getting whatever he can. I stood outside pops door when he was on the phone with him, and I heard him ask Wesley what he wanted for his birthday. He told pops that he didn’t want shit,” Kingston shared with me.

“Damn,” I replied, hearing how fucked up that sounded.

“Pops gave me his number. He told me to reach out and tell him happy birthday. I was going to just shoot the lil nigga a text, but I think I should facetime him. How you feel about it? I already talked to Emaye about it when I walked in the house. I didn’t want her to feel like we were fucked up sons for reaching out to him. She told me that she wouldn’t feel any kind of way about us having a relationship with our siblings. She said that they’re innocent. You think she means that for real, or she’s just saying that shit?” my brother wanted to know.

“Nah, she means it. She’s been telling me for days now that I need to go over to the crib and check on pops. She told me that she doesn’t want me to pick sides and cut pops off because of the shit that he’s done to her. She even expressed to me the other day that she encourages us to have a relationship with our brother and little sister. I believe her when she says that. I only believe her because she’s over his ass. I took her to meet with a family lawyer earlier today. She talking about cutting her hair, going blonde, and being outside,” I finished, and my brother shook his head.

“She needs to sit the fuck down somewhere,” he spat, sounding just like me.

“Since you out here with me, Ima facetime Wesley. You cool with that?” my brother wanted to know.

I had this big ass heart, especially when it came to children. I couldn’t imagine how that had to feel not being able to get the full version of your father. Only getting half of him. Also, growing up in a household without siblings.

I wasn’t tripping about my brother hitting up our little brother, especially since I knew our mom was cool with it.

Kingston came over, sitting on the same lounge chair I was sitting in. I watched him as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and he went to the text message thread between him, and our pops. The last message from our pops was him sending Kingston Wesley’s number.

Kingston clicked on the number, and instead of calling him through a regular audio, he put in a facetime call. The phone rang about ten times. I was getting ready to tell Kingston that I didn’t think he was going to answer, but eventually, the call connected. You couldn’t see anything though. Just the ceiling. The ceiling fan was on, and there was a TV playing in the background.

“Yo! This Wesley?” Kingston asked.

“Man, who this?” a minor’s voiced appeared on the other side of the phone.

All I could think to myself was that he was definitely a Bennett boy. Mean lil nigga. Obviously a trait that had gotten passed down from our father.

“My name is Kingston. I got Wolf sitting right next to me. We’re your big brothers,” Kingston went ahead, and did the introductions.

In seconds, we heard shuffling around on the other end of the phone.

I thought that he was getting ready to hang up on Kingston. He didn’t though. His face appeared on the screen, and all I could think to myself was how much he looked like Demarco. He had long hair like me though. Fresh plaits in his hair that looked as if he’d just gotten them done yesterday. He was mugging the fuck out of us though. I peeked my head into the camera, so he could see both of us.

No doubt he was our father’s son. He wasn’t quick to be friends with us. He kept looking between my brother and I, checking us out, trying to see what the fuck was going on.

“I know who ya’ll are. That don’t make us brothers though,” he spat. He had a lot of anger. I could hear it in each word that came out of his mouth.

“That’s fair. I won’t even take that from you. You do have big brothers though. You got four big brothers. The other two are Kendrix and Demarco. All this shit is new to us man. We just found out about you not too long ago. We heard it was your birthday and we wanted to reach out to wish you a happy birthday,” Kingston did all the talking.

I was speechless. Truly, I didn’t know what the fuck to say. This shit felt unreal. I still couldn’t believe it. I had a baby brother that didn’t come from my mom. This wasn’t something that was easy to process.

Wesley was on the other end of the phone with this mug still plastered on his face. After a few moments, that mug turned into sadness. You could tell that he didn’t know us well enough to keep showing that sadness. Since that was the case, he nodded his head, as if he was going to take this to the chin.

“Up until I was twelve, I’m thinking this nigga didn’t come around consistently, simply because he didn’t know how to be a father. Whole time, I was missing out because he was devoting time to his other sons. I found out about ya’ll a few years ago, and I didn’t have any intention on reaching out. You was better off not even calling me, man. That nigga ain’t even come out here today. He called me to wish me a happy birthday. I bet he was at all ya’ll birthday’s though, huh? Tell that nigga not to give out my number to strangers!” he snapped and then hung the phone up. Kingston tried to call him back, but I stopped him.

“Nah. You can’t force that shit on him. He’s angry, and he’s allowed to be. We probably shouldn’t have done this shit on his birthday. We’ll reach back out another time,” I said.

“Damn. Pops said he acts just like you. I guess he wasn’t exaggerating,” Kingston replied.

After the conversation ended, I gave myself time to sit in this shit for a little bit. I saw it from a different perspective. I know my pops had his fucked up ways about him growing up, and he wasn’t the best husband to our mom, but for the most part, he’s always been there. We had him in the house. We got him for our birthdays, major holidays, school graduations, all that shit.