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I shook my head.

“Please. Just let me have a little more time.”

“Of course.”

I looked back down at Giovani. His eyes were closed, and for a moment, I pretended he was sleeping. I bent down and kissed him. His skin felt nothing like it used to. I pulled back, and something inside me completely gave way.

“MY BABY!”

The scream came from somewhere so deep inside me that I hardly recognized my own voice. I grabbed the edge of the table as my knees weakened.

“Oh, God! Not my baby! Please, not my baby!”

The woman came closer and placed a hand against my back, but there was nothing she could’ve done to comfort me. Nobody could. I had carried Giovani for nine months. I felt him kick inside my stomach, watched him take his first breath, and spent years trying to protect him from a world that didn’t care whether he lived or died. From a world that hated black little boys who were destined to become strong black men.

If only I could have saved him, but it was too late for that now because somebody had put a bullet in his head. Somebody had taken my child away from me. I pressed my forehead against his and sobbed.

“I’m sorry, baby. Mama is so sorry.”

I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for anymore. Maybe it was for not recognizing how bad things had gotten. Maybe it was for all the times we had argued when I should’ve hugged him instead. I lifted my head and looked at his face again.

“You know I love you, right?”

My voice trembled.

“You know Mama always loved you.”

I waited, even though I knew there would never be an answer.

“Nothing you ever did could’ve changed that.” I touched his cheek one last time. “And nothing ever will.”

By the time I returned to my car, I was exhausted. My head hurt, my eyes were swollen, and I felt like somebody had reached inside my chest and pulled out everything that kept me standing. The detectives had given me their contact information and explained that someone would be in touch regarding the next steps. I listened because I had to, but none of it mattered to me at that moment. All I wanted was my son.

I sat behind the steering wheel with the engine off, staring through the windshield. Eventually, I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. I opened my pictures and scrolled until I found one of Giovani from a few years earlier. He was standing in my kitchen with a plate in his hand, smiling because I had caught him eating before dinner was ready. His beard had been trimmed then. His haircut was fresh, his locs freshly twisted, and his face was fuller. He looked happy.

I ran my thumb across the screen.

“There you go, baby.”

I smiled through my tears. I had to put a different picture of him in my head because when I closed my eyes, I kept seeing how he looked lying on that table.

“Now… that looks more like my G.”

For a while, I sat there remembering him. Not the man the detectives were investigating. Not that street ass name that boys around our way called him either. Giovani. The little boy who used to bring me drawings from school. The teenager who thought he knew everything. The grown man who could still make me laugh when I was determined to stay mad at him.

I closed my eyes as another wave of tears came. Giovani had chosen a dangerous life. I had warned him about the streets more times than I could count. I had told him that money came and went, but once somebody took your life, there wasn’t anything in this world that could buy it back. He always listened when we had talks like that. At least I thought he did. Sometimes he would promise me things would be different. Other times he would just kiss my cheek and tell me not to worry so much.

But I would worry anyway because that was what mothers did. We worried even when our children were grown. We prayed when they wouldn’t pray for themselves. We held on to hope long after everybody else had given up. And sometimes, even after all that praying, we still had to bury them. I looked at his picture again.

For years, I had carried the belief that if I just loved him a little harder, prayed a little longer, or found the right words, I could convince him to change. Today, I finally understood that I couldn’t. I had given Giovani life. What he chose to do with it had been his decision. That didn’t mean I agreed with the things he’d done, and it damn sure didn’t mean he deserved to die the way he had. But I knew the life he’d chosen came with dangers no mother could protect her child from.

I had watched other women lose their sons to those same streets. I cried for them, prayed for them, and thanked God every time my own child made it home. Now I was one of those women. I would have to choose a casket. Find something for him to wear. Make arrangements for people to come say goodbye to a young man who should’ve had decades left to live. And somehow, I would have to keep living after all of that was done. I wiped my cheeks and looked down at my phone.

“I love you, Giovani.”

My voice was barely above a whisper.

“I wish you would’ve listened to me, baby.”